Far from being the self-made man he says he is, Joseph N. Merlino was set up in the construction business by his father, a convicted Mafia killer, a retired federal corruption investigator testified yesterday.
Merlino and his mother are seeking a license that would permit their company, Bayshore Rebar of Pleasantville, to work in the Atlantic City casino industry.
Merlino admits that his father, Lawrence "Yogi," and his cousin Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino were mobsters. But he says Bayshore is free of mob influence and is unrelated to his father, who died in 2001 while in the witness protection program.
Ronald Chance, who investigated mob ties to the construction industry in the 1980s for the U.S. Department of Labor, said Bayshore was founded and run by the elder Merlino.
"Larry Merlino created Bayshore," Chance said. "Bayshore was the minority company of Larry Merlino."
Chance said Merlino listed his wife as the owner to get around requirements that a portion of some contracts be awarded to companies owned by women or minorities, and had his son on the payroll as well.
He testified during a hearing of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that Phyllis Merlino and Joseph N. Merlino were listed as company officers, but Lawrence Merlino was the real boss in the mid-1980s.
"Not one single person ever had any dealings with Joseph or Phyllis Merlino," Chance testified. "Their dealings were with Larry Merlino."
That testimony contradicted the Merlinos' claim of how Bayshore was founded - as a legitimate company free of any mob taint or influence from Lawrence Merlino.
The Merlinos' lawyer, John Donnelly, denied the truth of Chance's testimony.
"He's absolutely, unequivocally, dead wrong," Donnelly said. "It's already found to have been untrue by the Casino Control Commission."
Chance testified that his agency began investigating Lawrence Merlino in the 1980s after an ironworker whose wife had just given birth was hit with a $4,300 hospital bill. The worker went to his union to ask why the hospital said he had no insurance coverage, and was told to see a higher-up in the union, who in turn referred him to "the boss," Lawrence Merlino, Chance testified.
Confronting him at a work site in Atlantic City, Lawrence Merlino grabbed the worker by the throat, told him to open his mouth, stuck a gun inside it, and promised that he would kill the worker if he saw him again, Chance testified.
An investigation determined that Merlino's main company, Nat-Nat, had not been making required payments to a union benefits fund, Chance testified.
"That was the way Nat-Nat got all the jobs: because it wasn't making health and welfare payments," Chance said. Skipping the payments saved the company money and enabled it to underbid other competitors, he added.
The hearing is due to resume Friday.
Thanks to Wayne Parry
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Facebook Being Used to Recruit Teens into The Mafia
A new Facebook site inviting children into a Naples, Italy, crime syndicate allegedly could be linked to a recent wave of juvenile vandalism, officials said.
The site, which promises "plenty of work," claims to represent a new "Camorra gang made up of teenagers" in the Naples suburb of Pomigliano d'Arco, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Tuesday.
Police have yet to determine whether the site is real or a prank, while local officials fear the group may be behind recent vandalism, including the destruction of a playground, ANSA reported.
The site is one of hundreds on Facebook championing the mafia.
Earlier this year, Facebook removed some mafia-related content, including a page dedicated to Toto "The Beast" Riina, once known as the Cosa Nostra "boss of bosses," ANSA said. Riina's page had nearly 2,000 subscribers.
The thousands of people who join mafia Internet sites are "potential gangsters" who should be investigated, said Carlos Vizzini, an Italian crime envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Thanks to The Post Chronicle
The site, which promises "plenty of work," claims to represent a new "Camorra gang made up of teenagers" in the Naples suburb of Pomigliano d'Arco, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Tuesday.
Police have yet to determine whether the site is real or a prank, while local officials fear the group may be behind recent vandalism, including the destruction of a playground, ANSA reported.
The site is one of hundreds on Facebook championing the mafia.
Earlier this year, Facebook removed some mafia-related content, including a page dedicated to Toto "The Beast" Riina, once known as the Cosa Nostra "boss of bosses," ANSA said. Riina's page had nearly 2,000 subscribers.
The thousands of people who join mafia Internet sites are "potential gangsters" who should be investigated, said Carlos Vizzini, an Italian crime envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Thanks to The Post Chronicle
Victoria Gotti Speaks Out on Her Father, John Gotti, and Her New Book "This Family of Mine"
Try as she might to be a typical working mother, Victoria Gotti will always be known as the mob boss's daughter.
So, when her family approached her about writing a memoir about life as a Gotti, she initially balked, worried about adding to more tabloid stories and untruths.
"I think, at some point around the holidays, my family came to me and said, 'Enough. When are you going to set the record straight?'" Gotti said on "Good Morning America" today. "They won out at the end, and I did it."
Gotti's new book, "This Family of Mine," details her life in the family led by John Gotti, head of the Gambino crime family, who, after several government attempts to nab him, was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 on a multitude of charges, including murder and racketeering.
Getting the blessing of her family members, Gotti said, she told them she wanted to tell the full story. "If we're going to do this, it's not going to be halfway," Gotti said she told her family.
In the book, Gotti, 46, wrote that she did not know of her father's deep involvement with the mob in the beginning. John Gotti never brought his business into the family home. "I was 8 years old. I was 10 years old. You believe what you want to believe," Gotti said. "Later in life, things start to come together."
Only in the mid- to late-1980s did Gotti, her sister and her mother finally realize what John Gotti was doing and how powerful he was within the Gambino crime family. "People think that was bizarre, but it's not," Gotti said, adding that her family always believed the tabloid stories were embellished.
The late John Gotti was finally sent to prison after several previous prosecutions had failed to stick. Initially known as "Dapper Don" for his fancy suits, the tabloids christened him "Teflon Don" for his ability to beat the charges repeatedly. But as her father nabbed more and more headlines and her brother, John "Junior" Gotti, faced scrutiny for his position as the acting head of the Gambino crime family, the entire family was subjected to tabloid reports.
"It just got to the point where there were no boundaries anymore," she said. "Everyone was fair game."
The younger Gotti is now facing another trial -- his fourth in five years -- for murder and racketeering.
Victoria Gotti said that while her brother had admitted to past indiscretions, "Junior" Gotti told her he'd sworn off the mob life 10 years ago and simply wanted to enjoy the pleasures of life with his family.
The back cover of "This Family of Mine" shows Victoria Gotti posing with her father at her 1984 wedding to Carmine Agnello, himself now serving prison time.
Gotti had 1,500 guests at her New York wedding, many of them involved in the mob. The picture shows her in tears.
Gotti told "Good Morning America" that she had initially seen the wedding as a way to break free of her father, who had become extremely overprotective, watching over her every move. "I was ambivalent, I think, even about getting married, anyway," she said. "I basically wanted to get out from under dad's rule, under dad's thumb."
The tears, she said, came after realizing she didn't know her husband very well and the realization that, even after wanting more freedom, the marriage would mean leaving the protective cocoon of her family home.
Now a mother to three sons, Carmine, John and Frank, Gotti said she instilled in her sons from an early age that mob life is not for them. "This is the way to break mom's heart," she said she told them. "This is not what I want."
And Gotti said she believes they understand why. "I think they've seen the trial and error," she said. This is not something for them."
Thanks to GMA
So, when her family approached her about writing a memoir about life as a Gotti, she initially balked, worried about adding to more tabloid stories and untruths.
"I think, at some point around the holidays, my family came to me and said, 'Enough. When are you going to set the record straight?'" Gotti said on "Good Morning America" today. "They won out at the end, and I did it."
Gotti's new book, "This Family of Mine," details her life in the family led by John Gotti, head of the Gambino crime family, who, after several government attempts to nab him, was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 on a multitude of charges, including murder and racketeering.
Getting the blessing of her family members, Gotti said, she told them she wanted to tell the full story. "If we're going to do this, it's not going to be halfway," Gotti said she told her family.
In the book, Gotti, 46, wrote that she did not know of her father's deep involvement with the mob in the beginning. John Gotti never brought his business into the family home. "I was 8 years old. I was 10 years old. You believe what you want to believe," Gotti said. "Later in life, things start to come together."
Only in the mid- to late-1980s did Gotti, her sister and her mother finally realize what John Gotti was doing and how powerful he was within the Gambino crime family. "People think that was bizarre, but it's not," Gotti said, adding that her family always believed the tabloid stories were embellished.
The late John Gotti was finally sent to prison after several previous prosecutions had failed to stick. Initially known as "Dapper Don" for his fancy suits, the tabloids christened him "Teflon Don" for his ability to beat the charges repeatedly. But as her father nabbed more and more headlines and her brother, John "Junior" Gotti, faced scrutiny for his position as the acting head of the Gambino crime family, the entire family was subjected to tabloid reports.
"It just got to the point where there were no boundaries anymore," she said. "Everyone was fair game."
The younger Gotti is now facing another trial -- his fourth in five years -- for murder and racketeering.
Victoria Gotti said that while her brother had admitted to past indiscretions, "Junior" Gotti told her he'd sworn off the mob life 10 years ago and simply wanted to enjoy the pleasures of life with his family.
The back cover of "This Family of Mine" shows Victoria Gotti posing with her father at her 1984 wedding to Carmine Agnello, himself now serving prison time.
Gotti had 1,500 guests at her New York wedding, many of them involved in the mob. The picture shows her in tears.
Gotti told "Good Morning America" that she had initially seen the wedding as a way to break free of her father, who had become extremely overprotective, watching over her every move. "I was ambivalent, I think, even about getting married, anyway," she said. "I basically wanted to get out from under dad's rule, under dad's thumb."
The tears, she said, came after realizing she didn't know her husband very well and the realization that, even after wanting more freedom, the marriage would mean leaving the protective cocoon of her family home.
Now a mother to three sons, Carmine, John and Frank, Gotti said she instilled in her sons from an early age that mob life is not for them. "This is the way to break mom's heart," she said she told them. "This is not what I want."
And Gotti said she believes they understand why. "I think they've seen the trial and error," she said. This is not something for them."
Thanks to GMA
Company Seeking Casino License Was Founded by Mobster, Charges Ex-Fed
Far from being the self-made man he says he is, Joseph N. Merlino was actually set up in the construction business by his father, a convicted Mafia killer, a retired federal corruption investigator testified Monday.
Merlino and his mother are seeking a license that would permit their company, Bayshore Rebar of Pleasantville, to work in the Atlantic City casino industry.
Merlino's father, Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino, and his cousin, Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, were mobsters, he admits. But Joseph N. Merlino claims Bayshore is free of any mob influence and is unrelated to his father, who died in 2001 while in the witness protection program.
Ronald Chance, who investigated mob ties to the construction industry in the 1980s for the U.S. Department of Labor, said Bayshore was founded and run by the elder Merlino. "Larry Merlino created Bayshore," Chance said. "Bayshore was the minority company of Larry Merlino."
Chance said Merlino listed his wife as the owner to get around requirements that a portion of some contracts be awarded to companies owned by women or minorities, and had his son on the payroll as well.
He testified during a hearing of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that Phyllis Merlino and the younger Joseph Merlino were listed as company officers, but Lawrence Merlino was the real boss in the mid-1980s.
"Not one single person ever had any dealings with Joseph or Phyllis Merlino," Chance testified. "Their dealings were with Larry Merlino."
That testimony is important because it contradicts the Merlinos' claim of how Bayshore was founded , as a legitimate company free of any mob taint or influence from Lawrence Merlino.
The Merlinos' lawyer, John Donnelly, flatly denied Chance's testimony. "He's absolutely, unequivocally dead wrong," Donnelly said. "It's already found to have been untrue by the Casino Control Commission."
Chance testified his agency began investigating Lawrence Merlino in the 1980s after an ironworker whose wife had just given birth was hit with a $4,300 hospital bill. The worker went to his union to ask why the hospital said he had no insurance coverage and was told to see a higher-up in the union, who in turn referred him to see "the boss," Lawrence Merlino, Chance testified.
Confronting him at a work site in Atlantic City, Merlino grabbed the worker by the throat, told him to open his mouth, stuck a gun inside it and promised he would kill the worker if he ever saw him again, Chance testified.
An investigation determined that Merlino's main company, Nat-Nat, had not been making required payments to a union benefits fund, Chance testified. "That was the way Nat-Nat got all the jobs: because it wasn't making health and welfare payments," Chance said. Skipping the payments saved the company money, and enabled it to underbid other competitors, he added.
The hearing is due to resume Friday.
Thanks to Wayne Parry
Merlino and his mother are seeking a license that would permit their company, Bayshore Rebar of Pleasantville, to work in the Atlantic City casino industry.
Merlino's father, Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino, and his cousin, Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, were mobsters, he admits. But Joseph N. Merlino claims Bayshore is free of any mob influence and is unrelated to his father, who died in 2001 while in the witness protection program.
Ronald Chance, who investigated mob ties to the construction industry in the 1980s for the U.S. Department of Labor, said Bayshore was founded and run by the elder Merlino. "Larry Merlino created Bayshore," Chance said. "Bayshore was the minority company of Larry Merlino."
Chance said Merlino listed his wife as the owner to get around requirements that a portion of some contracts be awarded to companies owned by women or minorities, and had his son on the payroll as well.
He testified during a hearing of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that Phyllis Merlino and the younger Joseph Merlino were listed as company officers, but Lawrence Merlino was the real boss in the mid-1980s.
"Not one single person ever had any dealings with Joseph or Phyllis Merlino," Chance testified. "Their dealings were with Larry Merlino."
That testimony is important because it contradicts the Merlinos' claim of how Bayshore was founded , as a legitimate company free of any mob taint or influence from Lawrence Merlino.
The Merlinos' lawyer, John Donnelly, flatly denied Chance's testimony. "He's absolutely, unequivocally dead wrong," Donnelly said. "It's already found to have been untrue by the Casino Control Commission."
Chance testified his agency began investigating Lawrence Merlino in the 1980s after an ironworker whose wife had just given birth was hit with a $4,300 hospital bill. The worker went to his union to ask why the hospital said he had no insurance coverage and was told to see a higher-up in the union, who in turn referred him to see "the boss," Lawrence Merlino, Chance testified.
Confronting him at a work site in Atlantic City, Merlino grabbed the worker by the throat, told him to open his mouth, stuck a gun inside it and promised he would kill the worker if he ever saw him again, Chance testified.
An investigation determined that Merlino's main company, Nat-Nat, had not been making required payments to a union benefits fund, Chance testified. "That was the way Nat-Nat got all the jobs: because it wasn't making health and welfare payments," Chance said. Skipping the payments saved the company money, and enabled it to underbid other competitors, he added.
The hearing is due to resume Friday.
Thanks to Wayne Parry
Saturday, September 26, 2009
John Gotti, Father and Godfather
For the first time ever, John Gotti's children, Angel, Victoria and Peter, speak openly about a life shrouded in secrecy and reveal what they knew about the mafia in an exclusive interview with "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Troy Roberts.
"I loved the man… but I loathed the life, his lifestyle," said Victoria Gotti. "Prosecutors say my father was the biggest crime boss in the nation... If you really want to know what John Gotti was like, you need to talk to my family. We lived this life…
"I think I realized early on that my family wasn't like other families…
Growing up, my parents tried to hide a lot of things from me…from all of us…
"I think you grow up scared, anxious all the time…" she said.
"I used to get up as a young boy and I used to get excited when I would go and see that my father was alive," said Peter Gotti. "When I would hear him snore, I’d know he made it home."
"We didn’t talk back to my father. We didn’t ask him, 'Did you kill anyone?'" said Angel Gotti.
"I didn’t know his life…I didn’t know his lifestyle," said Peter. "Honestly, I was just a kid that wanted to love his father."
"The public saw my father right out of central casting. He looked the part, acted the part… he was the part! The real life Godfather," said Victoria. "People treat him like he was the second coming of Christ!
"It was very difficult for me to look into these crimes that he was accused of committing… I was angry at everybody for lying to me," she said.
"Do I believe now that my father was this big boss? Yes, I do now," Angel concedes.
"Should I lie and say I don’t love him? We loved him. And that's really all we should have been held accountable for. We just wanna move on," said Victoria.
Now, their brother, John "Junior" Gotti, is on trial again. If convicted, he could face life behind bars.
"My brother John’s life is on the line…like my father. John was a player in that world… but John is not in that courtroom," said Victoria. "I believe that it’s the last name Gotti. It’s definitely Dad."
