John Gotti

• 1. Introduction

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  John Gotti ran the Gambino crime family of New York City, and one of his fellow mobsters once delivered a harsh verdict on him. Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the former underboss of the Lucchese crime family, said: "what John Gotti did was the beginning of the end of Cosa Nostra." That is a strange charge to aim at a man described as leading the most powerful crime syndicate in the United States. How does a boy from a poor family in the Bronx and Brooklyn reach that position? Why did a boss who loved the news cameras keep walking out of courtrooms free? And what, exactly, did Casso think he had done? The answers run through loyalty, betrayal, and a surprising number of hidden microphones.

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• 2. Street Education

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  John Joseph Gotti Jr. was the fifth of thirteen children, and two of his siblings had died at birth. He was born in the Bronx on the 27th of October 1940 to John Joseph Gotti Sr. and Philomena "Fannie" DeCarlo. Both parents were born in New York. His grandparents are presumed to have come from San Giuseppe Vesuviano, in the province of Naples, because his parents married and lived there for a time.

  By the time he was 12, the family had settled in East New York, Brooklyn, where money was scarce. His father worked irregularly as a day laborer, and Gotti grew up resenting him for failing to provide. At school he skipped class and bullied other students. He dropped out of Franklin K. Lane High School at the age of 16.

  Street gangs connected to New York mafiosi had already drawn Gotti in at 12. At 14 he tried to steal a cement mixer from a construction site. It fell and crushed his toes, leaving him with a permanent limp. After leaving school he devoted himself to the mob-associated Fulton-Rockaway Boys. There he befriended two future Gambino mobsters, Angelo Ruggiero and Wilfred "Willie Boy" Johnson.

  In 1958 Gotti met Victoria DiGiorgio at a bar. She was of half-Italian and half-Russian descent. They married on the 6th of March 1962 and had five children: Angela, Victoria, John Jr., Frank and Peter. In 1962 Gotti tried honest work as a presser in a coat factory and as an assistant truck driver. It did not last, and by 1966 he had been jailed twice.

  Crime ran through the whole family. Gotti was one of five brothers who became made men in the Gambino family. Eugene, known as Gene, was initiated before John because John was behind bars. Peter was initiated in 1988, during John's leadership. Richard V. was identified as a captain by 2002, and Vincent was initiated that same year.

  Before any of that, Gotti was a teenager running errands for Carmine Fatico, a soldier in what was then called the Anastasia family under boss Albert Anastasia. With his brother Gene and his friend Ruggiero, he carried out truck hijackings at Idlewild Airport. He befriended fellow hijacker Joseph Massino, who would later become boss of the Bonanno family. Gotti picked up the nicknames "Black John" and "Crazy Horse." Around this time he also met the man who would shape his career, the Gambino underboss Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce.

  The law caught up in February 1968, when United Airlines employees identified Gotti as the man who had signed for stolen merchandise. The FBI arrested him soon afterward. Two months later, while out on bail, he was arrested again, this time for stealing a load of cigarettes worth $50,000 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Later that year he pleaded guilty to hijacking Northwest Airlines cargo trucks and received three years at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

  Gotti and Ruggiero were paroled in 1972 and went back to their old crew at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Queens, still answering to Fatico. Gotti took charge of the crew's illegal gambling and proved an effective enforcer. Fatico was indicted on loansharking charges in 1972, and his release terms barred him from associating with known felons. Gotti could not yet be a made man, because the membership books had been closed after the 1957 Apalachin meeting. Fatico named him acting captain of the Bergin crew anyway. Gotti began traveling to Dellacroce's headquarters at the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan to brief him. The two men found they had plenty in common: violent streaks, constant cursing, and a taste for heavy gambling.

  In 1973, Emanuel Gambino, nephew of boss Carlo Gambino, was kidnapped and murdered. Gotti was assigned to a hit team with Ruggiero and the enforcer Ralph Galione to find the main suspect, a gangster named James McBratney. The trio botched the job at a Staten Island bar. They tried to take McBratney while posing as police detectives, and Galione shot him dead once the others had him restrained. Eyewitnesses and a police insider identified Gotti, and he was arrested in June 1974. With the help of attorney Roy Cohn, he struck a plea bargain and received four years for attempted manslaughter.

