Jerome Tuccille's newest book, Gallo be Thy Name, follows the family saga of how the Gallo wine family rose from abject poverty in the early 1900s to become the most successful wine company in the world though hard work, unfettered ambition, and crime. From selling Dago Red to Al Capone during Prohibition to conquering America's wine market with cheap wine brands Thunderbird and Ripple, and from the Great Depression to the roiling farm labor movements of the sixties and seventies, and from the '90s wine boom to today's financial gyrations the Gallos got rich with iconic brothers Ernest and Julio steering the ship. But the real story began before they were even born.
Beneath the E. & J. Gallo Winery's carefully polished surface is a sweeping story of passion and power, swirling with rumors of murder. In Gallo Be Thy Name, biographer Jerome Tuccille goes beneath the shiny surface of the Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery to unearth a story that began with the Italian immigrant brothers Giuseppe and Michelo Gallo bribing local police, Federal Agents, and elected officials all across the nation to sell bootleg wine. Trainloads of illegal wine and grapes were shipped from California to Chicago and New Jersey in a partnership with the Mob, and that was just the beginning of the Gallo Wine story.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Widow of Mob Associate Linked to Illinois State Senator, James DeLeo
Illinois state Sen. James DeLeo (D-Chicago) -- who has made public statements questioning the existence of the Chicago mob -- was credited by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office with trying to help the widow of one of Chicago's most infamous slain mobsters.
The Northwest Side lawmaker is listed in a secret hiring database the then-governor's aides kept as the political sponsor for Anne Spilotro, the widow of murdered mob associate Michael Spilotro.
She's among 146 "recommended" job candidates linked to DeLeo by Blagojevich's office, though it isn't clear for what job.
Thirty-nine of them wound up being hired or promoted, according to the records, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, making DeLeo one of the top go-to guys at the Statehouse for jobs inside the Blagojevich administration.
"There's names on there I've never recognized," DeLeo said when shown copies of the job lists bearing his name. "I don't even know where they came from, who hired them. I have no idea who most of those people are.
"It makes me angry people's names are on a list with my name coded in there [and] that I don't even recognize any these names."
DeLeo said he knew Anne Spilotro but had no idea why she was on his jobs list. "Would I remember that name? Would I remember that name?" DeLeo repeated. "I'd remember that name. I would remember that name."
Michael Spilotro's brother, Anthony Spilotro, was once the Chicago crime syndicate's Las Vegas boss. The bodies of the brothers were found buried in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield after they were beaten to death in a 1986 mob hit.
In 2007, Anne Spilotro testified in the landmark Operation Family Secrets mob trial that she felt ripped off by DeLeo and another investor who bought her business in the late 1980s, after her husband was killed.
Spilotro, an employee of the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation since 1998, said she never discussed changing jobs or a promotion with DeLeo. "I haven't even talked to him for years," she said.
Another name on DeLeo's jobs list is the daughter of Marty Gutilla, managing partner of Tavern on Rush, the bar DeLeo co-owns with Illinois Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) and others.
Shauna Gutilla Kelley, a $99,924-a-year division head for the Illinois Commerce Commission, was hired by Blagojevich's administration in August 2003. Since then, her salary has risen 59 percent, state records show.
DeLeo denied persuading Blagojevich's administration to hire or promote her -- though he acknowledged recommending Kelley for a state job "two administrations ago," under now-imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan.
Thanks to Dave McKinney
The Northwest Side lawmaker is listed in a secret hiring database the then-governor's aides kept as the political sponsor for Anne Spilotro, the widow of murdered mob associate Michael Spilotro.
She's among 146 "recommended" job candidates linked to DeLeo by Blagojevich's office, though it isn't clear for what job.
Thirty-nine of them wound up being hired or promoted, according to the records, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, making DeLeo one of the top go-to guys at the Statehouse for jobs inside the Blagojevich administration.
"There's names on there I've never recognized," DeLeo said when shown copies of the job lists bearing his name. "I don't even know where they came from, who hired them. I have no idea who most of those people are.
"It makes me angry people's names are on a list with my name coded in there [and] that I don't even recognize any these names."
DeLeo said he knew Anne Spilotro but had no idea why she was on his jobs list. "Would I remember that name? Would I remember that name?" DeLeo repeated. "I'd remember that name. I would remember that name."
Michael Spilotro's brother, Anthony Spilotro, was once the Chicago crime syndicate's Las Vegas boss. The bodies of the brothers were found buried in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield after they were beaten to death in a 1986 mob hit.
In 2007, Anne Spilotro testified in the landmark Operation Family Secrets mob trial that she felt ripped off by DeLeo and another investor who bought her business in the late 1980s, after her husband was killed.
Spilotro, an employee of the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation since 1998, said she never discussed changing jobs or a promotion with DeLeo. "I haven't even talked to him for years," she said.
Another name on DeLeo's jobs list is the daughter of Marty Gutilla, managing partner of Tavern on Rush, the bar DeLeo co-owns with Illinois Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) and others.
Shauna Gutilla Kelley, a $99,924-a-year division head for the Illinois Commerce Commission, was hired by Blagojevich's administration in August 2003. Since then, her salary has risen 59 percent, state records show.
DeLeo denied persuading Blagojevich's administration to hire or promote her -- though he acknowledged recommending Kelley for a state job "two administrations ago," under now-imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan.
Thanks to Dave McKinney
The End for "Pretty Boy" Floyd
Two cars traveled down a country road towards the Conkle farm, two miles south of a small town named Clarkson on the eastern edge of Ohio. It was 4:10 on the afternoon of October 22, 1934, and history was about to unfold.
In one car were four Bureau agents, led by Chicago Special Agent in Charge Melvin Purvis. In the other were four local law enforcement officers, headed by East Liverpool Chief of Police Hugh McDermott.
The group was searching for Charles Arthur Floyd—known far and wide as “Pretty Boy,” a nickname he hated and refused to answer to, preferring “Choc”—and they quickly realized they’d found him. Wearing a navy blue suit, Floyd jumped from a car he was riding in and bolted across a rolling field, pistol in hand.
Within minutes, Floyd would breathe his last.
Law enforcement had been closing in on Floyd over the past two days. Floyd, just 30 years old, had been in trouble with the law for about a dozen years. He’d stolen money, robbed banks, and reportedly killed some 10 people. But it was his participation in the so-called Kansas City Massacre—a brazen attack in June 1933 that killed four lawmen, including a Bureau agent—that brought the FBI into the chase.
Floyd had been traveling across the country in the fall of 1934 with another conspirator in the Kansas City attack—Adam Richetti, an ex-sheriff turned bad—and their two girlfriends when the net tightened. On the wet, foggy evening of October 20, not long after the foursome had crossed into Ohio, Floyd ran their car into a telephone poll. Floyd and Richetti camped out nearby as the women went to have the car repaired. The men were eventually spotted, and law enforcement was called.
Richetti was soon captured, but Floyd ran off on foot. Hungry and tired, the fugitive ended up on the Conkle place on the afternoon of October 22 and tried to hitch a ride. That’s when the FBI and law enforcement finally caught up with him.
Fleeing the pursuing officers, Floyd zigzagged across the farm towards a group of trees. All eight law enforcement officers followed, calling on him to stop. As Floyd looked over his shoulder to see the pursuit, gunfire rang out. Floyd fell. “I’m done for, you’ve hit me twice,” he said after officers approached.
As he lay dying, Floyd was questioned. He admitted his identity, but little else. He slipped into unconsciousness and died soon after.
After his death, the legend of “Pretty Boy” just continued to grow. His myth even sparked a revisionist ballad by folk singer Woodie Guthrie, suggesting Floyd saved “many a starving farmer” from losing their homes. While Floyd reportedly destroyed mortgage notes from a bank or two that he robbed in hopes of saving a few farmers from foreclosure, his reputation as a humanitarian or a “Robin Hood” is undeserved. He robbed and stole to support a lifestyle of flash and ease and didn’t hesitate to shoot and kill when it suited him.
For the FBI, Floyd’s death was another key victory in the war against gangsters.
In one car were four Bureau agents, led by Chicago Special Agent in Charge Melvin Purvis. In the other were four local law enforcement officers, headed by East Liverpool Chief of Police Hugh McDermott.
The group was searching for Charles Arthur Floyd—known far and wide as “Pretty Boy,” a nickname he hated and refused to answer to, preferring “Choc”—and they quickly realized they’d found him. Wearing a navy blue suit, Floyd jumped from a car he was riding in and bolted across a rolling field, pistol in hand.
Within minutes, Floyd would breathe his last.
Law enforcement had been closing in on Floyd over the past two days. Floyd, just 30 years old, had been in trouble with the law for about a dozen years. He’d stolen money, robbed banks, and reportedly killed some 10 people. But it was his participation in the so-called Kansas City Massacre—a brazen attack in June 1933 that killed four lawmen, including a Bureau agent—that brought the FBI into the chase.
Floyd had been traveling across the country in the fall of 1934 with another conspirator in the Kansas City attack—Adam Richetti, an ex-sheriff turned bad—and their two girlfriends when the net tightened. On the wet, foggy evening of October 20, not long after the foursome had crossed into Ohio, Floyd ran their car into a telephone poll. Floyd and Richetti camped out nearby as the women went to have the car repaired. The men were eventually spotted, and law enforcement was called.
