Christmas is always an eventful time for Gambino capo Dominick (Skinny Dom) Pizzonia. 

It was on Christmas Eve, 1988, that the now 65-year-old Queens wiseguy was inducted into the mob, in the same ceremony as John (Junior) Gotti and four other lucky rookies. 

Last Christmas, Skinny Dom was in the can, awaiting trial for the murders of a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde, an armed robbery team that preyed on mob social clubs during a wild, year-long fling in 1992.

This year, however, Pizzonia is home for the holidays with his wife and family, albeit under strict house arrest. The feds want it to be his last Yule spent outside prison walls. 

The Ozone Park-based gangster is facing trial early next month for three execution-murders, all tied to the season of joy and good cheer. 

Two of the hits he allegedly carried out took place on another Christmas Eve. On December 24, 1992, Thomas and Rosemary Uva were each shot several times in the head at as they set out for some last minute Christmas shopping.

The victims, and their alleged killer, all lived in the same neighborhood, about

half a mile from the scene of the murder, the corner of Woodhaven Boulevard and 103d Ave in Ozone Park. 

The couple had long been tempting fate by brazenly sticking up social clubs in Brooklyn, Queens, and Little Italy. When they were shot, Thomas, 28, and Rosemary, 31, were in their maroon Mercury Topaz. It was 8:30 in the morning, and Rosemary, who was in the passenger seat, had $1000 in cash in her handbag. 

Usually, it was the other way around. Rosemary was the team’s daring wheel-woman while Thomas was the bag man who collected cash from their victims with the help of an Uzi submachine-gun that he brandished as he simply walked into as many as 10 un-locked clubs run by the Gambino and Bonanno crime families.

With both families gunning for them, it was Skinny Dom – whose Liberty Avenue social club was one of the audacious duo’s victims – along with two sidekicks – who got the job done, according to Brooklyn federal prosecutors Mitra Hormozi, Joey Lipton and Paige Petersen.

Sources say Pizzonia’s Christmas Eve Mafia induction was a reward for another murder, one that was committed in June 1988, according to his racketeering indictment.

That victim, Frank Boccia, earned the wrath of his father-in-law, mobster Anthony (Fat Andy) Ruggiano (right)

and the entire crime family, including Junior’s late father – then at the apex of his five year reign as the Dapper Don – when he physically and verbally abused Fat Andy’s wife while the mobster was serving time in federal prison. 

The prosecutors have no accomplices listed as witnesses in the Uva murders, but court papers show they plan to use the testimony of two high-level Bonanno turncoats – onetime underboss Salvatore Vitale and former capo Frank Lino – and Gambino defector Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo (left) to link Skinny Dom to the double homicide. 

As Gang Land reported last month, Fat Andy’s son, Anthony Ruggiano, has agreed to cooperate and will testify that he and Skinny Dom took part in the murder of Boccia – whose body has never been found – in Pizzonia’s social club. 

Pizzonia’s lawyer, Joseph Corozzo, said his client steadfastly maintains that he was not involved in any of the murders in the indictment, but he declined to discuss any specific trial strategy.

Gang Land has learned, however, that Corozzo has informed prosecutors that for the murders of the husband-and-wife stick-up team, Pizzonia has an alibi defense, one that involves a long time girlfriend.

That paramour, court records show, is apparently still pretty mushy about Skinny Dom. Her $700,000 home is one of seven properties posted as collateral for him, thus allowing Pizzonia to spend this Christmas at home – with his wife. 

Last week, the feds added a co-defendant to Pizzonia’s case. He is Alfred (Freddy Hot) DiCongilio, an aging Ozone Park bookmaker who was only recently inducted into the Gambino family. DiCongilio, 77, is charged with helping with the Boccia slaying, as well as illegal gambling. 

Freddy Hot has a reputation as a well-heeled bookmaker with many gambling arrests on his rap sheet. But the murder charge is believed to be the first violent crime lodged against him. Released on $3 million, he was ordered confined to his Ozone Park home. 

Gang Land expects that Judge Jack Weinstein, who has set January 8 as a firm trial date, will sever DiCongilio from Pizzonia’s upcoming trial, and order the feds to try Freddy Hot later.

Last year, when he was a spry 85, Genovese capo John (Buster) Ardito (left) joked about a trip that the feds believed he and a really old gangster, Albert (Chinky) Facchiano, had taken, supposedly to threaten another Genovese old-timer not to  cooperate. 

“Yeah, two hitmen, me and Chinkie, 95 years old,” he said with derision to longtime mob associate and legal mouthpiece, Peter Peluso, who was wearing a wire for the FBI. “I tell you, if we pull the trigger, we woulda fell on the floor.”

Today, Facchiano, 96, is home in Florida, ostensibly awaiting trial in New York for obstruction of justice, and in the Sunshine State for extortion.

Ardito, 87, has pancreatic cancer and is emaciated – he reportedly weighs less than 100 pounds. But he is still detained as a danger to the community as he awaits trial for racketeering even though he appears unlikely to make it to May, when the trial is slated to begin. 

Last week, attorney Corozzo angrily charged that recent actions by the feds seem designed to ensure that Ardito – who has lost more than 60 pounds from

his “thin” 5-foot-eight 160-pound frame since his arrest earlier this year – will die in prison even though there is no way he will ever be able to stand trial, let alone be convicted.

Stating that any layperson could see that “the man is dying” and could not hurt anyone or flee, Corozzo (right) asked Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan to release Ardito and permit him to spend Christmas and his last days with his family. But Kaplan declined, noting that a medical report filed the previous day listed Ardito, who was not in court, as “stable.”

Assistant U.S. attorney Miriam Rocah acknowledged that Ardito has cancer but added, “We don’t have any indication that it’s nearly as imminent or life-threatening as Mr. Corozzo suggests.” She essentially blamed Buster for delaying a finding about the seriousness of his cancer by refusing to submit to tests a day earlier, on December 11. 

The Judge cut short a spirited back-and-forth by the lawyers, ordering Ardito to be taken by ambulance to the Westchester County Medical Center for testing “preferably by an oncologist” and that a report be submitted to him this week. 

Late yesterday, Kaplan signed an order releasing Ardito on bail.

Gang Land readers interested in learning more details about the scandalous Mafia Cops saga of murderous ex-detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa have two new books to choose from.

The Brotherhoods, The True Story Of Two Cops Who Murdered For The Mafia is a 509-page hardcover book co-authored by Willam Oldham, a retired NYPD detective who began investigating the murderous duo as a criminal investigator for the feds, and writer Guy Lawson. Amazon has it for $18.97, more than eight bucks off the list price.

Mob Cops, The Shocking Rise and Fall of New York’s “Mafia Cops,” is a 386-page soft cover publication written by Daily News reporter Greg B. Smith, who previously authored “Made Men, The True Rise-and-Fall Story of a New Jersey Mob Family. $7.99 at Amazon.

Oldham and Lawson begin their account with the arrest last year of Eppolito and Caracappa in Las Vegas. Smith starts his narrative in 1969 on a young Burt Kaplan, who would become the star witness against the rogue cops, as the budding gangster drives to Connecticut to dump the body of a murder victim whose name he never learned.

Both books are up to date. They end with the convictions of both men for eight murders that were overturned by trial Judge Jack Weinstein, and with the ex-detectives jailed without bail as they wait for the government’s appeal of Weinstein’s ruling to be heard next year by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.