Junior Gotti Martini Drinking Contest Prize is a Stabbing According to Construction Worker

A self-styled construction coordinator testified Tuesday on how he once won a martini-drinking contest with John Gotti Jr. and got knifed in the shoulder for his trouble.

The appearance of Michael Finnerty, 43, came after seven days of colorful and sometimes horrific testimony from John Alite, a one-time top Mafia sidekick and buddy but now the sworn enemy of Gotti, a Howard Beach native.

Gotti lashed out at Alite, the star witness for the prosecution, after the jury left the courtroom last Thursday, calling him a dog and a punk.

Gotti is on trial for the fourth time since 2005 in Manhattan federal court on charges of racketeering and two murders. The prosecution contends he was kingpin of the Gambino crime family after his father died. The first three trials ended in hung juries.

The defense, headed by attorney Charles Carnesi, maintains Gotti had turned his back on organized crime by 1999, disillusioned and chastened by the death of John Gotti Sr., his colorful father, the Teflon Don, who was serving a life prison term for murder after avoiding conviction three times.

Finnerty told the jury about a night “in the mid-1980s” at the Shellbank bar on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach.

“John [Gotti] Jr. challenged me to a vodka martini contest and after we had been drinking awhile he left to go to the bathroom,” Finnerty said. “When he got back, I pointed to his glass and reminded him that he didn’t finish his drink.”

Finnerty said Gotti raised his arm as if to strike his drinking companion, “but at first I didn’t see the knife he had. He stabbed me twice in the shoulder blades.”

Finnerty said he fled the bar to a hospital.

“Did you give your real name at the hospital?” he was asked by the prosecution.

“No, they would have called the police,” Finnerty said. “The Gottis ran that neighborhood.”

Finnerty said he hid out until he got word through the grapevine that Gotti no longer was angry with him. He said Gotti explained to him their altercation was about “respect.”

Finnerty pleaded guilty to racketeering charges on the condition that he testify in the Gotti trial in the hope his sentence might be reduced. Finnerty, raised in Howard Beach, testified he dropped out of Christ the King High School as a senior and fell in with friends who operated a car theft ring, selling stolen automobiles to a junkyard.

Finnerty said he later saw Gotti and other Gambino crime family members in various bars and other locations in Queens.

Asked by a prosecutor what his occupation was, Finnerty replied “construction coordinator.”

On his seventh and final day of testimony last Thursday, Alite was being escorted out of the courtroom when he passed the defense table where Gotti was seated.

“You got something you want to say to me?” Alite said to Gotti, who shouted, “You’re a dog and a punk. A dog all your life.”

Judge Kevin Castel admonished Gotti, who apologized.

“You are not doing yourself any favors,” said Castel, who had prior to testimony in the case directed the defendant to remain silent throughout the proceedings.

Meanwhile, a juror in the trial was excused Tuesday after reporting that an incident in which a car nearly struck her had made her afraid to continue. The 55-year-old secretary had asked last week to be excused.

Judge Kevin Castel announced as the trial resumed that she would be released and replaced with an alternate. The juror explained that a car grazed her as she crossed a Manhattan street Oct. 2.

Thanks to Phillip Newman

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Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) Extended Against Frank Calabrese

"When Enough is Enough"

I have been informed that the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois has requested that the Attorney General of the United States extend the SAMS (special administrative measures) to Frank Calabrese for an additional year. Frank has been kept in almost complete isolation from his family and friends since November of 2008. He is allowed very limited contact with the outside world. He cannot talk to any prisoners or staff. The SAMS program is supposed to be reserved for terrorists both Foreign and Domestic. Matt Hale the white supremacist has been under SAMS along with Mid-Eastern Terrorists. This is sad news for Frank and his family. Otherwise it is my understanding that he is a model prisoner.

