Ex-Colombo boss Victor Orena doomed to die in prison after judge denies compassionate release

The federal appeals court on Wednesday denied the compassionate release of a legendary Colombo mob boss who is now critically ill with dementia, thereby ensuring his death in prison. Three judges on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals denied Victor “Little Vic” Orena’s compassionate release request, agreeing with a lower-court jurist who upheld his life sentence.

In the early 1990s, the Colombos’ acting boss, Orena, was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted in a federal court in Brooklyn of murder, racketeering, and several other crimes.

In light of his failing health and fresh evidence uncovered by his lawyer, the now 87-year-old had asked a federal judge in Brooklyn to release him in 2021.

The appeals panel concluded on Wednesday that despite his health challenges being “extraordinary and compelling” the district court judge firmly ruled that this wasn’t enough to overturn his life sentence.

If fresh evidence is found proving Orena’s innocence in the future, it would need to be apart of a separate appeal, not in conjunction with a compassionate release appeal.

Orena’s crimes, which landed him in prison for the rest of his life, were rooted in a mafia civil war between Orena  and Carmine “Junior” Persico loyalists. The conflict resulted in over 10 deaths.

Currently, Orena is being held at FMC Devens, a federal medical center with a minimum-security jail nearby.

According to Orena’s lawyer, David Schoen, the decision is “very disappointing” and that the prosecution is the most corrupt in the history of the Department of Justice.

“It is absurd and completely unfair to deny a trial court judge the discretion to at least consider whether new evidence since the trial ought to be relevant to the appropriateness of a terminally ill defendant,” he stated.

source: NY Post

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June 22, 2022 — The FBI thinks that the old Tony (The Ant) Spilotro crew in Las Vegas killed Los Angeles mob associate John (Johnny D) DuBeck and his wife Franny as a favor to the L.A. mafia, according to two people with intimate knowledge of the double-homicide at both the local and federal level. The pair were shotgunned to death in the courtyard of their Vegas apartment complex in the early-morning hours of March 19, 1974.

Spilotro was the Chicago mob’s crew boss on the Vegas Strip between 1971 and 1986. Authorities suspect his involvement in more than two dozen homicides committed on the West Coast during his reign of mob terror on the Strip. In exchange for the help in taking care of their “Johnny D problem,” Spilotro and the Chicago Outfit were cut in on a string of gambling and fencing operations. Spilotro had multiple liaisons and lieutenants of his living and working in Southern California.

The 31-year old DuBeck was scheduled to be the star witness against L.A. mafia figures Peter (Shakes) Milano, Luigi (Little Louie) Gelfuso and John (Johnny V) Vaccaro at a federal gambling trial the following week. Johnny D and his 27-year old wife worked at the Westward Ho-Cotel & Casino on the Vegas Strip in Winchester, rejecting requests by the government that they enter the Witness Protection Program prior to DuBeck taking the stand.

Milano and Gelfuso were captains in the Dragna crime family at the time. Gelfuso was street boss for L.A. mob don Nick Licata, having come up through the ranks of the local organized crime syndicate working for Licata in his bar and acting as a driver and bodyguard. Milano went on to become boss of the family in the coming years.

Spilotro and his younger brother Mike, were beaten, stomped and strangled to death in a gruesome June 1986 mob hit carried out as vengeance for Tony the Ant’s increasingly-bothersome insubordination and high-profile in the news headlines blamed for a slew of federal indictments for him and his mafia superiors in the Midwest. The entire Spilotro saga was tackled on the big screen by Hollywood director Martin Scorsese in the 1995 movie Casino, starring Joe Pesci as a character based on the Ant’s and chronicling his bloody stampede through the desert.

DuBeck and Johnny Vaccaro were a well-known tandem in L.A. mafia circles. They met in Las Vegas in the late 1960s and worked as “boots on the ground” in Nevada for the Licata regime. According to LAPD informant files, DuBeck was an expert at rigging slot machines and Licata often loaned him and Vaccaro out to Chicago Outfit representatives in the Vegas hotel and gaming industry for casino-fixing purposes. Law enforcement surveillance logs from the era show frequent meetings between Vaccaro and the Spilotro crew.