  Remo Franceschini, an NYPD organized crime specialist who served from 1957 to 1991, was asked in 1993 how he knew early that Gotti would matter. He answered: "He was charismatic and a leader." He also said Gotti "had a very sharp mind and total recall." And then: "There were few men who would go against him." After Gotti's death, Massino named him as the killer of Vito Borelli, a Gambino associate murdered in 1975.

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• 3. Capo Under Castellano

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  Carlo Gambino died of natural causes at his home on the 15th of October 1976, and his choice of successor surprised the family. He named Paul Castellano, passing over his underboss, Dellacroce. Gambino seems to have believed the family would profit from Castellano's focus on white-collar businesses. Dellacroce was in prison for tax evasion and could not contest it. A meeting on the 24th of November confirmed Castellano as boss, with Dellacroce present. Castellano kept Dellacroce on as underboss while running the family's affairs himself. In practice the deal split the Gambinos into two rival camps: Castellano's in Brooklyn and Dellacroce's in Manhattan.

  Gotti walked out of prison in July 1977 after two years inside. The membership books had reportedly been reopened in 1976, and he was initiated into the family under Castellano. He was promptly promoted to replace Fatico as captain of the Bergin crew. As part of the concessions that kept Dellacroce in place, Gotti's crew reported directly to Dellacroce, and Gotti was seen as his protégé. The crew became Dellacroce's biggest earners. Gotti took a share of what his men made, ran his own loansharking operation, and held a no-show job as a plumbing supply salesman. FBI informants made unconfirmed claims that he also financed drug deals.

  In December 1978 Gotti helped with the Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport, the largest unrecovered cash robbery in history. He arranged for the getaway van to be crushed and baled at a Brooklyn scrapyard. The driver, Parnell "Stacks" Edwards, ignored the plan. He parked the van near a fire hydrant and went to sleep at his girlfriend's apartment.

  On the 18th of March 1980 came the worst day of Gotti's family life. His youngest son, 12-year-old Frank, was riding a family friend's minibike when a neighbor, John Favara, ran him over. Frank died. The death was ruled an accident, but Favara began receiving death threats. When he visited the Gotti home to apologize, Victoria attacked him with a baseball bat. Four months later Favara disappeared and was presumed murdered.

  Accounts of what happened to his body differ. One says he was dismembered alive with a chainsaw, then stuffed into a concrete-filled barrel and dumped in the ocean or buried on the lot of a chop shop. In January 2009, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed court papers alleging that the mob hitman Charles Carneglia killed Favara and disposed of the body in acid. Gotti is widely assumed to have ordered the killing, even though he and his family had left for a Florida vacation three days earlier.

  Gotti generally tried to keep his own family away from his criminal life. The exception was his son John Jr., who was a mob associate by 1982.

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• 4. Killing Castellano

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  In August 1983, Ruggiero and Gene Gotti were arrested for dealing heroin, mostly on the strength of recordings from a bug in Ruggiero's house. Castellano, who had banned drug dealing under threat of death, demanded transcripts of the tapes. Ruggiero refused to hand them over, and Castellano threatened to demote Gotti. Gotti came to fear that Castellano would eventually have him and Gene killed for dealing drugs.

  Gotti already disliked his boss. He considered Castellano too isolated and too greedy. Many in the family felt the same, because Castellano lacked street credibility and had never paid his dues on street-level jobs. Gotti also had a personal money grievance, a longtime dispute over his share of the truck hijackings at Kennedy Airport.

  Castellano's own legal troubles opened a door. In 1984 he was indicted in a racketeering case over the crimes of the Gambino hitman Roy DeMeo and his crew. The next year came a second indictment for his role on the Commission, the Mafia's governing body. Facing life in prison, Castellano named Gotti acting boss alongside Thomas Bilotti, his favorite captain, and Thomas Gambino.

