In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins welcomes back veteran crime journalist and mob historian Larry McShane to discuss his latest book, Little Vic and the Great Mafia War. Together, they dive deep into the violent and chaotic period known as the Third Colombo War—a brutal internal conflict that nearly tore the Colombo crime family apart.

Larry offers exclusive insights from his research, including rare interviews with Andrew Arena, one of the five sons of Victor “Little Vic” Orena, the acting boss at the center of the war. These firsthand accounts reveal the deeply personal toll the Mafia war inflicted on the Arena family and expose the raw emotions behind the headlines.

Gary and Larry revisit the key flashpoints of the conflict, including the botched assassination attempt on Orena. On June 20, 1991, A five-man hit team waited in a car outside the Long Island home of Victor Orena, the acting crime boss of the Colombo crime family. Orena recognized the vehicle—and managed to escape with his lifethe bloody street warfare that followed. We explore the complex dynamics between longtime boss Carmine Persico, rising star John Gotti, and powerful enforcer Greg Scarpa—whose shadowy relationship with the FBI cast a dark cloud over the entire war.

The conversation also tackles the shifting nature of mob alliances, how loyalty turned lethal, and how the RICO prosecutions of the early 1990s reshaped the Mafia’s grip on New York. As the war’s body count climbed, so too did its consequences—both for the Colombo family and the broader underworld.

Don’t miss this deep-dive into one of the most explosive chapters in Mafia history. And be sure to pick up Larry McShane’s Little Vic and the Great Mafia War for an even more detailed look at the treachery, violence, and fallout of the Colombo civil war.

Click here to get Larry’s book Little Vic and the Great Mafia War.

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[1:07] Legal things, what happened to the arenas and that sort of thing. But, yeah, it’s it’s a mob war book. What this is, is the title is Little Vic and the Great Mafia War. And, you know, these, these Columbo’s, I tell you what, this, they coined, they must’ve coined the phrase going to the mattresses because the entire community. Span of the colombo family both before joe died there was killed and and up until the end they’re always have to go to the mattresses people are always running around and cruise trying to kill each other and and this third one was was no different it’s uh it’s just crazy tell us a little bit about your process here how you started researching this not been a lot done about Vic Orena i don’t know what kind of resources you got on that you have to report cases but you talked to some of these kids too, I believe, which is really interesting. You got some inside knowledge there. Yeah, I’ll give you kind of the long version. I’d spoken to Andrew Orena, who’s one of Vic’s five sons, about doing something. He had approached me through a guy that we both knew. I thought it was a kind of story that isn’t told often, and especially with the idea of the son cooperating, I thought, this is kind of interesting. You know what I mean?

[2:20] So we shopped it around and, you know, we got no takers. The guy who helped me get the Chin book out, the guy from the publishing house, Kensington Publishing, was getting ready to retire. And he got a hold of me and he said, I’d like to do one more book with you before I retired. And I said, how about that Orena book that you sniffed me on? He said, well, send me the stuff. I’ll take another look. And he took another look and he said, yeah, let’s do it. It took a long while to get here. You know, I think, as you mentioned, the ability to have two of the Orena brothers, two of Vic’s sons, I think, make this a different kind of book. You know, there’s so much coverage of what happened back then in the early 90s because it was the last big mob war. And so I thought, you know, I thought and the publisher agreed that, you know, this is a story worth telling. Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot from, you know, FBI agents telling, you know, this is what I remember. maybe even an informant or two out there. This is kind of what I remember, but they’re really hard to find. But court cases, there’s a lot out of the court cases, but you got the family, the view from inside the family, which I think is fascinating because these families, that Orena family, they stuck together. They truly were a old school Italian from Sicily mafia family. Yeah. John is the older brother who I spoke to. He was a made guy. He had a brother who was Vic Orena Jr. He was a made guy.

[3:47] And Andrew, who I mentioned first approached me.

[3:52] Um, was, was, was never a made guy cause his mom put the squash on it.

