The Colombo family has chosen a well-respected but little-known wiseguy pal of late Mafia boss Andrew (Mush) Russo to lead the beleaguered borgata in the wake of the feds’ blockbuster racketeering case that ended last week in 14 guilty pleas, including one by the family’s reputed boss-in-waiting, Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico, Mob Insider has learned.
The new acting boss, sources on both sides of the law say, is Robert (Little Robert) Donofrio, 66, a former member of the rebel faction headed by ex-acting boss Victor (Little Vic) Orena. In 1991, Donofrio switched sides and fought alongside mobsters loyal to Russo and Persico’s uncle, the family’s longtime imprisoned boss, Carmine (Junior) Persico, in the bloody two-year-long Colombo family war that ended in 1993.
Donofrio — he stands about 5′-6″ tall — was not snared with Skinny Teddy and other family honchos in the 20-year-long shakedown of a construction workers union. He appears to have avoided all trouble with the law since pleading guilty in 1992 to plotting to whack Orena and other rebel mobsters. Little Robert is currently serving as the crime family’s acting boss, according to the sources.
Sponsored by capo William (Wild Bill) Cutolo, Donofrio was inducted by Orena in 1988 with the blessing of Junior Persico. Little Robert was a loanshark in a crew headed by Orena capo Pasquale (Patty) Amato in June of 1991, when he opted to team up with the Persico faction when Little Vic decided to try to take over the reigns from the imprisoned-for-life official boss.
Donofrio pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder Orena faction members from June of 1991 to July of 1992. Twice, he was on hit teams that were poised to kill Wild Bill during visits to his girlfriend Betty Ann, once on Thanksgiving Day of 1991, and again in June of 1992, according to an FBI report obtained by Mob Insider.
Little Robert’s role in the Thanksgiving Day rubout, which was slated to take place near Betty Ann’s grandmother’s house in Borough Park, was to “protect the shooters” who’d be wearing “Hasidic outfits” of black pants, coats and hats and beards, according to the October 23, 1992 FBI report.
“We were gonna dress up as Hasidic Jews,” turncoat gangster Joseph (Joey Brains) Ambrosino stated two months later at Orena’s trial. “We had machine guns, stolen vans, bullet proof vests, bulletproof hats and silencers,” but they never used them, Ambrosino testified, because capo Carmine Sessa, the Persico faction leader, called it off that morning.
Donofrio was among ten gangsters who pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial for conspiring to murder unnamed mob rivals. But Donofrio and his co-defendants were far less deadly than longtime FBI top-echelon informer Gregory Scarpa, a Persico loyalist who killed four gangsters and wounded three others during the civil war. Little Robert & Company were more like The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight in Jimmy Breslin’s novel that was based on the Crazy Joe Gallo crew.
Donofrio and his cohorts were unable to dispatch Wild Bill at his girlfriend’s home in Staten Island in June of 1992, or take him out in “several attempts to murder Cutolo at Don Peppe’s Restaurant” in South Ozone Park. They also failed to whack Orena rebels Joseph Scopo, Thomas Petrizzo, Gabriel Scianna, or Vincent (Chickie) Demartino, according to the 1992 FBI report.
Prosecutors wanted life sentences for Donofrio and nine cohorts who were guilty of conspiring to murder unnamed rivals. But Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser ruled that was excessive since no intended victims were killed. He gave gangsters who were convicted at trial 13 years, and those, like Little Robert, who pleaded guilty, eight years behind bars, and three years of supervised release.
Switching sides did cost him a prison stretch, but it was also profitable, Ambrosino testified at Patty Amato’s racketeering trial. Donofrio told him, he said, that Amato had contributed $20,000 to Little Robert’s loanshark bank, for which he made two one percent “vig” payments before abandoning Amato’s crew — a net gain of $19,600.
Despite his unquestioned loyalty to Andy Russo and Carmine Persico during the internecine family feud, and his role in two plots to kill Cutolo, sources say that Donofrio has often been heard stating that Wild Bill Cutolo was his “best friend in the Life.”
“I’m not surprised,” said one former federal mob buster. “Cutolo was the real deal, and was well liked by most mobsters back then. It was the Administration of the crime family that didn’t like him, and feared him, and had him killed” he said, referring to the 1999 disappearance and murder of Wild Bill, whose remains were dug up by the FBI in 2008.
Sources say Little Robert has quietly established himself in a produce business that he used to run with his father, a World War II veteran, since his release from prison in July of 2000. He completed his three years of post-prison supervised release without a peep in 2003, according to court and federal Bureau of Prison records.
“Don’t let that fool you,” said a former FBI supervisor. “He’s a dyed in the wool gangster; a true blue wiseguy who’s been a major player in the family for years. He knows Teddy Persico his entire life, and he has the respect of the Orena faction guys too.”
“Robert’s position,” said one usually reliable underworld source, “is that once the feud ended and peace was declared, there weren’t two factions, but one family. He says it, he believes it, and he should be a stabilizing force.”
“He’s a nice guy, well respected by everyone,” said a longtime Brooklyn denizen who lives near the home that Donofrio shares with family members in the Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights neighborhood that was home to Carmine Persico and family patriarch Joe Colombo when they headed the crime family.
While Little Robert has managed to avoid any legal trouble for more than two decades, sources say it’s not for a lack of trying by the feds.
Donofrio might easily have joined 127 other mob connected defendants from six states who were rounded up by the FBI a dozen years ago on Mafia Takedown Dayon indictments that were obtained by federal prosecutors in four states.
Sources tell Mob Insider that in late 2010, two wired-up turncoats tape recorded Donofrio talking with Colombo capo Anthony (Big Anthony) Russo about an effort by the Colombo family to extort money — for medical expenses — from the Gambinos for their stabbing of mob associate Walter Samperi. The sources say that Little Robert came close, but didn’t implicate himself in criminal activity in the taped talks.
As it turned out, on January 20, 2011, Mush Russo, Skinny Teddy, and 37 other Colombo wiseguys and mob associates were rounded up and arrested on a slew of racketeering charges — but not Little Robert Donofrio who survived to rise to the top rank in his crime family.
Upstate New York Mob Insider 