  Gotti used the chance to plot. He conspired with fellow disgruntled captains Frank DeCicco and Joseph "Joe Piney" Armone, and with soldiers Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano and Robert "DiB" DiBernardo. The group became known as "The Fist." Armone's backing mattered most. As a respected old-timer whose roots reached back to the family's founder, Vincent Mangano, he gave the plot credibility.

  The Mafia's rules said a boss could be killed only with the approval of a majority of the Commission. An unsanctioned hit on Castellano would be the first on a boss of the Five Families since Frank Costello was nearly killed in 1957. It would be the first on any boss since Angelo Bruno in 1980. Gotti could not ask the other four bosses, who had long ties to Castellano. Instead he gathered support from important figures of his own generation in the Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families. He never approached the Genovese family, because Castellano was so close to its boss, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, that any overture would have been a tipoff. Gambino consigliere Joseph N. Gallo also went along.

  The breaking point came after Dellacroce died of cancer on the 2nd of December 1985. Castellano rewrote his succession plan. He made Bilotti underboss, made Thomas Gambino the only acting boss, and began planning to break up Gotti's crew. He also refused to attend Dellacroce's wake. Furious, Gotti decided to kill him.

  DeCicco tipped Gotti off that Castellano would meet several Gambino mobsters at Sparks Steak House on the 16th of December. Castellano and Bilotti were ambushed and shot dead when they arrived that evening. The gunmen worked under Gotti's command, and Gotti watched from his car alongside Gravano.

  A few days later, Gotti, Gallo and DeCicco were named to a three-man committee to run the family until a new boss was chosen. An internal investigation into the murder was announced. Yet it was an open secret that Gotti was already acting boss, and nearly every captain knew he had arranged the hit. At a meeting of twenty captains on the 15th of January 1986, he was formally named boss. He made DeCicco his underboss and kept Gallo as consigliere. Within three months, the new underboss would be dead.

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• 5. The Teflon Don

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  The family Gotti took over in 1986 was regarded as the most powerful in America, with an annual income of $500 million. Gotti himself reportedly earned between $5 million and $20 million a year as boss. In his book Underboss, Gravano estimated no less than $5 million, and more likely $10 million to $12 million. To shield himself legally, Gotti forbade family members from accepting plea bargains that acknowledged the organization existed.

  Unlike bosses who shunned attention, Gotti smiled and waved at news cameras. His expensive clothes and outspoken manner earned him the name "the Dapper Don," and the public warmed to him. That fame helped him in his first big case. In September 1984 he had quarreled with a refrigerator mechanic named Romual Piecyk and was charged with assault and robbery. Piecyk learned who his attacker was, and reports of Gambino intimidation followed. Boško "The Yugo" Radonjić, head of the Westies in Hell's Kitchen, helped persuade him to stay silent. When the trial opened in March 1986, Piecyk testified that he could not remember who attacked him. The case collapsed. The New York Post ran a headline playing on Gotti's name. It later emerged that Gambino mobsters had cut Piecyk's brake lines, made threatening calls and stalked him.

  On the 13th of April 1986 a car bomb killed DeCicco after he visited James Failla, a Castellano loyalist. Victor Amuso and Anthony Casso of the Lucchese family carried it out, on orders from Gigante and Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo, to avenge Castellano and Bilotti. Gotti had planned to visit Failla that day but canceled. A soldier riding with DeCicco was mistaken for the boss. Bombs had long been banned in the Mafia because they endanger innocent people, so the Gambinos first suspected "zips," Sicilian mafiosi working in the United States who were known for using them.

