Carmine Persico, Colombo crime family boss, 85

NEW YORK (AP) — Carmine J. Persico, who emerged from gangland Brooklyn to become the unpredictable boss of one of the nation’s most powerful Mafia organizations in an era when the mob in New York was at the peak of its prosperity, died a prisoner on Thursday in North Carolina, where he was serving a 139-year sentence. He was 85.

His lawyer, Benson Weintraub, confirmed the death, at Duke University Medical Center in Durham. He said he did not know the cause. Mr. Persico had been incarcerated nearby at a federal prison in Butner, N.C.

Mr. Persico spent most of his adult life under indictment or in prison, and yet, even from behind bars, he managed to retain his status as the leader of a vast and violent criminal enterprise known as the Colombo family. Law-enforcement authorities believe that he had a strong hand in the assassinations of the mob bosses Albert Anastasia and Joey Gallo.

The son of a middle-class law firm stenographer, he began his criminal career as a teenage enforcer and hit man in South Brooklyn. His first arrest, at age 17, was for murder. But employing a keen intelligence, street-bred guile, an appetite for violence and a willingness to betray others, he quickly climbed the ladder to the top of the Colombo organization.

“He was the most fascinating figure I encountered in the world of organized crime,” said Edward A. McDonald, a former federal prosecutor who was in charge of a Justice Department unit that investigated the Mafia in the 1970s and ’80s. “Because of his reputation for intelligence and toughness, he was a legend by the age of 17, and later as a mob boss he became a folk hero in certain areas of Brooklyn.”

Mr. Persico’s penchant for double-crossing his mob allies earned him an underworld nickname that he detested, the Snake.