Time's Running Out For Persicos

FOR two years now, Colombo mobsters loyal to Carmine (Junior) Persico have been waging a bloody mob war so his son Alphonse could take over the crime family when he was released from prison.

Alphonse, a capo, is due out next month after serving a six-year stretch. But with nine mobsters and associates killed in action and two dozen more in jail or on their way, there's not much left, in firepower - or brain power.

So instead of trying to pump new life into the crime family, and thinking of ways to fulfill his father's wishes, Alphonse should be looking for a good lawyer.

That's because, in the cruelest of ironies, Alphonse - who Gang Land hears never really wanted his father's business anyway - is squarely in the sights of the feds and their newest high-level mob turncoat, reputed consigliere Carmine Sessa.

And the feds are working on tight deadlines to make two racketeering cases - one for Alphonse, and another for his uncle, Theodore Persico, a reputed capo who was nabbed with Sessa outside St. Patrick's Cathedral on Palm Sunday and charged with harboring Sessa, a fugitive for nine months.

The feds have until May 4 to indict Theodore, who is under house arrest under charges filed in a criminal complaint. They want to indict Alphonse before May 30 when he is due out of federal prison in Milan, Mich.

In a June 1991 phone call he made from Milan to the home of a Colombo mobster, Alphonse involved himself in the early stages of the war between his father and mobsters loyal to acting boss Victor (Little Vic) Orena.

According to FBI documents, Sessa arranged the call to tell Alphonse that Teddy and reputed capos Josep (JoJo) Russo and Anthony (Chuckie) Russo did not attend a four-crime family meeting to iron out the war and to ask Alphonse to get them to attend the next one.

Using a simple code in which Carmine and Teddy Persico were "Papa Bear" and "Teddy Bear," and the Russos were "the cousins," Alphonse promised Sessa and reputed capo John Pate he would bring "Ted Bear" and the cousins in line.

The next day, Pate flew to Michigan and visited Alphonse, according to cooperating mobster Joseph Ambrosino who earned the name "Joey Brains" years ago when, while fleeing from cops, he led them to a social club full of mobsters.

Ambrosino, who has testified against Orena and several Persico loyalists, has spared no one, not even his wife, Lucille, in his tales of mayhem and madness to the FBI:

• Late one night in 1989, Ambrosino was tipped off that detectives were "down the street," so he had Lucille put a load of guns, knives and ammunition he was storing in his house on his next-door neighbor's back porch. They intended to wake at 5 a.m. and remove them.
  But they overslept and were awakened by cops who came to his neighbor's home after she called and told them she had found a garbage bag full of weapons.
  
  
• During the war, Ambrosino and four other Persico loyalists ended an unsuccessful stakeout for an Orena soldier and drove to Coney Island. There, they practiced their marksmanship at a boardwalk shooting gallery and topped off the night with hot dogs at Nathan's Famous.
  
  
• One morning, five shooters were staked out at the Staten Island home of another Orena loyalist when a resident seemed suspicious of the stolen car that three of them were waiting in. They fled without alerting two cohorts, who were waiting up the street. Two hours later, these two would-be assassins finally fled after they were spotted by a friend of their intended victim.
  
  
• During the war effort, the Persico faction always used stolen cars, which allowed reputed crew members like Frank (Frankie Steel) Pontillo and Lawrence Fiorenza to earn a few extra bucks. After stealing an Audi whose owner had left the engine running while buying a newspaper, Pontillo and Fiorenza told Michael Sessa they had bought the "stolen car" for $300, which Sessa forked over.
  
  
• Many of the same Persico mobsters held a big sitdown about the war at a restaurant in New Jersey. One problem was they all sat at different tables, capos with capos, soldiers with soldier, associates with associates. No one knew what was said at the others' tables. Another problem was everyone paid with stolen credit cards.