Richetti was soon captured, but Floyd ran off on foot. Hungry and tired, the fugitive ended up on the Conkle place on the afternoon of October 22 and tried to hitch a ride. That’s when the FBI and law enforcement finally caught up with him.
Fleeing the pursuing officers, Floyd zigzagged across the farm towards a group of trees. All eight law enforcement officers followed, calling on him to stop. As Floyd looked over his shoulder to see the pursuit, gunfire rang out. Floyd fell. “I’m done for, you’ve hit me twice,” he said after officers approached.
As he lay dying, Floyd was questioned. He admitted his identity, but little else. He slipped into unconsciousness and died soon after.
After his death, the legend of “Pretty Boy” just continued to grow. His myth even sparked a revisionist ballad by folk singer Woodie Guthrie, suggesting Floyd saved “many a starving farmer” from losing their homes. While Floyd reportedly destroyed mortgage notes from a bank or two that he robbed in hopes of saving a few farmers from foreclosure, his reputation as a humanitarian or a “Robin Hood” is undeserved. He robbed and stole to support a lifestyle of flash and ease and didn’t hesitate to shoot and kill when it suited him.
For the FBI, Floyd’s death was another key victory in the war against gangsters.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Guilty Plea to Tax Evasion by Reputed Mobster, Rudy Fratto
Reputed suburban Chicago mobster Rudy Fratto pleaded guilty Tuesday to evading thousands of dollars in federal income taxes.
Fratto, 65, of suburban Darien, pleaded guilty to a single charge of evading $30,052 in taxes on income of $199,595 for 2005. But he admitted in a signed plea agreement that he actually evaded $141,192 in taxes on $835,641 in income over seven years starting in 2001.
The maximum sentence on the charge is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The plea agreement, however, said the sentence could be more like 12 to 18 months under federal sentencing guidelines.
Fratto remained free on $4,500 bond pending sentencing, which U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly set for Jan. 12.
Fratto admitted in his plea agreement that he had arranged to have income funneled into the bank account of a defunct company in an effort to evade the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service. He received income in 2005 from jobs ranging from handyman to pasta salesman, according to the document.
Fratto's name has come up at least twice in connection with organized crime in recent federal cases.
Prosecutors introduced evidence that he was an associate of the Chicago police department's former chief of detectives, William Hanhardt, who is now serving a federal prison sentence as the leader of a mob-related jewel theft ring.
Fratto's name also came up in connection with the landmark 2007 Operation Family Secrets case -- the biggest Chicago mob trial in decades. He was listed on papers prepared by the FBI as a serious threat to the safety of the government's star witness in the case, admitted mobster and hit man Nicholas Calabrese.
Fratto's name also appears on a chart published by the Chicago Crime Commission in 1997, showing the structure of the so-called Chicago Outfit.
Thanks to Mike Robinson
Fratto, 65, of suburban Darien, pleaded guilty to a single charge of evading $30,052 in taxes on income of $199,595 for 2005. But he admitted in a signed plea agreement that he actually evaded $141,192 in taxes on $835,641 in income over seven years starting in 2001.
The maximum sentence on the charge is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The plea agreement, however, said the sentence could be more like 12 to 18 months under federal sentencing guidelines.
Fratto remained free on $4,500 bond pending sentencing, which U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly set for Jan. 12.
Fratto admitted in his plea agreement that he had arranged to have income funneled into the bank account of a defunct company in an effort to evade the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service. He received income in 2005 from jobs ranging from handyman to pasta salesman, according to the document.
Fratto's name has come up at least twice in connection with organized crime in recent federal cases.
Prosecutors introduced evidence that he was an associate of the Chicago police department's former chief of detectives, William Hanhardt, who is now serving a federal prison sentence as the leader of a mob-related jewel theft ring.
Fratto's name also came up in connection with the landmark 2007 Operation Family Secrets case -- the biggest Chicago mob trial in decades. He was listed on papers prepared by the FBI as a serious threat to the safety of the government's star witness in the case, admitted mobster and hit man Nicholas Calabrese.
Fratto's name also appears on a chart published by the Chicago Crime Commission in 1997, showing the structure of the so-called Chicago Outfit.
Thanks to Mike Robinson
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Reputed Bonanno Mafia Crew Pleads Guilty in Fort Lauderdale
Six men have pleaded guilty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to taking part in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy allegedly tied to the Mafia, police say.
Authorities said the men had ties with organized crime's Bonanno family, The Miami Herald reported.
The men, all from Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal racketeering statute. They were accused being involved in a variety of crimes including identity theft, drug trafficking, arson and Medicare fraud - all to benefit the organized crime group.
The alleged leader of the crew, Thomas Fiore of Boynton Beach, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, along with four other alleged co-conspirators.
Authorities said the men had ties with organized crime's Bonanno family, The Miami Herald reported.
The men, all from Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal racketeering statute. They were accused being involved in a variety of crimes including identity theft, drug trafficking, arson and Medicare fraud - all to benefit the organized crime group.
The alleged leader of the crew, Thomas Fiore of Boynton Beach, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, along with four other alleged co-conspirators.
Mobsters Are Passed by Cheats on the Casino "Black Book"
Of the 21 people banned from Nevada casinos between 1990 and 2000, most had alleged mob connections. From 2001 to today, only seven names were added to the list, and all except one were casino cheats.
This twofold change — the decline of additions to the list and the emphasis on cheaters instead of mobsters — is an easy indicator of how Clark County and its casinos have been transformed. The contrast reveals a Las Vegas that has perhaps outgrown a landmark bit of gaming regulation: the infamous Black Book.
"How important is the Black Book today?" asked Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, then answered his own question: "I would say not very."
At least not in comparison to the first List of Excluded Persons, issued in 1960 with 11 names tightly tied to organized crime — mob bosses with hidden interests in casinos, enforcers connected to gangland murders, drug traffickers and a person linked to a Castro assassination plot.
"It was a very powerful symbol," said Robert Faiss, a gaming attorney and former Gaming Commission secretary. Federal authorities saw Las Vegas as a town where mobsters colluded with casinos; the list began as a public relations counter-strike intended to forestall federal regulation of gambling.
Today's Black Book, by contrast, is used to combat the threat of cheats, people who damage Las Vegas' revenue.
Consider the last two names to be added: William Cushing and Michael McNeive. Both pleaded guilty in court late last month to cheating at slots with devices that tricked the machines into thinking $1 bills were $100 bills. Cushing and McNeive have no apparent connections to organized crime.
The first cheaters without mob connections appeared in the Black Book in the mid-'80s, when gaming was becoming increasingly corporate. The threat had shifted from something political — the appearance of organized crime — to something fiscal — lost revenue.
In the past nine years, the board has focused almost solely on cheats, and the rate of additions to the list has considerably dwindled — a change that may also reflect larger changes on the Strip. It's no longer possible to cheat a slot machine with fishing line attached to a quarter. Anyone suspected of marking cards will have surveillance cameras zoomed into their pores. Gaming is now coinless and computerized; cheats who can't crack a computer are out of luck.
This means one of two things: There are now fewer cheaters, or there are now better cheaters.
"It's just much more difficult to cheat the machines," said Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement at the Nevada Gaming Control Board, "and, logically, it's much more difficult for us to detect those types of cheating."
If cheaters are caught, it's certain casino operators won't fight the Control Board adding them to the excluded list. With casinos keeping their own in-house records of undesirables, the board's list is — depending on whom you ask — a doubling up of noble and mutual efforts, or a redundant relic.
"As Vegas changes we have to change with it," Markling said. "The Black Book is probably a good example of that."
Thanks to Abigail Goldman
This twofold change — the decline of additions to the list and the emphasis on cheaters instead of mobsters — is an easy indicator of how Clark County and its casinos have been transformed. The contrast reveals a Las Vegas that has perhaps outgrown a landmark bit of gaming regulation: the infamous Black Book.
"How important is the Black Book today?" asked Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, then answered his own question: "I would say not very."
At least not in comparison to the first List of Excluded Persons, issued in 1960 with 11 names tightly tied to organized crime — mob bosses with hidden interests in casinos, enforcers connected to gangland murders, drug traffickers and a person linked to a Castro assassination plot.
"It was a very powerful symbol," said Robert Faiss, a gaming attorney and former Gaming Commission secretary. Federal authorities saw Las Vegas as a town where mobsters colluded with casinos; the list began as a public relations counter-strike intended to forestall federal regulation of gambling.
Today's Black Book, by contrast, is used to combat the threat of cheats, people who damage Las Vegas' revenue.
Consider the last two names to be added: William Cushing and Michael McNeive. Both pleaded guilty in court late last month to cheating at slots with devices that tricked the machines into thinking $1 bills were $100 bills. Cushing and McNeive have no apparent connections to organized crime.
The first cheaters without mob connections appeared in the Black Book in the mid-'80s, when gaming was becoming increasingly corporate. The threat had shifted from something political — the appearance of organized crime — to something fiscal — lost revenue.
In the past nine years, the board has focused almost solely on cheats, and the rate of additions to the list has considerably dwindled — a change that may also reflect larger changes on the Strip. It's no longer possible to cheat a slot machine with fishing line attached to a quarter. Anyone suspected of marking cards will have surveillance cameras zoomed into their pores. Gaming is now coinless and computerized; cheats who can't crack a computer are out of luck.