[3:57] He said, you know, two sons in, in the life where, so he was, um, I guess you could say he was sort of mob adjacent. He, he, uh, he was involved in a lot of stuff and he knew about a lot of stuff, but he never, he never became a made guy. So now this, uh, you know, he, he was in the Clembo family and, uh, the Persicos had, uh, famously taken over from after Joe Clembo was killed and, uh, get them kind of mixed up alley boy and uh carmine the snake really were you know hand in glove with each other uh alley boy was i believe he was uh he was the younger wasn’t he and so carmine took over clumbo family was in real flux at that point in time try everybody was kind of jockeying for a position i would imagine and and for a while it ran pretty smooth at the persicos carmine went to jail and And he named three people to run the family, if I remember right. And then, of course, another person called Little Alley Boy is going to move on up. It’s kind of that way in Kansas City. If Nick Savella goes to jail, his brother of court becomes the titular head. He becomes the guy that everybody goes to and assumes he’s the boss. He may not be exactly, and there may be other people doing a lot of things, but because of that name identification, why, uh, they’re going to do it. And, and then Orena, a little bit Orena was right in there with them at that point in time.

[5:22] So can you talk about that part of it a little bit? Well, when, uh, when Carmine Persco goes to jail, that’s in the mafia commission trial, which is a big trial here. This was the start of Rico prosecutions around this time. And he, he very famously represented himself as his own attorney and got some pretty good reviews as well. Unfortunately, he did not get the verdict that he’d hoped for, despite his efforts. And he had been convicted on an earlier case. So he went to prison in.

[5:51] 80 or he was convicted in 86 he had this prior conviction over him so he had 139 year sentence ahead of uh and and clearly you know he was not going to get out and return to running the family so they they bring in a middle manny type guy not not a guy with um i guess not a guy with a lot of juice and uh persco quickly turns on this guy he’s executed in a garage in new jersey you know typical thing he’s taking his friends back to his house and he never he never gets inside the house kind of thing you know yeah and so at this point uh the agreement is made among all sides that vicarina is going to become the uh acting boss which is interesting because Orena is more known as like a businessman and an earner you know he’s got his own crew he’s living at this point out in the suburbs of long island but he seems to be a choice that that everybody is in agreement with and things go smoothly kind of seamless once he takes over you know they have a lot of uh income flows coming in and out he’s got as i mentioned his two sons vic jr and johnny capos in the family everything seems to be rolling in the Orena in his direction and then one night in the summer of uh 1991 he’s coming back from dinner and he’s almost at his house and he looks Sovereign sees a car with four faces that he recognizes.

[7:15] Four of his fellow members of the family, and they’re waiting to kill him. Fortunately for him, he sees them before they see him. He slams on the gas, gets out of Dodge. That’s how the war kicks off, you know, with this attempted hit on Vicarina. It rather than taking him out proves to be, you know, a total failure. Yeah, if you set out to kill somebody, you better get it done. And if they learned about it, you’re, you’re, you’re, you know, the war is on. I mean, you know, they know once, once that thing starts down the path, once that bullet starts down that barrel that you’re going to kill somebody there, there’s no calling it back. So it’s, it’s from then on it’s kill or be killed. Wasn’t it was Greg Scarpa. Was, was that one of the guys he recognized in there?

[8:01] No, it was not. Scarpa was, Scarpa was not one of the guys involved in that hit. And he’s going to get involved in a lot of this later on, which is a pretty interesting thing. The conflict with Scarpa and his FBI agent friend and what the Orena is, how they see that, what they have to say about that relationship and the trials that were going to happen later on. But now another thing, I think you mentioned something about John Gotti was pretty close with Orena and they had some business together. Yeah, it was…

[8:39] I mean it was good for for gotti because it gave him another guy on the commission, okay who would back you know what he wanted to do and so yeah the two of them were were on the same side of things sammy gravano who was the underboss at that point i had a chance to speak with him uh while i was working on the book you know and he said that vic was like a well-regarded guy and uh you know there didn’t seem to be any reason for any problems with the selection of vic he’s a guy that made money uh not a flashy showy guy sort of sort of the anti-goddy you know what i mean uh he’s he’s living at home with his wife as i mentioned they have five sons you know and he’s just a guy who’s pretty well regarded you know what i mean he’s a money maker which is always valued you know across any of the families what was uh persico carmine persico was he afraid that that vic was then gonna take away something he thought was his and that’s being the boss of the Colombo family? Was that what precipitated this? I think that had something to do with it, but it’s an odd thing because by most accounts, little alley boy was going to be getting out of prison in a couple of years in 1995. It seemed set up, and I think it would have happened this way.

