Vittorio “Little Vic” Amuso, the 88-year-old former boss of the Luchese crime family, says his health is falling apart in federal prison, and his lawyers describe him as a changed man “staring down his mortality.”
A court filing last week describes a pitiful convalescence in federal prison in Butner, N.C. — his chronic arthritis is so bad, he can’t get around without a wheelchair, his vision is clouded and worsening, he’s lost all of his teeth, and his pleas for medical help are not answered promptly.
In order to get the help he needs, he often has to make written requests, like one in March that read: “I need a cortisone shot in my hip and knee and I’m in severe pain please if there is a god help me with this as I am 90 years old and in severe pain.”
Amuso is the latest in a string of organized crime figures who have applied for compassionate release under the First Step Act of 2018. The results have been mixed.
Amuso’s legal team pointed to his perfect record in prison, his Catholic faith, and his devotion to being a mentor to his kids and grandkids.
“While the underlying offense conduct is admittedly serious, Mr. Amuso is not the same defendant that stood before the court more than 31-plus years ago,” wrote his lawyer Anthony DiPietro. “His circumstances have dramatically and materially changed, as he is now an elderly and very sick man of 88 years of age who is staring down his mortality.”
He was convicted in 1992 of murder and racketeering in a Brooklyn Federal Court trial where prosecutors linked him to nine murders and three attempted killings. His June 1992 conviction came just two months after the feds secured a guilty plea against legendary Gambino boss John Gotti.
The prosecution that led to his downfall started in 1990, when he was indicted in a Mafia scheme to rig bids in the city’s window-replacement industry. The case also laid out allegations of corruption in the trucking, airfreight, construction and garbage hauling industries.
Amuso went on the run until July 1991, when he was captured at a shopping mall in Dickson City, Pa.
Mob turncoats Peter Chiodo and one-time acting Luchese boss Alfonso D’Arco helped link Amuso to the killings at trial.
Chiodo pleaded guilty in the windows case, and Amuso, convinced he had turned snitch, ordered his killing.
A mob murder squad tried to do the deed on May 18, 1991, ambushing him at a Staten Island gas station, but the 6-foot-5, 435-pound Chiodo survived being shot 13 times.
Chiodo’s brush with death pushed him to become a government cooperator, and that cooperation included the testimony that helped put Amuso away.
Undaunted by the botched attempt, Amuso ignored Mafia code to not target relatives, and ordered Chiodo’s sister Patricia Capozzalo whacked, even though she had no role in organized crime, according to court testimony.
The crime family tapped Michael “Baldy Mike” Spinelli to plan her killing, according to testimony.
He assembled a team and stalked Capozzalo for weeks, deciding that their best chance to kill her was after she dropped her children off at school in the morning, and on March 10, 1992, took their shot outside her Gravesend, Brooklyn, home. She survived the ambush.
Spinelli, who’s slated to be released from prison in 2026, was denied compassionate release last month by Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie.
A few weeks later, Brooklyn Federal Judge Margo Brodie refused to cut loose another mob killer, Vito Guzzo, 58, who was seeking early release after he was convicted in 1998 of five murders.
The Colombo gangster is serving a 38-year sentence for running the “Giannini Crew” — a death squad comprised of members of several Cosa Nostra families who used the former Caffe Giannini in Ridgewood, Queens, as their home base.
Mob capo Anthony Russo, who ordered murders during the bloody Colombo crime family civil war, had better luck — last year, Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block ordered his life sentence cut to 35 years, which led to his release in February.
Block praised the bipartisan First Step Act, which has led to the reduction of more than 4,000 prison sentences since it was signed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018. In his decision, the jurist said that Russo was punished with a longer sentence because he took his case to trial.
Amuso’s legal team references the Russo case in its motion to have him released.
