If the TV folks had reached out to Peter (Petey 17) Piacenti a few years ago, Richard Hatch wouldn’t have had his 15 minutes in the spotlight for winning CBS’s so-called reality based survival contest. 

Say what you will about the Gambino soldier, Petey 17 is a survivor.

“If it came down to the two of them in that show, Pete would have eaten Hatch alive,” said a Gang Land source who’s known him for more than two decades.

Piacenti, 81, is a fringe defendant in the federal waterfront racketeering indictment against the remnants of the Gambino crime family, including its latest Gotti boss, Peter. Peter succeeded his nephew Junior, who had briefly succeeded his father John, the late Dapper Don.

By far the oldest wiseguy in the case, Petey 17 is charged in a single count – running a string of Joker Poker machines – of the massive 68-count, 91-page indictment that accuses 17 Gambino gangsters and friends with extortion, labor bribery, money laundering, loansharking and gambling. His operation raked in about $5000 a week from about 20 New York area bars and restaurants and he faces a statutory maximum (and unlikely) five years in prison.

A loanshark and onetime owner of a mob watering hole in Bensonhurst, 

Brooklyn, Piacenti has never been regarded as much of a tough guy, but was a mobster whose bite was much louder than his bark.  

He knows where lots of bodies are buried, and survived long enough not to tell about them. He was so close to a sensational 1979 double homicide and subsequent wild shootout – the October 1, 1979 slayings of James (Jimmy The Clam) Eppolito and his son, James Jr. – his ears are still ringing. And to this day, he still limps from a bullet he took in the aftermath. 

Piacenti was just along for the ride that night as the father and son gangsters were shot to death in a crowded white Thunderbird filled with five Gambino mobsters. Petey 17, whose nickname stems from the "The 1717 Club" he once operated at 1717 86th St. in Bensonhurst, is the only one still alive.

Capo Anthony (Nino) Gaggi (left) and Roy DeMeo (right) were on a mission from then-boss Paul Castellano to whack the Eppolitos for violating one mob rule or another.

The elder Eppolito had feared his number had been called. But Gaggi persuaded them into the car, saying they were going to a sitdown to iron out their problems and that Piacenti, (a close friend of the Eppolitos who had been kept in the dark about the hit) could speak up for them.

The plan, according to court records, was to drive to the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, to an apartment behind DeMeo’s base of operations, the Gemini Lounge, where they would execute, dismember and package them in plastic

bags and cardboard boxes for disposal in the Fountain Avenue dump. 

Petey 17 would survive the “Murder Machine,” which happens to be the title of the book by Gene Mustain and yours truly that details how DeMeo and his gang of coke-snorting hitmen – Joseph Testa, (left) Anthony Senter, (bottom left) Henry Borelli and Chris Harvey Rosenburg – had dispatched dozens of butchered-up victims to the landfill. 

Anyway, as they drove in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Jimmy The Clam realized what was in store for him. Gaggi, who was in the front passenger seat, pulled out a gun and fired three bullets into the brains of James Jr., who was driving. At the same time, DeMeo, who was seated behind Gaggi, reached his left arm around Piacenti and fired four bullets into the head of the senior Eppolito.

As brains and blood splattered all over the car, Petey 17 and the hitmen jumped out. But a small time burglar saw the shooting and flagged down an off-duty housing cop who wounded Gaggi and Piacenti in a wild shootout.

A year later, Piacenti attended his Brooklyn Supreme Court trial – the case was fixed but that’s another story – on a hospital gurney. Convicted of misdemeanor charges, he served about eight months in prison. DeMeo suffered the same fate as the Eppolitos in 1983. Gaggi was later convicted of fraud charges and died of a heart attack at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 1988. 

Petey 17, whose lawyer did not respond to calls for comment, is due in court next week for a status conference along with Peter Gotti & Company. It’s hard to predict how Gotti, his brother Richard V. Gotti, a capo, and the other major defendants will fare.

But Piacenti should survive this too, with a sweet plea deal calling for six months, or less, behind bars.

“We’re not going to kill you this time Al, out of respect for your father. But you make any more threats and we’ll do what we have to do,” said one of them.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Hot off the presses! It's here, the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do! Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June. Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

With a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga – from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall and right on up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books that was published in December. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.