In late 1972, DuBeck and Vaccaro came back to L.A. and opened a restaurant and after-hours gambling joint on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. With help from Gelfuso and Milano, they set up a floating backdoor casino centered out of San Bernardino where they began ripping off players with rigged card and dice games across the San Fernando Valley. The games were raking in $250,000 a month in profits.

After DuBeck’s slaying, the charges against Vaccaro, Gelfuso and Milano still stuck. Milano was also under indictment for heroin trafficking out of Hawaii. The star witness in the Hawaii “H” case survived a car-bombing attack in the parking lot of the Honolulu Hilton two weeks before DuBeck and his wife were murdered. Another co-conspirator in the drug-trafficking conspiracy was Jackson (Junket Jack) Inada, a Japanese Yakuza-affiliated Honolulu underworld figure, killed along with his girlfriend two years later.

Beating a mid-1980s federal bookmaking and extortion bust, Milano went to prison for a 1988 federal racketeering conviction and was released in 1991. Per FBI records, Milano became boss of the L.A. mafia in 1980s. He died of natural causes in 2012 at age 86.

“Johnny V” Vaccaro passed away due to heart issues at 75 in gangster retirement in 2015, owner of a lengthy rap sheet and reputation as a true jack-of-all-trades in the West Coast Italian mob. Gelfuso, 76, died of cancer in 2000. Vaccaro, Gelfuso and Milano all died publicly named as suspects in the DuBecks’ execution.

Most of the L.A. mafia was made up of hoodlum expats who relocated to the West Coast from the East Coast and Midwest. Licata came to L.A. from Detroit. Gelfuso was born and raised in Providence. Milano’s dad was consigliere of his hometown Cleveland mafia. Vaccaro cut his teeth in New Orleans for the Big Easy’s Marcello crime family.

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When Stratis Morfogen opened his first Manhattan diner in the 1990s, he had no intention of one day telling a member of John Gotti Jr.’s crew to “go f–k themselves.”

But for “The Golden Greek” — a nickname Morfogen earned from his mob contacts for his money-making ways — standing up to the mafia became a way of life as an NYC-based restaurateur. Now, the owner of Brooklyn Chop House in lower Manhattan is naming names in his new book, “Be a Disruptor: Streetwise Lessons for Entrepreneurs ― from the Mob to Mandates,” out Tuesday.

Morfogen opened Gotham City Diner on the Upper East Side in 1993. Soon after, the mob made their presence known.

“I had a head of promotions, his name was Noel Ashman … one night Noel comes in with a black eye, I said, ‘What’s going on?’” Morfogen told The Post in an exclusive interview.

“Some gangster said we have to pay them every month or they’re going to continuously start beating us up,” Morfogen recalled him saying. “[Ashman] pointed out some names to me and I recognized that these are Gambino guys.”

Wise in wiseguys

Morfogen wasn’t naive about the Cosa Nostra. He grew up on Long Island in the 1970s and his family had owned a Howard Beach restaurant where mob don Carlo Gambino was a regular. Gambino would slip the eager 6-year-old Morfogen $20 bills and ask him about school.

After he opened his own spot, Morfogen enjoyed frequent visits from the Genovese crime family’s Ralph Coppola and Bobby “Bucky” Carbone.

Underboss Coppola got so close that he called Morfogen “nephew,” and Carbone entertained him with tales from the other side. One night, Carbone even told him the story of the first man he killed, Morfogen said. It was at a bar, in a debt collection gone awry.

But Gotti Jr.’s crew was different.

Gambino died on Long Island in 1976 and John Gotti was behind bars thanks to testimony from Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. In his absence, his son, Gotti Jr., was running the show — and intimidating restaurateurs — in the 1990s.

“John Gotti, Jr. and his crew, that’s what they lived on. They would shake down every restaurant from the Upper East Side to Midtown,” Morfogen said.

As the new kid on the block, it was Morfogen’s turn to pony up. Or at least that’s what two of Gotti Jr.’s “top honchos” thought.

“I said, ‘What do you guys want?’” Morfogen recalled. They told him, “‘We want $5,000 a month or we’re going to break your windows every week.’”

“I said, ‘Let me give you the quick answer: Go f–k yourself.’ That’s how I was, I had no fear at all.”

Taking care of business

Soon after, someone started throwing black paint on the diner’s windows every night. Morfogen would scrub them down each morning.