[10:00] That he would finish his time, he’d get out of jail, and he would immediately move to the top of the family. You know, the war lasts through 1993. So really, if they had just waited two years, but as you sort of referred to when we were talking earlier, that’s sort of the way that the Columbos did things. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, with the wars going back to the gallows. So, yeah. Yeah, that is true. One crew against the other. One crew feels like they’re out and are afraid somebody’s going to get something that they should have. And so as this heats up now, what kind of actions do Orena, his sons, take? I mean, if you take on a guy with two sons who are made guys and are capos, that’s pretty serious stuff because you’re taking on some real power, some people that are going to be hard to isolate. So what kind of actions did they start taking in their own defense? Well, the initial thing from their side, the Orena side of things, was they wanted to see if this was something that they could resolve. I use the old cliche, without going to the mattresses, you know what I mean? They wanted to resolve this. And so between the two sides, and I believe it was at the home of one of the Persico sons, the arenas were looking to broker a deal.

[11:28] And basically, the option was kind of, you know, we want somebody else in. It quickly became clear that everything was not going to go back to the way it was, even though, you know, Vic had been in during a relatively long time.

[11:46] Quiet stretch in the family um and uh you know he had a lot of supporters but they they just couldn’t come to a resolution which is a debate over a guy who’s going to be in prison for three or four more years yeah you know and to oust the guy who’s in there things just kind of fester for a while you know the the arenas are uh the arenas are wondering what’s going to happen next of course they’re all very upset that there was an attempt to murder their father near their home out in Long Island, Cedarhurst they lived. So I guess there’s just a very uncomfortable stretch until the arenas decide to strike back. So what was their first move back? They decide Billy Cattolo, who’s a high-ranking guy in the family, decides that if they’re going to go after somebody, they should start near the top. And so they target Greg Scarpa. Yeah, exactly. That’s how he comes into this. I remember now. Yeah. So they load into a van and they drive to Brooklyn and they lie in wait for Scarpa. He comes out of his house with his girlfriend, the girlfriend’s daughter, I should say, Linda Shiro, his girlfriend’s daughter, who’s carrying her infant son. These four guy shooters come out of their van. There’s another car that’s used to hopefully block traffic.

[13:09] And they open fire. Incredibly, in all the craziness, no one is shot. They jump in the car and they flee the scene. But at this point, this thing goes from zero to 200 or whatever analogy you’d like to make. Because now the Orena side has fired the first shots. As it emerges, Scarpa becomes the most active shooter throughout, the most aggressive guy throughout, begins to raise questions as time goes on about his relationship with Lynn DeVecchio.

[13:44] Who’s working the case for the FBI out of Brooklyn. So the FBI, their deep throat informant, their most valuable informant they probably maybe have ever had, but one of their more valuable informants is right in the middle of this Colombo active shooting war now. Now, I guess later on, as they have these trials, they’re going to accuse DiBecchio of fomenting even more violence and assisting Scarpa because Scarpa, he needs to win. Also, I have one other question before we get too far into Scarpa. He had a pretty decent drug business going, I believe, in the end. And then, and little Vic Orena was pretty, took a pretty strong stance against anybody in the family doing drugs. Did that have anything to do with it? Did the kids talk about that at all? No, not really. You know, there was so much.

[14:43] I mean, to me, this war was more personal than, you know, financial or, you know, this was who was going to run the family, who was going to control the family. You know, the Arenas found themselves locked in this war against the Persicos, who were yin to their yang. Johnny Orena and one of the Persicos ran a trucking company together. So they weren’t just involved in illegal money-making things. They ran businesses and they worked together side by side. And so, yeah, the initial hit, I think, is really a shocker. Months later, it’s like, here’s the second hit. They’re going after Scarpa immediately. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[15:27] And so at that point, I think all bets are off. There’s not going to be any peace achieved at that point. I mean, you couldn’t tell at the time, I guess, but it would be two and a half years before everything finally settled down. And at that point, Vicarino was behind bars, and he’s still there today despite best efforts of his family to try and get him out. Yeah, I was reading that in your book, how bad his health was and how much he changed his life around now. But before we get onto that, let’s talk a little more about Scarpa. I mean, they tried to hit Scarpa with guns right with his stepdaughter and step-grandchild standing right there. I mean, that’s, to me, that’s such a huge no-no. I mean, you see those civilians walking out, you just move on and let’s try again. But they didn’t. They tried to hit him right there. That had to, you talk about it being personal, that had to really make it personal. Yeah, I agree with you that it’s sort of a weird thing that you don’t hear about, putting somebody’s family in the line of fire. You know, I think there was a notion on the on the Orena side of things that if you killed Scarpa.

