US News

I JUST COULDN’T WHACK MY PAL

A mob underling testified yesterday he was asked to kill William “Wild Bill” Cutolo for acting Colombo crime-family boss Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico – but couldn’t bring himself to whack his good friend.

Joseph Campanella recounted how Persico’s second in command, John “Jackie” DeRoss, asked him to turn on his friend just weeks before Cutolo went missing in May 1999.

“Jackie DeRoss asked me how I would feel about killing Billy,” Campanella said. “I just put my head down and shook my head.”

“I just can’t believe he would ask me that,” he said.

A couple of weeks later, DeRoss ordered Campanella to a meeting with him and Persico, where he was told during the 20-minute sit down that “Bill had to go.”

Their reasoning, Campanella testified, was that Persico was on his way to prison on a gun-possession charge, which would leave Cutolo in charge.

“They were afraid Billy wouldn’t give [control of the family] back to Allie Boy,” Campanella said.

Persico and DeRoss, the current acting underboss, are on trial in Brooklyn federal court on charges of murdering Cutolo – whose body was never found – and then trying to intimidate his family into staying mum about the gangland rubout.

They are also charged with a botched hit on Campanella.

“I was hit twice,” said Campanella, a former soldier who was shot in the arm and foot as he was getting into his car in Coney Island in July 2001.

“They had to take off one of my toes,” said Campanella, who became a mob turncoat only after Persico tried to have him whacked out of fear he would flip and talk about Persico’s role in Cutolo’s disappearance.

Prosecutors say Campanella was targeted for death because of his loyalties to Cutolo, who was part of a rival faction that challenged the ruling authority of Persico and his father – Colombo boss Carmine “The Snake” Persico – during a bloody civil war in the early 1990s.

“Bill and I were like two brothers,” said Campanella, 47. “There was a lot of friendship.”