Feb. 24, 1997

SMOKING COULD BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR FREEDOM

By Jerry Capeci

TEDDY Persico (left) should have heeded the U.S. Surgeon General's repeated warnings about the dangers of smoking - even cigarettes with recessed filters.

If he had, the Colombo capo might have won a reversal of his racketeering and murder conspiracy conviction stemming from the bloody mob war that left 11 dead and scores of others wounded in the New York metropolitan area five years ago. Instead Persico - brother of the family's imprisoned former boss, Carmine (Junior) Persico (right) - is to be sentenced Friday.

Joseph Russo, Anthony (Chuckie) Russo and Joseph (Joe Monte) Monteleone were granted new trials because of alleged corrupt dealings between an FBI agent and Greg Scarpa, a Colombo mobster who was also a top echelon FBI informer.

Federal Judge Charles Sifton said there was a lack of physical evidence tying the Russos and Monteleone to two murders for which they were convicted. And so, he said, testimony against them was tainted. Prosecution witnesses testified about things Scarpa told them, which differed from remarks about the same incidents he had secretly told his control FBI agent, Lindley DeVecchio.

The judge ruled that little testimony against Persico stemmed from Scarpa, and that there was tangible evidence linking him to a planned, but aborted, 1993 ambush of a rival Colombo mobster at a Brooklyn catering hall - Parliament cigarette butts with the signature recessed filters found at the scene.

The butts were the only physical evidence linking the Parliament smoking mobster to any of the many rubout efforts witnesses described during the 10-week trial in early 1994. They were retrieved at the Del Monte catering hall in Bensonhurst, along with bullet casings and ammunition box tops, after former Colombo consigliere Carmine Sessa was arrested and told the feds that Persico was one of several mobsters laying in wait for rival mobster William (Wild Bill) Cutolo.

 JUDGE: FEDS SCREWED UP
IN his well-reasoned, 100-page opinion that was nearly three years in the making, Sifton pointed to "serious errors of judgment on the part of law enforcement" during the investigation of the Colombo mob war and subsequent prosecutions.

The judge wrote that testimony and disclosures in five trials revealed a "highly reprehensible trading of information between a law enforcement official and a criminal, who, a reasonable person would assume, was continuing his criminal activities and using the information supplied for his own criminal ends.

"Scarpa emerges as sinister and violent and at the same time manipulative and deceptive with everyone including DeVecchio. DeVecchio emerges as arrogant, stupid or easily manipulated but, at the same time, caught up in the complex and difficult task of trying to make the best use of Scarpa's information to bring the war to a close."

Sifton tweaked several FBI agents and federal prosecutors for mistakes, but saved his best shots for FBI agent Chris Favo and assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Weissmann. Favo - who blew the whistle on DeVecchio - made an "erroneous decision" to withhold FBI reports from the defense and "is not to be excused."

Weissmann, he wrote, was guilty of a "myopic withholding" of similar documents, actions which were "reprehensible and subject, perhaps, to appropriate disciplinary measures."

However, the judge said, the government's conduct did "not begin to approach the level of uncivilized and indecent behavior" necessary to warrant a dismissal of the indictment. "Defendants were not the victims of DeVecchio's horrendous errors of judgment; the families of those shot in the war were."

G-MAN GETS IMMUNITY TO TALK  
MEANWHILE, DeVecchio, who retired last fall after the feds ended a two-year probe without bringing any charges against him, has been granted immunity and ordered to testify about his 15-year relationship with Scarpa in a hearing Friday involving another convicted Colombo mobster looking for a new trial.

Federal prosecutors suspect DeVecchio of giving Scarpa information about investigations, cooperating witnesses, an upcoming indictment of his son and addresses of loanshark victims and mob rivals.

In a 1995 affidavit, DeVecchio said: "I established an excellent rapport with Scarpa, but I always remembered that he was 'wiseguy' and I was an FBI agent."

GOTTI BACK AT MARION
BUREAU of Prisons officials ended nearly two months of wild rumors and tabloid speculation last week by returning John Gotti from the medical facility in Springfield, Mo. to his personal hellhole at Marion federal penitentiary in Illinois.

Gang Land heard just about everything on this one:

Gotti was knocked down by a fellow prisoner.

The Dapper Don was stabbed in the chest.

He was stabbed in the abdomen.

He had cancer of the jaw.

His jaw was broken by another inmate.

Well, Gotti, whose big mouth got him a life sentence in 1992, had a bad toothache.

He has a history of dental and gum problems and was transferred to Springfield Christmas Eve for periodontal surgery and followup care.

This time, his mouth got him a relatively comfy seven weeks away from Marion, held to be cruel and inhuman punishment by the folks at Amnesty International as well as by Gotti and many of his fellow cons.