[16:40] Maybe that would be a way, an avenue to figure out a way to end the war if you take out their top guy, right? Yeah, right. But instead you end up with an infuriated Scarpa, who nearly sees his grandchild and daughter killed in front of his eyes on a street in Brooklyn. Winding down, if I remember this Billy Cattolo, they then went back after him. He was kind of a wild guy. I think he had the moniker of Wild Bill. I believe they ended up going after him. Yeah, Wild Bill Cattolo. He was an Orena loyalist, although he managed to make his way out at the other end of the war untouched. He did. But he ends up getting killed at some point in time since then, I think. He does indeed get killed. According to his son, he thought he had been sort of welcomed back into the fold, let bygones be bygones, and he was murdered. That his son was involved in the case against Alley Boy Persico.

[17:41] Andrew Orena told me that he had a chat with Itolo about this, about going back into the family. And he told him, you know, don’t do it. Don’t go in there, just steer clear. And, you know, in response, he heard like, no, everything looks good this time. You know, they’re bringing me back in. And, you know, the Arenas had been out for some time. You know, this would have been in, I guess, the early 2000s. It was a bad decision, obviously, just a bad decision. And the Persco’s are not the forgiving kind, I guess, would be a fair way of putting it, you know. And this guy thought that he was going to get a pass. And I think for, you know, like Andrew Orena would say, you know, if you’re thinking you’re going to get a pass from these guys, you’re not really thinking clearly, you know. And he tried to talk him out of it, but unsuccessfully. So when little Vic goes to jail, he catches a case on a murder, I believe a murder case. Tommy O’Cara.

[18:39] He ran a restaurant out in Long Island. It was very popular with the mobsters out that way. You know, very mob-friendly place. Vickery and his sons used to eat there a lot. He also did some mob business, including sports gambling, that type of thing, take bets. And there was a raid on his place. When they get inside, Ossera, rather than having all his books for these different things set aside or held somewhere else, he has them in the restaurant. They’re very damning documents about his gambling business. So he finds himself in kind of a precarious spot now. He’s eventually kidnapped, killed, and buried. There’s some dispute over who did what. Andrew Orena said to me that they weren’t involved in this.

[19:29] John Gotti was involved as well. Sammy Gravano. I mean, it’s sort of an, I don’t want to say nondescript. We’re talking about somebody who was murdered. But this was not a guy whose name appearing in the paper would have turned any heads. Yeah. And yeah, so this is what happens. It ends up that they’re trying to say that this was a thing by the arenas. And again, John Gotti is kind of a mercurial guy too. He and Gravano discussed the hit, according to Gravano, and this guy is murdered and buried, and then he’s finally recovered a few years later. And then I guess they turned somebody, I think. Yeah, somebody flipped. I can’t remember who. I can’t remember his name now, but I don’t want to get too many names there. But somebody flipped and drug little Vic into it. And his kids, did they give you indication that he really, he wanted to take over the Colombo family and push the Persicos aside? Or was this all kind of a misunderstanding? Yeah, absolutely. They were afraid he was going to, and, you know, one thing leads to another. Well, I think, I know that they were really kind of proud that their father had gotten to the top of the food chain within the family, you know? What i mean they were definitely not proponents of the war you know they were hoping to resolve things and like we’ve touched on this a couple times i i think that they believed close ties with the persicos would allow them to sit down.

[20:55] And and have a discussion yeah about you know what what could we do you know what i mean this is this is not the way to do this we know your family you know our family um we can come to a reasonable agreement clearly that was not the case i mean it’s funny like one decision like that like you know we we don’t want peace okay you know three years later i think if i have the numbers right there were like 122 people arrested on both sides of the war wow um yeah it’s uh.