  The bombing rattled the federal racketeering case against Gotti. That case grew from a 1985 indictment brought by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Giacalone, which named Gotti, Dellacroce and several Bergin crew members. It had also exposed Willie Boy Johnson as an FBI informant. Judge Eugene Nickerson rescheduled the trial to avoid a jury tainted by publicity. Giacalone, citing witness intimidation in the Piecyk case, had Gotti's bail revoked. From jail, Gotti ordered Gravano to murder DiBernardo. DiBernardo and Ruggiero had both been competing to replace DeCicco, until Ruggiero accused DiBernardo of challenging Gotti. Then Ruggiero lost his own bail for abrasive behavior at hearings. Frustrated, Gotti promoted Armone to underboss instead.

  Jury selection began again in August 1986. Gotti stood trial with Johnson, who refused to turn state's evidence despite being exposed, along with Leonard DiMaria, Tony Rampino, Nicholas Corozzo and John Carneglia. The Gambinos found their opening in a juror named George Pape. He hid his friendship with Radonjić and was seated as juror No. 11. Through Radonjić, Pape reached Gravano and agreed to sell his vote for $60,000.

  On the 25th of September, defense attorney Bruce Cutler opened by denying the Gambino family existed and calling the case a personal vendetta. He attacked the credibility of Giacalone's witnesses by dwelling on the crimes they had committed. He also called Matthew Traynor, a bank robber dropped by the prosecution as unreliable, who claimed Giacalone had offered him drugs in exchange for testimony. Nickerson later called the allegations "wholly unbelievable," and Traynor was convicted of perjury.

  Mob writers Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain reported that most jurors favored conviction when deliberations began. But Gotti had known from the start that Pape guaranteed him at least a hung jury. Pape held out for acquittal until the others feared for their own safety. On the 13th of March 1987 the jury acquitted Gotti and his codefendants of every charge, including loansharking, gambling, murder and truck hijacking. Five years later, Pape was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to three years.

  After the success of the Mafia Commission Trial against other leaders, the acquittal was a major upset. The American media named him "The Teflon Don," because no charge would stick. His associates would not be so lucky.

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• 6. Vanity at the Ravenite

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  In December 1987, Gotti's underboss Armone and consigliere Gallo were both convicted of racketeering, after being indicted in 1986. Gene Gotti and Ruggiero's heroin trial had begun that June. The Gambinos worked on the jury there too, and the trial ended in two mistrials. Ruggiero was terminally ill when he was severed from the case and released in 1989. Gotti refused to contact him, blaming him for the family's troubles. According to Gravano, Gotti even considered murdering him, and at his funeral "I literally had to drag him to the funeral."

  Gotti also reshuffled his leadership. He demoted Gallo, who retired so Gravano could take the consigliere post. He slated Frank LoCascio to act as underboss if Armone went to prison.

  Starting in January 1988, Gotti ordered his captains to meet him at the Ravenite Social Club every week. Gravano advised against it. Gene saw it as a needless risk driven by vanity. FBI Gambino squad leader Bruce Mouw saw it as the opposite of a secret society. The meetings let FBI surveillance record and identify much of the Gambino hierarchy. They also supplied strong circumstantial evidence that Gotti was the boss, since Mafia protocol demands public shows of loyalty to the boss. The FBI bugged the Ravenite itself but captured no high-quality incriminating recordings.

  Later in 1988, Gotti, Gigante and the new Lucchese boss, Amuso, attended the first Commission meeting since the Commission Trial, at the LaBar Bat Club in Manhattan. Tensions ran high. Casso had been injured in an unauthorized hit by the Gambino captain Mickey Paradiso. In 1987 the FBI had warned Gotti that it recorded Genovese consigliere Louis Manna discussing a hit on Gotti and his brother. To avoid a war, the three families denied knowledge of the violence and agreed to "communicate better." They let Colombo acting boss Victor Orena join the Commission. Gigante, unwilling to hand Gotti a majority, blocked the Bonannos and Massino from returning.

  On Christmas Eve 1988, John Jr. was initiated into the family. Michael DiLeonardo, initiated the same night, said Gravano ran the ceremony so Gotti could not be accused of nepotism. John Jr. was promoted to captain right away.

