Carmine Sessa

Carmine Sessa was a Brooklyn-based mobster who became consigliere of the Colombo crime family.

Sessa began his criminal career doing bank robberies for the crew of Gregory Scarpa Sr. in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Sessa was eventually arrested and convicted for his role in a bank robbery. In 1990, Sessa was charged with violating probation after being linked to a crew of sophisticated bank robbers known as "the By-Pass Gang", which included members of the Lucchese crime family and the Colombos, such as Anthony Casso, Joseph DeFigueroa, George Zappola, Vincent Zappola, and Sessa's underling Robert Zambardi. The murders of Otto Heidel and Dominick Costa were ordered by the gang's leaders. Sessa later admitted to shooting Costa, while Zambardi served as a lookout.

In the early 1990s, the Colombo family erupted into an internal gang war. Imprisoned family boss Carmine Persico planned to have his son Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico take over the Colombo family when the son was released from prison. However, acting boss Victor Orena informed Sessa that he did not plan turning over his authority to the younger Persico. At this point, Carmine Persico ordered Sessa to murder Orena. On June 20, 1991, Sessa, Zambardi, John Pate, and Hank Smurra staked out Orena's Long Island, New York home to ambush and kill him. However, Orena showed up unexpectedly and was able to escape the trap.

A two-year mafia war erupted that resulted in over a dozen murders, and nearly a dozen unsuccessful hit attempts, throughout Brooklyn. As the war broke out, Sessa and Persico leaders, including the Russos (Persico cousins), Gregory Scarpa (a mob capo who was a secret FBI informant), and Theodore Persico, (Carmine Persico's brother and a family capo), handled the family and war's day-to-day affairs.On November 29, 1991, Sessa's nephew, Larry Sessa was nearly killed during an ambush; Larry was chased down the street by masked gunmen and escaped by jumping into a friend's car. Five days earlier, Smurra was shot in the head and killed while sitting in his car in in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.

Information of the planned hit was leaked by federal prosecutors during Zambardi's bail hearing on loan sharking charges, as he was part of a massive racketeering indictment that included Gambino crime family members Joseph Bilotti and several others from Staten Island, New York.

On April 8, 1993, Sessa and other Colombo mobsters were arrested while attending a secret meeting outside St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. Sessa had been a fugitive for the previous nine months. Sessa was indicted on RICO murder conspiracy charges. Shortly after the indictment, Sessa, at the urging of his wife, decided to become a government witness. Sessa went on to testify against many family members.

In the summer of 1997, Sessa was released from prison. In December 1997, Sessa was arrested for domestic violence against his wife and for stealing guns from his son.

In October 2007, Sessa testified at the trial of former Federal Bureau of Investigation (fBI) agent Lindley DeVecchio. DeVecchio was the agent in charge of Scarpa. DeVecchio was eventually acquitted.

External links

* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEED71131F932A3575AC0A967958260&scp=6&sq=Carmine+Sessa&st=nyt New York Times: Prosecutors Tell of Colombo Family Murder Plot] by ARNOLD H. LUBASCH
* [http://www.ganglandnews.com/column120.htm This Week in Gangland: Turncoat Wife Beater Back to Jail] by Jerry Capeci
* [http://www.nypost.com/seven/10262007/news/regionalnews/scarpa_hid_by_killing__witness.htm New York Post: SCARPA HID BY KILLING: WITNESS] By ALEX GINSBERG