Colombo rat cracks jokes during testimony of Thomas Gioeli
Evidence photos submitted were taken at the Bronx Zoo.
A shot from Disney World.
It's not all murder and mayhem in the mob — gangsters also get to vacation together and crack jokes in court.
Colombo dumbfella Joseph "Joey Caves" Competiello tried to be funny at a federal prosecutor's expense Monday while testifying about his greatest hits and heists.
Maybe was feeling his oats after identifying photos taken back in the day of himself and his mob buddies hanging out in Bensonshurst and lounging in front of the polar bear’s den at the Bronx Zoo.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes was questioning Competiello about an attempted Long Island warehouse detergent heist, when the witness showed his smart-aleck side .
“What were you going to do with the detergent?” Geddes asked.
“Drink it,” Competiello, 40, replied, winning laughs in the courtroom.
When the snickers stopped, Competiello said the crooks planned to sell the stolen detergent.
But the plan fizzled because they heard a report of the break-in over their police scanner — so Competiello and fellow Colombo mobsters Thomas Gioeli, Dino Calabro and Richard Greaves fled.
Prosecutors say Competiello was a member of Gioeli’s lethal crew who carried out multiple gangland murders over a decade, along with numerous commercial robberies and bank break-ins.
The crew that killed and robbed together also vacationed and partied together — and have the photos to prove it, which the government obtained from the cooperating witnesses.
Calabro’s wife, Andrea, took a bunch of snapshots from the Gioeli family photo album when it was still a secret that her hit man hubby was cutting a deal with the feds.
One memorable shot shows Gioeli and Calabro at Disney World, standing together in what looks like Main St. U.S.A. with their kids sitting on a stoop.
In another, Calabro, Gioeli and co-defendant Dino "Little Dino" Saracino are having some down time from the stress of mob life on a golf outing in Williamsburg, Va.
Competiello, 40, testified that he had some experience with golf clubs — but he didn’t mean he wielded them on the putting green.
“I was a tough kid,” he said, recalling that he got into fights every day using his fists, a baseball bat and a golf club as weapons.
Competiello, who said he was also known as The Rock, was arrested at age 13 in a stolen car on the Verrazano Bridge, and hung out with a group of wannabe-mobsters in training in front of a candy store on the “The Corner” at 75th St. and 20th Ave.
In the Bronx Zoo photo, tough guys Competiello and Saracino look seriously under-dressed for the weather in warmup suits with snow and the polar bear in the background.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan ordered prosecutors to release a photo of the outdoor grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park where Gioeli went to pray and allegedly passed the order to kill capo William Cutolo in 1999.
Competiello breezed through his recollection of murdering associates Joseph Miccio, gunned down while riding in a Jaguar sedan, and Carmine Gargano, buried outside Competiello’s auto chop shop in Brooklyn. The body was then moved to a mob graveyard in Farmingdale, L.I.
“I dug the hole,” he said.
Competiello said his mob mentor Calabro hugged him and congratulated him after he’d killed Miccio. But he got a reprimand from Gioeli.
“(Calabro) told me he would have my back, but in front of Gioeli he hollered at me and said I had to stop being a cowboy,” Competiello said.
The jury has already viewed photos of Calabro’s wedding, the baptism of Competiello’s son and a video of guests leaving Gioeli’s daughter’s “Sweet 16” party at a Farmingdale nightclub.
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