[21:25] I mean, dozens of people involved in shootings and that type of thing, all related to this kind of pointless fight, the last fight for control of a, I don’t want to say dying mafia, but a foundering mafia at that point. Veds are starting already. The RICO prosecutions, which are obviously a total game changer. Yeah, and the commission trials were during all this, so I mean, they put away the heads of all the families during this. Yeah, yeah. And the other thing is when Irina got arrested, he was arrested at his girlfriend’s house out in the Long Island suburbs. It seems like some trials take forever to get going. He was prosecuted very quickly, convicted very quickly and sentenced to a very long prison term very quickly. That was a case where he was sort of the first domino to fall, and certainly at least the first big domino to fall. They brought in a really good prosecutor to handle the case. I mean, Andrew talks about how he was having a panic attack, waiting for the verdict to come in. Bang, their whole world collapses, you know what I mean? He says in the book that after the verdict, Vic Jr. Tells all the people in the family who were there, like, you know, we’re going to walk out with our heads held high. And that’s what they did. They didn’t come out moaning or decrying some crooked prosecution or anything.

[22:47] They walked out with their heads held high. I was on a wiretap once, and this guy, he was kind of a mob associate, and he was talking to a friend of his, and he was giving him advice because the guy was in trouble with some other people or something. And he was giving him advice, he said, and they were going to boot him out of a business or something. And so this Tommy Russo, he says, I’m going to tell you something. And he says, when they’re running you out of town, he says, go out like you’re leading a parade. So these guys, they’re being run out of town. They went out like they were leading a parade. Yeah.

[23:20] Well, I was going to say, I think their whole idea was, right, we’re not going to give these guys their pound of flesh. We’re going to walk out with our heads held high and just, you know, unfortunately for the arenas, that was just the beginning rather than the end of the prosecutions they would face. So, yeah, what happened to these other brothers? They all had cases that they could catch, and they all committed a lot of crimes. So what happened to them? There was a big case in which the two brothers were defendants along with some other guys. And this was a federal prosecution case.

[23:54] And it was linked to a number of things. One of them was a gas operation where they were squeezing money from legitimate businesses and taking a percentage of the cash that came in. So they wind up, them and some other five, six, at a federal trial in Brooklyn. As it turns out, this is kind of the trial that changes everything. Before the trial begins, the prosecutor has a meeting in chambers with the defense lawyers and the prosecutors, the chief prosecutor acknowledges a variety of different interactions between Linda Vecchio and Greg Scarpa. This is not a usual thing to happen, you know, and especially right before a trial is about to begin. And so now I think, you know, think, you know, Johnny Orena said that this gave everybody a big boost. Their argument was that Scarpel was getting information from Lynn DeVecchio about different things, a variety of different things. If I recall correctly, one of the things that was alleged was that DeVecchio had given information about where the Orena hideout was. When the trial starts, these guys are like, okay, we got really good lawyers. We got something to hang our hats on here. Prosecution was along the lines of, you know, at this point. Don’t don’t let this steer you away from what this trial is about kind of thing you know what i mean.

[25:24] There’s this whole weird thing that happens. Things are coming to a close, and the jury begins deliberations. Andrew Orena is very, he was telling me, he’s very nervous. They don’t know what’s going on. They’re waiting to see what happens. And the jury sends out a request for an FBI document. The document was never introduced at the trial, but the jurors, during their deliberations, figured out amongst themselves that this was something they thought they needed to see as part of the trial, you know? So the prosecutors turn over all the paperwork. It leans in their favor. The jurors go back to resume their deliberations. I mean, even now, I think, incredibly enough, they’re all acquitted. I mean, the judge in the case, Judge Corman, Federal Judge Corman, actually told the arenas before the deliberations continued that if the jury, I mean, yeah, that if the jury found the defendants guilty.

[26:29] He would vacate the convictions in order of mistrial based on this document that had been introduced. So if the jurors had gone the other way on this paperwork, the judge would have given them another shot.

