The former acting boss of the Colombo crime family has been charged with orchestrating a hit on an off-duty NYPD officer – because the cop had married the mobster’s ex-wife.
Joel “Joe Waverly” Cacace ordered a two-man hit team to gun down Police Officer Ralph Dols as he climbed out of his car outside his home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on Aug. 25, 1997, according to an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.
“They ambushed Officer Dols and shot him repeatedly outside his Brooklyn home and left him to die in the street,” David Cardona, head of the FBI’s criminal division in New York, said of the accused gunmen, Colombo wiseguys Dino Calabro and Dino Saracino.
The plot was hatched “merely because Dols was married to Cacace’s ex-wife,” Cardona said as authorities announced the results of the 11-year investigation by feds and the NYPD.
Dols, 28, was Kimberly Kennaugh’s third husband, and the second one to be murdered – a dark history that earned her the moniker “Black Widow.”
She and Dols had been married about a year when he died, leaving behind an infant daughter.
Cacace, 67, whose marriage to Kennaugh was almost as brief, is now serving 20 years behind bars on a separate conviction.
The 24-count indictment also brings charges in three other mob murders, including the infamous 1999 slaying of Colombo underboss William “Wild Bill” Cutolo.
Reputed acting boss Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli, 56, is accused of orchestrating that hit for higher-ups in the crime family who suspected Cutolo was plotting to seize power.
Nearly nine years after his disappearance, the FBI finally located and dug up Cutolo’s body in a wooded site in Farmingdale, LI, in October.
Authorities had previously believed his body was dumped from a boat.
In announcing the new charges, US Attorney Benton Campbell said Cutolo was killed in a basement apartment belonging to Saracino, 36, who was charged with the murder, as was Calabro, 42.
Calabro is also charged with the 1994 slaying of Carmine Gargano, a 21-year-old Pace University student who was shot to death at a chop shop at 1247 McDonald Ave. in Brooklyn.
Gioeli is charged with the 1995 murder of Richard Greaves, an ex-Marine and mob associate who was suspected of cooperating with the feds and was shot in the same Bensonhurst apartment as Cutolo.
The new indictment comes after Colombo soldier Joseph “Joey Caves” Competiello agreed to sing.
Gioeli, Calabro and Saracino were all previously charged in a sweeping racketeering indictment, and are awaiting trial.