"It does not mean that a child has to answer for his father’s sins," said Peter.
"Now it’s time to set the record straight," said Victoria. "No one knows John Gotti better than his family does. Nobody. And we’re ready to talk about it. We’re ready to talk about him… finally.
They are images the public has never seen before: the private, treasured photographs and home videos belonging to the children of mob boss John Gotti - a man who once ran the largest organized crime syndicate in the country; a man convicted of multiple counts of murder.
"You don’t want to believe it. And when you love that person, it makes it so much more hard," said Victoria Gotti.
For the first time, the Mafia chieftain's daughters, Victoria and Angel, and his son, Peter, are talking openly about the life they’ve always kept secret… and no question is off limits.
"How difficult is it to accept that your own father either directly or indirectly killed people?" correspondent Troy Roberts asked John Gotti's youngest daughter.
"When you choose that life, I think you know what you're signing on for…," Victoria said. "I think he knew going in what was expected of him. What he would have to do. What it would cost him. And I don't think he cared. I think that all goes along with that life."
"Why do you call it the life?" asked Roberts.
"Because, mostly it’s called the life," Victoria replied.
"No one ever says, 'I’m in the mob?'" Roberts asked.
"No. It’s always the life."
Victoria has never spoken about "the life" publicly, but in her new book, "This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti," she's finally talking about what it was really like growing up Gotti.
When asked why she decided now to write a tell-all, she said, "It got personal. I woke up one day and said, 'Enough's enough.' There were so many things that had to be addressed as far as rumors, lies, gossip."
Victoria talked to her father about the possibility of writing a book before he died.
"'If you ever write that book,' he said, 'You write it as your life. One thing I ask that you do… Don't you ever look to make me out to be an altar boy, because I wasn't.'"
But when Victoria and her siblings were children, it's clear that John Gotti never wanted them to know that side of him.
"He just took everything to another extreme," said Gotti's youngest son, Peter. "I remember getting excited about going to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. He would talk for a half an hour, 45 minutes, about how he just wanted to get them chestnuts. You can't even find roasted chestnuts anymore. But he was so excited he would talk like a little kid."
"He was a very funny. People don't know that. He was very funny," said Angel, Gotti's firstborn. But mixed in with the fun, were the lies - like what he told his children he did for a living. "He told me that he worked in a construction crew. I asked where he was going and he would say he was off to somewhere to build a school or a building," Victoria told Roberts.
They believed him, but the truth was that all John Gotti had ever wanted to be was a mobster. He had grown up one of 11 children - raised in Brooklyn by an abusive father and an overwhelmed mother. He quickly embraced a life of crime and violence, working for local gangsters and building a rap sheet.
"This is where he came from," Victoria explained. "These men were the men that were respected. This was something he saw early on and made up his mind that this was what he was going to do. This is what he was going to be. And he never saw anything wrong in that."
In 1958, the future Don was in a local bar where he met Victoria DiGiorgio. He was instantly smitten. Their affair produced a daughter, Angel, and in 1962, they were married. Gotti didn't earn much as a low-level mobster, and they struggled, "facing eviction month, after month, after month," according to Victoria.
Later that year, Victoria was born.
"Mom went into labor unexpectantly. I was early," she explained. "Mom, she said, 'They basically said to your father, "You can come back and pick up mother and child when you pay up the bill." At that time they didn’t have any monies. He comes back late, late that night - literally broke into the hospital. He scooped me up. He helped my mother down the stairs. They hobbled out. They had a good 13-block walk, it was freezing. They had no money for a cab or a bus ride and years later, my dad swore we bonded during that walk."
Two years later, the Gotti's son, John, was born, followed by Frankie. Despite the needs of his growing family, Gotti spent most of his time out of the house, getting into trouble. Victoria said her parents often fought over money and that her mother "was always fearful of the uncertainty."
In 1969, Victoria was just starting grade school, when her father was convicted for hijacking cargo from Kennedy airport and was sent to a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania for three years. As strange as it sounds, his children had no idea their father was in prison, even when they went to visit him.
"We used to go to prison to see him, and my uncle would be in the same prison. And we really didn't know that he was in prison," Angel told Roberts.
She explained that her mother told the children their father was working. "I remember driving to Pennsylvania. And there would be the big, giant wall. And we’d say, you know, 'Why is that wall… Oh! He built that wall.' I said, 'Wow, he built that big wall.' [And we'd ask] 'And Uncle Angelo, too?' 'Yeah.' We believed it."
When they were home in Brooklyn, Victoria tried to be just like all the other kids. But at the age of 7, she finally found out the truth about her father.
"I went to school and we had to write an essay [about] who our heroes were. And most kids chose their fathers. And I wrote like the other kids, you know, my dad is a construction worker and he builds tall buildings. So I took my place in the front of the room and I started to read this report. And there was a young girl in the back. She yells out, 'Her father’s not, you know, a construction worker. Her father’s a jailbird. He’s in jail.' She had heard it from her parents at the dinner table. She blurted everything that she could out. The fact that he had gone to jail before, that he wasn’t coming home. I remember just standing there in front of that room. It was like, 'Wow - what is she talking about?'' But it made sense to me. And I remember the class laughing at me and I got so upset, so nervous that I just peed on the floor. I'll never forget the teacher. She made me, in front of the kids, get on my hands and knees and clean up the mess."
Victoria asked her mother for the truth.
"I said to her something like, 'Is Daddy really in jail?' She had said to me, 'Sometimes people do bad things. Sometimes they need to pay for these things that they do.' And I remember looking at her and saying, 'Where’s my father? Is he in jail or is he working?' And she looked at me and she said, 'He is in jail.' And those words, I remember they just haunted me for days, nights, weeks, months. All I kept hearing was my mother's words, 'He is in jail.'"
The charade was finally over.
Learning that her father was in jail was Victoria Gotti's first indication that he lived a secret life. "I would lay awake nights and cry a lot thinking, is my dad gonna come home? Is he gonna go to jail again? Is he going to get killed?"
She was right to be afraid. Outside the home, John Gotti lived in a violent world.
In 1973, Gotti was sent to do a personal favor for the Godfather himself, Carlo Gambino. His orders: find the man thought to be involved in the kidnapping and murder of his nephew. At Snoopes Bar in Staten Island, Gotti and his partners confronted James McBratney, who was shot and killed. Although he was not the triggerman, Gotti went to prison, this time for attempted manslaughter.
By the time Victoria reached her early teens, her father had been incarcerated or on the lam for nearly half her life. But the McBratney hit was a big break in Gotti’s career. When he was released from prison in 1977, he was officially inducted into "the life," becoming a made man in the Mafia.
"He had earned his way. He had earned his keep," Victoria explained. "And that really started the rise in that life."
Living that life meant more time spent out of the house, either in his headquarters, called a social club, or out on the town. Gotti’s wife, Victoria, didn't like it one bit.
"She would do crazy things, my mother. One time she sent his armoire to his club," Angel told Roberts.
"As if to say don’t come back?" he asked. "Yeah, 'Here's your clothes, take them.'"
When they weren't fighting, the Gottis were enjoying the fruits of his newfound status. They were now living at a house in Howard Beach, Queens. Angel was 18 when she first got an inkling of how others really saw her father.
"I was dating someone from Ozone Park. He says to me, 'You know - your father’s really, he’s feared. He’s the toughest guy in this neighborhood.' And I’m like, "OK."
All the Gotti children - even Peter, the youngest - would have a moment when they discovered their father had a reputation.
"I was 12 years old. I remember I had a crush and I asked her out. And she said, to me, 'I would love to go with you. But my dad said I'm not allowed. Your family are very bad people,'" he told Roberts. "And, when I had gotten home I had started to cry. My mother told me, 'Peter, I'm telling you right now, your father loves you more than life. You forget all the nonsense and things they're saying; you remember that man would give his life for you. OK? And don't ever forget that.'"
But John Gotti couldn't protect his family from tragedy. In March 1980, 12-year-old Frankie, who Gotti affectionately called "Frankie Boy," was struck by a car while riding a mini bike.
"My sister called me and said, 'Frankie Boy got hit by a car,'" Angel said, tearing up at the memory. "I said, 'Mom, stay in the house. I just have to go and check on Frankie Boy.' And then we went there. And you know, [he's] lying in the street in front of my friend’s house."
Frankie died later that night.
"Dad walked in and then I remember he sat down and I remember he cradled his head in his hands and he lost it," Victoria said.
The driver of the car was the Gotti’s backyard neighbor, John Favara. Victoria claims Favara hit Frankie because Favara was driving erratically.
"He didn’t stop. He had gone to the end of the block and the neighbors were screaming. And he got out of the car and he was very upset. And he started to scream, 'What the f - was he doing in the street to begin with. Whose f-in' kid is this?'"
Police called it an accident, but Victoria was furious with what she says she heard about Favara's callous behavior, and she spoke to her father about it.
"I looked at him and I said, 'You’re supposed to be a tough guy. How can you let somebody kill my brother?' And he just looked at me and he said, 'You know, honey, it was an accident.' And I said, 'No it wasn’t.' And Dad didn’t want to believe it. He looked at me and he said, 'You're wrong, you’re angry. You’re wrong.'
"For the first time, I was so angry at my father that his life - if he could ever be this man when I really needed it, when I really wanted it - I think if ever I could have him be this man that he said he was. It would have been the moment because…"
"You wanted revenge?" asked Roberts.
"I wanted revenge. I was so upset and I thought our lives would never be the same again."
The tragedy sent their mother into a suicidal depression that left her practically bedridden for a year.
That July, John Gotti tried to brighten his wife's spirits by taking the family to Florida. Just three days later, John Favara was abducted as he left his job at a furniture store. Witnesses say several men hit him over the head, forced him into a van and drove off. Favara was never heard from again.
"Four months after your brother was killed John Favara disappeared. Is your father responsible?" Roberts asked Victoria.
"No," she replied.
"How can you be so sure? Did you ask him?"
"I'm positive he wasn't responsible."
"I just can't imagine that this incident, this horrible, tragic accident that devastated your family and your father didn't want to exact revenge?" asked Roberts.
"No… he didn't."
"You were a teenager. Your mother attempted suicide," Roberts continued.
"I'm with you. I'm with you," said Victoria. "I couldn't understand why, either. It angered me."
"I know what my father said, that it was an accident," said Angel. "That's what he said."
When asked by Roberts if it ever entered her mind that perhaps her father was behind that disappearance she replied, "Sometimes. I'm being honest. Sometimes."
Victoria believes her father's mob associates took it upon themselves to exact revenge.
"Do I believe someone in Dad's circle did it? I do. Somebody did it and they thought they'd be celebrated."
Favara's body has never been found. And police never made an arrest in the case. In the years after Frankie’s death, the Gottis struggled to get back to a normal life. Angel met, and then married, her boyfriend.
A year later, it was Victoria's turn.
"I think I was just a kid in a hurry to get out of my father's house quickly," she said.
"You had 1,500 [wedding] guests," Roberts noted. "That's a lot of thank you notes."
"A lot of people to greet," she said. "I didn't know half of the people at my wedding. More than half. I didn't know them. They weren't there for me. They were there for Dad… and I remember thinking something's up."
Little did Victoria know, but the groundwork for her father's ascension to Boss of Bosses was being laid. She danced that night not just with her father, but with the future Godfather.
"He was gonna become a leader. He wasn't gonna be a follower. He was gonna rise to the top," Victoria Gotti said of her father's ambition. "He was gonna make it."
On Dec. 16, 1985, at 5:25 p.m., John Gotti did just that. In a hail of bullets, his fortunes - and the fortunes of his unsuspecting family - changed forever.
It was widely reported that Gotti orchestrated one of the most famous mob murders in New York City history - the hit on his boss Paul Castellano and Gambino No. 2 man Thomas Bilotti.
"Gotti showed a lot of sophistication in engineering almost a flawless assassination of Castellano," said Selwyn Raab, a reporter who has covered the mob for more than 40 years and is a CBS News consultant.
Within days of the murder, Raab said it was no secret John Gotti was the new Godfather.
"After Castellano's murder, Gotti showed up at one of the most important mafia hangouts in New York, the Ravenite Club in Little Italy. And people were kissing his hand. And people were going over and fawning over him."
But back in Howard Beach, Queens, the family had no idea had what was going on.
"And my mother says, 'You're not gonna believe this.' And she was laughing. And she said, 'They have your father now as the boss.' And I said, 'The boss?' And she said, "The boss of the Gambino crime family.' And we all started laughing," Angel said. "We really thought it was funny. I thought it was a big, like - 'Oh, my God - like what are they gonna say next?'"
Peter was in the fifth grade when he learned his father ran the Gambino crime family.
"It was 1985. I had gone to school one morning and we're sitting in class and current events came around. And there are my friends, kids I grew up with. They would parade up to the class, in front of the class, and talk about my dad as if I wasn't even sitting in the room," he told Roberts.
The kids were all talking about a story in the New York Daily News. The headline read, "New Godfather Reported Heading Gambino Gang."
"'John Gotti's the new boss of the Gambinos,' that's what the article said. And, needless to say," Peter continued, "I went on home and I cut that article out of a newspaper. Without my mother knowing. Without my dad knowing. Without anybody knowing. And I still… to this very day, have that article."
Even before John Gotti became the boss of the Gambino crime family, he had brought his oldest son, John Junior, into the family business. It was a secret not even his mother knew about.
"John saw dad driving the fancy car and having these guys look up to him like he was God," said Victoria. And on Christmas Eve 1988, in a secret ceremony, John Junior became a made man.
"I have to wonder if John saw this as a way to just get our father's approval or to somehow make him proud," she said.
The family business was doing pretty well. According to investigators, during the 80s the Gambino crime family grossed about $500 million a year and Gotti himself was getting a pretty big cut. The family says they didn’t see it.
"He didn't move, he didn't go out and buy a huge house somewhere," Victoria told Roberts. "I'm not saying he didn't have it, but he didn't spend it."
"Investigators say he made between $10 to $12 million," Roberts pointed out.
"Oh, yeah, and investigators also say that… he left us $200 million buried somewhere in the backyard," Victoria responded. "I'm still trying to find that money. Investigators say. You tell me where the money is. I'm still lookin'."
But one look at John Gotti told another story.
"He was now wearing custom-made silk suits. I mean, he had monogrammed socks, only cashmere coats," said Raab. "He was now going to the chic restaurants in New York, nightclubs."
Gotti often stayed out all night, had a reputation as a womanizer and was a compulsive gambler.
Peter said his father loved to gamble. ""His way of bonding with me was to watch a ball game with me. Here I was, seven, eight years old. He's askin' my opinion on who I liked to win a college football game."
"Did you help him win? Roberts asked.
"Obviously, not. Because he didn't win much," Peter said with a laugh. But John Gotti made sure his family life was always separate from his work life.
"It sounds odd to people, they don’t understand it," said Angel. "We're not like 'The Sopranos.' We didn’t sit at the dinner table and you curse… we didn't ask him, you know, 'Did you kill anyone?' We didn't ask him those questions."
But if the family didn't want to ask him any questions, the government certainly did.
Raab said, "He was an emperor, he was a titan. He had this attitude, 'Come and get me if you can.'"
In the first five years of his reign, John Gotti was put on trial three times: for assault, for racketeering and for ordering the shooting of a union boss. And in each of those trials, Gotti beat the rap. What no one knew was he had bribed a juror, intimated a witness, and had a crooked cop on the inside.
Gotti's celebrity grew with each victory.
"They just couldn't seem to get enough of him," said Victoria.
John Gotti became a celebrity attracting celebrity. In an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, the Gambino Godfather met actor Marlon Brando, the Hollywood Godfather, and invited him to his social club across the street.
According to Victoria, "Brando was telling jokes all night and doing magic tricks. Dad was doing what he does best, telling stories. And they just enjoyed each other's company."
John Gotti's growing fame was a double-edged sword: he had become the most notorious mobster since Al Capone and he put himself squarely in the sights of the FBI.
"This is going to be very bad," Victoria said. "I was always terrified."
"I think he saw there was no happy ending," Victoria Gotti told Troy Roberts. "I think he knew that one day he was either gonna spend the rest of his life in jail or he was gonna end up dead."
