As federal prosecutors await approval to seek the death penalty against two Colombo leaders in the execution slaying of underboss William “Wild Bill” Cutolo, the feds have identified other suspects in the mysterious six-year-old slaying, Gang Land has learned.

At this point, only acting boss Alphonse “Allie” Persico and replacement underboss John “Jackie” DeRoss are charged with the murder of Cutolo, who was last seen on May 26, 1999, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on his way to what he thought was a meeting with Persico.

Informers have fingered several participants in the storied rub out, which occurred minutes after Cutolo gave the slip to a special operations team of FBI agents that had been tailing him all day, sources said. The FBI, which had no idea Cutolo had been marked for death, was looking to build a case against the wily gangster, who had been acquitted of racketeering a few years earlier.

One suspect is Vincent “Chickie” De-Martino, a one-time Cutolo crony who in 1994 was acquitted along with Wild Bill. Chickie, who was a key ally during a bloody family war against the Persico faction in the early 1990s, admitted his involvement in the slaying to a cohort who later cooperated, sources said.

During an expletive-laden tirade about Cutolo, an enraged DeMartino boasted, “We took care of him, and don’t worry, the way we did it, nobody’s ever going to be able find him,” according to a source familiar with an account the turncoat provided the FBI.

Sources identified the turncoat as Giovanni “John the Barber” Floridia, a mob associate who last year was convicted along with Chickie of the 2001 attempted murder of mobster Joseph “Joe Campy” Campanella as he walked to his car from the beach in Coney Island.

As Gang Land reported a year ago, sources said Floridia, who was jailed at a federal lockup in Brooklyn along with DeRoss, also gave the feds information he claims to have gleaned from DeRoss that links the latter to the slaying.

In addition to DeMartino, who is currently serving 25 years for his attempted murder conviction, the feds have come up with at least two other suspects in the Cutolo hit, but sources declined to identify them or disclose whether their identities were provided by John the Barber or other turncoats.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn Federal Judge Sterling Johnson has severed the trial against Persico, 51, and DeRoss, 68, from that of two family associates who are charged in the same racketeering indictment with being part of the plot to kill Joe Campy.

According to court papers, one defendant, Carmine “Skippy” DeRoss, is a nephew of Jackie DeRoss who served as a messenger between his uncle and the hit team. The other, Michael “Mikey Spat” Spataro, was in on the planning with DeMartino during the month before the shooting, and received five phone calls from Chickie in the 30 minutes following the attempted hit.

According to assistant U.S. attorneys Katya Jestin and Thomas Siegel, Floridia said that the purpose of the calls “was to inform Spataro and Jackie DeRoss that DeMartino and Floridia had failed to kill Campanella.”

The trial for Spataro, 38, and Skippy DeRoss, 37, is set for December 5.

A trial date for Persico and Jackie DeRoss will be scheduled after Attorney General Gonzales decides whether to authorize Ms. Jestin and Mr. Siegel to seek the death penalty.

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THE NAME GAME

As if DeMartino, 50, doesn’t have enough problems, until very recently he was embroiled in a months-long brouhaha with his jailers at the maximum security prison near Scranton, Pa., where he is doing his time.

Try as he might, Chickie couldn’t get officials at the U.S. Penitentiary in Waymart to correct the spelling of his last name to DeMartino, the way he had spelled it all his life. They’ve been spelling it DiMartino.

After months of trying to solve the problem on his own, DeMartino wrote Brooklyn District Judge Raymond Dearie in June about “BIG PROBLEMS” he was having getting prison officials to fix the typographical error, noting that there was no way he was going to heed their suggestion and change his name legally to the way that officials spelled it.

“I need the ‘Di’ in DeMartino changed to ‘De’ in DeMartino. The right way,” he wrote.

That seemed reasonable to Judge Dearie, whose deputy clerk forwarded Chickie an order correcting the spelling.

You might think that would have ended the flap.

Two months later, however, an obviously exasperated DeMartino submitted a notice from prison officials that they weren’t going to take his word on the spelling of his name. They needed official word “from the court.” Worse, the problem was escalating, Chickie noted, submitting a copy of a letter U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf wrote to his wife that contained the same misspelling of her name.

Last month, Judge Dearie signed an amended “Judgment and Commitment Order” and his clerk sent a certified copy of the order to the prison, effectively giving Chickie back his name.

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CRUMB BUM

The colorful nicknames of many wise guys go back to their childhood days. Others acquire them after they begin committing crimes. Philadelphia mobster Peter “Pete The Crumb” Caprio, 76, says he fits into both categories.

The slight, white-haired Caprio gave the derivation of his nickname the other day at the labor racketeering trial of two International Longshoremen’s Association officials and Genovese soldier Lawrence Ricci, who went missing two weeks ago and is feared dead.

Caprio, who became a “made man” in 1982, testified that he committed his first crime when he was 8. He broke into a warehouse and stole some comic books. When he was caught, a police captain made him sing a song in Italian and sent him home.

He recalled that his friends began calling him Pete the Crumb when he was 12. The reason: “I used to eat the crumbs from cakes and pies and throw the rest away.”

Not so, according to several mobsters who ran with the New Jersey-based gangster in the 1970s and 1980s,including the late George Fresolone, a turncoat like Caprio,who discussed the subject with a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, George Anastasia, in 2001.

“He had a social club on Hudson Street, kind of a dump in a real bad neighborhood,” Fresolone said. “A lot of times he would sleep on a cot in the back room. He also dressed like a slob, that’s why we called him ‘The Crumb.’ He used to wear a toupee that cost,like,18 bucks. Real cheap. That was his lifestyle. That’s why he was The Crumb.”

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.