Updated news on the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Lucchese and Colombo Organized Crime Families of New York City.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Gioeli spilled his guts about the former nun's killing to captain-turned-cooperator Dino "Big Dino" Calabro


Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli was more scared of eternal damnation than prison.
Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli was more scared of eternal damnation than prison.

It's mob retribution on a higher plane: whacking a nun means eternal damnation - or so believed the mobster responsible.
"I'm going to hell!" accused Colombo crime boss Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli allegedly confessed to a fellow gangster about the accidental murder of former nun Veronica Zuraw during a Mafia execution.
The Italian-Catholic gangster participated in the slaying with sidekick Joseph (Junior Lollipops) Carna on Jan. 4, 1982, in Gravesend, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
The innocent victim - who was known as Sister Mary Adelaide before leaving the Pallottine order and marrying her accountant husband, Louis Zuraw - was struck by fragments of a shotgun blast that penetrated her home's front door and walls.
Gioeli's intended targets - porn king Joseph Peraino and his son Joseph Jr. - were fleeing their executioners and ended up at the Zuraws' Lake St. doorstep.
"Somebody was banging on their door and she was walking to see who was banging on the door," Linda Costanza, an acquaintance of the Zuraws, later recalled in a deposition reviewed by The Daily News.
"These people that were being shot at ran up on their stoop and started to bang on the door. She was walking toward the door saying, 'What is going on, who is that banging, who is it?'"
Peraino Jr. was killed, and his father left paralyzed in the double mob hit that may have been sparked by a dispute with the Colombos over cutting up profits from the porn classic "Deep Throat," a mob informant previously told the feds.
The elder Peraino had just survived another murder try two months earlier, and refused to cooperate with cops after both shootings.
Gioeli, 58, the former acting boss of the Colombo crime family, is charged with a half-dozen murders - including the 1997 slaying of off-duty NYPD cop Ralph Dols in Brooklyn and the 1999 rubout of Columbo capo William (Wild Bill) Cutolo.
He is not charged with Zuraw's murder, but prosecutors hope to introduce a slew of uncharged crimes at his trial.
At the time of her death, Zuraw was still doing good works as a social worker at St. Finbar's Church and for the Italian Board of Guardians in Brooklyn.
Gioeli spilled his guts about the former nun's killing to captain-turned-cooperator Dino (Big Dino) Calabro, sources said.
Defense attorney Adam Perlmutter dismissed the allegations.
"If one of the government's cooperators said Gioeli killed 'Cock Robin' from the children's fairy tale, the government would believe that, too," he said. "The government believes anything its rats tell them."
Gioeli's mouthpiece tried to keep the nun-killing allegations sealed, but Judge Brian Cogan rejected the request in response to a motion by the Daily News and the website Gangland News.
Prosecutors say Gioeli, of Farmingdale, L.I., was unrepentant about wreaking crime in his own neighborhood, accusing him of burying slay victims in a mob graveyard near his home and plotting to rob Adventureland Amusement Park, a meat market, a Chinese restaurant and an armored car depot in the area.


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