John Gotti knew the FBI was never going to let up. He suspected they had bugged his headquarters in Little Italy, the Ravenite Social Club.
"He didn't trust the atmosphere in general, so he would get up and walk outside, and constantly walk around the block with someone. He didn't want to be recorded," Victoria explained. But someone was listening.
The FBI had placed bugs everywhere-in the club, in the apartment Gotti occasionally used upstairs, and even on the street. They gathered hundreds of hours of recordings of mob business.
The tapes led to Gotti's arrest in December 1990. He faced a litany of charges, including the murder of Paul Castellano.
"There's no question the government had a strong case," said reporter Selwyn Raab. "It was his own words. He talks about five murders. About Castellano, Bilotti. He talks about three other people and the reasons why they were killed."
But the government didn't just have tapes - they had a star witness: Gotti's right-hand man, his underboss in the Gambino crime family, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano.
"Sammy Gravano, you know, dots the I's and crosses the T's," said Raab. "Gravano was the icing on the cake. He made it easier for them."
Sammy Gravano, a self-confessed mafia hit man who admitted to taking part in 19 murders, turned on his former boss and made a deal with the government. He took the stand and told the court that John Gotti planned and organized the hit on Paul Castellano and that he and John Gotti were actually there went it went down.
"Sammy told a lot of lies," said Victoria.
Roberts asked her, "Did your father orchestrate the assassination of Paul Castellano?"
"Absolutely not," she replied. "No one man is that powerful in this organization. Not one man."
In her book, Victoria claims the assassination was a plan agreed upon by mafia bosses.
"I'm not arguing that he had no part in it, and I'm not arguing and saying he wasn't the boss after it. He was. Nobody can stand there and tell me that he did it alone."
But that's not what the jury said. On April 2, 1992, John Gotti was found guilty on all counts. And he was the only person ever tried and convicted for the murder of Paul Castellano.
Seventeen years ago, as a local reporter in New York, Roberts talked to Victoria just hours after her father was convicted.
"Victoria what did you think of the verdict?" Roberts asked in 1992.
"My father is the last of the Mohicans. They don't make men like him anymore, and they never will," she replied.
"I knew that I've lost my father. I knew that was it," she tells Roberts in 2009. "It was as if somebody had told me my father had died. And that's how I felt that day."
John Gotti was sent to the Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, for life.
"The man was never coming home," said Peter Gotti. "I believed the day would never come where I would be able to hug my father again, you know. I had trained myself to believe that that's it. I'm gonna visit my father behind glass for the rest of my life."
Peter was 18 years old when his father was put in solitary confinement.
"My dad had 6,000 meals alone. Ain't never ate with… he ate meals in his cell. And again, I’m not justifying anything. Just saying… he paid. He paid the piper."
Roberts asked Peter, "I'm curious to know why you did not follow in your father's footsteps. You're the only Gotti man to not do so."
"Did it ever dawn on you that my dad shielded me from it? And my brother enforced it even more. He did everything he can, he did everything he can to prevent me. Everything he can. He tried to screen every person I'm socializing with."
At the same time he was protecting Peter, John Junior was rising in the ranks of the Gambino crime family, becoming the acting boss when his father went to prison.
"When did you learn that your brother was in the mafia? Roberts asked Angel Gotti.
"When he got arrested," she replied.
John Junior was arrested in 1998, for extortion, loan sharking and gambling. His mother was caught completely by surprise. For 10 years, her oldest son had been a mobster and then acting boss of the Gambino crime family. And she never knew it.
"You know, John is her life. And she was not standing for it," Victoria said. "And she had such distaste for the fact that Dad was involved and now her son."
Mrs. Gotti believed her husband had lied to her, betrayed her trust and put John Junior in grave danger.
"She wasn't speaking to my father when he was in prison for a while." Angel said, "It caused a lot of problems for all of us."
John Junior was in grave danger; he was facing 20 years in prison and he was thinking of making a deal.
In a prison tape recorded in February 1999, and obtained exclusively by "48 Hours Mystery," John Junior asks his father's permission to take a plea.
"I don't love you John, I adore you," John Gotti told his son.
"I know you do," John Junior replied. "You understand my circumstance."
After some discussion, the Godfather reluctantly consented.
"John, I am not saying don't take this plea if you get what you want. As a father... I want you to be happy," John Gotti said. But John Junior wanted more from his father. According to Victoria, he also asked for permission to quit the mob. And Victoria says her mother decided to get involved.
"Mom goes to see Dad and Mom threatens Dad. And she says, 'Either you release him or… I'll never speak to you again. I won't be here anymore. You'll never see me in your life again.'"
When John Junior went to prison in September 1999, Victoria claims he left the mafia. Federal prosecutors didn't believe it. But her brother wasn't the only one Victoria says had secretly joined the mob. Her husband was also a Gambino member.
It was yet another secret she says her father had kept from her.
"I was angry at my ex-husband, at my father. I was angry at everybody. This isn't what I wanted for my life, for my kids," she said. But her anger would fade with time as her father grew gravely ill.
"He just looked at me and said, 'I'm never gonna be around forever.' And, of course, I knew that. And I said to him, "Yeah, I know, Dad. You know, whatever." But then he looked at me again and he said, 'I think it's time.'"
Ten years into his life sentence, John Joseph Gotti, the Godfather of the Gambino crime family, father of five and grandfather of 15, died of cancer. The last days of his life were spent in a prison hospital with his son, Peter, at his side.
"I watched this for six months. He never admitted or denied anything," said his youngest child. "That's what was funny about his personality. You know… his was [a] 'Hey, hey, hey, you mind your business,' type of personality. 'Let me pay with God.' And he did… In the end, he did."
To his family John Gotti was a fallen hero, to the public he was the last Don, but for his mob family he was a disaster. At the end of his reign, the Gambino crime family was decimated - more than half of the leadership was either dead or behind bars.
"I think about the devastation that this life has had on your family, on the Gotti men. Your father, your brother, three uncles are all incarcerated," Roberts said to Victoria.
"Yep. And a husband," she added. And "the life" continues to take its toll on the Gotti family.
John Junior Gotti is back in court facing a new round of charges. But Victoria says the government's case is about the past, not the present.
"My brother is not in that courtroom. It is my father, always, all over again, day in, day out. It's about John Gotti. That's what it's about."
The Gotti family claims the government is persecuting John Junior and that he quit the mob years ago. The government says John Junior is a killer and that he did not quit.
"They don't want to believe it," Victoria said. "John's attitude is, 'I paid for what I did in that life. I gave them my pound of flesh.'"
Now divorced, Victoria's life is focused on her three sons. They were the infamous bad boys of the TV show "Growing Up Gotti."
Today, the boys are all in college and Victoria isn’t worried that they will take up "the life."
"If they wanted to break my heart, they can do that. They know that. But, they know better."
For years, there have been questions about the multimillion-dollar mansion that Victoria and her sons still live in. Where did she get the money to buy it?
"My ex-husband certainly started this family, helped to build this house. Everything I own to this day came from me. Never my father," she told Roberts. "It came from legitimate money. I'm not in the mob, you know?"
Prosecutors investigated whether the house was bought with mob money, but found no evidence that it was.
Victoria is determined that her sons will not follow their father - and her father - into the mafia.
"Never a discussion about that," she said. "If they wanted to break my heart and go against everything I stand for, they can do that. They know that. But they know better."
John Gotti's grandchildren have decided, it seems, they don’t want to remember the Godfather… just their grandfather.
"I love my grandfather to death. He taught me everything I need to know," said John Gotti Agnello. Victoria's middle child, named after his grandfather, made him a promise just before he died. Could law school be in his future?
"You know what? I promised my grandfather a long time ago that I would do it. I wrote a personal letter to him on his funeral. I put it in his pocket that I would do it for him."
Carmine, Victoria's oldest son, is an aspiring musician who wrote a song about his family.
"I've been recording now in the studio for the past two and a half - almost three years. I mean, it's been a lot of work. Five days a week throughout the year. Everything's comin' together."
But John Gotti's children are still trying to figure out what it all meant-their father’s mob life; the death of their brother; the disappearance of their neighbor; the hit on Paul Castellano; the trials; prison; brothers and husbands in jail.
At the end, Peter Gotti says, his father was refusing medical care.
"I believe in my heart that it went around a full circle, 'cause I believe in the end, that he was punishing himself for the things he may have done. And… I feel for anyone if there was pain caused by him or not. I feel regret and sadness for that."
Hear more from Peter Gotti
For Victoria, the circle closed at her father's funeral.
"I remember sitting there. I was the last to get up. And I remember getting so angry and so angry and so angry. And just saying to him, 'What was this all for? What did you do? Look at you. Look at the life that you lived. Look at us. You loved us most in the world. Look at us. What was this all for?' And I walked out of there so angry. And I'm still angry. I don't understand it and I guess I never will."
Thanks to 48 Hours
"I loved the man… but I loathed the life, his lifestyle," said Victoria Gotti. "Prosecutors say my father was the biggest crime boss in the nation... If you really want to know what John Gotti was like, you need to talk to my family. We lived this life…
"I think I realized early on that my family wasn't like other families…
Growing up, my parents tried to hide a lot of things from me…from all of us…
"I think you grow up scared, anxious all the time…" she said.
"I used to get up as a young boy and I used to get excited when I would go and see that my father was alive," said Peter Gotti. "When I would hear him snore, I’d know he made it home."
"We didn’t talk back to my father. We didn’t ask him, 'Did you kill anyone?'" said Angel Gotti.
"I didn’t know his life…I didn’t know his lifestyle," said Peter. "Honestly, I was just a kid that wanted to love his father."
"The public saw my father right out of central casting. He looked the part, acted the part… he was the part! The real life Godfather," said Victoria. "People treat him like he was the second coming of Christ!
"It was very difficult for me to look into these crimes that he was accused of committing… I was angry at everybody for lying to me," she said.
"Do I believe now that my father was this big boss? Yes, I do now," Angel concedes.
"Should I lie and say I don’t love him? We loved him. And that's really all we should have been held accountable for. We just wanna move on," said Victoria.
Now, their brother, John "Junior" Gotti, is on trial again. If convicted, he could face life behind bars.
"My brother John’s life is on the line…like my father. John was a player in that world… but John is not in that courtroom," said Victoria. "I believe that it’s the last name Gotti. It’s definitely Dad."
"It does not mean that a child has to answer for his father’s sins," said Peter.
"Now it’s time to set the record straight," said Victoria. "No one knows John Gotti better than his family does. Nobody. And we’re ready to talk about it. We’re ready to talk about him… finally.
They are images the public has never seen before: the private, treasured photographs and home videos belonging to the children of mob boss John Gotti - a man who once ran the largest organized crime syndicate in the country; a man convicted of multiple counts of murder.
"You don’t want to believe it. And when you love that person, it makes it so much more hard," said Victoria Gotti.
For the first time, the Mafia chieftain's daughters, Victoria and Angel, and his son, Peter, are talking openly about the life they’ve always kept secret… and no question is off limits.
"How difficult is it to accept that your own father either directly or indirectly killed people?" correspondent Troy Roberts asked John Gotti's youngest daughter.
"When you choose that life, I think you know what you're signing on for…," Victoria said. "I think he knew going in what was expected of him. What he would have to do. What it would cost him. And I don't think he cared. I think that all goes along with that life."
"Why do you call it the life?" asked Roberts.
"Because, mostly it’s called the life," Victoria replied.
"No one ever says, 'I’m in the mob?'" Roberts asked.
"No. It’s always the life."
Victoria has never spoken about "the life" publicly, but in her new book, "This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti," she's finally talking about what it was really like growing up Gotti.
When asked why she decided now to write a tell-all, she said, "It got personal. I woke up one day and said, 'Enough's enough.' There were so many things that had to be addressed as far as rumors, lies, gossip."
Victoria talked to her father about the possibility of writing a book before he died.
"'If you ever write that book,' he said, 'You write it as your life. One thing I ask that you do… Don't you ever look to make me out to be an altar boy, because I wasn't.'"
But when Victoria and her siblings were children, it's clear that John Gotti never wanted them to know that side of him.
"He just took everything to another extreme," said Gotti's youngest son, Peter. "I remember getting excited about going to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. He would talk for a half an hour, 45 minutes, about how he just wanted to get them chestnuts. You can't even find roasted chestnuts anymore. But he was so excited he would talk like a little kid."
"He was a very funny. People don't know that. He was very funny," said Angel, Gotti's firstborn. But mixed in with the fun, were the lies - like what he told his children he did for a living. "He told me that he worked in a construction crew. I asked where he was going and he would say he was off to somewhere to build a school or a building," Victoria told Roberts.
They believed him, but the truth was that all John Gotti had ever wanted to be was a mobster. He had grown up one of 11 children - raised in Brooklyn by an abusive father and an overwhelmed mother. He quickly embraced a life of crime and violence, working for local gangsters and building a rap sheet.
"This is where he came from," Victoria explained. "These men were the men that were respected. This was something he saw early on and made up his mind that this was what he was going to do. This is what he was going to be. And he never saw anything wrong in that."
In 1958, the future Don was in a local bar where he met Victoria DiGiorgio. He was instantly smitten. Their affair produced a daughter, Angel, and in 1962, they were married. Gotti didn't earn much as a low-level mobster, and they struggled, "facing eviction month, after month, after month," according to Victoria.
Later that year, Victoria was born.
"Mom went into labor unexpectantly. I was early," she explained. "Mom, she said, 'They basically said to your father, "You can come back and pick up mother and child when you pay up the bill." At that time they didn’t have any monies. He comes back late, late that night - literally broke into the hospital. He scooped me up. He helped my mother down the stairs. They hobbled out. They had a good 13-block walk, it was freezing. They had no money for a cab or a bus ride and years later, my dad swore we bonded during that walk."
Two years later, the Gotti's son, John, was born, followed by Frankie. Despite the needs of his growing family, Gotti spent most of his time out of the house, getting into trouble. Victoria said her parents often fought over money and that her mother "was always fearful of the uncertainty."
In 1969, Victoria was just starting grade school, when her father was convicted for hijacking cargo from Kennedy airport and was sent to a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania for three years. As strange as it sounds, his children had no idea their father was in prison, even when they went to visit him.
"We used to go to prison to see him, and my uncle would be in the same prison. And we really didn't know that he was in prison," Angel told Roberts.
She explained that her mother told the children their father was working. "I remember driving to Pennsylvania. And there would be the big, giant wall. And we’d say, you know, 'Why is that wall… Oh! He built that wall.' I said, 'Wow, he built that big wall.' [And we'd ask] 'And Uncle Angelo, too?' 'Yeah.' We believed it."
When they were home in Brooklyn, Victoria tried to be just like all the other kids. But at the age of 7, she finally found out the truth about her father.
"I went to school and we had to write an essay [about] who our heroes were. And most kids chose their fathers. And I wrote like the other kids, you know, my dad is a construction worker and he builds tall buildings. So I took my place in the front of the room and I started to read this report. And there was a young girl in the back. She yells out, 'Her father’s not, you know, a construction worker. Her father’s a jailbird. He’s in jail.' She had heard it from her parents at the dinner table. She blurted everything that she could out. The fact that he had gone to jail before, that he wasn’t coming home. I remember just standing there in front of that room. It was like, 'Wow - what is she talking about?'' But it made sense to me. And I remember the class laughing at me and I got so upset, so nervous that I just peed on the floor. I'll never forget the teacher. She made me, in front of the kids, get on my hands and knees and clean up the mess."
Victoria asked her mother for the truth.
"I said to her something like, 'Is Daddy really in jail?' She had said to me, 'Sometimes people do bad things. Sometimes they need to pay for these things that they do.' And I remember looking at her and saying, 'Where’s my father? Is he in jail or is he working?' And she looked at me and she said, 'He is in jail.' And those words, I remember they just haunted me for days, nights, weeks, months. All I kept hearing was my mother's words, 'He is in jail.'"
The charade was finally over.
Learning that her father was in jail was Victoria Gotti's first indication that he lived a secret life. "I would lay awake nights and cry a lot thinking, is my dad gonna come home? Is he gonna go to jail again? Is he going to get killed?"
She was right to be afraid. Outside the home, John Gotti lived in a violent world.