This means one of two things: There are now fewer cheaters, or there are now better cheaters.
"It's just much more difficult to cheat the machines," said Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement at the Nevada Gaming Control Board, "and, logically, it's much more difficult for us to detect those types of cheating."
If cheaters are caught, it's certain casino operators won't fight the Control Board adding them to the excluded list. With casinos keeping their own in-house records of undesirables, the board's list is — depending on whom you ask — a doubling up of noble and mutual efforts, or a redundant relic.
"As Vegas changes we have to change with it," Markling said. "The Black Book is probably a good example of that."
Thanks to Abigail Goldman
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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
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
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
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
Medicare Fraud Creates Easy Money for Organized Crime
Lured by easier money and shorter prison sentences, Mafia figures and other violent criminals are increasingly moving into Medicare fraud and spilling blood over what was once a white-collar crime. Around the nation, federal investigators have been threatened, an informant's body was found riddled with bullets, and a woman was discovered dead in a pharmacy under investigation, her throat slit with a piece of broken toilet seat.
For criminals, Medicare schemes offer a greater payoff and carry much shorter prison sentences than offenses such as drug trafficking or robbery. "We've seen more people that used to be involved in (dealing) drugs are switching over to health care fraud because it's not as dangerous," Miami FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said.
Medicare scammers typically make their money by billing Medicare for medical equipment and drugs that patients never receive - and never needed. Some pay homeless people on Los Angeles' Skid Row for Medicare or Social Security numbers to use in fake billing invoices. Others intimidate elderly victims to use their Medicare numbers, federal authorities say.
Most Medicare schemes are based in cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston. And rather than building an elaborate hierarchy like the Mafia or other gangs, many Medicare con artists use common street criminals to recruit patients and doctors, authorities said.
A Medicare scammer could easily net at least $25,000 a day while risking a relatively modest 10 years in prison if convicted on a single count. A cocaine dealer could take weeks to make that amount while risking up to life in prison.
"Building a Medicare fraud scam is far safer than dealing in crack or dealing in stolen cars, and it's far more lucrative," said Lewis Morris, lead attorney at the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general's office.
It's unclear how many violent crimes are tied to Medicare fraud because most of them are carried out by someone within the hoax who attacks another person taking part in the crime.
One Southern California criminal task force has arrested about 50 suspects for Medicare fraud in the last three years. And 11 members of New York's Bonanno family were indicted in May in a Medicare fraud scheme in South Florida. They were accused of stealing patients' Medicare numbers and using them to submit false claims. Other allegations included identity theft and conspiring to commit murder.
Even criminals with violent records, including a convicted murderer, have been able to obtain Medicare supplier licenses. Applicants with felony records can only be rejected if their convictions are 10 years old or less.
"It's outrageous that those trusted to provide medical care are really nothing but common criminals," said federal prosecutor Kirk Ogrosky, who heads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force across the United States.
Guillermo Denis Gonzalez spent 14 years in prison for second-degree murder, but after his 2006 release, records showed he soon bought a business called DG Medical in the Miami suburb of Hialeah and applied to be a Medicare supplier. Within two months, federal investigators were alerted that the Medicare claims the company were making were fraudulent and suspended its license. By then, the sham company had illegally netted $31,000.
Last month, he pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud and now awaits sentencing. He is also charged in a gruesome killing in May 2008 in which police say he repeatedly stabbed a man with a kitchen knife, crushed his face with a mallet, then cut off the victim's head and dismembered the body before stuffing the parts in trash bins. The killing might be related to Medicare fraud, authorities said.
His attorney, Stephen Kramer, has declined to comment.
Medicare-fraud investigations used to focus mainly on patient records and financial papers, but now the crime scenes are increasingly bloody:
- In 2007, authorities found Juana Gonzalez lying in a pool of blood on the floor of her Miami pharmacy. Her cousin was charged with second-degree murder, accused of taking a piece of a broken toilet and slitting Gonzalez's throat. Federal authorities said they were investigating the pharmacy for Medicare fraud and believe the crimes are related.
- In 2004, a week after the FBI issued search warrants on more than 50 fraudulent Medicare storefronts in Miami, the body of Ernesto Valdes was found in the back seat of his car, riddled with bullets. Federal authorities said he had information that could have linked players in the $148 million fraud scheme. No one has ever been charged in his slaying.
- In 2006, members of a Russian-Armenian organized crime ring were indicted for allegedly bilking Medicare of more than $20 million through a group of medical clinics they ran in the Los Angeles area. The group included Konstantin Grigoryan, a former colonel in the Soviet army, family members and others with past criminal records.
"They don't have the typical structure that we see in Italian mobs. They'll work with whoever can make them money. And if they don't get their way, they won't be ashamed to kidnap somebody, to shoot somebody," said Glendale Police Lt. Steve Davey, who leads the Southern California Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.
The violent crimes are mostly to settle a debt or silence a witness.
"It's in-house. Typically professional hits, generally unsolved. Usually it's just a bullet in the head, nobody saw anything," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Stephen Opferman.
The Armenian gangs have also aggressively pursued elderly patients, intimidating them to obtain their Medicare numbers, Opferman said. Police have received reports from family members who feared their grandmother had been abducted, only to learn later that she was picked up in a van and taken to a fake store where her Medicare number was swiped.
The groups have broken into computer banking systems or paid moles to provide key information from court clerk's offices and various government agencies, Davey said.
In Los Angeles, two federal authorities investigating Medicare fraud say colleagues have been threatened and had their cars followed.
Sometimes Medicare fraud turns violent without the involvement of organized crime. Illinois podiatrist Ronald Mikos was sentenced to death for the 2002 fatal shooting of a patient to keep her from telling a federal grand jury how he defrauded Medicare. He shot the woman six times as she sat in her wheelchair at her home. Her subpoena was found on the floor next to her.
Thanks to Kelli Kennedy
For criminals, Medicare schemes offer a greater payoff and carry much shorter prison sentences than offenses such as drug trafficking or robbery. "We've seen more people that used to be involved in (dealing) drugs are switching over to health care fraud because it's not as dangerous," Miami FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said.
Medicare scammers typically make their money by billing Medicare for medical equipment and drugs that patients never receive - and never needed. Some pay homeless people on Los Angeles' Skid Row for Medicare or Social Security numbers to use in fake billing invoices. Others intimidate elderly victims to use their Medicare numbers, federal authorities say.
Most Medicare schemes are based in cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston. And rather than building an elaborate hierarchy like the Mafia or other gangs, many Medicare con artists use common street criminals to recruit patients and doctors, authorities said.
A Medicare scammer could easily net at least $25,000 a day while risking a relatively modest 10 years in prison if convicted on a single count. A cocaine dealer could take weeks to make that amount while risking up to life in prison.
"Building a Medicare fraud scam is far safer than dealing in crack or dealing in stolen cars, and it's far more lucrative," said Lewis Morris, lead attorney at the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general's office.
It's unclear how many violent crimes are tied to Medicare fraud because most of them are carried out by someone within the hoax who attacks another person taking part in the crime.
One Southern California criminal task force has arrested about 50 suspects for Medicare fraud in the last three years. And 11 members of New York's Bonanno family were indicted in May in a Medicare fraud scheme in South Florida. They were accused of stealing patients' Medicare numbers and using them to submit false claims. Other allegations included identity theft and conspiring to commit murder.
Even criminals with violent records, including a convicted murderer, have been able to obtain Medicare supplier licenses. Applicants with felony records can only be rejected if their convictions are 10 years old or less.
"It's outrageous that those trusted to provide medical care are really nothing but common criminals," said federal prosecutor Kirk Ogrosky, who heads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force across the United States.
Guillermo Denis Gonzalez spent 14 years in prison for second-degree murder, but after his 2006 release, records showed he soon bought a business called DG Medical in the Miami suburb of Hialeah and applied to be a Medicare supplier. Within two months, federal investigators were alerted that the Medicare claims the company were making were fraudulent and suspended its license. By then, the sham company had illegally netted $31,000.
Last month, he pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud and now awaits sentencing. He is also charged in a gruesome killing in May 2008 in which police say he repeatedly stabbed a man with a kitchen knife, crushed his face with a mallet, then cut off the victim's head and dismembered the body before stuffing the parts in trash bins. The killing might be related to Medicare fraud, authorities said.
His attorney, Stephen Kramer, has declined to comment.
Medicare-fraud investigations used to focus mainly on patient records and financial papers, but now the crime scenes are increasingly bloody:
- In 2007, authorities found Juana Gonzalez lying in a pool of blood on the floor of her Miami pharmacy. Her cousin was charged with second-degree murder, accused of taking a piece of a broken toilet and slitting Gonzalez's throat. Federal authorities said they were investigating the pharmacy for Medicare fraud and believe the crimes are related.
- In 2004, a week after the FBI issued search warrants on more than 50 fraudulent Medicare storefronts in Miami, the body of Ernesto Valdes was found in the back seat of his car, riddled with bullets. Federal authorities said he had information that could have linked players in the $148 million fraud scheme. No one has ever been charged in his slaying.
- In 2006, members of a Russian-Armenian organized crime ring were indicted for allegedly bilking Medicare of more than $20 million through a group of medical clinics they ran in the Los Angeles area. The group included Konstantin Grigoryan, a former colonel in the Soviet army, family members and others with past criminal records.
