A tough Queens gangster who defied the feds and took the stand as a defense witness for John Gotti in the historic trial that ended with an astounding acquittal in 1987 is a budding prosecution witness against John A. “Junior” Gotti, Gang Land has learned.

The new turncoat is Peter “Bud” Zuccaro, a longtime mob associate who will soon make his debut as a government informer at the ongoing trial of capo Dominick “Skinny Dom” Pizzonia.

Pizzonia, 66, is charged with three mob rubouts, including the 1992 slayings of Rosemarie and Thomas Uva, a husband and wife team that robbed mob social clubs.

The Pizzonia case is only a warmup for Team America’s latest recruit, however, with the bigger show expected to come later against the wiseguy the feds most want to nail.

Sources tell Gang Land that Zuccaro, 51, has linked Junior Gotti to criminal activity that the FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are investigating with a view toward ultimately putting the Junior Don behind bars again.

Zuccaro, a drug-dealing Gambino associate who operated in New York and Florida, has admitted several murders, including at least one for which he faced a possible death penalty, sources said. This delayed the official signing of his cooperation agreement to give Justice Department officials in Washington time to approve the deal.

Gang Land reported 16 months ago that Bud had decided to cooperate under pressure of a possible life sentence as the leader of a multimillion-dollar drug ring that sold high-quality marijuana that was harvested in high-tech hydroponic warehouses near elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens.

The Gotti probe is in its early stages, sources said. They declined to disclose any specifics about the investigation, such as whether the allegations include violence. They stressed that the potential charges would not be barred by a statute of limitations, however. But that can be a difficult maneuver even under liberal racketeering statutes, as shown by Gotti’s last encounter with the feds.

In October, after three mistrials during a 27-month-long conflict that hinged on Gotti’s claim that he quit the mob when he went to prison in 1999, federal prosecutors in Manhattan dismissed racketeering charges that stemmed from the kidnap-shooting of a radio talk show host, Curtis Sliwa, in 1992.

Junior, who at his last trial often voiced an intention to move his family far from his New York mob ties — both in person and during tape-recorded jailhouse conversations with cohorts — still resides with his family in a mansion in Oyster Bay Cove on Long Island.

“Everybody who doesn’t want to do his time for a crime that he commits is more than willing to make up a story about John,” Gotti’s lawyer, Charles Carnesi, said. “We just hope that the government is able to weed out those who deal in fiction rather than fact.”

At Pizzonia’s trial, Zuccaro is expected to add little to the prosecution’s case about the Christmas Eve slayings of the modern-day Bonnie & Clyde team who hit Skinny Dom’s Café Liberty social club twice, according to the charges. The case is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorneys Joey Lipton and Paige Petersen.

An FBI report in the case states that Zuccaro “heard that Skinny Dom killed the Uvas on Woodhaven Boulevard. The Uvas had robbed Skinny Dom’s social club. This was the reason the Uvas were killed.”

Sources said Zuccaro will corroborate much of what another prosecution witness, Anthony Ruggiano Jr., is planning say about the murder of Frank Boccia, whom Skinny Dom and co-defendant Alfred “Freddy Hot” DeCongilio allegedly killed in the Café Liberty in June 1988.

Boccia, a small-time hood who was married to Ruggiano’s sister, was murdered for slapping around his wife’s mother, who happened to be the wife of Gambino soldier Anthony Ruggiano Sr., who was then incarcerated. The killing was sanctioned by the late Dapper Don, sources say.

“Zuccaro and Ruggiano were buddies, and Bud will have a lot to say about the demise of Boccia,” a source said. Boccia, whose body has never been found, was dumped into the Atlantic and, in the words of another source, “is swimming with the fishes.”

After his testimony against Skinny Dom and Freddy Hot, Zuccaro had been slated to testify next month against another mob scion, Angelo “Junior” Ruggiero, an alleged drug dealer whose late father was a right-hand-man-in-crime to Junior Gotti’s old man during the elder Gotti’s rise to the top of the Gambino family.

Two weeks ago, the trial was put off until September, soon after Ruggiero and a co-defendant received intriguing visits from lawyers Joseph Corozzo, who represents Pizzonia, and Michael Rosen, whose clients have included capo Thomas Gambino and other family members.

Ruggiero, who has been held without bail in less than desirable accommodations at the Nassau County jail for six months, had been pushing long and hard for a speedy trial. Soon after the visits, Ruggiero’s attorney, James Froccaro, requested an adjournment.

Mr. Corozzo was likely engaged in normal due diligence, mining Ruggiero for any negative insight he might have about his former buddy Bud that the attorney might be able to use during cross-examination. Mr. Rosen said his meeting was with the co-defendant, and that the timing of his and Mr. Corozzo’s visits was coincidental.

The big puzzler is why Ruggiero, who has been griping about his lousy situation, would put off his day in court and possible freedom for four more months. In a May trial, his lawyer would be able to use any negative information that Mr. Corrozzo might develop, and the feds would have little time to rehabilitate their new witness if he were to be less than a smashing success on the stand.

Either way, expect both sides of the law to be watching Zuccaro’s upcoming court performance the same way scouts at spring training eye a promising rookie.

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Brooklyn prosecutors want to cancel an agreed-upon pre-trial hearing in the murder case against a former FBI supervisor, R. Lindley DeVecchio, prompting a claim that the move is merely an attempt to further delay the trial in the 13-month-old case.

Lawyers for the ex-agent have asked the trial judge to proceed with the scheduled May 15 hearing to determine whether the indictment was tainted by improper evidence gathering by members of the prosecution team or — as attorney Douglas Grover put it in court filings — a “cottage industry of self-styled forensic investigators and journalists” the Brooklyn district attorney’s office allegedly used during its probe.

In his papers, Mr. Grover notes that between March 16, when the DA’s office agreed that the pretrial hearing was necessary, and April 5 it had “not contacted either Angela Clemente or Peter Lance — two witnesses who are essential to the … hearing,” or the appropriate federal authorities to secure government witnesses for the hearing.

At issue is whether testimony that Mr. DeVecchio gave under grants of immunity or leads from that testimony were used to obtain the indictment, which charges Mr. DeVecchio with helping mobster and FBI informer Greg Scarpa Sr. to commit four Brooklyn murders between 1984 and 1992.

In its papers, the DA’s office now asserts that the hearing, should it be necessary, should be conducted after the trial, which it has asked to be put off until September.

Tomorrow, a state Supreme Court justice, Gustin Reichbach, will hear oral arguments from both sides.

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