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| August 31, 2000 | |
| By Jerry Capeci | |
| Maybe A Little Too Bullish | |
 Most investors just grit their teeth and
bear it when they guess wrong and lose money on Wall Street, even if it happens during a
booming bull market.Not William Cutolo Jr., (right) the son of slain Colombo underboss Wild Bill Cutolo, according to court papers filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. Early this year, all was well as young Cutolo’s portfolio grew
from $50,000 he invested in November to $75,000 on March 20, primarily on stock purchases
he'd selected for the Manhattan brokerage, Tucker Anthony. Things looked so good that he
withdrew $10,000 in profit and let the rest ride. |
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| which got him a $15,000
payoff from the frightened broker, said agent Portocorvo. Apparently impressed with the success of his gangsterism, Cutolo went back and demanded the $75,000 high point of the account, “increasing the volume and severity of the threats over time,” wrote Portocorvo. On May 20, Cutolo took it up a notch. He threatened a Tucker Anthony supervisor and “implied that he had connections to organized crime” and would “use physical violence” to get his way, wrote Portocorvo. On June 10, Cutolo was arrested on extortion charges and released on a $750,000 bond.  A federal grand jury is investigating the matter.Cutolo’s arrest and his alleged threats were sandwiched around the first anniversary of his father’s mysterious death, noted in two moving tributes (right) from his widow Peggy and other loving family members, including son Willie and grandson William III, in the May 29th editions of the New York Daily News. By all accounts, the elder Cutolo was rubbed out last year in a Colombo |
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family power play on May
26, even though his body was never found and no one has been charged in his death. The
main suspects include jailed-for-life family boss Carmine Persico
and acting boss/son Alphonse who's due out next year.
Officially, Wild Bill is classified as a missing person. That status caused minor
complications during the younger Cutolo's arraignment when his mom tried to post her
Staten Island home as collateral for her son's $750,000 bond.  Her husband, (left) still listed as co-owner of the house, would
normally be required to sign the bond, but assistant U.S. attorney Patricia Notopoulos
waived the requirement, acknowledging publicly that the feds believe he is dead.“The only reason he was arrested was because of his father’s name,” said Cutolo’s lawyer, James LaRossa. “The truth is that he invested his grandmother’s money. The broker was told not to margin the account but he eradicated the account almost entirely. He treated it like it was that of a 16-year-old. Mr. Cutolo was justifiably upset and acted accordingly. It was just anger on his part, nothing more than that. When all the facts come out everyone will admit that the broker mishandled the account.” |
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| Pepe's Nightmare Returns | |
An appeals court has
overruled a Queens judge and restored murder charges against a reputed Gambino mobster for a 1981 double slaying in which the murder
weapon and interview notes of a key witness have been  lost.The panel ruled that a 17-year delay in obtaining a murder indictment against Robert (Pepe) Vernace (right) did not violate his right to a speedy trial even though Vernace had been tabbed as a suspect within six months of the killings. The ruling overturns a July 1999 dismissal by Queens Justice Randall Eng. In a 3-2 decision, the court ruled that Vernace must stand trial for the Apr. 11, 1981 murders of the co-owners of the Shamrock Bar in Woodhaven after they had thrown a Vernace cohort out of the bar for unruly behavior after a patron had spilled a drink on him. The panel noted there is no statute of limitations in murder cases and ruled that the long delay and lost evidence -- including interviews of John Gotti niece Linda Gotti, a key eyewitness -- would hurt the prosecution, not Vernace's defense. Vernace allegedly was one of three men involved in the killings. Two others were indicted in 1982, but one, Frank Riccardi, fled and has never been apprehended. Charges against the second suspect were dropped after Linda Gotti recanted and said she could not identify him. Two years ago, Cold Case detective Thomas Mansfield began looking for Riccardi, found references to a third suspect named Pepe, reopened the case, reinterviewed witnesses, and got enough evidence for Queens prosecutors to obtain an indictment that November. Held without bail for several months, he was released on $1million bail in January, 1999.
"I am concerned," said Vernace's lawyer, Joseph Corozzo, "that the ruling may require an innocent man to defend himself against accusations involving circumstances and actions that occurred almost two decades ago, when the evidence he may need is likely to have disappeared. If we fail in the Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) I am confident of an acquittal at trial." |
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Since then, Vernace, who had been a
virtually anonymous Queens mobster, has been spotted at numerous Gambino social events,
including the wake last year for capo Anthony 