"They don't have the typical structure that we see in Italian mobs. They'll work with whoever can make them money. And if they don't get their way, they won't be ashamed to kidnap somebody, to shoot somebody," said Glendale Police Lt. Steve Davey, who leads the Southern California Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.
The violent crimes are mostly to settle a debt or silence a witness.
"It's in-house. Typically professional hits, generally unsolved. Usually it's just a bullet in the head, nobody saw anything," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Stephen Opferman.
The Armenian gangs have also aggressively pursued elderly patients, intimidating them to obtain their Medicare numbers, Opferman said. Police have received reports from family members who feared their grandmother had been abducted, only to learn later that she was picked up in a van and taken to a fake store where her Medicare number was swiped.
The groups have broken into computer banking systems or paid moles to provide key information from court clerk's offices and various government agencies, Davey said.
In Los Angeles, two federal authorities investigating Medicare fraud say colleagues have been threatened and had their cars followed.
Sometimes Medicare fraud turns violent without the involvement of organized crime. Illinois podiatrist Ronald Mikos was sentenced to death for the 2002 fatal shooting of a patient to keep her from telling a federal grand jury how he defrauded Medicare. He shot the woman six times as she sat in her wheelchair at her home. Her subpoena was found on the floor next to her.
Thanks to Kelli Kennedy
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Gotti Painted as Typical Gangster at Trial
Victoria Gotti may be starting off a book tour like a celebrity author, but her brother John "Junior" Gotti has been sweating it out in court as prosecutors try to show he was a typical organized crime cretin.
For a full week ending Thursday, the federal government used its star witness, John Alite, to convince a federal jury in Manhattan that Gotti was as lethal a threat to society as anyone else in the Gambino crime family.
The testimony marks the first time in four racketeering trials for Gotti over the last four years that the government has produced a witness who could so dramatically link Gotti to stabbings and murders and beatings in the 1980s and 1990s.
Prosecutors seem intent on taking a shine off the Gotti name that has resulted in part from his sister.
Thanks to WCAX
For a full week ending Thursday, the federal government used its star witness, John Alite, to convince a federal jury in Manhattan that Gotti was as lethal a threat to society as anyone else in the Gambino crime family.
The testimony marks the first time in four racketeering trials for Gotti over the last four years that the government has produced a witness who could so dramatically link Gotti to stabbings and murders and beatings in the 1980s and 1990s.
Prosecutors seem intent on taking a shine off the Gotti name that has resulted in part from his sister.
Thanks to WCAX
Junior Gotti Explodes in Court
And on the seventh day, he lost it.
An enraged John A. (Junior) Gotti exploded Thursday, fed up after a week's worth of damning testimony from his ex-best friend - reportedly threatening to murder the mob informant in a Manhattan courtroom.
"I'll kill you," Gotti mouthed at John Alite just before the once inseparable duo shared a high-decibel Mafia meltdown in front of a stunned audience.
Jurors didn't see Gotti send that silent message to Alite, and they were ushered out of the courtroom before the real fireworks minutes later.
As Alite stepped down from the witness stand, he slowed and snarled at Gotti.
"You got something to say to me?" the star government witness barked, later telling the judge about the threat.
"You fag!" Gotti shouted back. "Did I kill little girls? You're a punk. You're a dog. You're a dog. You always were a dog your whole life, you punk dog."
The ugly encounter in federal court came after Alite blamed one of Gotti's uncles for a murder in the early 1990s.
The testimony enraged Gotti, who shouted at Alite while court officers intervened.
"You want to strangle little girls in a motel?" Gotti screamed as Alite was led away. "You dog!"
Alite had just testified that Vincent Gotti had strangled a young woman in a drug-fueled fight and left her body in a Queens motel bathtub.
Defense lawyer Charles Carnesi suggested Alite was the real killer.
"Ridiculous," said Alite, laughing. "His uncle, yes, strangled somebody and killed her. ... I wasn't there."
Alite confirmed that Junior was later blamed for the slaying, infuriating the Gambino boss.
Gotti, 45, facing his fourth racketeering trial, apologized for mouthing off, but federal Judge Kevin Castel was not moved by the mea culpa and said another outburst would land him in contempt.
"You are not doing yourself any favors, and you violated my direction," said Castel, who had warned Gotti during jury selection to keep his mouth shut.
Castel said he did not see Gotti mouth the threat at Alite, but accepted Prosecutor Elie Honig's claim that a U.S. Marshal saw Gotti do it.
"He lipped to me, 'We're gonna kill you,'" Alite told the judge. "So I said, 'What?' And he said, 'We're gonna kill you.'"
Gotti's mother, Victoria, said Alite went after her son because Carnesi was getting too close to the truth. Carnesi had forced Alite to recount hundreds of lies he had made - to the government, lawyers, family and friends - as he tried to worm his way out of a life sentence.
"Alite is a pathological liar - a rat caught in a proverbial trap, caught in his own lies, and he lashed out," she said.
The ex-friends ignored one another when they returned to court later in the day.
Thanks to Alison Gendar and Larry Mcshane
An enraged John A. (Junior) Gotti exploded Thursday, fed up after a week's worth of damning testimony from his ex-best friend - reportedly threatening to murder the mob informant in a Manhattan courtroom.
"I'll kill you," Gotti mouthed at John Alite just before the once inseparable duo shared a high-decibel Mafia meltdown in front of a stunned audience.
Jurors didn't see Gotti send that silent message to Alite, and they were ushered out of the courtroom before the real fireworks minutes later.
As Alite stepped down from the witness stand, he slowed and snarled at Gotti.
"You got something to say to me?" the star government witness barked, later telling the judge about the threat.
"You fag!" Gotti shouted back. "Did I kill little girls? You're a punk. You're a dog. You're a dog. You always were a dog your whole life, you punk dog."
The ugly encounter in federal court came after Alite blamed one of Gotti's uncles for a murder in the early 1990s.
The testimony enraged Gotti, who shouted at Alite while court officers intervened.
"You want to strangle little girls in a motel?" Gotti screamed as Alite was led away. "You dog!"
Alite had just testified that Vincent Gotti had strangled a young woman in a drug-fueled fight and left her body in a Queens motel bathtub.
Defense lawyer Charles Carnesi suggested Alite was the real killer.
"Ridiculous," said Alite, laughing. "His uncle, yes, strangled somebody and killed her. ... I wasn't there."
Alite confirmed that Junior was later blamed for the slaying, infuriating the Gambino boss.
Gotti, 45, facing his fourth racketeering trial, apologized for mouthing off, but federal Judge Kevin Castel was not moved by the mea culpa and said another outburst would land him in contempt.
"You are not doing yourself any favors, and you violated my direction," said Castel, who had warned Gotti during jury selection to keep his mouth shut.
Castel said he did not see Gotti mouth the threat at Alite, but accepted Prosecutor Elie Honig's claim that a U.S. Marshal saw Gotti do it.
"He lipped to me, 'We're gonna kill you,'" Alite told the judge. "So I said, 'What?' And he said, 'We're gonna kill you.'"
Gotti's mother, Victoria, said Alite went after her son because Carnesi was getting too close to the truth. Carnesi had forced Alite to recount hundreds of lies he had made - to the government, lawyers, family and friends - as he tried to worm his way out of a life sentence.
"Alite is a pathological liar - a rat caught in a proverbial trap, caught in his own lies, and he lashed out," she said.
The ex-friends ignored one another when they returned to court later in the day.
Thanks to Alison Gendar and Larry Mcshane
Honeymoon in Hawaii Ends with Arrest of Reputed Mobster
An alleged Mafia associate was arrested on racketeering charges while on his honeymoon in Honolulu.
Twenty-seven-year-old Vito Pipitone is in custody awaiting a federal judge's decision on whether he may return to New York on $50,000 bail or be extradited.
A grand jury returned a 33-count indictment last month charging 15 members and associates of the Bonanno organized crime family. It accuses them of various racketeering charges, including extortion, bank fraud, narcotics trafficking and assault.
Pipitone turned himself in Wednesday after learning his brother and others had been arrested.
Authorities say Pipitone, his brother and three others stabbed and beat two men in October 2004 whom they believed had broken windows of a protected restaurant in Queens.
Thanks to AP
Twenty-seven-year-old Vito Pipitone is in custody awaiting a federal judge's decision on whether he may return to New York on $50,000 bail or be extradited.
A grand jury returned a 33-count indictment last month charging 15 members and associates of the Bonanno organized crime family. It accuses them of various racketeering charges, including extortion, bank fraud, narcotics trafficking and assault.
Pipitone turned himself in Wednesday after learning his brother and others had been arrested.
Authorities say Pipitone, his brother and three others stabbed and beat two men in October 2004 whom they believed had broken windows of a protected restaurant in Queens.
Thanks to AP
The Mafia Takes Over The Bank at Bellagio
The mob may no longer run Las Vegas but the mafia took over The Bank at Bellagio last night.
Three 6 Mafia, that is.
The Academy Award-winning group was at the glamorous nightspot Thursday night to shoot a music video for their upcoming single, “Feel It.”
Camera crews followed the rappers as they made their way through the crowd, singing along to the pre-recorded track.
Meanwhile, house DJ Eddie McDonald urged clubgoers to get in on the action and out onto the dance floor.
It all took place just after 12:30 a.m. this morning and, after a few takes, the Three 6 boys called it a wrap and retired to the VIP while Dutch DJ sensation Tiesto took over.
