By Phillip Messing
An elderly and once-powerful Colombo crime family capo from Queens serving life at a Florida federal prison died Thursday at age 80, sources said.
Pasquale Amato, a one-time co-defendant of acting Colombo boss Vic Orena who was a prisoner of the Coleman Federal penitentiary, a facility outside of Orlando, succumbed to brain cancer, according to a family friend. A Bureau of Prisons spokesman confirmed the death, but declined to provide details.
Amato, originally of Ozone Parrk, was indicted with Orena in a Brooklyn Federal Court racketeering case in April 1992 as part of a probe into an infamous internal feud over the control of the family that had erupted between Orena and mobsters loyal to to imprisoned Colombo boss Carmine Persico, a dispute that led to the murders of a dozen people.
Amato, whose trial was severed from Orena’s, was convicted after a jury trial in January 1992 for loansharking, weapons possession and the Nov. 13, 1989 murder of Colombo member Thomas Ocera, who was garrotted and buried in Forest Park, Queens. His corpse was dug up on Oct. 3, 1991, according to court papers.