Carmine John Persico was born on Aug. 8, 1933, and grew up in Park Slope and Red Hook, which were then heavily Italian-American and Irish-American blue-collar neighborhoods. Gangsters of his day typically came from impoverished backgrounds, but Mr. Persico’s upbringing was solidly middle class. His father, Carmine Sr., was a legal stenographer for Manhattan law firms, and his mother, Susan (Plantamura) Persico, was a strong-willed woman who tried to keep a tight rein on young Carmine; his older brother, Alphonse; his younger brother, Theodore; and a sister, Dolores.
But she was contending with a South Brooklyn of the 1940s that had become a bastion for organized crime. Neighborhood youths were attracted to the flashy, tough-talking gangsters with big bankrolls who hung out at the storefront clubs that they used as meeting places. The Persico brothers were no exception. Alphonse and Theodore enlisted in the Mafia’s ranks at early ages, according to court records.
Carmine dropped out of high school at 16 and became known to the police as the leader of the Garfield Boys, a street gang that brandished knives, clubs and zip guns — primitive single-round weapons often secretly constructed in high school shops — in battles with rival gangs and in extorting money from teenagers.
In March 1951, when Carmine was 17, he was arrested for the fatal beating of another youth during a brawl in Prospect Park. It was his first serious encounter with the law, and when the charges against him were dropped, his reputation for boldness and cunning was enhanced.
“He was only a teenager and small in size, but people took notice of him and began to fear him,” Mr. McDonald, the former prosecutor, said.
‘Made’ at Just 21
At 18, Mr. Persico was working for Frank (Frankie Shots) Abbatemarco, the head of a crew in a Mafia group then known as the Profaci family. Joseph Profaci was the boss, or godfather, of the organization, which evolved into the Colombo family and became one of the original five New York mob families established by the Mafia in 1931.
The Abbatemarco crew specialized in illegal sports and numbers gambling, loan-sharking, burglaries and truck cargo hijackings. According to police intelligence reports, Mr. Persico advanced swiftly as a trusted, hardened member of the crew. He was “made,” or formally inducted as a soldier into the Mafia, at 21 — an unusually early age to be recognized by mob leaders.
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