The Mob's Underground Railroad: How Allie Boy Persico Survived On The Lam For Seven Years
In 1987, reputed Colombo boss Carmine Persico knew that, short of his lawyers one day cooking up a miracle, he would in all likelihood be spending the rest of his life in prison. He had been convicted in two separate trials: the Mafia Commission trial and a separate racketeering trial involving the Colombo family's operations. (Persico died in 2019 at age 85 after serving 32 years of that 136-year prison sentence following his two convictions.) Allie Boy Persico was on the run for seven years. The cases were separate, but overlapped, the common denominator being FBI surveillance recordings of Colombo soldier Ralph Scopo’s conversations, which alerted the Feds to the initial evidence that would help them build the Commission Case. Scopo was the bagman in a large-scale ongoing racket involving shaking down concrete contractors at major construction projects. As the president of the Cement and Concrete Workers District Council of the Laborers' International Union of North Americ...