[26:41] Johnny was telling me, I mean, these are things you don’t think about if you’re not in the mob, I guess. But johnny was saying they were taken back to the federal lockup him and his brother, when they went in they were like greeted with raucous cheers by the other inmates that you know here are two guys that actually beat the government you know what i mean really yeah that’s unusual that’s that’d be key it really is you know and uh yeah so bruce bruce cutler um, you know, who was Gotti’s attorney, came down to visit them at the prison after the verdict. And he basically, like I said to these, the two of them, like, you know, what you have just witnessed is something that will never be seen again and has never been seen before. That you guys beat this case is just, it’s astounding, you know? It is. And I guess the jury, it’s just enough to cause a reasonable doubt. I mean, that’s what a good defense lawyer is always trying to do, just bring something in to create any kind of reasonable doubt. And I guess the interactions between DeBecchio and Scarpa created that enough doubt and the other witnesses that they just couldn’t bring themselves to convict him. I would assume. What would be your take on that?

[28:04] Well, I mean, the whole thing is just so strange, like, you know, a jury sending out a note like, hey, where’s this document that we’ve never seen? You know what I mean? How did they know about that document? I did have that question. I’m glad you brought that up. How do you think they knew about that document even? I guess during the course of negotiations, it came up and they requested it.

[28:25] They deciphered during their, that this thing should exist. There should be a document like this that exists. I see. And so they send out a note saying, we’d like to look at this. And when they do, they come back with the other verdict. The Arenas, or I should say not all the Arenas, but Andrew Orena had some of the jurors over his house afterwards for like a little celebration. Yeah, yeah. And reading your book, I noticed that then when they’re trying to do appeals for their dad, they’re frantically trying to bring this relationship in and they cannot get that reintroduced to help with their dad’s case. Because it’s like this relationship between DiVecchio and Scarpa, that’s like a magic get-out-of-jail-free card, it seemed to me like for a while. Yeah, it was definitely, I guess, the number one choice of defendants trying to beat their cases. Really?

[29:18] Although in the end of that, right, DiVecchio beat his case too. Yeah, I was going to say, I wonder what DiVecchio has to say about this. He’s written a book. I need to get that book. And I’ve got another book here that really goes into that depth by this Peter Lance, Deal with the Devil. Yes, right, right. So it’s really got a lot. I’ve just kind of scratched the surface of it. I tried to get old of him, but he never did respond. I don’t think he does podcasts. I’ve never seen him on one. Well, now, hold on a second. I got a hold of him, and he got back to me. Yeah, DeVecchio. Which I was like, well, I’ll tell you the story. There’s a website you can visit if you’re working as a journalist.

[30:02] And retired FBI agents, you can reach them this way. Somebody at the FBI probably steered me that way.

[30:11] So I put up this thing. I get a message back from one guy who was involved in the arrest of Carmine Sessa and one of the Persco’s outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was like a huge arrest as the war was winding down.

[30:29] And this guy had some really good story to tell about how they’re staking out you know the steps of saint patrick’s cathedral and these four gangsters are planning what they’re going to do next and they swoop in and arrest them all i was like well you’re not going to do better than that you know what i mean it’s not yeah the next thing i know i get a message from linda vecchio which basically is kind of like saying i understand you’re looking for me and i’d be happy to talk Oh, well, cool. You did get a chance to get his take on all this. I guess there was an internal investigation, which dragged on for a couple of years, and he beat that. There were no charges, I should say. And then, you know, 2007, you know, the Brooklyn District Attorney just announces, you know, we’re going to charge him with four murders. Um and you know at this point de vecchio has been out of the spotlight for some time you know he’s living down in florida yeah you know and he writes in his book how uh he comes back to brooklyn and they have him in handcuffs in an office in the brooklyn da’s office you know and you know he’s charged with four murder cases uh one was uh the murder of mary barry yeah uh who was i think.

[31:48] Alphonse Persico’s girlfriend at the time? His girlfriend and he went into jail and he supposedly they sent some guys over and took all of her, you know, the jewelry he’d given her and they cut her out. He cut her off. Then it acted like they were going to give her a job because he was worried that she could talk about it. Right, exactly. And Scarpa and Scarpa’s son Scarpa killed her. There’s no doubt about it. Scarpa’s son was he testified that himself and of course scarpa bought his way out of that with uh his relationship with the bureau one of the murders he he got free of because of the vecchio but that linda shiro claims that the vecchio said you need to do something about barry and and maybe gave him an address with kind of a you know a wink and a nod kind of a thing right right right right, There was another friend of the younger Persico’s, Patrick Torco, who was killed because Scarpa thought he was going to rat on his son at some point.