Coppola noticed this was happening and told Morfogen to “sit tight.”

Two days later, Morfogen got a call from one of Coppola’s guys, telling him to come by the now-defunct restaurant Ferrier Bistro at 10 p.m.

“When I got there, Ralph was there with Bucky and all the Gambino capos were in the back, sitting … so I sat down with Ralph, Bobby and the five heads of the Gambino family,” he said.

“Ralph basically says, ‘Listen, this kid is with us and you tell [Gotti] Jr. to back off and if he doesn’t back off, this thing is gonna escalate.’

“And my head just spun … just like that, the guys turned around and said, ‘Hey, we like this kid, he’s a good kid. Don’t worry, we’ll talk to Jr. and we’ll squash this.’ And lo and behold, it was squashed.”

Just like that, Morfogen was under the protection of the Genovese boys. Carbone even put an ice pick into the thigh of an employee whom he believed stole $30,000 from the diner. He said they never asked for anything in return: “It was true friendship,” Morfogen said.

A friend of ours — and a new enemy

Following the then-uninterrupted success of Gotham City, Morfogen opened a club called Rouge with silent backing from Coppola.

Things were fantastic. The club quickly became famous when New York Rangers captain Mark Messier brought in the Stanley Cup. One night, Morfogen accidentally turned away Madonna and Tupac at the door because he didn’t recognize them.

But it also caught the attention of a West Coast mafioso who wanted to “buy” his way into the nightlife.

A “Jewish gangster from LA” once sat Morfogen down inside his own club and tried making him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“He takes out a pen, he writes on a napkin ‘$10K’ and then he pulls out a 9 millimeter, pops out a bullet and puts it on the table.” He told Morfogen: “It’s this or that.”

But Morfogen wasn’t worried. “He didn’t get the memo,” he said. “He didn’t know the most powerful people in the world were already protecting me.”

Morfogen immediately brought the issue to Coppola and Carbone. They couldn’t stop laughing.

Funny how?

“I walk into the club at 1 a.m. one Saturday night and [Coppola, Carbone and the LA gangster are] all sitting in the back, in the VIP room having a great time, drinking Champagne.”

Morfogen wasn’t amused.

“By around 4:30 in the morning they’re still drinking. I walked up to the table and I said, ‘You guys having a good time?’ I was kind of pissed. Ralph, I’ll never forget, he says, ‘Nephew, we’re having a great time,’ and he eyed me to go away.”

Morfogen got the message. “As I was walking away I heard Ralph say, ‘Let’s get down to business. I heard your offer and here’s my counter offer,’ and he took a 60-pound candelabra and hit him over the head. Then Bucky came running to me to get me out of the nightclub and put me in a taxi as this fight was going on.

“When I got to Rouge nightclub the day after, there was no blood on the floor, no blood on the walls. But I did notice the area carpet was gone.”

Going clean

That sort of drop-of-a-hat loyalty was shown to Morfogen for years to come. He knew Coppola would always have his back — which is why he was shocked when he didn’t show up to his wedding in 1998.

“At my wedding I noticed two empty chairs. Ralph and his wife never showed up. I was blown away by that. Ralph really was like my uncle and I wouldn’t go a week without talking to him,” Morfogen said.

“Bucky came up to me that night and said, ‘Ralph’s gone.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Ralph’s gone. Don’t ask anymore.’”

Years later, Morfogen was informed that Coppola “went to a meeting in Harlem and never came out of the house.” That’s all he knows, even now.

Coppola’s disappearance shook him. With his silent partner gone, he took it as a sign. “I really wanted no part of it anymore,” he said of the mob life.

And, he felt like the mob wasn’t the friend to him it had once been.

“In 2005 I was really struggling — divorced, I lost my [old] business and I didn’t get any calls from any of those guys to see if I needed anything … [Ralph] would have been calling me every day,” he said.

But a few years and business ventures later, the mafia came knocking once again in 2006 by way of a Genovese associate.

The associate came on behalf of two capos who wanted “an envelope” from Morfogen, who had just gotten back on his feet.

The answer was the same he gave Gotti’s crew a few years back when he was just starting out: “Tell them to go f–k themselves’,” Morfogen said.

“I said, ‘Don’t make me into a rat … I’m done with you guys’ … they never came back or bothered me again.”

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