In 1973, Gotti was sent to do a personal favor for the Godfather himself, Carlo Gambino. His orders: find the man thought to be involved in the kidnapping and murder of his nephew. At Snoopes Bar in Staten Island, Gotti and his partners confronted James McBratney, who was shot and killed. Although he was not the triggerman, Gotti went to prison, this time for attempted manslaughter.
By the time Victoria reached her early teens, her father had been incarcerated or on the lam for nearly half her life. But the McBratney hit was a big break in Gotti’s career. When he was released from prison in 1977, he was officially inducted into "the life," becoming a made man in the Mafia.
"He had earned his way. He had earned his keep," Victoria explained. "And that really started the rise in that life."
Living that life meant more time spent out of the house, either in his headquarters, called a social club, or out on the town. Gotti’s wife, Victoria, didn't like it one bit.
"She would do crazy things, my mother. One time she sent his armoire to his club," Angel told Roberts.
"As if to say don’t come back?" he asked. "Yeah, 'Here's your clothes, take them.'"
When they weren't fighting, the Gottis were enjoying the fruits of his newfound status. They were now living at a house in Howard Beach, Queens. Angel was 18 when she first got an inkling of how others really saw her father.
"I was dating someone from Ozone Park. He says to me, 'You know - your father’s really, he’s feared. He’s the toughest guy in this neighborhood.' And I’m like, "OK."
All the Gotti children - even Peter, the youngest - would have a moment when they discovered their father had a reputation.
"I was 12 years old. I remember I had a crush and I asked her out. And she said, to me, 'I would love to go with you. But my dad said I'm not allowed. Your family are very bad people,'" he told Roberts. "And, when I had gotten home I had started to cry. My mother told me, 'Peter, I'm telling you right now, your father loves you more than life. You forget all the nonsense and things they're saying; you remember that man would give his life for you. OK? And don't ever forget that.'"
But John Gotti couldn't protect his family from tragedy. In March 1980, 12-year-old Frankie, who Gotti affectionately called "Frankie Boy," was struck by a car while riding a mini bike.
"My sister called me and said, 'Frankie Boy got hit by a car,'" Angel said, tearing up at the memory. "I said, 'Mom, stay in the house. I just have to go and check on Frankie Boy.' And then we went there. And you know, [he's] lying in the street in front of my friend’s house."
Frankie died later that night.
"Dad walked in and then I remember he sat down and I remember he cradled his head in his hands and he lost it," Victoria said.
The driver of the car was the Gotti’s backyard neighbor, John Favara. Victoria claims Favara hit Frankie because Favara was driving erratically.
"He didn’t stop. He had gone to the end of the block and the neighbors were screaming. And he got out of the car and he was very upset. And he started to scream, 'What the f - was he doing in the street to begin with. Whose f-in' kid is this?'"
Police called it an accident, but Victoria was furious with what she says she heard about Favara's callous behavior, and she spoke to her father about it.
"I looked at him and I said, 'You’re supposed to be a tough guy. How can you let somebody kill my brother?' And he just looked at me and he said, 'You know, honey, it was an accident.' And I said, 'No it wasn’t.' And Dad didn’t want to believe it. He looked at me and he said, 'You're wrong, you’re angry. You’re wrong.'
"For the first time, I was so angry at my father that his life - if he could ever be this man when I really needed it, when I really wanted it - I think if ever I could have him be this man that he said he was. It would have been the moment because…"
"You wanted revenge?" asked Roberts.
"I wanted revenge. I was so upset and I thought our lives would never be the same again."
The tragedy sent their mother into a suicidal depression that left her practically bedridden for a year.
That July, John Gotti tried to brighten his wife's spirits by taking the family to Florida. Just three days later, John Favara was abducted as he left his job at a furniture store. Witnesses say several men hit him over the head, forced him into a van and drove off. Favara was never heard from again.
"Four months after your brother was killed John Favara disappeared. Is your father responsible?" Roberts asked Victoria.
"No," she replied.
"How can you be so sure? Did you ask him?"
"I'm positive he wasn't responsible."
"I just can't imagine that this incident, this horrible, tragic accident that devastated your family and your father didn't want to exact revenge?" asked Roberts.
"No… he didn't."
"You were a teenager. Your mother attempted suicide," Roberts continued.
"I'm with you. I'm with you," said Victoria. "I couldn't understand why, either. It angered me."
"I know what my father said, that it was an accident," said Angel. "That's what he said."
When asked by Roberts if it ever entered her mind that perhaps her father was behind that disappearance she replied, "Sometimes. I'm being honest. Sometimes."
Victoria believes her father's mob associates took it upon themselves to exact revenge.
"Do I believe someone in Dad's circle did it? I do. Somebody did it and they thought they'd be celebrated."
Favara's body has never been found. And police never made an arrest in the case. In the years after Frankie’s death, the Gottis struggled to get back to a normal life. Angel met, and then married, her boyfriend.
A year later, it was Victoria's turn.
"I think I was just a kid in a hurry to get out of my father's house quickly," she said.
"You had 1,500 [wedding] guests," Roberts noted. "That's a lot of thank you notes."
"A lot of people to greet," she said. "I didn't know half of the people at my wedding. More than half. I didn't know them. They weren't there for me. They were there for Dad… and I remember thinking something's up."
Little did Victoria know, but the groundwork for her father's ascension to Boss of Bosses was being laid. She danced that night not just with her father, but with the future Godfather.
"He was gonna become a leader. He wasn't gonna be a follower. He was gonna rise to the top," Victoria Gotti said of her father's ambition. "He was gonna make it."
On Dec. 16, 1985, at 5:25 p.m., John Gotti did just that. In a hail of bullets, his fortunes - and the fortunes of his unsuspecting family - changed forever.
It was widely reported that Gotti orchestrated one of the most famous mob murders in New York City history - the hit on his boss Paul Castellano and Gambino No. 2 man Thomas Bilotti.
"Gotti showed a lot of sophistication in engineering almost a flawless assassination of Castellano," said Selwyn Raab, a reporter who has covered the mob for more than 40 years and is a CBS News consultant.
Within days of the murder, Raab said it was no secret John Gotti was the new Godfather.
"After Castellano's murder, Gotti showed up at one of the most important mafia hangouts in New York, the Ravenite Club in Little Italy. And people were kissing his hand. And people were going over and fawning over him."
But back in Howard Beach, Queens, the family had no idea had what was going on.
"And my mother says, 'You're not gonna believe this.' And she was laughing. And she said, 'They have your father now as the boss.' And I said, 'The boss?' And she said, "The boss of the Gambino crime family.' And we all started laughing," Angel said. "We really thought it was funny. I thought it was a big, like - 'Oh, my God - like what are they gonna say next?'"
Peter was in the fifth grade when he learned his father ran the Gambino crime family.
"It was 1985. I had gone to school one morning and we're sitting in class and current events came around. And there are my friends, kids I grew up with. They would parade up to the class, in front of the class, and talk about my dad as if I wasn't even sitting in the room," he told Roberts.
The kids were all talking about a story in the New York Daily News. The headline read, "New Godfather Reported Heading Gambino Gang."
"'John Gotti's the new boss of the Gambinos,' that's what the article said. And, needless to say," Peter continued, "I went on home and I cut that article out of a newspaper. Without my mother knowing. Without my dad knowing. Without anybody knowing. And I still… to this very day, have that article."
Even before John Gotti became the boss of the Gambino crime family, he had brought his oldest son, John Junior, into the family business. It was a secret not even his mother knew about.
"John saw dad driving the fancy car and having these guys look up to him like he was God," said Victoria. And on Christmas Eve 1988, in a secret ceremony, John Junior became a made man.
"I have to wonder if John saw this as a way to just get our father's approval or to somehow make him proud," she said.
The family business was doing pretty well. According to investigators, during the 80s the Gambino crime family grossed about $500 million a year and Gotti himself was getting a pretty big cut. The family says they didn’t see it.
"He didn't move, he didn't go out and buy a huge house somewhere," Victoria told Roberts. "I'm not saying he didn't have it, but he didn't spend it."
"Investigators say he made between $10 to $12 million," Roberts pointed out.
"Oh, yeah, and investigators also say that… he left us $200 million buried somewhere in the backyard," Victoria responded. "I'm still trying to find that money. Investigators say. You tell me where the money is. I'm still lookin'."
But one look at John Gotti told another story.
"He was now wearing custom-made silk suits. I mean, he had monogrammed socks, only cashmere coats," said Raab. "He was now going to the chic restaurants in New York, nightclubs."
Gotti often stayed out all night, had a reputation as a womanizer and was a compulsive gambler.
Peter said his father loved to gamble. ""His way of bonding with me was to watch a ball game with me. Here I was, seven, eight years old. He's askin' my opinion on who I liked to win a college football game."
"Did you help him win? Roberts asked.
"Obviously, not. Because he didn't win much," Peter said with a laugh. But John Gotti made sure his family life was always separate from his work life.
"It sounds odd to people, they don’t understand it," said Angel. "We're not like 'The Sopranos.' We didn’t sit at the dinner table and you curse… we didn't ask him, you know, 'Did you kill anyone?' We didn't ask him those questions."
But if the family didn't want to ask him any questions, the government certainly did.
Raab said, "He was an emperor, he was a titan. He had this attitude, 'Come and get me if you can.'"
In the first five years of his reign, John Gotti was put on trial three times: for assault, for racketeering and for ordering the shooting of a union boss. And in each of those trials, Gotti beat the rap. What no one knew was he had bribed a juror, intimated a witness, and had a crooked cop on the inside.
Gotti's celebrity grew with each victory.
"They just couldn't seem to get enough of him," said Victoria.
John Gotti became a celebrity attracting celebrity. In an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, the Gambino Godfather met actor Marlon Brando, the Hollywood Godfather, and invited him to his social club across the street.
According to Victoria, "Brando was telling jokes all night and doing magic tricks. Dad was doing what he does best, telling stories. And they just enjoyed each other's company."
John Gotti's growing fame was a double-edged sword: he had become the most notorious mobster since Al Capone and he put himself squarely in the sights of the FBI.
"This is going to be very bad," Victoria said. "I was always terrified."
"I think he saw there was no happy ending," Victoria Gotti told Troy Roberts. "I think he knew that one day he was either gonna spend the rest of his life in jail or he was gonna end up dead."
John Gotti knew the FBI was never going to let up. He suspected they had bugged his headquarters in Little Italy, the Ravenite Social Club.
"He didn't trust the atmosphere in general, so he would get up and walk outside, and constantly walk around the block with someone. He didn't want to be recorded," Victoria explained. But someone was listening.
The FBI had placed bugs everywhere-in the club, in the apartment Gotti occasionally used upstairs, and even on the street. They gathered hundreds of hours of recordings of mob business.
The tapes led to Gotti's arrest in December 1990. He faced a litany of charges, including the murder of Paul Castellano.
"There's no question the government had a strong case," said reporter Selwyn Raab. "It was his own words. He talks about five murders. About Castellano, Bilotti. He talks about three other people and the reasons why they were killed."
But the government didn't just have tapes - they had a star witness: Gotti's right-hand man, his underboss in the Gambino crime family, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano.
"Sammy Gravano, you know, dots the I's and crosses the T's," said Raab. "Gravano was the icing on the cake. He made it easier for them."
Sammy Gravano, a self-confessed mafia hit man who admitted to taking part in 19 murders, turned on his former boss and made a deal with the government. He took the stand and told the court that John Gotti planned and organized the hit on Paul Castellano and that he and John Gotti were actually there went it went down.
"Sammy told a lot of lies," said Victoria.
Roberts asked her, "Did your father orchestrate the assassination of Paul Castellano?"
"Absolutely not," she replied. "No one man is that powerful in this organization. Not one man."
In her book, Victoria claims the assassination was a plan agreed upon by mafia bosses.
"I'm not arguing that he had no part in it, and I'm not arguing and saying he wasn't the boss after it. He was. Nobody can stand there and tell me that he did it alone."
But that's not what the jury said. On April 2, 1992, John Gotti was found guilty on all counts. And he was the only person ever tried and convicted for the murder of Paul Castellano.
Seventeen years ago, as a local reporter in New York, Roberts talked to Victoria just hours after her father was convicted.
"Victoria what did you think of the verdict?" Roberts asked in 1992.
"My father is the last of the Mohicans. They don't make men like him anymore, and they never will," she replied.
"I knew that I've lost my father. I knew that was it," she tells Roberts in 2009. "It was as if somebody had told me my father had died. And that's how I felt that day."
John Gotti was sent to the Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, for life.
"The man was never coming home," said Peter Gotti. "I believed the day would never come where I would be able to hug my father again, you know. I had trained myself to believe that that's it. I'm gonna visit my father behind glass for the rest of my life."
Peter was 18 years old when his father was put in solitary confinement.
"My dad had 6,000 meals alone. Ain't never ate with… he ate meals in his cell. And again, I’m not justifying anything. Just saying… he paid. He paid the piper."
Roberts asked Peter, "I'm curious to know why you did not follow in your father's footsteps. You're the only Gotti man to not do so."
"Did it ever dawn on you that my dad shielded me from it? And my brother enforced it even more. He did everything he can, he did everything he can to prevent me. Everything he can. He tried to screen every person I'm socializing with."
At the same time he was protecting Peter, John Junior was rising in the ranks of the Gambino crime family, becoming the acting boss when his father went to prison.
"When did you learn that your brother was in the mafia? Roberts asked Angel Gotti.
"When he got arrested," she replied.
John Junior was arrested in 1998, for extortion, loan sharking and gambling. His mother was caught completely by surprise. For 10 years, her oldest son had been a mobster and then acting boss of the Gambino crime family. And she never knew it.
"You know, John is her life. And she was not standing for it," Victoria said. "And she had such distaste for the fact that Dad was involved and now her son."
Mrs. Gotti believed her husband had lied to her, betrayed her trust and put John Junior in grave danger.
"She wasn't speaking to my father when he was in prison for a while." Angel said, "It caused a lot of problems for all of us."
John Junior was in grave danger; he was facing 20 years in prison and he was thinking of making a deal.
In a prison tape recorded in February 1999, and obtained exclusively by "48 Hours Mystery," John Junior asks his father's permission to take a plea.
"I don't love you John, I adore you," John Gotti told his son.
"I know you do," John Junior replied. "You understand my circumstance."
After some discussion, the Godfather reluctantly consented.
"John, I am not saying don't take this plea if you get what you want. As a father... I want you to be happy," John Gotti said. But John Junior wanted more from his father. According to Victoria, he also asked for permission to quit the mob. And Victoria says her mother decided to get involved.
"Mom goes to see Dad and Mom threatens Dad. And she says, 'Either you release him or… I'll never speak to you again. I won't be here anymore. You'll never see me in your life again.'"
When John Junior went to prison in September 1999, Victoria claims he left the mafia. Federal prosecutors didn't believe it. But her brother wasn't the only one Victoria says had secretly joined the mob. Her husband was also a Gambino member.
It was yet another secret she says her father had kept from her.
"I was angry at my ex-husband, at my father. I was angry at everybody. This isn't what I wanted for my life, for my kids," she said. But her anger would fade with time as her father grew gravely ill.
"He just looked at me and said, 'I'm never gonna be around forever.' And, of course, I knew that. And I said to him, "Yeah, I know, Dad. You know, whatever." But then he looked at me again and he said, 'I think it's time.'"
Ten years into his life sentence, John Joseph Gotti, the Godfather of the Gambino crime family, father of five and grandfather of 15, died of cancer. The last days of his life were spent in a prison hospital with his son, Peter, at his side.
"I watched this for six months. He never admitted or denied anything," said his youngest child. "That's what was funny about his personality. You know… his was [a] 'Hey, hey, hey, you mind your business,' type of personality. 'Let me pay with God.' And he did… In the end, he did."
To his family John Gotti was a fallen hero, to the public he was the last Don, but for his mob family he was a disaster. At the end of his reign, the Gambino crime family was decimated - more than half of the leadership was either dead or behind bars.
"I think about the devastation that this life has had on your family, on the Gotti men. Your father, your brother, three uncles are all incarcerated," Roberts said to Victoria.
"Yep. And a husband," she added. And "the life" continues to take its toll on the Gotti family.
John Junior Gotti is back in court facing a new round of charges. But Victoria says the government's case is about the past, not the present.
