1736 routes, including 853 of the city’s 2000 larger routes that carry 80,000 general education students, according to a DOE spokeswoman. 

Gatto’s father, also named Domenic, ran a non-union bus company in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was an associate of Paul Castellano, according to investigative sources. The elder Gatto was tape-recorded in meetings with the then-Gambino boss at his Staten Island home in 1983. 

Until his connection to this wide-ranging indictment alleging the Genovese family has controlled Local 1181 of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union for decades, the younger Gatto has never been linked to organized crime. 

Gatto did not return repeated calls for comment. 

His attorney, Peter Silverman, told Gang Land that “neither Dom Gatto nor Atlantic Express is a target” of the ongoing federal investigation into corruption in the school bus industry. “He has cooperated and will cooperate with the authorities regarding any questions that they have. I emphasize that he is neither a target nor a subject of any investigation. Mr. Gatto may be called as a witness, if he is, he’ll tell the truth.” 

Sources say Gatto was implicated in the payoff scheme by former union Secretary Treasurer, Julius (Spike) Bernstein. (right) An  

1181 official for 35 years, Bernstein died two months ago, a year after he began cooperating. 

Bernstein, a close pal of legendary Genovese capo Matthew (Matty The Horse) Ianniello –  the mobster (left) was best man at Spike’s wedding – was tape recorded stating that he got $1000 a year for each bus route over five that any one company received, according to a 2006 arrest complaint by FBI agent Michael Gaeta. 

In a complaint charging a Department of Education supervisor with bribe receiving last week, Gaeta wrote that during a wide ranging investigation, four bus company owners have told him they have been paying bribes to DOE officials for decades. 

It could not be determined whether Gatto was also one of the four bus company owners cited in last week’s arrest complaint of the supervisor, Geoffrey Berger. 

Gaeta, and Manhattan federal prosecutors Benjamin Gruenstein and Elie Honig, declined to comment about Berger’s arrest, or the upcoming Battaglia trial, except to state that it’s scheduled to begin January 14. 

Battaglia’s attorney, Joseph Benfante, ripped the allegations as “horribly untrue. Sal (right) has worked his whole life as a bus driver, and later as a union leader. He never took one dime from anyone. He worked tirelessly for the rank and file, and after becoming president in 2002, he won the best contract the workers have achieved in decades. They’re making him a scapegoat for years of corruption by others.”

With jurors set to get the case today, the issue of who killed Wild Bill Cutolo is still in doubt. But it’s indisputable that all the women in his life believe that he is dead and didn’t run away and leave them when he disappeared back on May 26, 1999.

As they did at the top of the trial, prosecutors called a woman who loved him to put the final touches on the racketeering and murder trial of top Colombo family mobsters, Alphonse (Allie) Persico and John (Jackie) DeRoss.

“He was very much like my husband,” said Bettyanne Fox, who met Cutolo when she was 12, became his girlfriend about six years later, and bore his child in 1990, at age 24. “He was with me and my daughter. We lived like (any) average family would.”

Billy spent every Christmas at her Staten Island home, never missed her daughter’s birthday, she testified, and was there when they celebrated her first Holy Communion, (right).

Cutolo paid the mortgage, gave her whatever money she needed for food, clothes, household items. Like many couples, they had their ups and downs. But 1999 was a pretty good

year and they spent “most days” together, she recalled, until that fateful day, Fox testified.

They were together the afternoon before he disappeared. “We went grocery shopping. We went to the hardware store. We came home. We cooked dinner. We did some backyard work, watched some television, put together a cabana in the backyard.”

The FBI often followed Cutolo around, she recalled. In fact, that day, they joked about how obvious the agents were tracking him and photographing him (left) everywhere they went. Agents tailed him the next day also, but unfortunately for Wild Bill, he gave them the slip. 

She didn’t know whom Billy was scheduled to meet the following day, but he had an appointment that “he wasn’t happy about,” she said. “It interfered with our schedule and other things that he had to do.” 

She last saw him about 11:30 that night, when he left her home to spend the night with his wife, Peggy, who testified in much the same fashion, at the outset of the trial.

A few days before Christmas of 2006, Santa arrived early with surprisingly good tidings for Mario (The Baker) Fortunato as he and Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito (right) prepared to stand trial a second time for a 1994 social club murder.