Tommy Genovese was a Colombo associate who, like you said, was a distant relative of Don Vito. He was born in Italy but later moved to the U.S. and started living it up on Lower East Side. As a Colombo mobster, he served under Michael Franzese. Genovese was good friends with both Mikey and John. Persico put a contract on Genovese after he was released from serving nearly a decade in prison. He was murdered in 1979 by a couple of recruits from John Matera's crew.