[32:56] Uh lorenzo lampazzi i hope i’m pronouncing that correctly was a guy on the Orena side during the war he was charged with that murder as well and then there was another friend of uh serpico jr serpico god almighty persico jr yeah probably had slipped there yeah exactly and uh there was some concern he was going to become a born-again christian and then at that point if he finds god perhaps we’ll find and uh someone he can tell the whole story or two about what’s going on so he’s the uh he’s the fourth victim and and again d’avecchio is charged in those cases with you know working with uh persico and so when he goes to trial i mean look it was uh it was insane when the trial started you know what i mean it’s it’s out in brooklyn the courthouse is packed, yeah i mean here you have this guy who i think at one point was regarded as one of the fbi’s best agents he did instruction for incoming guys you know what i mean and they do the internal investigation, and he comes out at the other end of that with no charges. And so here’s the last big swing they’re going to take at this guy with Charles Hines, Joe Hines, and the Brooklyn prosecutors. And then the whole case fell apart in one day.

[34:12] That’s what I read about it. They somehow discredited a witness, and I can’t remember what it was now. Actually, I know the answer to this one. Oh, good. I know, but I forgot all of a sudden. Yeah. She testifies, among the people who are there are two reporters, Tom Robbins and Jerry Capici. They both worked, like me, at the Daily News at some point. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. And they had done interviews with her.

[34:45] Maybe like 10 years earlier yeah that was some time with scarf with scarper’s girlfriend linda shiro correct and uh they had done interviews with her for possible maybe a book project or something yeah uh and it all fell apart um but they they saved the tapes and so when she testifies they get in touch with each other and uh they find that they find the old tapes and uh what she says on the tapes is far different than the damning testimony that she gave under oath the day before, or I guess the same day. And so when they got to court the next day, the case was dismissed. The judge, if I recall correctly, told Linda Shearer, the next thing you should do is find yourself a defense attorney. And so their last big shot, Linda Vecchio, collapsed like the old house of cards in the course of 24 hours. I actually like this. This is a good little touch that I like.

[35:43] He went out to celebrate at Spark Steakhouse.

[35:50] So I guess they walked a walk past the old Castellano parking space, you know? Yeah. That guy, he had a sense of irony, maybe, a sense of history, a good sense of history, you know? Yeah well i mean look uh again i did not expect to hear from him uh he gave me oh yeah i’m surprised myself he answered all questions uh he was very insistent he had done nothing wrong much like you said it was a great surprise to me to hear from him but uh he was super cooperative he didn’t blow off any questions you know i learned a little bit about his uh earlier career which was interesting he was a very highly regarded agent um and i believe there were like three or four dozen, FBI agents who filled the courtroom on that first day of, uh, of opening statements and testimony. So there were guys that he worked with who, uh, who had his back and, and who backed him up. Well, it’s, like I said, you get in and working with these informants, the really good guys, the ones that there’s no stuff and are good criminals there. It’s, it’s a constant battle with them to, for the, who’s going to be in control and, And, you know, they can, they can then use you in the end.

[37:12] They’re going to use you or anybody else that can. I guess the secret is letting them think that they’re using you. Right. And actually you’re using them, right? That’s the secret. It takes a really skilled person to do that. I imagine it would. Yeah. Really skilled. I’ll tell you why. One quick little story. Here’s the kind of things these guys will do. I was, I met this guy at a strip club, right? So we go in there and meet another guy who, who was another policeman from another department who had actually introduced me to this guy. And, and he, he wasn’t really a mob informant, but he was a professional criminal and he knew everybody in that substrata, that professional criminal, you know, connected with the mob on one time and knew all the fences and, and he knew all these people, but he was always, you know, pulling at me. It is the kind of guy that even went to junior college and took law enforcement courses to find out what the police were doing. He had a stolen car operation himself. We’re sitting in a strip club, you know, having a merry old time. And he calls one of the girls over and he gives her some money and she leaves. And I’m watching. What the hell’s going on? She goes over and sits down and starts doing lap dances and talking with a guy with a snap-on tool uniform. And then my guy, he disappears.