"My brother is not in that courtroom. It is my father, always, all over again, day in, day out. It's about John Gotti. That's what it's about."
The Gotti family claims the government is persecuting John Junior and that he quit the mob years ago. The government says John Junior is a killer and that he did not quit.
"They don't want to believe it," Victoria said. "John's attitude is, 'I paid for what I did in that life. I gave them my pound of flesh.'"
Now divorced, Victoria's life is focused on her three sons. They were the infamous bad boys of the TV show "Growing Up Gotti."
Today, the boys are all in college and Victoria isn’t worried that they will take up "the life."
"If they wanted to break my heart, they can do that. They know that. But, they know better."
For years, there have been questions about the multimillion-dollar mansion that Victoria and her sons still live in. Where did she get the money to buy it?
"My ex-husband certainly started this family, helped to build this house. Everything I own to this day came from me. Never my father," she told Roberts. "It came from legitimate money. I'm not in the mob, you know?"
Prosecutors investigated whether the house was bought with mob money, but found no evidence that it was.
Victoria is determined that her sons will not follow their father - and her father - into the mafia.
"Never a discussion about that," she said. "If they wanted to break my heart and go against everything I stand for, they can do that. They know that. But they know better."
John Gotti's grandchildren have decided, it seems, they don’t want to remember the Godfather… just their grandfather.
"I love my grandfather to death. He taught me everything I need to know," said John Gotti Agnello. Victoria's middle child, named after his grandfather, made him a promise just before he died. Could law school be in his future?
"You know what? I promised my grandfather a long time ago that I would do it. I wrote a personal letter to him on his funeral. I put it in his pocket that I would do it for him."
Carmine, Victoria's oldest son, is an aspiring musician who wrote a song about his family.
"I've been recording now in the studio for the past two and a half - almost three years. I mean, it's been a lot of work. Five days a week throughout the year. Everything's comin' together."
But John Gotti's children are still trying to figure out what it all meant-their father’s mob life; the death of their brother; the disappearance of their neighbor; the hit on Paul Castellano; the trials; prison; brothers and husbands in jail.
At the end, Peter Gotti says, his father was refusing medical care.
"I believe in my heart that it went around a full circle, 'cause I believe in the end, that he was punishing himself for the things he may have done. And… I feel for anyone if there was pain caused by him or not. I feel regret and sadness for that."
Hear more from Peter Gotti
For Victoria, the circle closed at her father's funeral.
"I remember sitting there. I was the last to get up. And I remember getting so angry and so angry and so angry. And just saying to him, 'What was this all for? What did you do? Look at you. Look at the life that you lived. Look at us. You loved us most in the world. Look at us. What was this all for?' And I walked out of there so angry. And I'm still angry. I don't understand it and I guess I never will."
Thanks to 48 Hours
Related Headlines
Al Capone,
John Gotti,
Junior Gotti,
LBJ,
Paul Castellano,
RFK,
Salvatore Gravano,
Thomas Bilotti
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Friday, September 25, 2009
Pet Crocodile Used by Mafia Boss to Threaten and Extort Money
An Italian mafia boss used his pet crocodile to threaten people and extort money, authorities said.
The caiman was 1.1 meters long (3.6 feet), the Italian Forest Service said.
Antonio Cristofaro kept the 40-kilogram (88-pound) reptile on a terrace of his home near Naples and fed it live rats and rabbits, according to LAV, an Italian animal rights group.
Authorities discovered the animal during a search for weapons at Cristofaro's home, LAV said. The crocodile was found on September 18 but the news was only made public Wednesday, the group said.
The crocodile was 1.1 meters long (3.6 feet), the Italian Forest Service said, and was capable of pulling off a man's limb with one bite. It lived atop Cristofaro's condominium in Caserta, less than an hour northeast of Naples, the Forest Service said.
Cristofaro used the crocodile to intimidate people, notably entrepreneurs, to pay him more money, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.
The crocodile is of a type known as a caiman, commonly found in Latin America. It is protected under the Washington Convention, which regulates the international trade of endangered animals, and is considered too dangerous to own as a pet, the Forest Service said.
Police charged Cristofaro with illegal possession of animals, ANSA said. It was not clear whether he had been arrested.
The Forest Service is now holding the reptile at an animal center near Rome, ANSA reported.
Cristofaro, who the Forest Service said comes from a mafia family, already had a criminal record for weapons-related charges, resisting police, and extortion, ANSA reported.
Authorities found a flak jacket during a search of Cristofaro's house, the Forest Service said.
It was not the first time the Forest Service discovered an illegal crocodile at someone's home, the Forest Service said. In August 2008 in Naples, authorities found a 2-meter-long (6.5-foot-long) crocodile at the home of a man known for drug dealing, they said.
Thanks to CNN
The caiman was 1.1 meters long (3.6 feet), the Italian Forest Service said.
Antonio Cristofaro kept the 40-kilogram (88-pound) reptile on a terrace of his home near Naples and fed it live rats and rabbits, according to LAV, an Italian animal rights group.
Authorities discovered the animal during a search for weapons at Cristofaro's home, LAV said. The crocodile was found on September 18 but the news was only made public Wednesday, the group said.
The crocodile was 1.1 meters long (3.6 feet), the Italian Forest Service said, and was capable of pulling off a man's limb with one bite. It lived atop Cristofaro's condominium in Caserta, less than an hour northeast of Naples, the Forest Service said.
Cristofaro used the crocodile to intimidate people, notably entrepreneurs, to pay him more money, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.
The crocodile is of a type known as a caiman, commonly found in Latin America. It is protected under the Washington Convention, which regulates the international trade of endangered animals, and is considered too dangerous to own as a pet, the Forest Service said.
Police charged Cristofaro with illegal possession of animals, ANSA said. It was not clear whether he had been arrested.
The Forest Service is now holding the reptile at an animal center near Rome, ANSA reported.
Cristofaro, who the Forest Service said comes from a mafia family, already had a criminal record for weapons-related charges, resisting police, and extortion, ANSA reported.
Authorities found a flak jacket during a search of Cristofaro's house, the Forest Service said.
It was not the first time the Forest Service discovered an illegal crocodile at someone's home, the Forest Service said. In August 2008 in Naples, authorities found a 2-meter-long (6.5-foot-long) crocodile at the home of a man known for drug dealing, they said.
Thanks to CNN
Thursday, September 24, 2009
City of Chicago Inspector Charged with Bribery in Probe of Crooked Permits
A city of Chicago zoning inspector was arrested on federal charges for allegedly accepting a $600 cash bribe from a cooperating individual to provide two residential certificates of occupancy in 2006, federal law enforcement officials and the city’s Acting Inspector General announced today. The defendant, Dominick Owens, allegedly accepted more than $20,000 from the cooperating individual in 2005 and the first half of 2006 in return for certificates of occupancy for many single-family and several multi-unit new construction projects in the city, according to a criminal complaint unsealed this afternoon. The case is part of an ongoing federal corruption investigation, code-named Operation Crooked Code, which became public in 2007 and has resulted in previous charges against more than two dozen defendants, including 13 city inspectors.
Owens, 43, of Chicago, an inspector in Chicago’s Department of Zoning since 1995, was released on his own recognizance after appearing before Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan in U.S. District Court. A status hearing was set for 1:30 p.m. on October 7.
According to the complaint affidavit, Owens allegedly had a corrupt relationship with the cooperating individual, who worked as a permit “expediter,” since the beginning of 2005. The complaint charges Owens with accepting a $600 bribe from the cooperating expediter on July 20, 2006, in return for Owens providing occupancy certificates for single-family residences on West 37th Place and North Wolcott Street, both in Chicago. The affidavit states that in the cooperating expediter’s experience, city inspectors generally do not inspect residences of three units or less, but builders are often willing to pay money to obtain occupancy certificates expeditiously and to avoid having city inspectors drop in and find deviations from approved plans that could result in expensive additional work and closing delays.
The cooperating expediter has previously pleaded guilty to charges in the investigation and was sentenced earlier this year to 18 months probation, according to today’s complaint affidavit.
The arrest and charges were announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Thomas P. Brady, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago; and Mary Hodge, Acting Inspector General for the City of Chicago.
Anyone with information about alleged corruption in the city permit process is encouraged to contact the City Inspector General’s Office either through their hotline – (866) 448-4754, or through their web site at www.chicagoinspectorgeneral.org
The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Juliet Sorensen, April Perry and Christopher Hotaling.
If convicted, Owens faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The Court, however, would determine the appropriate sentence to be imposed under the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines.
The public is reminded that a complaint contains only charges and is not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and is entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt
Owens, 43, of Chicago, an inspector in Chicago’s Department of Zoning since 1995, was released on his own recognizance after appearing before Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan in U.S. District Court. A status hearing was set for 1:30 p.m. on October 7.
According to the complaint affidavit, Owens allegedly had a corrupt relationship with the cooperating individual, who worked as a permit “expediter,” since the beginning of 2005. The complaint charges Owens with accepting a $600 bribe from the cooperating expediter on July 20, 2006, in return for Owens providing occupancy certificates for single-family residences on West 37th Place and North Wolcott Street, both in Chicago. The affidavit states that in the cooperating expediter’s experience, city inspectors generally do not inspect residences of three units or less, but builders are often willing to pay money to obtain occupancy certificates expeditiously and to avoid having city inspectors drop in and find deviations from approved plans that could result in expensive additional work and closing delays.
The cooperating expediter has previously pleaded guilty to charges in the investigation and was sentenced earlier this year to 18 months probation, according to today’s complaint affidavit.
The arrest and charges were announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Thomas P. Brady, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago; and Mary Hodge, Acting Inspector General for the City of Chicago.
Anyone with information about alleged corruption in the city permit process is encouraged to contact the City Inspector General’s Office either through their hotline – (866) 448-4754, or through their web site at www.chicagoinspectorgeneral.org
The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Juliet Sorensen, April Perry and Christopher Hotaling.
If convicted, Owens faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The Court, however, would determine the appropriate sentence to be imposed under the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines.
The public is reminded that a complaint contains only charges and is not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and is entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Mafia Princess Plans for Grand Opening of The Las Vegas Mob Exhibition
Plans for a Mafia exhibit in Las Vegas would include artifacts that lift the veil on how Mafia bosses really lived -- down to their favorite chairs, fancy china and shotguns.
The Las Vegas Mob Exhibition could find a home at a fancy hotel on the Strip as soon as next year, says Antoinette "The Mafia Princess" Giancana, the project spokeswoman and daughter of notorious Chicago Outfit boss, Sam "Momo" Giancana.
"We've got my father's things. All the living room furniture from when my mom and dad were married in 1933," she said. "Crystal and flatware. We've got a slot machine and one of his rifles. He used to hunt."
Similar artifacts that belonged to Bugsy Siegel and Meyer "the Mob's Accountant" Lansky also will be on display, Giancana said.
Of course, the exhibit will face competition from the government. Las Vegas mayor, former high-profile mob lawyer Oscar Goodman, has his city backing a $50 million mob museum in the works called the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.
Giancana said she's not worried about competition.
"That place will be more documentary and police-oriented," she said. "Our exhibit will be more about family."
Thanks to Mark J. Konkol
The Las Vegas Mob Exhibition could find a home at a fancy hotel on the Strip as soon as next year, says Antoinette "The Mafia Princess" Giancana, the project spokeswoman and daughter of notorious Chicago Outfit boss, Sam "Momo" Giancana.
"We've got my father's things. All the living room furniture from when my mom and dad were married in 1933," she said. "Crystal and flatware. We've got a slot machine and one of his rifles. He used to hunt."
Similar artifacts that belonged to Bugsy Siegel and Meyer "the Mob's Accountant" Lansky also will be on display, Giancana said.
Of course, the exhibit will face competition from the government. Las Vegas mayor, former high-profile mob lawyer Oscar Goodman, has his city backing a $50 million mob museum in the works called the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.
Giancana said she's not worried about competition.
"That place will be more documentary and police-oriented," she said. "Our exhibit will be more about family."
Thanks to Mark J. Konkol
Sunday, September 20, 2009
John DiFronzo, Reputed Chicago Mob Boss, Connected to Two Constuction Companies That Receive Substantial Government Payments
It’s called Omerta – the code of silence. It’s an old world Mob term that still applies here in modern-day Chicago. And when we started asking about two companies tied to the Mob, we saw it in action.
“Will you get the hell out of here?” one woman yelled when we asked. “Jesus Christ!”
“We just want to know who runs the business,” FOX Chicago investigator Dane Placko replied.
“None of your damned business!”
“D & P Construction” and “JKS Ventures” in Melrose Park are family-run businesses. The family is headed by John DiFronzo, the 81-year-old reputed boss of bosses of the Chicago Outfit.
Former FBI agent Jim Wagner spent his career busting the mob. Now, the head of the Chicago Crime Commission says the businesses are being run by convicted felons. When Dane Placko showed Wagner our video of the business owner, Wagner said he looked like the John DiFronzo he remembered: “He’s actually remained in very good shape for a man his age.”
Back in the day, John DiFronzo earned his nickname “No Nose” when a shard of glass clipped his nose during a gun battle with police. In the historic “Family Secrets” mob trial, a government turncoat testified that DiFronzo took part in the murders of mobsters Michael and Anthony Spilotro, who were beaten to death and buried in an Indiana cornfield. He was named in open court, but DiFronzo has never been charged with the crime.
FOX Chicago investigator Dane Placko spent several days over the summer watching John DiFronzo going in and out of D & P Construction – sometimes spending hours inside. When we finally talked to him, he appeared to be right at home.
"What do you do for D & P Construction and JKS?" Placko asked.
"Me? Nothing. Nothing," DiFronzo replied.
"Well we see you here quite often,” Placko continued.
"It's just my brother. It's my brother."
"Peter?" Placko asked.
"Yes, that's my family,” said DiFronzo.
"Who owns D & P?"
"His wife I think."
Josephine DiFronzo signs her name as the owner of the business. When Placko asked whether Mrs. DiFranzo was in, people at the business did not seem happy.
"Go away. Don't worry about who's here,” said one woman.
"They're not here. Go away," said a man.
Ultimately, FOX Chicago News never saw Josephine Spilotro at the company’s headquarters on the Northwest side. She stayed at their multi-million dollar home in Barrington, while her husband Peter went to work.
Peter DiFronzo also is reputedly a made member of the Chicago Outfit. And we saw Joseph DiFronzo, the youngest brother, who just got out of federal prison after he was caught running a massive indoor marijuana farm. When he arrived at D & P headquarters driving his brother’s car, we approached him to ask some questions.
That’s when a woman on the property told DiFronzo to leave the property rather than talk to us. “Go, go, go,” she yelled at him through the closed windows of DiFronzo’s Chrysler 300.
No one wants to talk about it, but the DiFronzo family clearly has a keen sense of business. Trucks hauling gravel, Dumpsters and fancy Cadillacs pass through the gates all day long. And millions of your tax dollars help keep it going.
"A basic rule of government and politics in the United States of America is you do business with reputable companies,” says Andy Shaw of Chicago’s Better Government Association. “You don't do business with gangsters, you don't do business with mobsters. You don't do business with people with a long record of felony convictions. You don't do that.”
Well, it turns out they do that in Bellwood, Stone Park, Norridge, Harwood Heights, Schiller Park and River Grove.
Suburbs and government agencies which have made payments to D&P Construction and JKSS Ventures since 2001 from the Freedom Of Information Act:
Bellwood: $1,013,295
Stone Park: $61,052
Schiller Park: $79,670
Franklin Park: $1,586,722
Elmwood Park: $787,462
Leyden Township: $59,218
River Grove: $384,416
Cook Co. Forest Preserve: $32,212
Melrose Park: $1,088,041
Stone Park: 61,021
Harwood Heights: $300
Norridge: $1,300
Oak Park: $7,497
Elmhurst: $8,640
Northlake: $75,556
Thanks to Dane Placko
“Will you get the hell out of here?” one woman yelled when we asked. “Jesus Christ!”
“We just want to know who runs the business,” FOX Chicago investigator Dane Placko replied.
“None of your damned business!”
“D & P Construction” and “JKS Ventures” in Melrose Park are family-run businesses. The family is headed by John DiFronzo, the 81-year-old reputed boss of bosses of the Chicago Outfit.
