Despite having fought two previous internal civil wars dating back from 1961 to 1963, and again in 1971 through 1973, it was almost inevitable that there would be another go-around between the Colombo Family membership.
The Colombo mob never seemed to have learned that key underworld lesson that blood begets blood, and that killing solves nothing. That it is very bad for business.
The millions of dollars to be made annually, and the assets to be gleaned would blind both “acting boss” Victor Orena and “sitting boss” Carmine Persico. And the vast power that was at stake was not something that either mafioso was willing to give up.
The result was that blood would fill the streets of New York reminiscent of the 1930s. The havoc it caused reverberates within the borgata to this very day! The conflict lead to one of the bloodiest gangland wars and struggles for underworld power that America had ever seen…
Nothing Can Stop Them
By the late-1970s, early-1980s, much of the membership of the Colombo Family was now living out on Long Island, having moved from Brooklyn and Queens years earlier.
A realistic count of the Long Island membership would have been approximately 30 to 40 inducted members and many more associates residing between Nassau and Suffolk counties. If you add in Queens, probably half the borgata lived out that way.
From 1980 through 1986, the borgata had suffered several major law enforcement assaults on the membership resulting in many convictions and imprisonments of the entire official top family administration.