Three 6 Mafia will return to The Bank’s sister club at the Mirage, Jet, on Monday. Instead of shooting a music video, though, the group will kick-off the workweek with a live performance.
Thanks to Melissa Arseniuk
Three 6 Mafia, that is.
The Academy Award-winning group was at the glamorous nightspot Thursday night to shoot a music video for their upcoming single, “Feel It.”
Camera crews followed the rappers as they made their way through the crowd, singing along to the pre-recorded track.
Meanwhile, house DJ Eddie McDonald urged clubgoers to get in on the action and out onto the dance floor.
It all took place just after 12:30 a.m. this morning and, after a few takes, the Three 6 boys called it a wrap and retired to the VIP while Dutch DJ sensation Tiesto took over.
Three 6 Mafia will return to The Bank’s sister club at the Mirage, Jet, on Monday. Instead of shooting a music video, though, the group will kick-off the workweek with a live performance.
Thanks to Melissa Arseniuk
The Making of "Chicago Overcoat"
Chris Charles says he warned his star up front: "But I don't think it really registered till his first day of shooting in downtown Chicago."
Charles had cast Frank Vincent as the lead in Chicago Overcoat, an independent drama that received its world premiere Saturday, October 10, at the Chicago International Film Festival. Known almost exclusively for playing gangsters—including New York crime boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos and Billy Batts, who ends up in a trunk in Goodfellas—Vincent, 70, got to the set in October 2007 and realized that most of the crew were in their early 20s. "He's looking around like, 'Where'd all these kids come from?'" says Charles, who's now 25.
Chicago Overcoat was the first full-length feature produced by Beverly Ridge Pictures, a company formed in 2005 by six Columbia College film students, including Charles. Writer-director Brian Caunter, now 26, and writer-producer John Bosher, now 25, developed a sideline producing promotional and music videos while roommates at Columbia. Their "booty video," as Caunter calls it, for Joe Glass & IROC's "Two" got heavy rotation on BET Uncut in 2004. The next year, Caunter and Bosher joined forces with Charles, Philip Plowden, Kevin Moss, and William Maursky to form Beverly Ridge, named after Moss's far-south-side neighborhood. "The name sounds Hollywood, but it's also kind of Chicago," Caunter explains. They used Givens Castle, a Beverly landmark, as their logo. Charles directed Beverly Ridge's first production, a short adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story "The Small Assassin."
In 2006 the six friends worked on a low-budget thriller called The Devil's Dominoes, directed by Scott Prestin, owner of the now-defunct Wicker Park bar Ginbucks. "We realized from that experience that we were more prepared than we thought to make a feature," Charles says. They were all fans of gangster films and figured they could make one without incurring a lot of extra production costs by taking advantage of Chicago locations.
"For months all we had was a title," says Caunter. His grandmother in Ohio had suggested "Chicago Overcoat," Prohibition-era slang for a coffin. The Family Secrets mob trials were in the headlines at the time and wound up providing inspiration for the screenplay.
Vincent plays Lou Marazano, an old hit man for the Chicago Outfit, who accepts his first contract in years—going after witnesses in a union pension-fund embezzlement case—to finance his Vegas retirement. Another Goodfellas vet, Mike Starr, is the underboss who exploits Marazano's money troubles. Another Sopranos alum, Kathrine Narducci, plays Marazano's old flame and alibi. Armand Assante plays the jailed boss facing trial. Chicago-based actor Danny Goldring is the alcoholic detective who's been chasing Marazano since the 1980s. And Stacy Keach does a cameo as a retired investigator pulled off the case when he got too close to city corruption.
"We were huge fans of The Sopranos," Caunter says. "We decided to write the script with Frank Vincent in mind so when he read it he'd feel like the main character is Frank Vincent. His book A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man was our character outline." The partners figured that "if we could create roles from scratch for celebrities, knowing they'd want to play something different, something challenging, we'd have an easier time recruiting them," Charles says. "We usually see Frank as a high-rolling mobster, higher on the food chain. In this film he's very humbled, very flawed, taking orders from guys younger than him."
Charles got the script to Vincent's people, and Vincent responded even though it came from unknowns in flyover country. "What appealed to me was the sensitivity of playing the softer side of a mob guy," Vincent says, "a guy who's not in control, who's looking to get the control." Vincent says he met a lot of mafiosi while touring as a drummer for Del Shannon and Paul Anka in the 1960s, helping him perfect a persona he's portrayed in Scorsese masterpieces and B movies alike. "They all have a way of looking at you, of intimidating you," Vincent says. "They're all evil. I can give a look or a stare that people read as evil."
Caunter and Charles signed Vincent at a place called Goodfellas Ristorante near his New Jersey home. "Frank walked in in a jumpsuit with a gold chain, looking like he walked off the set of The Sopranos," Charles says.
Once Vincent signed on, the other leads followed. Joe Mantegna was cast as the detective but dropped out weeks before shooting to take a role on CBS's Criminal Minds. "That was tough," Charles says. "I'd worked very hard to cast Joe." Goldring, who played the last clown killed in the opening bank heist sequence of The Dark Knight, stepped in. "They're so young, but they really got the writing for old-timers down," Goldring says.
The mother of cinematographer Kevin Moss, JoAnne Moss, who runs a real estate title insurance firm, personally invested "hundreds of thousands of dollars" and helped raise the rest of the $2 million budget, according to a report in Crain's Chicago Business. "Originally it was a smaller film. But as we found some success attaching talent, the budget increased," Charles says. "The project just kept getting bigger."
The filmmakers' youth "concerned me, absolutely," Vincent says. "They were younger than my kids. I've never experienced that before in all the films I've done, such a young team. . . . I figured if they were going to screw up, they'd screw up right away. As we progressed into the shoot, it became clear that they really knew what they wanted, and that was enough to make me confident."
Caunter, who turned 24 during the shoot, says he felt like "a chicken with its head cut off. Most of the time you have no idea what's going on. You feel like the world is going to end. You shoot for 12 hours, you come home and feel like you failed. The next day you feel like you want to redeem yourself. I think that's what makes a good movie—the struggle. If everything went your way it might feel kind of washy. I never had that experience, so I don't know."
The biggest adjustment for Caunter was learning to adapt to each actor's approach. "Frank is quite easygoing," he says. "Armand is the polar opposite. Armand would scream obscenities at the top of his lungs before the take. That alone would scare half the set, and then we'd roll the camera."
"They turned me loose," says Goldring. "That can be a dangerous thing for any actor, but they also had the good sense to rein me in. I'm a passion merchant. Doing Chicago Overcoat allowed me to let my passions out. The [character] is . . . ornery. He likes to tip back a few. Even though I don't do that anymore, I can play one on TV."
Accusations of ethnic stereotyping have dogged many of Vincent's projects. Last spring, MillerCoors pulled a series of ads featuring Vincent and Starr as mobsters after complaints from the Order Sons of Italy in America. Chicago Overcoat is no exception. After principal photography wrapped in November 2007, Bosher got an e-mail from Bill Dal Cerro of the advocacy group Italic Institute of America. Dal Cerro wrote, "It saddens—and yes, sickens me—that you are reverting to the oldest game in the book in your quest for Hollywood fame: namely, stoking prejudice against Americans of Italian descent by producing yet another pointless Italian 'mob' movie."
"I told him they can't force us to stop making movies that people want to see," Bosher says. "They have to change people's minds." Let them protest, adds Vincent, who sells "mobbleheads" of his Goodfellas character on his Web site. "It'll do the movie good."
It's going to be tough to recover the $2 million budget in today's independent film market, which is arguably in a deeper slump than the rest of the economy. Todd Slater of LA-based Huntsman Entertainment is shopping the film to distributors. "We've had a lot of offers from smaller companies," Charles says. "We've been waiting patiently for the right buyer. We want an offer we can't refuse."
Thanks to Ed M. Koziarski
Charles had cast Frank Vincent as the lead in Chicago Overcoat, an independent drama that received its world premiere Saturday, October 10, at the Chicago International Film Festival. Known almost exclusively for playing gangsters—including New York crime boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos and Billy Batts, who ends up in a trunk in Goodfellas—Vincent, 70, got to the set in October 2007 and realized that most of the crew were in their early 20s. "He's looking around like, 'Where'd all these kids come from?'" says Charles, who's now 25.
Chicago Overcoat was the first full-length feature produced by Beverly Ridge Pictures, a company formed in 2005 by six Columbia College film students, including Charles. Writer-director Brian Caunter, now 26, and writer-producer John Bosher, now 25, developed a sideline producing promotional and music videos while roommates at Columbia. Their "booty video," as Caunter calls it, for Joe Glass & IROC's "Two" got heavy rotation on BET Uncut in 2004. The next year, Caunter and Bosher joined forces with Charles, Philip Plowden, Kevin Moss, and William Maursky to form Beverly Ridge, named after Moss's far-south-side neighborhood. "The name sounds Hollywood, but it's also kind of Chicago," Caunter explains. They used Givens Castle, a Beverly landmark, as their logo. Charles directed Beverly Ridge's first production, a short adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story "The Small Assassin."