  On the evening of the 23rd of January 1989, police arrested Gotti outside the Ravenite. He was charged with ordering the 1986 assault of John O'Connor, a leader of the carpenters' union Local 608. O'Connor was believed to have ordered an attack on a Gambino-associated restaurant that had snubbed the union, and the Westies later shot and wounded him. In the back of the police car, Gotti said, "Three to one I beat this charge." After a night in jail he was released on $100,000 bail.

  By then the FBI had new informants. It learned why the Ravenite bug had failed: Gotti held sensitive talks in a rear hallway or in an upstairs apartment where the widow of a Gambino soldier lived. By November 1989, both places were bugged. The apartment proved the richest source, because Gotti spoke so frankly there. On the 12th of December, he told LoCascio plainly that he had ordered the murders of DiBernardo and of Liborio Milito, one of Gravano's partners who was killed for insubordination. He also announced he would kill soldier Louis DiBono, who had ignored a summons about his mismanagement of a drywall business. The FBI misheard the name and never warned DiBono, who was killed on the 4th of October 1990. At a taped meeting on the 4th of January 1990, Gotti promoted Gravano to underboss, preferring him to lead if Gotti were convicted.

  State prosecutors tied Gotti to the assault with a recording of him discussing O'Connor and announcing he would "bust him up," plus testimony from Westies gangster James McElroy. Even so, Gotti was acquitted of all six charges on the 9th of February 1990. Locals set off fireworks afterward. Jules J. Bonavolonta, director of the FBI's organized crime division in New York, warned: "With all this media coverage he's beginning to look like a folk hero... What the public should realize is that he is the boss of the largest Cosa Nostra family, that he surrounds himself with ruthless killers and that he is flat out a criminal."

  Later it emerged that FBI bugs had apparently caught Gotti planning to fix the jury, as he had in the 1986-87 racketeering case. The FBI and federal prosecutors did not share this with Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau or state organized crime taskforce chief Ronald Goldstock, who were furious. Morgenthau said that had he known, he would have asked for a mistrial.

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• 7. Tapes and Testimony

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  On the 11th of December 1990, FBI agents and NYPD detectives raided the Ravenite and arrested Gotti, Gravano and LoCascio. Bugs concealed in the main room, the first-floor hallway and the upstairs apartment had recorded them discussing incriminating events. Federal prosecutors charged Gotti in a new racketeering case with five murders: Castellano, Bilotti, DiBernardo, Milito and DiBono. They also charged conspiracy to murder Gaetano "Corky" Vastola, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, bribery and tax evasion.

  Tapes played at pretrial hearings persuaded the judge to deny bail to the Gambino leadership. Prosecutors also had Gotti's lawyers removed. They argued that Cutler and Gerald Shargel were "part of the evidence" and could be called as witnesses, because they had acted as "in-house counsel" for the Gambino family. Gotti hired Albert Krieger, a Miami attorney who had worked with Joseph Bonanno, to replace Cutler.

  The tapes also split Gotti from Gravano. On them, the boss called his new underboss too greedy and tried to frame him as the main force behind the DiBernardo, Milito and DiBono murders. Gotti's attempt at reconciliation failed. Gravano grew disillusioned with the mob and doubted he could win without Shargel. On the 13th of November 1991 he formally agreed to testify. He was the highest-ranking member of a New York crime family to become an informer until Joseph Massino did so in 2003.

  Gotti and LoCascio went on trial in the Eastern District of New York before Judge I. Leo Glasser. Jury selection began in January 1992. Because of Gotti's reputation for jury tampering, the anonymous jury was fully sequestered, a first for a Brooklyn federal case. Prosecutors Andrew Maloney and John Gleeson opened on the 12th of February by playing tapes of Gotti discussing family business and murders he approved. The tapes also confirmed his hostility toward Castellano, which established his motive. An eyewitness to the Castellano hit identified Carneglia as one of the men who shot Bilotti.

  Gravano took the stand on the 2nd of March. He confirmed Gotti's place in the family and described the plot against Castellano in detail, from the hit to its aftermath. Gravano confessed to nineteen murders and implicated Gotti in four of them. Krieger and LoCascio's attorney, Anthony Cardinale, could not shake him on cross-examination. The government rested on the 24th of March.

