 Welcome into another quick hitter edition of the original gangsters podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein. Today I want to do a quick deep dive into a little historical tidbit that traces into something that's going on today in the Colombo crime family. I love talking about that last great American mafia dynasty that is the Persico crime family skinny teddy persico recently got sentenced to go back to prison for about five years but in that paperwork we found out that he is the boss in waiting that the crime family will be his upon him getting out of prison in the late 2020s but what I want to talk about today is the fact that he ended the 1990s Colombo mob war by ordering a murder from inside his grandmother's wake in Brooklyn about 30 years ago almost to this week and he did it on a furlough from prison surrounded by three state prison guards shackled from the hands to his legs and held a clandestine meeting with his crew a handful of guys came and in front of his grandma's body he gave the order to kill Joey Scopo the last remaining member of that rebel faction led by little vicarina who opposed skinny teddy's uncle Carmine the snake persico in the early 90s between 1991 and 1993 New York City was a shooting gallery headlines were you know splashed across the city connected to this shooting war that erupted between little vicarina the acting boss and Carmine the snake persico who was behind bars and at the end of the day you had almost a dozen dead bodies and the final body to drop was joey scopos and teddy persico took that murder contract very personally he wanted his guys to be the ones to murder uh joey scopo and end the war so let's just do a quick time travel back to august of 1993 i believe it was august 18th uh and diker heights brooklyn at the scarpacci funeral home and teddy persico was away upstate serving a drug sentence and he arranges for a furlough to come back to brooklyn and say goodbye to his grandma and he's ushered down downstate back to his home hometown stomping grounds of brooklyn by uh state police guards that he had to pay for um and they brought him to pay his respects to his grandmother they brought him in the back of scarpacci's funeral home with the body for him to um say goodbye but when he was saying goodbye he huddled with members of his crew most notably his acting capo anthony big anthony rousseau who eventually would turn government informant and kind of fill us in on what was happening inside the funeral home on august 18th 1993 and he was like i said he had handcuffs on uh three guards around him and he calls anthony rousseau and another two people close to him and whispers you know you got to get joey scopo we got to do it it's got to come from our crew and it's got to happen fast um the word had been said the button had been pushed and joey scopo was was running on uh borrowed time scopo was a guy that you know went way back in the crime family through his dad little ralfi he was very close with the goddies in queens john goddie gene goddie peak goddie uh came up doing hijacks with those guys in the 70s and then she became the under boss of that rebel faction under vecarina vecarina was jailed in 92 i believe and his main muscle on the streets wild bill cotolo uh who was his kind of sergeant at arms the general fighting the fighting the war uh was jailed i think in 93 so by late 93 joey scopo was the last man standing and the order was given from the funeral home and then how it was carried out is also notable uh because they they stalked him to his home in queens he was coming home from uh i believe a dinner where he had had a a meal with his family it was in a car with his teenage nephew and his his son-in-law and the hit team was was stationed on his block when the car pulled up into the driveway one of the hit men came and sprayed it with automatic weapon fire but everybody miraculously was uh was not hit and survived that joey scopo jumped out of the car and had a cell phone he chucked it at a teenage hit man that was on the hit team john papa uh and chucks his phone at john papa and kind of starts shit talking him says oh you think you're some kind of tough guy let's see how tough you are john papa dodges the cell phone and then comes up at point blank range and unloads his clip into joey scopo murdering him and for all intents and purposes ending that colombo mob war john papa again as an 18 year old hit man um very eager to to prove his merit uh was responsible for for three or four murders in a very short period of time he killed a number of the guys that were on that hit team with him because they were bragging about the fact that they had been the ones that killed joey scopo when scopo had had been the one to pull the trigger um his his father was a pretty legendary mob guy that was murdered as well uh papa bear john papa went to prison uh in his serving life right now teddy persico you know ended up copying a plea uh or being found guilty rather uh in this murder conspiracy and had to go do uh at least a dozen years or so came out in 2020 and part of this plea that he just uh agreed to in this colombo labor racketeering case uh could included him admitting to violating his supervisor release from being released on this uh on this case that included on a racketeering plate racketeering case that included the scopo murder uh meeting with people in the family kind of politicking there's been wire taps that have come out in court in the last couple weeks that show people in the colombos talking about teddy as the future boss uh saying that everything's going to be great once teddy's in and uh how how teddy is is the future he's the future of that dynasty as jerry capesi says uh he's a dyed and wool true blue gangster and um you know it's his for the taking now jerry reported about the little rob to no for your promotion we touch on that on another quick hitter this week he is now the acting boss of the colombos rebel a little rob to no frio from from brooklyn so we'll keep you up to date with everything that's going on but i thought i wanted to give people a little insight into the way the persical mind works and to tell you how crazy things were back in that colombo war and and do a little uh you know throwback to to the august 1993 murder contract that was issued at a funeral for og podcast i'm scott bernstein i'll see you next time