Former FBI agent Jim Wagner spent his career busting the mob. Now, the head of the Chicago Crime Commission says the businesses are being run by convicted felons. When Dane Placko showed Wagner our video of the business owner, Wagner said he looked like the John DiFronzo he remembered: “He’s actually remained in very good shape for a man his age.”
Back in the day, John DiFronzo earned his nickname “No Nose” when a shard of glass clipped his nose during a gun battle with police. In the historic “Family Secrets” mob trial, a government turncoat testified that DiFronzo took part in the murders of mobsters Michael and Anthony Spilotro, who were beaten to death and buried in an Indiana cornfield. He was named in open court, but DiFronzo has never been charged with the crime.
FOX Chicago investigator Dane Placko spent several days over the summer watching John DiFronzo going in and out of D & P Construction – sometimes spending hours inside. When we finally talked to him, he appeared to be right at home.
"What do you do for D & P Construction and JKS?" Placko asked.
"Me? Nothing. Nothing," DiFronzo replied.
"Well we see you here quite often,” Placko continued.
"It's just my brother. It's my brother."
"Peter?" Placko asked.
"Yes, that's my family,” said DiFronzo.
"Who owns D & P?"
"His wife I think."
Josephine DiFronzo signs her name as the owner of the business. When Placko asked whether Mrs. DiFranzo was in, people at the business did not seem happy.
"Go away. Don't worry about who's here,” said one woman.
"They're not here. Go away," said a man.
Ultimately, FOX Chicago News never saw Josephine Spilotro at the company’s headquarters on the Northwest side. She stayed at their multi-million dollar home in Barrington, while her husband Peter went to work.
Peter DiFronzo also is reputedly a made member of the Chicago Outfit. And we saw Joseph DiFronzo, the youngest brother, who just got out of federal prison after he was caught running a massive indoor marijuana farm. When he arrived at D & P headquarters driving his brother’s car, we approached him to ask some questions.
That’s when a woman on the property told DiFronzo to leave the property rather than talk to us. “Go, go, go,” she yelled at him through the closed windows of DiFronzo’s Chrysler 300.
No one wants to talk about it, but the DiFronzo family clearly has a keen sense of business. Trucks hauling gravel, Dumpsters and fancy Cadillacs pass through the gates all day long. And millions of your tax dollars help keep it going.
"A basic rule of government and politics in the United States of America is you do business with reputable companies,” says Andy Shaw of Chicago’s Better Government Association. “You don't do business with gangsters, you don't do business with mobsters. You don't do business with people with a long record of felony convictions. You don't do that.”
Well, it turns out they do that in Bellwood, Stone Park, Norridge, Harwood Heights, Schiller Park and River Grove.
Suburbs and government agencies which have made payments to D&P Construction and JKSS Ventures since 2001 from the Freedom Of Information Act:
Bellwood: $1,013,295
Stone Park: $61,052
Schiller Park: $79,670
Franklin Park: $1,586,722
Elmwood Park: $787,462
Leyden Township: $59,218
River Grove: $384,416
Cook Co. Forest Preserve: $32,212
Melrose Park: $1,088,041
Stone Park: 61,021
Harwood Heights: $300
Norridge: $1,300
Oak Park: $7,497
Elmhurst: $8,640
Northlake: $75,556
Thanks to Dane Placko
Related Headlines
Family Secrets,
Joe DiFronzo,
John DiFronzo,
Michael Spilotro,
Peter DiFronzo,
Tony Spilotro
5 comments:
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Federal Stimulus Money Going to the Mob?
Everybody is looking for stimulus money.
From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives.
The mob is eager, too.
Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that some members have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx — if they have not already — looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks.
Nimble, innovative and with a seemingly boundless appetite for the taxpayer’s dollar, the mob’s more sophisticated cadre has plundered municipal, state and federal coffers for generations.
So the F. B. I. office in New York has conducted an extensive analysis of the money flowing into the area to create a blueprint of its vulnerabilities, a process, an official said, that is being continually updated. Also, some of the 28 inspectors general who have oversight of the federal agencies receiving stimulus money are considering having federal agents sit in on selected screening interviews of contractors to tell them that if they lie to a federal officer, they could be charged with a crime, officials briefed on the matter said.
“Because there is so much money involved, criminals will look to exploit the system,” said Guy Petrillo, chief of the criminal division in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, referring to the New York area’s five Mafia families.
Because the money is being widely dispersed — flowing to federal agencies, then to states and localities and then to contractors and smaller groups — opportunities for fraud abound at a level rarely seen. And despite recent improvements, the screening of contractors sometimes still presents a challenge for local, state and federal agencies, which time and again have failed to halt the flow of public money to companies accused of having ties to organized crime or having otherwise troubling histories.
Indeed, even with the mob’s power waning, some members have profited handsomely in the past few years on projects large and small. They have benefited from new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets, the city’s $3 billion water filtration plant and the post-9/11 cleanup at ground zero, as well as from work on federal buildings, state highways and city schools and playgrounds.
The audacity and accomplishment exhibited by some contractors seem to match the gusto they have for government work. One mob associate, convicted in 1994 in a case stemming from organized crime’s control of lucrative Housing Authority window replacement contracts, pleaded guilty nearly a decade later in a case involving window replacement work on city schools. After serving nearly three years in prison, he got in trouble again last year for improprieties involving another window replacement contract, this one at the same federal courthouse where he was convicted in 1994.
In another case, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s pet project to spruce up City Hall Park was delayed because two successive concrete contractors were found to have ties to organized crime. The mob also had long cornered the market on the city’s lucrative emergency snow removal contracts, as well as controlling city school bus contracts.
The distinctiveness of the immediate challenge surrounding the stimulus money is owed in part to the bill’s twin imperatives: Get a lot of money out and get it out as fast as possible. And it is compounded by the fact that law enforcement agencies like the F. B. I. and prosecutors’ offices are hip deep in the competing priorities of counterterrorism and the explosion of corporate and mortgage fraud cases.
Making matters worse, the money is flowing into familiar territory for those with a history of feeding at the public trough. Two of the largest portions of the stimulus pie in the New York City area are going to sectors of the economy — Medicaid and infrastructure projects — where the mob and Eastern European crime groups have flourished for decades, perfecting old schemes and developing new ones. And it is not just criminals who are causing concern. Several officials noted that in an area where close to two dozen state and city legislators have been indicted in recent years, the flow of stimulus funds through government agencies will provide ample opportunity for corrupt public employees.
Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose administration will dole out nearly $1 billion for infrastructure projects and $2.5 billion in Medicaid and social service money, played down concerns about the vetting of contractors. The amounts to be awarded, he said, are far from astronomical for a city with a $60 billion budget and “robust fraud- and waste-prevention measures,” which include a staff that has doubled in eight years and an additional layer of review for stimulus contracts.
Mr. La Vorgna added, “The notion that the city’s vendor integrity mechanisms will somehow be taxed is false.”
State officials said they, too, were comfortable with their vetting procedures. Gov. David A. Paterson appointed a panel last month to coordinate the state’s antifraud efforts. And Congress has appropriated about $220 million in additional money to assist 23 of the 28 federal inspectors general involved in overseeing stimulus money, said Ed Pound, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the federal stimulus watchdog. But despite these measures, the speed with which the program has been put in place, along with what many officials have called insufficient oversight, has left some in law enforcement with grave concerns.
“It’s coming out without the internal controls in place,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “It’s like putting a bank robber in a toll booth.”
Thanks to William K. Rashbaum
From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives.
The mob is eager, too.
Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that some members have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx — if they have not already — looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks.
Nimble, innovative and with a seemingly boundless appetite for the taxpayer’s dollar, the mob’s more sophisticated cadre has plundered municipal, state and federal coffers for generations.
So the F. B. I. office in New York has conducted an extensive analysis of the money flowing into the area to create a blueprint of its vulnerabilities, a process, an official said, that is being continually updated. Also, some of the 28 inspectors general who have oversight of the federal agencies receiving stimulus money are considering having federal agents sit in on selected screening interviews of contractors to tell them that if they lie to a federal officer, they could be charged with a crime, officials briefed on the matter said.
“Because there is so much money involved, criminals will look to exploit the system,” said Guy Petrillo, chief of the criminal division in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, referring to the New York area’s five Mafia families.
Because the money is being widely dispersed — flowing to federal agencies, then to states and localities and then to contractors and smaller groups — opportunities for fraud abound at a level rarely seen. And despite recent improvements, the screening of contractors sometimes still presents a challenge for local, state and federal agencies, which time and again have failed to halt the flow of public money to companies accused of having ties to organized crime or having otherwise troubling histories.
Indeed, even with the mob’s power waning, some members have profited handsomely in the past few years on projects large and small. They have benefited from new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets, the city’s $3 billion water filtration plant and the post-9/11 cleanup at ground zero, as well as from work on federal buildings, state highways and city schools and playgrounds.
The audacity and accomplishment exhibited by some contractors seem to match the gusto they have for government work. One mob associate, convicted in 1994 in a case stemming from organized crime’s control of lucrative Housing Authority window replacement contracts, pleaded guilty nearly a decade later in a case involving window replacement work on city schools. After serving nearly three years in prison, he got in trouble again last year for improprieties involving another window replacement contract, this one at the same federal courthouse where he was convicted in 1994.
In another case, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s pet project to spruce up City Hall Park was delayed because two successive concrete contractors were found to have ties to organized crime. The mob also had long cornered the market on the city’s lucrative emergency snow removal contracts, as well as controlling city school bus contracts.
The distinctiveness of the immediate challenge surrounding the stimulus money is owed in part to the bill’s twin imperatives: Get a lot of money out and get it out as fast as possible. And it is compounded by the fact that law enforcement agencies like the F. B. I. and prosecutors’ offices are hip deep in the competing priorities of counterterrorism and the explosion of corporate and mortgage fraud cases.
Making matters worse, the money is flowing into familiar territory for those with a history of feeding at the public trough. Two of the largest portions of the stimulus pie in the New York City area are going to sectors of the economy — Medicaid and infrastructure projects — where the mob and Eastern European crime groups have flourished for decades, perfecting old schemes and developing new ones. And it is not just criminals who are causing concern. Several officials noted that in an area where close to two dozen state and city legislators have been indicted in recent years, the flow of stimulus funds through government agencies will provide ample opportunity for corrupt public employees.
Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose administration will dole out nearly $1 billion for infrastructure projects and $2.5 billion in Medicaid and social service money, played down concerns about the vetting of contractors. The amounts to be awarded, he said, are far from astronomical for a city with a $60 billion budget and “robust fraud- and waste-prevention measures,” which include a staff that has doubled in eight years and an additional layer of review for stimulus contracts.
Mr. La Vorgna added, “The notion that the city’s vendor integrity mechanisms will somehow be taxed is false.”
State officials said they, too, were comfortable with their vetting procedures. Gov. David A. Paterson appointed a panel last month to coordinate the state’s antifraud efforts. And Congress has appropriated about $220 million in additional money to assist 23 of the 28 federal inspectors general involved in overseeing stimulus money, said Ed Pound, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the federal stimulus watchdog. But despite these measures, the speed with which the program has been put in place, along with what many officials have called insufficient oversight, has left some in law enforcement with grave concerns.
“It’s coming out without the internal controls in place,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “It’s like putting a bank robber in a toll booth.”
Thanks to William K. Rashbaum
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Family Secrets Jury Deliberations Were Systematic, Often Contentious
The anonymous jury that decided the Family Secrets case was exhausted.
After methodically working through stacks of evidence to convict four mob figures and a former Chicago police officer of racketeering conspiracy, jurors had become bogged down during a second round of deliberations.
For the first time in three months, personality conflicts flared and jurors snapped at one another as they tried to decide if the four mobsters could be blamed for 18 gangland slayings stretching back decades.
"There were times when we all looked out the window for a while and no one talked to each other," one juror recalled.
Two years after the landmark Family Secrets mob trial gripped Chicago with its lurid details of mob mayhem, jurors who sat in judgment have finally broken their silence.
Two of the jurors -- a man and a woman -- spoke last week to a Tribune reporter at a Loop restaurant, insisting their identities remain secret out of continued concern for their safety.
Even two years after the summerlong trial in 2007, few of the jurors know the names of one another, they said. Their identities had been publicly concealed to protect them from possible retaliation by the Chicago syndicate and to shield them from the news media.
Instead, jurors addressed one another by nicknames. Some took on names of characters in the trial, while others won monikers that might have been passed on by the mob itself. A tall juror became "Shorty" and another was called "Puzzles" because he often sat solving them during trial breaks.
As they began their deliberations, jurors pored over their notes -- one juror filled 16 pads of paper -- and sorted through carts of prosecution evidence -- documents, photos and even ski masks worn by hit men.They wrote questions on large "post-it" notes and stuck them to the wall. When they ran out of space, jurors took down decorative pictures to make more room for their notes.
The two jurors said the panel began the initial deliberations by deciding whether a criminal enterprise known as the Chicago Outfit existed. Then they considered the alleged role of each of the defendants they had spent months staring at from the jury box.
"I found them all to look mild-mannered and pleasant and grandfatherly," the female juror said of defendants James Marcello, Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, Frank Calabrese Sr., Paul "the Indian" Schiro, and Anthony "Twan" Doyle, the ex-Chicago cop.
The man said most of the jurors began to figure out the importance of the trial after hearing about the infamous murders of mobster Anthony Spilotro and his brother, Michael, whose bodies were found in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.
The jurors said the first round of deliberations went smoothly. If anyone was uncertain, others would calmly go back over the testimony, according to the two. The evidence was strong, they said, and jurors took four days to convict all five defendants on a host of counts, voting by a show of hands.
The jury was surprised, though, to find out that their work was not over after three months, the two said.
They again placed notes on the wall, building a chart with the 18 murder victims on one side and the four mobsters on trial across the top. They placed check marks by the defendant's name if they felt he could be held responsible for a particular murder.
"There was a lot more talking and a lot more disagreement," the female juror said. "People were passionate about Round 2."
The jurors said the panel delved more deeply into the centerpiece of the prosecution case -- the testimony of mob turncoat Nicholas Calabrese. The former hit man admitted committing 14 murders himself and linked the four mobsters -- including his own brother -- to many of the gangland killings.
To some jurors, Calabrese was a tortured man who calmly named names as he recounted murders he was forced to commit with other Chicago Outfit members, but others on the jury wouldn't rely on his word alone to find blame in a killing. "Fundamentally, Nick was himself just like one of those guys in the room," the female juror said. "Some people just weren't able to get past it."
The result, the jurors said, were strained arguments and frazzled tempers.
The male juror was among the leaders who thought Calabrese was believable because other evidence corroborated his testimony. He recalled one instance when Calabrese fought tears on the witness stand as he recounted how an attempt to blow up the car of a businessman targeted by the mob almost resulted in killing the man's wife and child. "That was either the best acting job ever or somebody who's facing some serious demons," the juror said.
The jury wound up finding Lombardo, Marcello and Frank Calabrese Sr. responsible for 10 of the murders, but deadlocked on the other eight slayings. The two jurors said the jury deadlocked on murders that relied only on the word of Nicholas Calabrese.
The jury found Marcello responsible for the Spilotro killings, but it was close, they said. Calabrese testified Marcello drove him to a house where the brothers had been lured by the promise of mob promotions and helped beat them to death in the basement.
Calabrese had alone put Marcello at the murder scene, but the jurors said there was just enough evidence to buttress his account. Relatives of the Spilotros had testified that Marcello called their home the day the brothers were killed and that Michael Spilotro worried enough about the meeting to have left his jewelry at home. But there were discrepancies in the government evidence, the jurors noted. Calabrese had put a mobster at the murder scene who was actually under FBI surveillance at the time, making his presence there impossible. But the jurors said they chalked it up to a memory lapse and moved on, confident they had made the right decision.
The jurors said they weren't surprised to see Marcello, Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr. each sentenced to life in prison this year. Both said they supported the controversial 12-year prison sentence that U.S. District Judge James Zagel imposed on Nicholas Calabrese.
The male juror said he thought the judge had done a good job explaining his decision, even though some family members of victims found the sentence unfair. No one would dispute that Calabrese was a killer, he said. "You have to look at what he was able to bring forward on all of this -- he gave people answers," the juror said. "But I'm glad I didn't have to make that call."