In 2006 the six friends worked on a low-budget thriller called The Devil's Dominoes, directed by Scott Prestin, owner of the now-defunct Wicker Park bar Ginbucks. "We realized from that experience that we were more prepared than we thought to make a feature," Charles says. They were all fans of gangster films and figured they could make one without incurring a lot of extra production costs by taking advantage of Chicago locations.
"For months all we had was a title," says Caunter. His grandmother in Ohio had suggested "Chicago Overcoat," Prohibition-era slang for a coffin. The Family Secrets mob trials were in the headlines at the time and wound up providing inspiration for the screenplay.
Vincent plays Lou Marazano, an old hit man for the Chicago Outfit, who accepts his first contract in years—going after witnesses in a union pension-fund embezzlement case—to finance his Vegas retirement. Another Goodfellas vet, Mike Starr, is the underboss who exploits Marazano's money troubles. Another Sopranos alum, Kathrine Narducci, plays Marazano's old flame and alibi. Armand Assante plays the jailed boss facing trial. Chicago-based actor Danny Goldring is the alcoholic detective who's been chasing Marazano since the 1980s. And Stacy Keach does a cameo as a retired investigator pulled off the case when he got too close to city corruption.
"We were huge fans of The Sopranos," Caunter says. "We decided to write the script with Frank Vincent in mind so when he read it he'd feel like the main character is Frank Vincent. His book A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man was our character outline." The partners figured that "if we could create roles from scratch for celebrities, knowing they'd want to play something different, something challenging, we'd have an easier time recruiting them," Charles says. "We usually see Frank as a high-rolling mobster, higher on the food chain. In this film he's very humbled, very flawed, taking orders from guys younger than him."
Charles got the script to Vincent's people, and Vincent responded even though it came from unknowns in flyover country. "What appealed to me was the sensitivity of playing the softer side of a mob guy," Vincent says, "a guy who's not in control, who's looking to get the control." Vincent says he met a lot of mafiosi while touring as a drummer for Del Shannon and Paul Anka in the 1960s, helping him perfect a persona he's portrayed in Scorsese masterpieces and B movies alike. "They all have a way of looking at you, of intimidating you," Vincent says. "They're all evil. I can give a look or a stare that people read as evil."
Caunter and Charles signed Vincent at a place called Goodfellas Ristorante near his New Jersey home. "Frank walked in in a jumpsuit with a gold chain, looking like he walked off the set of The Sopranos," Charles says.
Once Vincent signed on, the other leads followed. Joe Mantegna was cast as the detective but dropped out weeks before shooting to take a role on CBS's Criminal Minds. "That was tough," Charles says. "I'd worked very hard to cast Joe." Goldring, who played the last clown killed in the opening bank heist sequence of The Dark Knight, stepped in. "They're so young, but they really got the writing for old-timers down," Goldring says.
The mother of cinematographer Kevin Moss, JoAnne Moss, who runs a real estate title insurance firm, personally invested "hundreds of thousands of dollars" and helped raise the rest of the $2 million budget, according to a report in Crain's Chicago Business. "Originally it was a smaller film. But as we found some success attaching talent, the budget increased," Charles says. "The project just kept getting bigger."
The filmmakers' youth "concerned me, absolutely," Vincent says. "They were younger than my kids. I've never experienced that before in all the films I've done, such a young team. . . . I figured if they were going to screw up, they'd screw up right away. As we progressed into the shoot, it became clear that they really knew what they wanted, and that was enough to make me confident."
Caunter, who turned 24 during the shoot, says he felt like "a chicken with its head cut off. Most of the time you have no idea what's going on. You feel like the world is going to end. You shoot for 12 hours, you come home and feel like you failed. The next day you feel like you want to redeem yourself. I think that's what makes a good movie—the struggle. If everything went your way it might feel kind of washy. I never had that experience, so I don't know."
The biggest adjustment for Caunter was learning to adapt to each actor's approach. "Frank is quite easygoing," he says. "Armand is the polar opposite. Armand would scream obscenities at the top of his lungs before the take. That alone would scare half the set, and then we'd roll the camera."
"They turned me loose," says Goldring. "That can be a dangerous thing for any actor, but they also had the good sense to rein me in. I'm a passion merchant. Doing Chicago Overcoat allowed me to let my passions out. The [character] is . . . ornery. He likes to tip back a few. Even though I don't do that anymore, I can play one on TV."
Accusations of ethnic stereotyping have dogged many of Vincent's projects. Last spring, MillerCoors pulled a series of ads featuring Vincent and Starr as mobsters after complaints from the Order Sons of Italy in America. Chicago Overcoat is no exception. After principal photography wrapped in November 2007, Bosher got an e-mail from Bill Dal Cerro of the advocacy group Italic Institute of America. Dal Cerro wrote, "It saddens—and yes, sickens me—that you are reverting to the oldest game in the book in your quest for Hollywood fame: namely, stoking prejudice against Americans of Italian descent by producing yet another pointless Italian 'mob' movie."
"I told him they can't force us to stop making movies that people want to see," Bosher says. "They have to change people's minds." Let them protest, adds Vincent, who sells "mobbleheads" of his Goodfellas character on his Web site. "It'll do the movie good."
It's going to be tough to recover the $2 million budget in today's independent film market, which is arguably in a deeper slump than the rest of the economy. Todd Slater of LA-based Huntsman Entertainment is shopping the film to distributors. "We've had a lot of offers from smaller companies," Charles says. "We've been waiting patiently for the right buyer. We want an offer we can't refuse."
Thanks to Ed M. Koziarski
"Chicago Overcoat" Film Locations
In "Chicago Overcoat," Lou Marazano (Frank Vincent), a has-been hit man who hung up his weapons in the 1980s, comes out of retirement 20 years later to resume his career as a triggerman for the Chicago Outfit. John Bosher, who co-wrote the movie with fellow alums from Columbia College Chicago, says they looked for locations that represented the gritty underbelly of Chicago. Here are descriptions of a few of the more than 50 locations of the film, which is being screened as part of the Chicago International Film Festival, gathered from a phone interview with Bosher.
--Franco's Ristorante, 300 W. 31st St.: This corner spot in Bridgeport is used for exterior shots of the place where the gangsters hang out.
Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland Ave.: The filmmakers removed the modern-day decor of this late-night spot and transformed it into a gathering place for the gangsters that looks like a 1980s strip club. Additions included poles for the strippers and a stage with a glass floor lit from below.
La Villa Restaurant & Banquet, 3636 N. Pulaski Rd.: This Italian restaurant stands in for the interior of Franco's Ristorante.
Nicky's Carry Out, 3501 S. Western Ave.: Lou takes his young grandson to this small McKinley Park spot to introduce him to a Chicago-style hot dog and a serving of life's lessons.
George's Automotive Repair, 3209 W. Barry Ave.: Lou and a young member of his crew mosey in to this neighborhood shop to shake down the owner. They do a bit of damage when he refuses to pay a street tax.
Alley at Franklin and Superior streets: Dumpsters stand against the brick wall of this dark alley where Lou gets back to work as a hit man.
Under the Dan Ryan Expressway at Cermak Road and Halsted Street: Imposing columns tower over this secluded space where Lou has a rendezvous with disgruntled members of the Outfit. The filmmakers wanted to give the shoot-out the feel of a scene in a Hollywood Western.
Police station, 2259 S. Damen Ave.: An abandoned Chicago Police station was cleaned up, furnished and rehabbed as a room where Lou is interrogated and placed in a lineup. Windows that had been boarded up were opened, and a Metro Police station sign was put up so as not to confuse the fictional police officers who behave badly in the film with Chicago's finest.
Thanks to Nancy Maes
--Franco's Ristorante, 300 W. 31st St.: This corner spot in Bridgeport is used for exterior shots of the place where the gangsters hang out.
Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland Ave.: The filmmakers removed the modern-day decor of this late-night spot and transformed it into a gathering place for the gangsters that looks like a 1980s strip club. Additions included poles for the strippers and a stage with a glass floor lit from below.
La Villa Restaurant & Banquet, 3636 N. Pulaski Rd.: This Italian restaurant stands in for the interior of Franco's Ristorante.
Nicky's Carry Out, 3501 S. Western Ave.: Lou takes his young grandson to this small McKinley Park spot to introduce him to a Chicago-style hot dog and a serving of life's lessons.
George's Automotive Repair, 3209 W. Barry Ave.: Lou and a young member of his crew mosey in to this neighborhood shop to shake down the owner. They do a bit of damage when he refuses to pay a street tax.
Alley at Franklin and Superior streets: Dumpsters stand against the brick wall of this dark alley where Lou gets back to work as a hit man.
Under the Dan Ryan Expressway at Cermak Road and Halsted Street: Imposing columns tower over this secluded space where Lou has a rendezvous with disgruntled members of the Outfit. The filmmakers wanted to give the shoot-out the feel of a scene in a Hollywood Western.
Police station, 2259 S. Damen Ave.: An abandoned Chicago Police station was cleaned up, furnished and rehabbed as a room where Lou is interrogated and placed in a lineup. Windows that had been boarded up were opened, and a Metro Police station sign was put up so as not to confuse the fictional police officers who behave badly in the film with Chicago's finest.
Thanks to Nancy Maes
Eliot Ness and Al Capone Move to Turkey
If this column were written regularly in Turkish and I were a columnist of greater importance, I would have sworn that the man opposite me had been reading my mind. The man opposite me is, of course, the Turkish Prime Minister.