Unfortunately we do not have access to the request to determine why Frank should be subject to SAMS but many speculate it is the way he moved his lips during closing argument. Two anonymous jurors who apparently are expert lip readers claimed that they saw Frank move his lips in such a manner that they flapped in the wind "you are a fucking dead man". This was reported 2 weeks after the trial ended. There may be other reasons why Frank is subject to SAMS but its not because Frank Jr wants to visit his father. Frank Jr. the "gutless wonder" inflicted pain on a lot of families for his own agenda mostly to become famous since he was a nobody in a world full of somebodies. Now he can go down in the history books as the most famous traitor in Chicago without a red dress! Frank no doubt will want to challenge the SAMS but its probably a losing battle. Stay tuned for more as this story develops.

Thanks to Joseph "The Shark" Lopez

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Joseph "Mousie" Massimino, Reputed Underboss of Philadelphia Mob, Granted Early Prison Release

Joseph "Mousie" Massimino, the reputed underboss of the Philadelphia mob, is coming home after serving more than five years of a 10-year sentence on a New Jersey racketeering charge.

Judge Anthony Pugliese reduced Massimino's sentence to time served during a sentence reconsideration hearing today in Camden County Superior Court.

In issuing what amounted to a get out of jail card to the 57-year-old mob leader, Pugliese accepted the arguments of Massimino's lawyer who said "he's done more than enough time considering the nature of the crime."

In fact, attorney M.W. "Mike" Pinsky pointed out that Massimino has served more time than any other defendant in the case, including a co-defendant who pleaded guilty to the same charges and was given the same 10-year sentence.

Massimino was denied release in February by a state parole board that cited his extensive criminal history and his failure to abide by prior parole requirements.

"If you're alleged to be a member of organized crime sometimes you're treated more harshly than if you're not," Pinsky said in pointing out the disparity between Massimino's treatment and that of his co-defendants.

All eight defendants in the case pleaded guilty.

Massimino, who began serving his sentence in June 2004, was charged with being one of the leaders of a multi-million dollar, mob-linked bookmaking operation and also with engaging in loan-sharking.

The charges were part of a racketeering indictment brought by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office based on an investigation by the State Police.

Pinsky argued that while the charge was racketeering, the offenses were gambling and loan-sharking and that taken separately they would have amounted to no more than five-year sentence.

The sentence reconsideration hearing grew out of a motion filed earlier this year by Jeffrey Zucker, Massimino's original lawyer.

Zucker filed the motion after the parole board had turned down Massimino's request for release. Zucker cited a stipulation in Massimino 2004 guilty plea agreement that permitted him to ask for a sentence reconsideration if he were denied parole after serving five years.

The State Attorney General's Office neither opposed nor supported the application for release, but agreed that a sentence reconsideration hearing was warranted under the terms of the original plea deal.

Massimino would have been eligible for release in 11 months in any event. At that point, Pinsky said, he would have maxed out his sentence under state guidelines.

In addition to reducing the sentence to time served, Pugliese also ordered Massimino to serve one year probation, to enroll in gambler's anonymous and to take part in drug and behavior modification counsel.

Pugliese added those requirement after noting that the parole board, in denying Massimino's request in February, cited his failure to recognize and acknowledge his criminal behavior.

Massimino, a close associate of reputed mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi, has a criminal case file dating back to the 1970s. The parole board cited his lengthy record which includes convictions for, among other things, drug dealing, assault, gambling and receiving stolen property.

He is also believed to be one of several targets in an ongoing federal racketeering investigation aimed at the Ligambi organization.

Three members of the FBI's Philadelphia-based organized crime squad were in the courtroom during today's hearing. They declined to comment about the case.

Pinsky said his client, who formerly owned a bar-restaurant in South Philadelphia, probably would be released early next week.

He first had to be returned to Northern State Prison in Newark where he has been housed for most of his sentence.

Pinsky said the prison, regard as one of the toughest in the state, was an unusual place for someone convicted of bookmaking to be housed. It was, he said, just one example of how Massimino's sentence exceeded the nature of his crimes.

"It's overkill for the type of offense we're dealing with," he said in arguments before Pugliese.

Thanks to George Anastasia

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