Colombo turncoat tells court his cohort suggested they use the game of Clue as alibi
Frank Guerra (l.) is on trial and his former pal Anthony Russo (r.) is testifying against him in murder case.
A mob turncoat says it wasn’t Col. Mustard who whacked the gangster in his car with a machine gun.
Former Colombo capo Anthony Russo testified Tuesday that accomplice Frank Guerra dreamed up a novel alibi to get them off the hook for a 1993 mob rubout — they were home playing the board game Clue with Russo’s ex-wife and Guerra’s girlfriend.
“I said that’s insane,” Russo told Assistant Brookyn U.S. Attorney Nicole Argentieri. “I wasn’t with my wife anymore, I had left her for another woman. She’s not going to help me.”
Russo, 51, chose another path to get off the hook for the killing of Colombo underboss Joseph Scopo — he began cooperating with the government last year and fingered Guerra as part of the hit team.
Defense lawyer Gerald McMahon told the jury in his opening statement that they will hear from the women and they will back up Guerra’s version of events — that he was solving a murder in the mansion with Mustard and Professor Plum, not driving a car to kill Scopo, who was ambushed with machine guns in Queens during the Colombo family’s civil war.
Russo’s recollection of the wacky alibi drew the only snickers in the courtroom during an otherwise grim recitation of brutal crimes and betrayal.
The hulking ex-enforcer became a blubbering blabbermouth when he admitted that Guerra had been his best friend for 25 to 30 years — until Russo broke the bond when he decided to become a rat.
After wiping away a few tears and sniffles, Russo implicated Guerra in murders, prescription drug dealing, extortion and peddling stolen video games.
Guerra was present when they went to famed restaurant Rao’s in East Harlem in the early 1990s looking for two intended murder victims in an unrelated attack.
“Allie (former acting boss Alphonse Persico) said they have a table there,” Russo recalled.
Russo was dry-eyed, though, describing how he sexually mutilated the corpse of John Sparacino, another member of the team that went to kill Scopo.
The motive for the mutilation was unclear, though Russo recalled as he viewed Sparacino’s body splayed on a basement floor he was reminded that the dead man had previously insulted him. “Yeah, right, he did say that,” Russo said. “Then somebody, I don’t remember who, took out a knife.”
Sources said Guerra has chosen to fight the charges after turning down a plea deal that would have required him to serve 15 years in prison for the murders of Scopo and Michael Devine, a Staten Island nightclub owner shot to death in 1994 for dating Alphonse Persico’s estranged wife.
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