Reputed acting boss of the Colombo crime family Thomas "Tommy...

Reputed acting boss of the Colombo crime family Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli is led by FBI agents from Federal Plaza for arraignment in New York. (June 8, 2012) Credit: AP

Accused high-ranking Colombo family gangster Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli of Farmingdale plotted the rubout of another mob leader on the grounds of a Catholic church in Massapequa Park, an informant testified in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday.

Dino Calabro, a member of Gioeli's crew who has confessed to eight murders, said Gioeli drove him to Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park in early 1999 and pointed to his heart to pass the order for a hit on underboss William "Wild Bill" Cutolo from Colombo boss Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico.

"By the church there's a garden area where he goes and prays," said Calabro, a Farmingdale neighbor and family friend of Gioeli until flipping in 2010. "He told me there."

Gioeli, 59, an alleged former Colombo acting boss, faces life in prison on racketeering charges that include six murders and a string of other crimes on Long Island and in Brooklyn. The testimony about discussing murder at a church touched on what has been a sore point for Gioeli, a father of four daughters.

Before trial, prosecutors alleged that he was part of a 1982 mob hit that accidentally killed an ex-nun, and feared going to hell. The evidence was excluded at trial, but Gioeli has angrily denounced the government on a prison blog for trying to poison the jury by portraying him as "an animal."

Calabro's testimony provided new details on two notorious mob killings at the center of the trial -- the 1997 ambush of NYPD Officer Ralph Dols, who had allegedly angered Colombo consigliere Joel "Joe Waverly" Cacace by marrying his ex-wife, and the execution of Cutolo, whose body was unearthed from a mob graveyard in Farmingdale in 2008.

Cacace, Calabro testified, ordered Gioeli to have his crew execute Dols without ever disclosing that the target was a cop. But the morning after he and Saracino gunned down Dols, Calabro said, he went out for coffee, and was stunned to see screaming tabloid headlines about a cop shooting.

"That's just a rule in the mob," he testified. "You don't hurt kids, you don't kill cops."

Calabro said he wanted to kill Cacace for blindsiding the crew. Gioeli wouldn't OK it, but in 1999 -- when he took Calabro to the church to escape surveillance while discussing Cutolo -- the Dols killing was still on his mind.

Gioeli had been ordered by Persico to lure Cutolo, whose power the boss feared, to a house where he would be killed by shooters from another crew, Calabro testified. But Gioeli confided that he feared the real plan was to kill him for bringing law enforcement pressure by his role in killing Dols.

Calabro said he and Gioeli came up with an alternative plan at the church, in which Calabro and other killers who worked for Gioeli would handle the Cutolo murder themselves, and eventually presented the idea to Persico in a meeting at a Hempstead car dealership. "Allie-Boy said 'That's fine,' " Calabro testified. "He just wanted it done."

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