I warned our bosses more than a year ago that our group might face “corporate consequences” if we did not “behave.” We did not. And we suffered terrible corporate consequences. Last month, I expressed my concern that our boss, Aydın Doğan, might face prison if we did not behave. I compared Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vs Aydın Doğan to Vladimir Putin vs Mikhail Khodorkovsky. And a few days ago Prime Minister Erdoğan likened Doğan to Al Capone. That’s a bad sign.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 5, Erdoğan played the Turkish reincarnation of Eliot Ness, the Bureau of Prohibition agent and the man who finished off Capone as he compared the $3.2 billion tax case against Doğan with the U.S. pursuit of the famous gangster on tax-evasion charges in the 1930s. Erdoğan said: “In the U.S. there are also people who have had problems with evading taxes. Al Capone comes to mind. He was very rich, but then he spent the rest of his life in jail. Nobody raised a voice when those events happened.”
Now, what should we make of that? That champion tax payer Doğan is in fact Turkey’s public enemy number one? That he is a gangster engaged in mob wars and massacres but never leaves behind evidence so that he could be brought to justice for his crimes? That the only way to nail him was to send him a crippling tax fine? That, Doğan, like Capone, could also spend the rest of his life in jail despite his wealth?
The truth is, by using the Capone analogy, Erdoğan has unwisely confessed that his problem with Doğan was about a matter “other than taxation,” but that taxation was the only way to hit Doğan. What could that “matter” be? Drug smuggling? Racketeering? Mass killings of business rivals? Torture? Bombs and subversion? It’s just too obvious, and even my cat could tell you the truth if he could speak (in fact, he tried to scratch an answer on the rug, but I should not mention his argument here lest he be carted off to pet prison).
What else does WSJ’s Erdoğan quote tell us? Why did the prime minister say that “Capone spent the rest of his life in jail and nobody raised a voice when those events happened?” Could it be because Erdoğan is annoyed by the international reaction against the tax case, including senior EU officials warning that this case will come under the press freedom heading in this year’s annual progress report?
Apparently, Erdoğan expects everyone, especially the West, to remain silent about Doğan just as everyone was silent about Capone in the 1930s. That is hardly surprising, since the first one to criticize the international chorus of complaints about the Doğan affair was, ironically, Erdoğan’s minister for the EU, Egemen Bağış. According to Messrs. Erdoğan and Bağış, it was wrong of Doğan to voice complaints “to foreigners” about the most unprecedented tax fine in Turkish fiscal history.
In Erdoğan’s ideal world, his Western friends must treat Doğan like others treated Capone in the 1930s. Naturally, in his fairy tale, Erdoğan is the good-hearted patriot Ness fighting against public enemy number one. What heroic roles Bağış and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek would assume is difficult to guess, given the bizarre analogy. But I heard my cat meow-laughing loudly when Şimşek said that the tax fine was “purely technical.”
I have no idea what kind of car or cars Doğan drives, but they may be seized soon too. How do I know? From mob history. Scarface Al’s bullet-proof Cadillac was seized by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1932 and was later used as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's limousine. And what happens when the likes of Capone are totally eliminated from the scene? After Capone was jailed for income tax evasion in 1932, the Chicago mob flourished, establishing itself as one of the most innovative criminal associations in the country. That should be a message for Erdoğan. In a world with increasingly easier access to information, Erdoğan may even regret having fixated on one man, since the thousands of different voices that constitute the Doğan Media Group today may flourish and become a powerful, combined voice for “the opposition” tomorrow.
Thanks to Burak Bekdil
I warned our bosses more than a year ago that our group might face “corporate consequences” if we did not “behave.” We did not. And we suffered terrible corporate consequences. Last month, I expressed my concern that our boss, Aydın Doğan, might face prison if we did not behave. I compared Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vs Aydın Doğan to Vladimir Putin vs Mikhail Khodorkovsky. And a few days ago Prime Minister Erdoğan likened Doğan to Al Capone. That’s a bad sign.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 5, Erdoğan played the Turkish reincarnation of Eliot Ness, the Bureau of Prohibition agent and the man who finished off Capone as he compared the $3.2 billion tax case against Doğan with the U.S. pursuit of the famous gangster on tax-evasion charges in the 1930s. Erdoğan said: “In the U.S. there are also people who have had problems with evading taxes. Al Capone comes to mind. He was very rich, but then he spent the rest of his life in jail. Nobody raised a voice when those events happened.”
Now, what should we make of that? That champion tax payer Doğan is in fact Turkey’s public enemy number one? That he is a gangster engaged in mob wars and massacres but never leaves behind evidence so that he could be brought to justice for his crimes? That the only way to nail him was to send him a crippling tax fine? That, Doğan, like Capone, could also spend the rest of his life in jail despite his wealth?
The truth is, by using the Capone analogy, Erdoğan has unwisely confessed that his problem with Doğan was about a matter “other than taxation,” but that taxation was the only way to hit Doğan. What could that “matter” be? Drug smuggling? Racketeering? Mass killings of business rivals? Torture? Bombs and subversion? It’s just too obvious, and even my cat could tell you the truth if he could speak (in fact, he tried to scratch an answer on the rug, but I should not mention his argument here lest he be carted off to pet prison).
What else does WSJ’s Erdoğan quote tell us? Why did the prime minister say that “Capone spent the rest of his life in jail and nobody raised a voice when those events happened?” Could it be because Erdoğan is annoyed by the international reaction against the tax case, including senior EU officials warning that this case will come under the press freedom heading in this year’s annual progress report?
Apparently, Erdoğan expects everyone, especially the West, to remain silent about Doğan just as everyone was silent about Capone in the 1930s. That is hardly surprising, since the first one to criticize the international chorus of complaints about the Doğan affair was, ironically, Erdoğan’s minister for the EU, Egemen Bağış. According to Messrs. Erdoğan and Bağış, it was wrong of Doğan to voice complaints “to foreigners” about the most unprecedented tax fine in Turkish fiscal history.
In Erdoğan’s ideal world, his Western friends must treat Doğan like others treated Capone in the 1930s. Naturally, in his fairy tale, Erdoğan is the good-hearted patriot Ness fighting against public enemy number one. What heroic roles Bağış and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek would assume is difficult to guess, given the bizarre analogy. But I heard my cat meow-laughing loudly when Şimşek said that the tax fine was “purely technical.”
I have no idea what kind of car or cars Doğan drives, but they may be seized soon too. How do I know? From mob history. Scarface Al’s bullet-proof Cadillac was seized by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1932 and was later used as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's limousine. And what happens when the likes of Capone are totally eliminated from the scene? After Capone was jailed for income tax evasion in 1932, the Chicago mob flourished, establishing itself as one of the most innovative criminal associations in the country. That should be a message for Erdoğan. In a world with increasingly easier access to information, Erdoğan may even regret having fixated on one man, since the thousands of different voices that constitute the Doğan Media Group today may flourish and become a powerful, combined voice for “the opposition” tomorrow.
Thanks to Burak Bekdil
Will Disbanded Chicago Police Gambling Unit Allow for a Mob Revival in the City?
The I-Team has learned that the Chicago Police Department's renowned gambling unit has been disbanded. It's a decision that some call a bad bet.
Here we are at the height of the football wagering season with the Bears on a roll and the Chicago Police Department has given up on its famed gambling unit.
The end of the line for the storied gambling squad came in a shake-up of the vice control unit six months ago. But only when the I-Team started asking questions was it revealed to the public.
Dial the number listed for the Chicago Police gambling squad and you get a recorded message saying the extension is not available.
"It was my decision," said Commander Ernie Brown, CPD Organized Crime Division.
Organized crime commander Ernie Brown says gone are the days of secret outfit wire rooms where sports bets were booked on banks of phones; mob bookies ran parlay cards for the weekend sports action; and customer records were kept on dissolving paper.
"That problem simply doesn't exist at the magnitude and at the level that requires a single purpose team for just gambling," said Brown.
Police say there is no longer a need for teams of specialty cops battering down doors and ending up on the front pages. "I just can't figure it out because those people are out there and they're always going to be out there. There's money in that stuff, you know, lots of money," said Don Herion, retired gambling detective.
The celebrated gambling squad was best known for it's for decades of deployment out of the old Maxwell Street station on the West Side.
When retired Sgt. Don Herion worked it in the 60, 70's and 80's, the squad had 35 or 40 officers. "How could you not work on the mob and gambling?" said Herion.
Herion spent four decades chasing mob bookmakers and their bosses for the Chicago police and the Cook County sheriff before retiring in 2000. Herion says the mob will never retire its gambling operation and the Chicago police shouldn't have closed theirs.
"It seems to me that they almost just legalized it by having no one chase bookmakers. If you don't have anybody chasing a dog you're not going to catch a dog are you?" said Herion. Police say officers absorbed by the vice unit will still chase illegal gambling if they see it or receive a complaint.
"Basically what it was is I would like to refer to it as being hybridized," said Brown.
Former IRS criminal investigator Phil DiPasquale says the feds would frequently depend on Chicago police gambling intelligence and that you can't work gambling cases part-time. "For three years I looked at a guy's phone records and knew he was doing it&most people don't want to spend three years going through phone records to catch somebody," said DiPasquale.
DiPasquale spent more than a year undercover working to nail south suburban outfit gambling boss Albert "Caesar" Tocco. DiPasquale says mob bosses like the late Caesar Tocco would love to know the CPD gambling unit has folded. "He'd probably have a party," said DiPasquale.
