Ralph (The Undertaker) Balsamo is a gregarious Genovese family gangster who runs funeral homes. He would rather be caught dead than say anything bad about Liborio (Barney) Bellomo. (right) 

The same could be said about Bellomo’s brother-in-law, mob associate Gerald Fiorino. He has no real problems with Barney, who married his sister and has long been a devoted husband, and doting father of three children.

But both are Bellomo’s co-defendants in a 34-defendant indictment, and hope to be far away from Barney (right) when the onetime acting Genovese crime boss goes to trial next spring on racketeering conspiracy charges that include murder and obstruction of justice. 

In court papers, Balsamo and Fiorino have asked that they be tried separately from Bellomo, who is accused of taking part in the 1998 execution murder of acting capo Ralph Coppola. 

The charges against Balsamo aren’t exactly chicken feed. They include labor racketeering, witness tampering, gambling, gun charges and drug dealing.

Fiorino (left) faces extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice counts. But unlike Bellomo, neither man is accused of killing anyone – a vital and important distinction they want to be sure their jurors don’t overlook. 

So-called severance motions are rarely successful, even in cases in which many defendants are charged with separate, unrelated crimes that are all alleged to part of the same racketeering enterprise, which in this case, is the Genovese crime family. These motions have a better than usual chance of success, however, primarily because the feds are seeking the most horrific possible penalty for Barney – his death by lethal injection.

In similar cases, most federal judges have severed defendants from trials in which a co-defendant was facing capital punishment, say Fiorino’s lawyers, Michael Rosen and Jean Graziano, who have petitioned Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan to sever their client from Barney’s case. 

The lawyers acknowledge that Fiorino is charged with “serious crimes,” but assert that he would suffer a “unique prejudice” by a joint trial with his brother-in-law because the jury would have to be a “death-qualified jury” – that is, a panel without any members who are opposed to capital punishment. 

This prejudice, the lawyers wrote, was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, which stated in a ruling involving a death penalty case in Kentucky that so

called “death-qualified juries” were “more conviction-prone” than those in non-death cases.

Lawyers for six other codefendants, including Albert (Chinky) Facchiano – who at age 96 has the distinction of being the oldest “made man” to be awaiting trial in a racketeering case – have filed similar severance motions, raising many of the same legal issues.

Balsamo’s attorney, Edward Hayes, (right) came up with an intriguing additional reason why his client would be unduly prejudiced by standing trial “alongside a defendant who is facing the death penalty” for murder. 

“The potential for spillover prejudice from this murder charge will be even greater since the Government insists on giving Mr. Balsamo the nickname ‘Undertaker,’ which is his profession, not his nickname,” wrote Hayes, noting that Balsamo is a licensed funeral home director who works in his family’s funeral homes in the Bronx and Westchester.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Eric Snyder, Jonathan Kolodner and Miriam Rocah did not return calls for comment. Gang Land expects them to cite Supreme Court decisions which permit joint trials of capital punishment defendants alongside others and push to prosecute all remaining defendants at the same trial, currently slated to begin in May.

In his court papers, Hayes belittled tape-recorded evidence that prosecutors had cited to characterize Balsamo (left) as a danger to the community. The lawyer argued that his client was not a violent person, but merely “a talkative person” with a “propensity to repeat phrases in conversation.” 

A judge disagreed with the lawyer’s contention, and Balsamo has been detained since his arrest last February. But there is little dispute that The Undertaker likes to talk, that undertaker is at least one of his professions, and that he occasionally repeats things. 

When he was arrested, he drummed up a discussion with investigators for the Westchester District Attorney’s office who were part of a task force that arrested him, according to an arrest report obtained by Gang Land. At one point, the Undertaker asked whether they had worked for former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro. A few months earlier, Pirro had been soundly defeated in a run for Attorney General.

After some small talk, during which the investigators told Balsamo that they now worked for District Attorney Janet DiFiore, they asked Balsamo “how a guy from the Bronx opened a funeral parlor in Harrison NY.” 

“Jeanine,” Balsamo replied, repeating her name a second time, before elaborating further, according to the report.

“Balsamo continued that Al Pirro was Balsamo’s father’s attorney and that he helped the Balsamos obtain the funeral home. Balsamo continued that the Pirros were friends of his family for many years,” wrote detective Dennis Gallego. 

Jeanine Pirro could not be reached for comment. Albert Pirro did not respond to a request for comment about Balsamo’s remarks.

Balsamo, who allegedly oversaw a large-scale cocaine distribution network that operated in The Bronx and Westchester from April through December of last year, is the only defendant in the case who is charged with being part of the mob-connected drug ring.

Last week, the last of 13 codefendants charged in the drug trafficking aspects of the massive 45-count indictment, copped plea bargains, with almost all beginning their prison sentences as part of the deals their lawyers worked out with the feds. 

Eleven defendants who joined their alleged leader behind bars before Christmas will receive sentences from five years to 10 years; two less culpable defendants who face about three years in prison are slated to begin doing their time next year. 

Michael (Chunk) Londonio, (left) an accused middle manager of the drug operation, was killed last December during a shootout in which he wounded two New York state troopers, one seriously, when they sought to arrest him on coke trafficking and weapons charges. 

Two months later, Balsamo acknowledged an affiliation with the deceased Londonio during his chat with investigators, according to the arrest report. When prodded about advice he had given Chunk about how to conduct himself in the ongoing drug business, Balsamo replied: “Oh, you guys know about that?”

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.