NY- The son of murdered mob boss Joe Colombo is putting a new twist on house arrest – one where strip clubs, fancy restaurants and card games are part of his “confinement.”
Chris Colombo, 44, isn’t just sitting around his Orange County home polishing his ankle bracelet. He’s pushing his legal limits for an upcoming TV show that he hopes will be a hit without violating his bail restrictions.
“How do I feel? I’ve got a guy filming the top of my head . . . and I’m about to go to the Blue Moon [topless club] that’s known for the ugliest girls in the world,” Colombo says in a snippet from his HBO program, aptly titled “House Arrest.”
The show is scheduled to debut Thanksgiving night, well in advance of Colombo’s federal trial next year on charges of loansharking, extortion and gambling.
“I always try to look for the good side of things, the funny side,” Colombo told Ganglandnews.com reporter Jerry Capeci. “I’m like a human anti-depressant, always have been.”
Colombo’s attorney, Jeremy Schneider, said yesterday that his client knows his critics will likely include FBI agents looking for missteps to nail him.
“He does know that he can’t do anything to violate his parole. He knows that,” Schneider told the Daily News. “Is a strip club against the law? As far as I know, it’s not.”
Under conditions of his bail, Colombo is free to leave his luxurious Blooming Grove home at 7 a.m. daily. But he must be back at his 9-acre estate by 9 p.m.
He must have his electronic monitoring device attached to his left ankle at all times, and make sure he doesn’t break the law.
“This could be a violation of my bail restriction,” Colombo says in a scene from the show in which a pal uses a credit card to try to open the locked door of a church so Colombo can confess his sins.
Colombo hopes the show, which HBO calls a “docu-comedy based on reality,” will lead to bigger on-screen gigs.
“I always wanted to host ‘Saturday Night Live,'” he told Ganglandnews.com, “and play my father in a movie about his life.”
His dad didn’t shy away from spotlight
Many old-time mobsters tended to shy away from publicity, but Joe Colombo embraced it – and that’s likely what got him whacked.
The late Godfather of the Colombo crime family – and dad of soon-to-be HBO TV star Chris Colombo – took the pledge of omertà , but fashioned himself as an outspoken civic leader.
He became a made man in the late 1950s in the Profaci crime family and graduated to capo in the 1960s. At age 48, Colombo ascended to boss of the crime family that would take his name.
Colombo, who was raised in Brooklyn, was the founder of the Italian-American Civil Rights League.
As a self-styled civic leader, the charismatic Colombo got the words “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” banned from Justice Department reports and from “The Godfather” movie.
But while leading a rally in Columbus Circle in 1971, Colombo was shot three times in the back of the head by a gunman who then also was gunned down.
Colombo lingered in a vegetative state until his death in 1978 at age 64.