Thanks to Jeff Coen
After methodically working through stacks of evidence to convict four mob figures and a former Chicago police officer of racketeering conspiracy, jurors had become bogged down during a second round of deliberations.
For the first time in three months, personality conflicts flared and jurors snapped at one another as they tried to decide if the four mobsters could be blamed for 18 gangland slayings stretching back decades.
"There were times when we all looked out the window for a while and no one talked to each other," one juror recalled.
Two years after the landmark Family Secrets mob trial gripped Chicago with its lurid details of mob mayhem, jurors who sat in judgment have finally broken their silence.
Two of the jurors -- a man and a woman -- spoke last week to a Tribune reporter at a Loop restaurant, insisting their identities remain secret out of continued concern for their safety.
Even two years after the summerlong trial in 2007, few of the jurors know the names of one another, they said. Their identities had been publicly concealed to protect them from possible retaliation by the Chicago syndicate and to shield them from the news media.
Instead, jurors addressed one another by nicknames. Some took on names of characters in the trial, while others won monikers that might have been passed on by the mob itself. A tall juror became "Shorty" and another was called "Puzzles" because he often sat solving them during trial breaks.
As they began their deliberations, jurors pored over their notes -- one juror filled 16 pads of paper -- and sorted through carts of prosecution evidence -- documents, photos and even ski masks worn by hit men.They wrote questions on large "post-it" notes and stuck them to the wall. When they ran out of space, jurors took down decorative pictures to make more room for their notes.
The two jurors said the panel began the initial deliberations by deciding whether a criminal enterprise known as the Chicago Outfit existed. Then they considered the alleged role of each of the defendants they had spent months staring at from the jury box.
"I found them all to look mild-mannered and pleasant and grandfatherly," the female juror said of defendants James Marcello, Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, Frank Calabrese Sr., Paul "the Indian" Schiro, and Anthony "Twan" Doyle, the ex-Chicago cop.
The man said most of the jurors began to figure out the importance of the trial after hearing about the infamous murders of mobster Anthony Spilotro and his brother, Michael, whose bodies were found in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.
The jurors said the first round of deliberations went smoothly. If anyone was uncertain, others would calmly go back over the testimony, according to the two. The evidence was strong, they said, and jurors took four days to convict all five defendants on a host of counts, voting by a show of hands.
The jury was surprised, though, to find out that their work was not over after three months, the two said.
They again placed notes on the wall, building a chart with the 18 murder victims on one side and the four mobsters on trial across the top. They placed check marks by the defendant's name if they felt he could be held responsible for a particular murder.
"There was a lot more talking and a lot more disagreement," the female juror said. "People were passionate about Round 2."
The jurors said the panel delved more deeply into the centerpiece of the prosecution case -- the testimony of mob turncoat Nicholas Calabrese. The former hit man admitted committing 14 murders himself and linked the four mobsters -- including his own brother -- to many of the gangland killings.
To some jurors, Calabrese was a tortured man who calmly named names as he recounted murders he was forced to commit with other Chicago Outfit members, but others on the jury wouldn't rely on his word alone to find blame in a killing. "Fundamentally, Nick was himself just like one of those guys in the room," the female juror said. "Some people just weren't able to get past it."
The result, the jurors said, were strained arguments and frazzled tempers.
The male juror was among the leaders who thought Calabrese was believable because other evidence corroborated his testimony. He recalled one instance when Calabrese fought tears on the witness stand as he recounted how an attempt to blow up the car of a businessman targeted by the mob almost resulted in killing the man's wife and child. "That was either the best acting job ever or somebody who's facing some serious demons," the juror said.
The jury wound up finding Lombardo, Marcello and Frank Calabrese Sr. responsible for 10 of the murders, but deadlocked on the other eight slayings. The two jurors said the jury deadlocked on murders that relied only on the word of Nicholas Calabrese.
The jury found Marcello responsible for the Spilotro killings, but it was close, they said. Calabrese testified Marcello drove him to a house where the brothers had been lured by the promise of mob promotions and helped beat them to death in the basement.
Calabrese had alone put Marcello at the murder scene, but the jurors said there was just enough evidence to buttress his account. Relatives of the Spilotros had testified that Marcello called their home the day the brothers were killed and that Michael Spilotro worried enough about the meeting to have left his jewelry at home. But there were discrepancies in the government evidence, the jurors noted. Calabrese had put a mobster at the murder scene who was actually under FBI surveillance at the time, making his presence there impossible. But the jurors said they chalked it up to a memory lapse and moved on, confident they had made the right decision.
The jurors said they weren't surprised to see Marcello, Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr. each sentenced to life in prison this year. Both said they supported the controversial 12-year prison sentence that U.S. District Judge James Zagel imposed on Nicholas Calabrese.
The male juror said he thought the judge had done a good job explaining his decision, even though some family members of victims found the sentence unfair. No one would dispute that Calabrese was a killer, he said. "You have to look at what he was able to bring forward on all of this -- he gave people answers," the juror said. "But I'm glad I didn't have to make that call."
Thanks to Jeff Coen
Has the Mob Left Philly?
A recent Inquirer article detailed the near extinction of the Philadelphia family of La Cosa Nostra. From approximately 80 members in the 1980s, the Philadelphia mob has dwindled to roughly 20 "soldiers," of whom almost half are in prison. Philadelphia has but 10 mafiosi left to do the work that once took eight times as many.
Law enforcement officials would have us believe that this is the result of good police work, but don't believe it. Like cockroaches, the mob cannot be eradicated once it moves in.
No, there can be only one reason for this outcome: The mafia has departed for greener pastures.
What further proof do we need that this is a city in crisis? Of all the miserable milestones along our path to perdition, this one, above all, should give us pause.
It means that we have so little going for us that we can't even attract and keep a decent-sized organized-crime family. Things have deteriorated so badly that not even these bums want to live and commit crimes here. And it's not like we are competing against the garden spots of America for the mob's attention. Back in the 1970s, when I was an eager young prosecutor in the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, we had a strike force in every city with a mob family. These were places like Newark, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Brooklyn. Philadelphia can't even hold its place in that lineup?
To put this into context, we have a municipal budget in free fall, threatened cutbacks of city services, and whole neighborhoods that resemble Dresden after the Royal Air Force paid it a visit. The deficit is so large that Philadelphia will soon have to call itself "the city that loves you back, due to budget cuts, every other Wednesday."
And now this: The mob is voting with its feet.
But where are the mobsters going? Have they moved to the suburbs? How would that work? Would it really be possible for some thug to claim with a straight face that he is the boss of the Bryn Mawr family? I mean, where do you stuff a body in a Prius? Don't the batteries get in the way?
Of course, these and other important questions are beside the real point: Once again, Philadelphia has placed last. As with our industrial base and business community, our underworld entrepreneurs have taken a hike, leaving us to try to put a happy face on what can only be considered a major source of civic embarrassment.
Thanks to George Parry
Law enforcement officials would have us believe that this is the result of good police work, but don't believe it. Like cockroaches, the mob cannot be eradicated once it moves in.
No, there can be only one reason for this outcome: The mafia has departed for greener pastures.
What further proof do we need that this is a city in crisis? Of all the miserable milestones along our path to perdition, this one, above all, should give us pause.
It means that we have so little going for us that we can't even attract and keep a decent-sized organized-crime family. Things have deteriorated so badly that not even these bums want to live and commit crimes here. And it's not like we are competing against the garden spots of America for the mob's attention. Back in the 1970s, when I was an eager young prosecutor in the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, we had a strike force in every city with a mob family. These were places like Newark, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Brooklyn. Philadelphia can't even hold its place in that lineup?
To put this into context, we have a municipal budget in free fall, threatened cutbacks of city services, and whole neighborhoods that resemble Dresden after the Royal Air Force paid it a visit. The deficit is so large that Philadelphia will soon have to call itself "the city that loves you back, due to budget cuts, every other Wednesday."
And now this: The mob is voting with its feet.
But where are the mobsters going? Have they moved to the suburbs? How would that work? Would it really be possible for some thug to claim with a straight face that he is the boss of the Bryn Mawr family? I mean, where do you stuff a body in a Prius? Don't the batteries get in the way?
Of course, these and other important questions are beside the real point: Once again, Philadelphia has placed last. As with our industrial base and business community, our underworld entrepreneurs have taken a hike, leaving us to try to put a happy face on what can only be considered a major source of civic embarrassment.
Thanks to George Parry
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
"Chicago Overcoat" to Debut at Chicago International Film Festival
Six Columbia alumni will debut their first feature-length film, Chicago Overcoat, at the Chicago International Film Festival on Oct. 10.
Loosely based on the Chicago crime syndicate, Chicago Overcoat tells the story of Lou Marzano, an aging gangster who is upset with the way the mob functions in the modern era and wants it to be as it was in his day.
Columbia is the presenting sponsor at the Chicago International Film Festival this year, and Chicago Overcoat will be screened multiple times. The movie’s stars, Frank Vincent and Katherine Narducci of “The Sopranos,” as well as Mike Starr, will make appearances throughout the weekend of the festival. The cast also includes Armand Assante and Chicago’s own Danny Goldring.
The presenting sponsors of the festival, Columbia’s National Director of Alumni Relations Josh Culley-Foster and Vice President of Institutional Advancement Eric Winston, joined forces with Columbia’s marketing team to plan the national debut of the film at the festival.
The crew’s independent production company, Beverly Ridge Pictures, produced the film. The crew consists of writer/director Brian Caunter, writer/producer John Bosher, associate producer/casting director Chris Charles, associate producer/director of photography Kevin Moss, director of production William Maursky and co-producer/production designer Philip Plowden.
The idea for the film came from Caunter’s grandmother, who said a “Chicago overcoat” is an old gangster term for coffin.
“[Caunter] thought it was a really fascinating idea and we were thinking about what kind of stories could focus on Chicago [and have] Chicago as a backdrop,” Charles said. “John suggested a gangster movie. We realized that nobody had done a modern-day Chicago mob story [before].”
Shot in more than 70 locations, the filmmakers chose not only the familiar sides of Chicago, but also gritty scenery not seen in most films where Chicago is the backdrop.
“We have underground locations for some of the scenes,” Plowden said. “It provided a layer of realism to the film. For us, it was nice to add that layer.”
Working with a little more than $1 million, Chicago Overcoat conceals evidence of the tight budget through disciplined production schedules, sharp cinematography and devout professionalism, as well as the use of an antique, yet fully functional Thompson submachine gun.
Enlisting the help of Columbia students and recent graduates, the crew of Chicago Overcoat dedicated themselves and each gave their best effort.
“The people in the cast and crew got a lot out of the experience,” Bosher said. It was nice to have a production that really had that independent spirit—that young, go-getter attitude. Their hunger, excitement and desire for making the most of their opportunities allowed us to get an efficient crew.”
Columbia will hold an exclusive viewing night for the college community prior to the world premiere of Chicago Overcoat on Oct. 9. The evening will also feature the short film Burden, created by Charles and Bosher while they were students at Columbia.
“Just to be one of five films from the [U.S.] to be at this festival is incredible,” Charles said. “We’re very excited.” Charles said one of the greatest things about Columbia is being able to network. “There’s a lot of collaboration, whether it’s with your professors who work in the industry or your fellow classmates,” Charles said.
A filmmaker can meet a handful of really good, hardworking people, said Film and Video instructor Clint Vaupel. “If you prove yourself and you do what you need to do, other people will see that, and your name gets passed on,” Vaupel said. “A big family is made and people look out for each other.”
Thanks to Ciara Shook
Loosely based on the Chicago crime syndicate, Chicago Overcoat tells the story of Lou Marzano, an aging gangster who is upset with the way the mob functions in the modern era and wants it to be as it was in his day.
Columbia is the presenting sponsor at the Chicago International Film Festival this year, and Chicago Overcoat will be screened multiple times. The movie’s stars, Frank Vincent and Katherine Narducci of “The Sopranos,” as well as Mike Starr, will make appearances throughout the weekend of the festival. The cast also includes Armand Assante and Chicago’s own Danny Goldring.
The presenting sponsors of the festival, Columbia’s National Director of Alumni Relations Josh Culley-Foster and Vice President of Institutional Advancement Eric Winston, joined forces with Columbia’s marketing team to plan the national debut of the film at the festival.
The crew’s independent production company, Beverly Ridge Pictures, produced the film. The crew consists of writer/director Brian Caunter, writer/producer John Bosher, associate producer/casting director Chris Charles, associate producer/director of photography Kevin Moss, director of production William Maursky and co-producer/production designer Philip Plowden.
The idea for the film came from Caunter’s grandmother, who said a “Chicago overcoat” is an old gangster term for coffin.
“[Caunter] thought it was a really fascinating idea and we were thinking about what kind of stories could focus on Chicago [and have] Chicago as a backdrop,” Charles said. “John suggested a gangster movie. We realized that nobody had done a modern-day Chicago mob story [before].”
Shot in more than 70 locations, the filmmakers chose not only the familiar sides of Chicago, but also gritty scenery not seen in most films where Chicago is the backdrop.
“We have underground locations for some of the scenes,” Plowden said. “It provided a layer of realism to the film. For us, it was nice to add that layer.”
Working with a little more than $1 million, Chicago Overcoat conceals evidence of the tight budget through disciplined production schedules, sharp cinematography and devout professionalism, as well as the use of an antique, yet fully functional Thompson submachine gun.
Enlisting the help of Columbia students and recent graduates, the crew of Chicago Overcoat dedicated themselves and each gave their best effort.
“The people in the cast and crew got a lot out of the experience,” Bosher said. It was nice to have a production that really had that independent spirit—that young, go-getter attitude. Their hunger, excitement and desire for making the most of their opportunities allowed us to get an efficient crew.”
Columbia will hold an exclusive viewing night for the college community prior to the world premiere of Chicago Overcoat on Oct. 9. The evening will also feature the short film Burden, created by Charles and Bosher while they were students at Columbia.
“Just to be one of five films from the [U.S.] to be at this festival is incredible,” Charles said. “We’re very excited.” Charles said one of the greatest things about Columbia is being able to network. “There’s a lot of collaboration, whether it’s with your professors who work in the industry or your fellow classmates,” Charles said.
A filmmaker can meet a handful of really good, hardworking people, said Film and Video instructor Clint Vaupel. “If you prove yourself and you do what you need to do, other people will see that, and your name gets passed on,” Vaupel said. “A big family is made and people look out for each other.”
Thanks to Ciara Shook
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Final Chapter for The "Mafia Cops"
I like a mob story as well as the next guy, but "The Godfather" this ain't.
Still, somebody has to sweep up after the elephants in the "Mafia Cops" parade. So give me the broom and step aside.
On Tuesday morning, a prudent jury returned a guilty verdict in the federal drug trial of Anthony Eppolito and Guido Bravatti. It was the quintessentially understated ending to one of the loudest organized crime investigations in recent history: the successful prosecution of the infamous "Mafia Cops," Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were convicted of betraying their NYPD badges and acting as informants and hit men for New York's Lucchese organized crime family. In all, they had a hand in eight murders, including the Nov. 6, 1990, shooting death of Gambino family capo Eddie Lino, a job they pulled personally on behalf of Lucchese underboss Anthony Casso.
The elder Eppolito, a rotund and affable fellow who retired to Las Vegas in the early 1990s and pursued a career as a movie actor and screenwriter, received life plus 100 years. Caracappa, who moved in across the street from his former police partner and worked for a time as a private investigator and women's prison employee, was sentenced to life plus 80 years.
Upon sentencing, the ice-cold Caracappa didn't flinch. He said simply, "I am innocent of these charges."
Eppolito, always auditioning, gave something of a soliloquy. "I'm a big boy," he said. "I'm not a child. The federal government can take my life. But they can't take my soul, they can't take my dignity. I never hurt anybody. ... I never did any of this."
Senior Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, a veteran of many bloody mob trials, called the Mafia Cops case "the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse."
At last count, a half dozen books have been written about the Mafia Cops and their crimes, not including Eppolito's own paperback autobiography, "Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family was the Mob." Eppolito's father, uncle and cousin were mobsters, but in his book he claimed to have broken the chain of criminal behavior.
