Wanna whack me? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Genovese turncoat Michael “Cookie” D’Urso, who is now using a different identity after testifying against the mob, wrote an open letter to his former colleagues, warning them against trying to take revenge.
D’Urso, 49, apparently heard that members of the Genovese family were discussing his new name and whereabouts at an Upper East Side steakhouse.
“I am ready, able and willing to defend my family and myself,” D’Urso threatens in the letter, first obtained by Gang Land News. “A bat and a knife won’t help you so you will have to use a gun.”
D’Urso was an up-and-coming gangster when, in 1994, he survived a bullet to the head over a gambling debt during a predawn card game in a Williamsburg social club. The hit also killed a beloved cousin, but the mob family wouldn’t allow D’Urso to seek retribution, an episode he alludes to in the letter.
He says the acting boss of the Genoveses, Frank “Farby” Serpico, threatened to assassinate him, which drove D’Urso to begin wearing a wire in 1998.