Colombo Follies

The Colombo family never fails to deliver when it comes to material for the blog, and this week is no exception.

Carmine Persico, who received a 100 year sentence in the Commission case back in 1987, filed a motion to have his sentence set aside.

Persico claims that new FBI files prove that he was not boss of the family when Carmine Galante was murdered.  

The Galante murder was ordered by the Commission and it was carried out in Bushwick Brooklyn at Joe and Mary's Italian restaurant. The photograph of his corpse splayed out with a cigar in his mouth is iconic.  

Persico claims that if he was not boss in 1979 then he was not on the Commission and could not have ordered the murder.  

Judge Kevin Duffy does not agree.  He found that Persico’s new material was not case changing and the outcome at the trial would have been the same.   

The good news is that Persico will remain behind bars until he gets parole, or he is maxed out in 2050 when he will be 115 years old.

Speaking of oldtimers, how about the oldest federal prison inmate Sonny Franzese who filed papers last year for compassionate release consideration from his 96 month sentence.

Franzese was convicted of racketeering in a case that featured his son John testifying against him.  He was convicted of extortion of the Penthouse and Hustler stripclubs in Manahatten.

Franzese was also caught on tape speaking about murdering so many people he could not remember how many he committed.

So far he has been denied early release and he is now appealing the decision.

Franzese is scheduled to be released in june of 2017 when he will be 100 years old.  

Franzese has spent over 40 years of his life behind bars, a feat that Teddy Persico seems determined to match.

This week Louis Barbati the co-owner of L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn was shot multiple times in his backyard by a hoodie-wearing gunman. Barbati was returning from the pizzeria carrying a bag of bread and 10k in cash.  He went around to the rear entrance when he was confronted by a 30 year old white male wearing a hoodie.  The man fired five times, striking at least twice in the back.  He then took off and escaped in a white car leaving behind the cash and a dead man.

The police are saying it was a robbery, but usually with robbery the object is to take cash, not murder.

L&B Spumoni Garden was the center of a mafia sitdown a few years ago.  Frank Guerra aka BF is a long time Colombo associate who was married to one of the owners.  A former employee stole the sauce recipe from L&B when he worked at L&B.  He opened a pizzeria on Staten Island called The Square.

BF Confronted him with another Colombo soldier and later received 4k in a family sit down.

The Colombo family delivers again.