  Of six intended defense witnesses, five were ruled irrelevant or extraneous. Only Gotti's tax attorney, Murray Appleman, testified. A motion for a mistrial over Maloney's closing remarks failed. Gotti grew hostile, and Glasser threatened to remove him from the courtroom. He called Gravano a junkie while his attorneys tried to raise Gotti's past steroid use. He likened the dismissal of a juror to the fixing of the 1919 World Series.

  On the 2nd of April 1992, after only fourteen hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Gotti on every count. LoCascio was convicted on all but one. At a press conference, James Fox, who headed the FBI's New York office, announced: "The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro, and all the charges stuck". On the 23rd of June 1992, Glasser sentenced both men to life without parole and fined each $250,000.

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• 8. Prison and Legacy

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  Gotti served his sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. He spent most of it in effective solitary confinement, let out of his cell for one hour a day. The Supreme Court rejected his final appeal in 1994.

  On the 18th of July 1996, a fellow inmate named Walter Johnson punched Gotti in the recreation room, leaving him bruised and bleeding. The New York Daily News reported that Gotti had insulted Johnson with a racial slur. Seeking revenge, Gotti offered the Aryan Brotherhood chieftains David Sahakian and Michael McElhiney between $40,000 and $400,000 to have Johnson killed. In August, McElhiney told two underlings to kill Johnson "if given the opportunity," according to a federal indictment against him and thirty-nine other gang members. Johnson was transferred to the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

  Despite his imprisonment and pressure from the Commission to step down, Gotti insisted on keeping the title of boss until death or retirement. His brother Peter and his son John Jr. relayed his orders. By 1998, when John Jr. was indicted on racketeering charges, he was believed to be the acting boss. Against his father's wishes, he pleaded guilty and received six years and five months in 1999. He maintains that he has since left the Gambino family. Peter then became acting boss and is believed to have formally succeeded his brother shortly before Gotti died.

  John Jr.'s indictment strained Gotti's marriage further. Victoria Gotti had not known her son was in the Mafia. She blamed her husband for ruining his life and threatened to leave unless John Jr. could leave the mob.

  In 1998 Gotti was diagnosed with throat cancer and sent to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, for surgery. The tumor was removed, but two years later the cancer returned, and he spent the rest of his life back at Springfield. He died there on the 10th of June 2002, at the age of 61.

  The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced that the family could not hold a Requiem Mass, though a memorial Mass after the burial was allowed. The funeral took place in a non-church facility. An estimated 300 onlookers followed the procession, which passed the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club on its way to the gravesite. Gotti was interred in a crypt next to his son Frank. Peter could not attend because he was in prison.

  The other New York families sent no representatives, which looked like a repudiation of his leadership. Prosecutions triggered by his tactics had left the Gambino family in shambles. By the turn of the century, half its made men were in prison.

  Still, Gotti became a fixture of popular culture. Since his conviction he has been portrayed in six television films, three theatrical films and three documentary series. Anthony John Denison played him in the 1994 CBS movie Getting Gotti, and Armand Assante played him in HBO's 1996 film Gotti. John Travolta took the role in the 2018 theatrical film Gotti. Netflix released the documentary series Get Gotti in 2023. The character Joey Zasa in The Godfather Part III, from 1990, is partly based on him.

  Musicians kept returning to him. Kool G Rap and DJ Polo referenced him in their 1988 single "Road to the Riches." In 1996, Fun Lovin' Criminals made him the key subject of "King of New York," which reached number 28 in the UK singles chart. Band member Brian Leiser said the song grew from their time playing at the Limelight club, when "Gotti was still running things." That same year, Jay-Z rapped, "I never prayed to God, I prayed to Gotti." Rick Ross titled a 2010 album Teflon Don. In 2024, Megan Thee Stallion called herself the "Teflon Don" in her single "Hiss," so the nickname still circulates in her songs.

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