Instead, Louis Eppolito helped extend it to another generation by implicating his son Anthony in his rotten life. It's a safe bet no one will be writing a book about this pathetic excuse for a mob case.
Fast forward to this past week in U.S. District Judge Philip Pro's courtroom, where defense attorneys Richard Schonfeld, on behalf of Anthony Eppolito, and Assistant Federal Public Defender Shari Kaufman attempted to persuade a jury their clients were entrapped by the FBI and DEA through its use of undercover informant Stephen Corso.
The defense attorneys worked this case about as well as they could given the problem with the evidence. (The problem was it incriminated their clients and didn't come close to proving entrapment. On the contrary, the defendants appeared only too willing to provide drugs, guns and women.)
Judge Pro took extra care to severely limit any mention of defendant Eppolito's more notorious father and the Mafia Cops case in general. Trouble is, this is a case with plenty of incriminating surveillance tape, which was collected hour after hour by Corso during the investigation.
At one point, perhaps sensing that Corso was getting the cold shoulder from the government, courthouse sources say the defense team sought to interview the insider witness. After the request was granted by Judge Pro, Schonfeld changed his mind and Corso remained a courthouse ghost.
Schonfeld and Kaufman started like pitbulls, ended like house cats. No wonder neither feels like talking. I hear their clients were offered sweet pretrial deals.
The case might have developed into something worth writing about had the small mountain of damaging discovery material associated with the investigation surfaced in the court record. Sources say it contains voluminous recordings of local organized crime figures and their eclectic circle of friends from the business and legal communities.
One gregarious fellow beyond worrying about the government's inquiry is telemarketer and ex-fighter Joey Roach, who died recently. Roach was tight with local Lucchese crime family man John Conti. And now my cleanup is complete. This is what I've been reduced to in the pursuit of a good mob story -- a mundane drug dealing case.
Forget "The Godfather."
This isn't even "The Godson" material.
Thanks to John L. Smith
Still, somebody has to sweep up after the elephants in the "Mafia Cops" parade. So give me the broom and step aside.
On Tuesday morning, a prudent jury returned a guilty verdict in the federal drug trial of Anthony Eppolito and Guido Bravatti. It was the quintessentially understated ending to one of the loudest organized crime investigations in recent history: the successful prosecution of the infamous "Mafia Cops," Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were convicted of betraying their NYPD badges and acting as informants and hit men for New York's Lucchese organized crime family. In all, they had a hand in eight murders, including the Nov. 6, 1990, shooting death of Gambino family capo Eddie Lino, a job they pulled personally on behalf of Lucchese underboss Anthony Casso.
The elder Eppolito, a rotund and affable fellow who retired to Las Vegas in the early 1990s and pursued a career as a movie actor and screenwriter, received life plus 100 years. Caracappa, who moved in across the street from his former police partner and worked for a time as a private investigator and women's prison employee, was sentenced to life plus 80 years.
Upon sentencing, the ice-cold Caracappa didn't flinch. He said simply, "I am innocent of these charges."
Eppolito, always auditioning, gave something of a soliloquy. "I'm a big boy," he said. "I'm not a child. The federal government can take my life. But they can't take my soul, they can't take my dignity. I never hurt anybody. ... I never did any of this."
Senior Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, a veteran of many bloody mob trials, called the Mafia Cops case "the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse."
At last count, a half dozen books have been written about the Mafia Cops and their crimes, not including Eppolito's own paperback autobiography, "Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family was the Mob." Eppolito's father, uncle and cousin were mobsters, but in his book he claimed to have broken the chain of criminal behavior.
Instead, Louis Eppolito helped extend it to another generation by implicating his son Anthony in his rotten life. It's a safe bet no one will be writing a book about this pathetic excuse for a mob case.
Fast forward to this past week in U.S. District Judge Philip Pro's courtroom, where defense attorneys Richard Schonfeld, on behalf of Anthony Eppolito, and Assistant Federal Public Defender Shari Kaufman attempted to persuade a jury their clients were entrapped by the FBI and DEA through its use of undercover informant Stephen Corso.
The defense attorneys worked this case about as well as they could given the problem with the evidence. (The problem was it incriminated their clients and didn't come close to proving entrapment. On the contrary, the defendants appeared only too willing to provide drugs, guns and women.)
Judge Pro took extra care to severely limit any mention of defendant Eppolito's more notorious father and the Mafia Cops case in general. Trouble is, this is a case with plenty of incriminating surveillance tape, which was collected hour after hour by Corso during the investigation.
At one point, perhaps sensing that Corso was getting the cold shoulder from the government, courthouse sources say the defense team sought to interview the insider witness. After the request was granted by Judge Pro, Schonfeld changed his mind and Corso remained a courthouse ghost.
Schonfeld and Kaufman started like pitbulls, ended like house cats. No wonder neither feels like talking. I hear their clients were offered sweet pretrial deals.
The case might have developed into something worth writing about had the small mountain of damaging discovery material associated with the investigation surfaced in the court record. Sources say it contains voluminous recordings of local organized crime figures and their eclectic circle of friends from the business and legal communities.
One gregarious fellow beyond worrying about the government's inquiry is telemarketer and ex-fighter Joey Roach, who died recently. Roach was tight with local Lucchese crime family man John Conti. And now my cleanup is complete. This is what I've been reduced to in the pursuit of a good mob story -- a mundane drug dealing case.
Forget "The Godfather."
This isn't even "The Godson" material.
Thanks to John L. Smith
Related Headlines
Anthony Casso,
Edward Lino,
Jimmy Eppolito,
John Conti,
Stephen Caracappa
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Mob Murder of Chicago Tribune Reporter Remains Unsolved
Q: My father was born in 1918 in Chicago. He told me a story that, during his youth, the mob killed a newspaper reporter. The whole city of Chicago turned out for the funeral, leading to a public outcry against mob activity. Is the story true?
A: It’s true. On June 9, 1930, Alfred “Jake” Lingle Jr., a 38-year-old reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was murdered near a train station. A big state funeral with bands and military representation treated Lingle as a genuine hero. In time, his reputation became tarnished. Fervently involved in mob activity, Lingle lived a plush life way beyond the means of a newspaperman. His unsolved murder is a cold case; it still is on the books.
Thanks to Gary Clothier
A: It’s true. On June 9, 1930, Alfred “Jake” Lingle Jr., a 38-year-old reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was murdered near a train station. A big state funeral with bands and military representation treated Lingle as a genuine hero. In time, his reputation became tarnished. Fervently involved in mob activity, Lingle lived a plush life way beyond the means of a newspaperman. His unsolved murder is a cold case; it still is on the books.
Thanks to Gary Clothier
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Moammar Khadaffi to Cause Mafia War with Visit to US?
Moammar Khadaffi made plans last week to stay in New Jersey this month at Libya's U.N. embassy house, where he'll sleep on the lawn in a tent. The locals are up in arms. If one of those Predator drones misses and hits a Mafia house, it could set off a war.
Thanks to Argus.
Thanks to Argus.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Is the Philadelphia-South Jersey Mob in Decline?
Joseph Ligambi, reputed boss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey mob, heads a criminal organization that has nearly as many active members in jail as it does on the streets.
Decimated by a 20-year onslaught of federal prosecutions, bloody internecine power struggles, and turncoat testimony, the local branch of La Cosa Nostra - which in the 1980s had roughly 80 members - now has a base of about 20 "soldiers." And nine of them are in prison.
Simply put, the Philadelphia Mafia has fallen on hard times. It is no longer the dominant player in the underworld, and is dwarfed in size by some of the area's more violent drug gangs.
That's the picture that has emerged based on a crime-family organizational chart compiled by the Philadelphia Police Department and introduced as evidence at an ongoing hearing into a casino service-industry license for Joseph N. Merlino, cousin of jailed Philadelphia mob leader Joseph S. "Skinny Joey" Merlino.
The hearing, before a Casino Control Commission examiner, resumes today. Joseph N. Merlino is scheduled to testify by the conclusion of the proceedings this week.
Merlino, 42, and his mother, Phyllis, head Bayshore Rebar, a Pleasantville construction company that has twice been denied a service-industry license because of suspected mob ties.
The hearing has included testimony from an ex-FBI agent called as a witness for Merlino who has said that, based on his knowledge and on information from mob informants, he does not believe Merlino, his mother, or Bayshore have organized-crime connections.
Other former agents also are expected to testify on Bayshore's behalf.
The Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has presented law enforcement testimony, surveillance reports, and videos it contends show a continuing organized-crime association.
It is in that context that a picture of the beleaguered Philadelphia-South Jersey mob has emerged.
The chart compiled by the Intelligence Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department has provided a graphic outline of the current structure of the crime family.
Sgt. Daniel McCullough, a unit supervisor, testified for the DGE and noted that Ligambi, mobster Martin Angelina, and other high-ranking members of the organization are under constant surveillance by Philadelphia police or other law-enforcement agencies.
McCullough said he could not testify about specifics without "jeopardizing ongoing investigations." But he did present an overview of the crime family.
His remark underscored reports from other law enforcement sources that the Ligambi organization is the target of an FBI racketeering probe.
The Police Department chart used by the DGE included color photos of most of the key figures in the organization along with their birth dates, addresses, and criminal identification numbers.
Ligambi, who turned 70 last month, is listed as the boss. Angelina, 46, is the acting underboss.
Michael Lancellotti and Anthony Staino are said to be capos, or captains. Staino's data includes the designation "South Jersey."
The nephew of onetime high-profile mobster Ralph "Junior" Staino, Anthony Staino lives in the Swedesboro area and, according to authorities, oversees the mob's South Jersey interests.
He and Angelina have been spotted meeting on a regular basis with Ligambi, according to police. Staino's meetings often take around 6 a.m. as Ligambi walks his dog in the Packer Park section of South Philadelphia, where he lives.
Another major figure, Steven Mazzone, onetime underboss of "Skinny Joey" Merlino, is listed on the chart as a member of the "Merlino faction" but has no rank.
Police sources say this reflects the fact that Mazzone, on supervised release for a 2001 racketeering conviction, has remained low key and has not been spotted meeting with organization members.
Angelina, who was convicted in the same racketeering case, was jailed twice for violating terms of his supervised release. Philadelphia police surveillance reports of Angelina meeting with Ligambi were used to support those violation charges.
According to the organizational chart, the crime family currently is operating without a "consigliere," or counselor. That post is listed as vacant.
The soldiers listed on the chart are John Ciancaglini, Anthony Nicodemo, Martin Curro, Nicholas Olivieri, Frank Gambino, Anthony Pungitore Sr., Anthony Pungitore Jr., Gaeton Lucibello, and Joseph Stanfa, son of jailed mob boss John Stanfa.
The younger Stanfa's designation may simply be a matter of record-keeping. Most sources say he has been "shelved" and not actively involved since his father lost a mob war in 1994 to the organization's Merlino faction.
Three other "inactive" soldiers are listed: Nicholas Milano, a hit man who served nearly 20 years on murder and racketeering charges and who is the brother of mob informant Eugene "Gino" Milano; Luigi Tripodi, a onetime soldier with the Stanfa organization; and "Junior" Staino, a larger-than-life wiseguy who was recently released from prison and who, at 77, is reported to be in poor health.
The jailed members shown on the chart are "Skinny Joey" Merlino; George Borgesi, who is Ligambi's nephew; former Ligambi underboss Joseph Massimino; convicted drug dealer Damion Canalichio; former Stanfa soldier Vince Fillipelli; and four members of the Scarfo organization convicted in a 1988 racketeering case: Frank Narducci, Salvatore Scafidi, Joseph Pungitore, and Charles Iannece.
Thanks to George Anastasia
Decimated by a 20-year onslaught of federal prosecutions, bloody internecine power struggles, and turncoat testimony, the local branch of La Cosa Nostra - which in the 1980s had roughly 80 members - now has a base of about 20 "soldiers." And nine of them are in prison.
Simply put, the Philadelphia Mafia has fallen on hard times. It is no longer the dominant player in the underworld, and is dwarfed in size by some of the area's more violent drug gangs.
That's the picture that has emerged based on a crime-family organizational chart compiled by the Philadelphia Police Department and introduced as evidence at an ongoing hearing into a casino service-industry license for Joseph N. Merlino, cousin of jailed Philadelphia mob leader Joseph S. "Skinny Joey" Merlino.
The hearing, before a Casino Control Commission examiner, resumes today. Joseph N. Merlino is scheduled to testify by the conclusion of the proceedings this week.
Merlino, 42, and his mother, Phyllis, head Bayshore Rebar, a Pleasantville construction company that has twice been denied a service-industry license because of suspected mob ties.
The hearing has included testimony from an ex-FBI agent called as a witness for Merlino who has said that, based on his knowledge and on information from mob informants, he does not believe Merlino, his mother, or Bayshore have organized-crime connections.
Other former agents also are expected to testify on Bayshore's behalf.
The Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has presented law enforcement testimony, surveillance reports, and videos it contends show a continuing organized-crime association.
It is in that context that a picture of the beleaguered Philadelphia-South Jersey mob has emerged.
The chart compiled by the Intelligence Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department has provided a graphic outline of the current structure of the crime family.
Sgt. Daniel McCullough, a unit supervisor, testified for the DGE and noted that Ligambi, mobster Martin Angelina, and other high-ranking members of the organization are under constant surveillance by Philadelphia police or other law-enforcement agencies.
McCullough said he could not testify about specifics without "jeopardizing ongoing investigations." But he did present an overview of the crime family.
His remark underscored reports from other law enforcement sources that the Ligambi organization is the target of an FBI racketeering probe.
The Police Department chart used by the DGE included color photos of most of the key figures in the organization along with their birth dates, addresses, and criminal identification numbers.
Ligambi, who turned 70 last month, is listed as the boss. Angelina, 46, is the acting underboss.
Michael Lancellotti and Anthony Staino are said to be capos, or captains. Staino's data includes the designation "South Jersey."
The nephew of onetime high-profile mobster Ralph "Junior" Staino, Anthony Staino lives in the Swedesboro area and, according to authorities, oversees the mob's South Jersey interests.
He and Angelina have been spotted meeting on a regular basis with Ligambi, according to police. Staino's meetings often take around 6 a.m. as Ligambi walks his dog in the Packer Park section of South Philadelphia, where he lives.
Another major figure, Steven Mazzone, onetime underboss of "Skinny Joey" Merlino, is listed on the chart as a member of the "Merlino faction" but has no rank.
Police sources say this reflects the fact that Mazzone, on supervised release for a 2001 racketeering conviction, has remained low key and has not been spotted meeting with organization members.
Angelina, who was convicted in the same racketeering case, was jailed twice for violating terms of his supervised release. Philadelphia police surveillance reports of Angelina meeting with Ligambi were used to support those violation charges.
According to the organizational chart, the crime family currently is operating without a "consigliere," or counselor. That post is listed as vacant.
The soldiers listed on the chart are John Ciancaglini, Anthony Nicodemo, Martin Curro, Nicholas Olivieri, Frank Gambino, Anthony Pungitore Sr., Anthony Pungitore Jr., Gaeton Lucibello, and Joseph Stanfa, son of jailed mob boss John Stanfa.
The younger Stanfa's designation may simply be a matter of record-keeping. Most sources say he has been "shelved" and not actively involved since his father lost a mob war in 1994 to the organization's Merlino faction.
Three other "inactive" soldiers are listed: Nicholas Milano, a hit man who served nearly 20 years on murder and racketeering charges and who is the brother of mob informant Eugene "Gino" Milano; Luigi Tripodi, a onetime soldier with the Stanfa organization; and "Junior" Staino, a larger-than-life wiseguy who was recently released from prison and who, at 77, is reported to be in poor health.
The jailed members shown on the chart are "Skinny Joey" Merlino; George Borgesi, who is Ligambi's nephew; former Ligambi underboss Joseph Massimino; convicted drug dealer Damion Canalichio; former Stanfa soldier Vince Fillipelli; and four members of the Scarfo organization convicted in a 1988 racketeering case: Frank Narducci, Salvatore Scafidi, Joseph Pungitore, and Charles Iannece.
Thanks to George Anastasia
Related Headlines
Anthony Staino,
Joe Ligambi,
Joey Merlino,
Michael Lancellotti,
Steven Mazzone
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