[38:32] And I thought, oh, shit. As we saw, I remember seeing a snap-on tool truck when we pulled in the parking lot. And my guy goes out there and he comes back a little bit and he said, hey, he said, there wasn’t anything in that truck. I’m going, oh, my God. Oh, my God. You know, they do stuff like that to you, to try to pull you in a little bit. You know, you’d say something about, oh, it’s a nice watch you got there. You want one? I got two or three more just like it. So it’s a constant battle let me tell you, yeah larry this has been great this has really been fun and uh interesting story uh, Maybe not the last mob book that’s ever written, but I’ll tell you what, there’s been a plethora of it just in the last few years. Little Rick and the Great Mafia War. Guys, you better get this. It’s an interesting, easy read, and I promise you, you’ve got to learn about a little chunk of the New York or the Colombo War and the Colombo family and the later years of the mob before they really, you know, the 90s, when it just took a night. Nosedive, you’ve got to learn a lot of stuff that you didn’t know before. I sure did. Yeah, well, listen, thank you for having me. All right, Larry. I should leave with Len DiVecchio’s great line, which supposedly set off his coworkers. We’re going to win this thing.

[40:01] Was that the Columbo, the Persicos winning the Columbo War, or was that the FBI? Well, that was always the bone of contention. He insisted that he was saying that, you know, we, the FBI are going to win this war. And some of his colleagues went the other way. Yeah. And you’ll always have a couple of colleagues you work with that think the worst of you are going to go around and say bad things about you. That’s another problem when you’re doing this kind of thing. And you’re the stick and other guys are jealous. And so they’re going to somehow try to discredit you. So that’s another hazard of the business. All right. Larry McShane. Thanks a lot, Larry. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for reaching out. Take care, man. All right. See you. Bye. Bye-bye. Well, guys, that was a great story. It’s a really interesting little chapter in mob history in New York city. And I hope you get that book. Larry’s written. He’s a good guy. I really like talking to him. He’s, uh, he, he’s extremely helpful and he sent me a couple of three extra copies of the book. So I’ve got a couple of friends here that I’m going to be giving those two. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So if you are out there in a big SUV.

[41:14] Watch what you’re doing and watch your motorcycles. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, be sure and go to the website of the VA. That is, if you’ve been in the service, if not, there’s other places for help out there, but you got a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. And with that, you know, if you’ve got a problem with drugs or alcohol, go to Anthony Ruggiano’s website or his YouTube page, uh.

[41:40] I can’t remember the name of it all of a sudden. That’s okay. You can figure it out. Not get a hold of me. He’s got a hotline number. And if you’re on YouTube, you’ll see that hotline number right now. He’s got a hotline number, and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida. So go see Anthony. He’ll straighten you out, get you in recovery. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, go to 1-800-BETS-OFF in Missouri. I don’t know what you have in other states, if that’s just a state-by-state thing or what. But there’s help for gambling. And you can have problems with gambling. Like starting off with bankruptcy and loan sharks coming after you and shit like that. So there’s help available for all those different things. Don’t forget, I have books and movies out there for sale.

[42:24] One last little sales pitch for myself. I’ve got, and also a pitch for a review. I’d like to get some reviews on that New York Mafia book I did, Big Apple Mafia and the Five Families or something like that. I just looked for my New York book, and I got the Chicago Outfit book, Windy City Mafia. And my book, you’ll see over my shoulder here, is the Leaving Vegas, how FBI wiretaps in and mob domination in Las Vegas casinos. And I’ve got my documentaries. I’ve got three great mob documentaries all streaming on Amazon for $1.99.

[43:02] And other than that you know you might want to check my uh gangland wire podcast group out uh if you can’t it’s a private group now we had to do that to get rid of the scammers and spammers and all that and then start went private and then ace people out so if you can’t quite figure it out well get hold of me and i’ll send you a link and don’t ever hesitate to ask me any questions you make comments on my youtube ask me questions you know i like to interact with people and maybe hear your stories and you can tell your stories on that too. So thanks a lot, guys.