Carmine Sessa

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Carmine Sessa was a Brooklyn-based mobster who became consigliere of the Colombo crime family. Sessa began his criminal career doing bank robberies, and was eventually convicted for his role in a bank robbery.

In 1990, Sessa was charged with violating probation after being linked to a crew of sophisticated bank robbers known as "the By-Pass Gang", which included members of the Lucchese crime family and the Colombos, such as Anthony Casso, Joseph DeFigueroa, George Zappola, Vincent Zappola, and Sessa's underling Robert Zambardi. The murders of Otto Heidel and Dominick Costa were ordered by the gang's leaders. Sessa later admitted to shooting Costa, while Zambardi served as a lookout.

On June 20, 1991, Sessa led a crew, which included soldiers Robert Zambardi, John Pate, and Hank Smurra, who staked out the family's acting boss, Victor Orena's Long Island, New York home, with orders from imprisoned family boss Carmine Persico to kill Orena. Orena informed Sessa that he did not plan on stepping down from his position when Persico's son Alphonse Persico was released from prison. Orena showed up unexpectedly that night and was able to escape the men. A two-year mafia war erupted that resulted in over a dozen murders, and nearly a dozen unsuccessful hit attempts, with bullets flying across the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Sheepshead Bay, Canarsie and Gravesend.

Information of the planned hit was leaked by federal prosecutors during Zambardi's bail hearing on loan sharking charges, as he was part of a massive racketeering indictment that included Gambino crime family members Joseph Bilotti and several others from Staten Island, New York.

On November 29, 1991, Sessa's nephew, Larry Sessa was nearly killed during an ambush oin Brooklyn; Larry was chased down the street by masked gunmen and escaped by jumping into a friend's car. Five days earlier, Hank Smurra, a Persico loyalist who had attempted to kill Orena was shot in the head while sitting in his car in Sheepshead Bay.

As the war broke out, Sessa and Persico leaders, including the Russos (Persico cousins), Gregory Scarpa (a mob capo who was a secret FBI informant ), and Theodore Persico, (Carmine Persico's brother and a family capo), handled the family and war's day-to-day affairs.

On April 8, 1993, Sessa, Teddy Persico, and Frank Sparaco (another family capo) were arrested while attending a secret meeting outside St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan, on RICO murder conspiracy charges. Arrested simultaneously were other Persico loyalists: Joseph Russo, Anthony Russo, Zambardi]] and Joseph Monteleone. Shortly after the indictment, Sessa decided to break with omerta and become a government witness. Sessa went on to testify against many family members.