Herion, who wrote a book about outfit gamblers and now consults on Hollywood crime movies, says bookies are more tech-savvy and it may be that they have just outsmarted Chicago police who last year made less than 100 gambling arrests.
"If they're going to wait for a phone call they may get one about three guys shooting dice in an alley or something but I can't see anything worthwhile Mob-wise," said Herion.
Police say they hope the new hybrid vice cops will be able to stop dogfight gambling and work illegal online betting cases.
"I just want the public to rest assured that we haven't abdicated or withdrawn ground on illicit gambling, what we've done is refocused our activities and allowed those officers who engaged in gambling enforcement to do other things along with enforcement of gambling laws," said Brown.
Illinois state police and Cook County haven't had a dedicated gambling unit for several years. The sheriff's vice unit focuses on internet sex crimes and human trafficking according to a spokesman. Now that Chicago is without one, only the FBI and IRS actually gather gambling intelligence here, usually in large organized crime cases. So with this weekend's kickoff a few days away illegal wagering may never have been easier.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Here we are at the height of the football wagering season with the Bears on a roll and the Chicago Police Department has given up on its famed gambling unit.
The end of the line for the storied gambling squad came in a shake-up of the vice control unit six months ago. But only when the I-Team started asking questions was it revealed to the public.
Dial the number listed for the Chicago Police gambling squad and you get a recorded message saying the extension is not available.
"It was my decision," said Commander Ernie Brown, CPD Organized Crime Division.
Organized crime commander Ernie Brown says gone are the days of secret outfit wire rooms where sports bets were booked on banks of phones; mob bookies ran parlay cards for the weekend sports action; and customer records were kept on dissolving paper.
"That problem simply doesn't exist at the magnitude and at the level that requires a single purpose team for just gambling," said Brown.
Police say there is no longer a need for teams of specialty cops battering down doors and ending up on the front pages. "I just can't figure it out because those people are out there and they're always going to be out there. There's money in that stuff, you know, lots of money," said Don Herion, retired gambling detective.
The celebrated gambling squad was best known for it's for decades of deployment out of the old Maxwell Street station on the West Side.
When retired Sgt. Don Herion worked it in the 60, 70's and 80's, the squad had 35 or 40 officers. "How could you not work on the mob and gambling?" said Herion.
Herion spent four decades chasing mob bookmakers and their bosses for the Chicago police and the Cook County sheriff before retiring in 2000. Herion says the mob will never retire its gambling operation and the Chicago police shouldn't have closed theirs.
"It seems to me that they almost just legalized it by having no one chase bookmakers. If you don't have anybody chasing a dog you're not going to catch a dog are you?" said Herion. Police say officers absorbed by the vice unit will still chase illegal gambling if they see it or receive a complaint.
"Basically what it was is I would like to refer to it as being hybridized," said Brown.
Former IRS criminal investigator Phil DiPasquale says the feds would frequently depend on Chicago police gambling intelligence and that you can't work gambling cases part-time. "For three years I looked at a guy's phone records and knew he was doing it&most people don't want to spend three years going through phone records to catch somebody," said DiPasquale.
DiPasquale spent more than a year undercover working to nail south suburban outfit gambling boss Albert "Caesar" Tocco. DiPasquale says mob bosses like the late Caesar Tocco would love to know the CPD gambling unit has folded. "He'd probably have a party," said DiPasquale.
Herion, who wrote a book about outfit gamblers and now consults on Hollywood crime movies, says bookies are more tech-savvy and it may be that they have just outsmarted Chicago police who last year made less than 100 gambling arrests.
"If they're going to wait for a phone call they may get one about three guys shooting dice in an alley or something but I can't see anything worthwhile Mob-wise," said Herion.
Police say they hope the new hybrid vice cops will be able to stop dogfight gambling and work illegal online betting cases.
"I just want the public to rest assured that we haven't abdicated or withdrawn ground on illicit gambling, what we've done is refocused our activities and allowed those officers who engaged in gambling enforcement to do other things along with enforcement of gambling laws," said Brown.
Illinois state police and Cook County haven't had a dedicated gambling unit for several years. The sheriff's vice unit focuses on internet sex crimes and human trafficking according to a spokesman. Now that Chicago is without one, only the FBI and IRS actually gather gambling intelligence here, usually in large organized crime cases. So with this weekend's kickoff a few days away illegal wagering may never have been easier.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
The Story of Old Chicago Gangster Ma Barker
Kate "Ma" Barker (October 8, 1873 January 16, 1935) was an American criminal from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the Midwest gripped the American people and press. Her notoriety has since subsided, trailing behind Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.
Genovese Crime Boss & WWII Hero, Carlo Mastrototaro, Dies at 89
The man frequently identified as a kingpin of organized crime in the Worcester area for much of the latter half of the past century and a highly decorated World War II combat veteran died Monday at his home in Worcester.
Carlo Mastrototaro, 89, of 40 Hancock Hill Drive, died peacefully surrounded by family members, according to his obituary.
In an interview earlier this year, Mr. Mastrototaro would only describe himself as a “retired businessman,” determinedly steering clear of specifying what he did before retiring.
“Different things” was all he would say. Reminded that law enforcement officials and other sources had labeled him a powerful figure in the New England mob, he responded, “Not everything said about me is true.”
A Worcester native, Mr. Mastrototaro, for the most part, stayed out of local headlines. He owned several restaurants in the area over the years and occasional stories referred to arrests and convictions for, among other things, racketeering, wire fraud and gambling.
Thomas J. Foley, former superintendent of the Massachusetts state police, said that Mr. Mastrototaro answered in the 1980s and 1990s to the Genovese crime family in New York with the tacit approval of Raymond L.S. Patriarca of Providence, regarded as the head of the New England Mafia until his death in 1984.
One of his convictions was in 1971 in Baltimore federal court after he was tried for aiding and abetting in the transportation of three stolen U.S. Treasury bills. The man who stole the treasury bills, Boston and Providence mob figure Vincent “Big Vinnie” Teresa, testified against Mr. Mastrototaro in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Two years later, Mr. Teresa wrote a tell-all book called “My Life in the Mafia,” in which he described Mr. Mastrototaro as “the boss of Worcester” and “the fourth most powerful boss in the current New England hierarchy of crime.”
There are numerous references in the book to Mr. Mastrototaro, some linking him to Mafia-backed casinos that operated in Haiti and pre-Communist Cuba, as well as to Meyer Lansky, a notorious figure in mob annals who was regarded as a financial genius.
Despite his testimony that helped convict Mr. Mastrototaro, Mr. Teresa, who died in 1990 while in the federal witness protection program, had an obvious admiration for the Worcester resident. “He was as honest as they come in the mob when you dealt with him,” Mr. Teresa wrote. “If you had a cent and half coming from him, it didn't make a bit of difference if you didn't show up to collect for six months. When you got there, the money was there waiting for you.”
Far less well-known about Mr. Mastrototaro was his distinguished record as a Marine serving in the Pacific during WWII. That service earned him a Purple Heart and the Silver Star, the military's third highest award for valor in the face of the enemy.
In his later years, Mr. Mastrototaro spent time at the Leatherneck Lounge on Lake Avenue and on rare occasions, friends say, he would open up about his military service from 1939 to 1944.
The Silver Star, he confided, stemmed from fighting in the Mariana Islands in the fierce Battle of Saipan in June and July 1944. On watch late one night while others in his platoon were asleep in foxholes, he detected shadows from behind, yelled a warning to fellow Marines, then jumped up and opened fire. He killed eight or nine Japanese on the perimeter of the platoon's camp.
Mr. Mastrototaro and several others in his company were badly wounded by mortar fire a few weeks later in the Battle of Tinian, also in the Marianas. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and later sent home with a medical discharge. His wounds, he told friends, actually saved his life. Much of his company was wiped out when they moved on to the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Mr. Mastrototaro helped found the Marine Corps League chapter in Worcester and was a member of several veterans' organizations.
Thanks to Jay Whearley
Carlo Mastrototaro, 89, of 40 Hancock Hill Drive, died peacefully surrounded by family members, according to his obituary.
In an interview earlier this year, Mr. Mastrototaro would only describe himself as a “retired businessman,” determinedly steering clear of specifying what he did before retiring.
“Different things” was all he would say. Reminded that law enforcement officials and other sources had labeled him a powerful figure in the New England mob, he responded, “Not everything said about me is true.”
A Worcester native, Mr. Mastrototaro, for the most part, stayed out of local headlines. He owned several restaurants in the area over the years and occasional stories referred to arrests and convictions for, among other things, racketeering, wire fraud and gambling.
Thomas J. Foley, former superintendent of the Massachusetts state police, said that Mr. Mastrototaro answered in the 1980s and 1990s to the Genovese crime family in New York with the tacit approval of Raymond L.S. Patriarca of Providence, regarded as the head of the New England Mafia until his death in 1984.
One of his convictions was in 1971 in Baltimore federal court after he was tried for aiding and abetting in the transportation of three stolen U.S. Treasury bills. The man who stole the treasury bills, Boston and Providence mob figure Vincent “Big Vinnie” Teresa, testified against Mr. Mastrototaro in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Two years later, Mr. Teresa wrote a tell-all book called “My Life in the Mafia,” in which he described Mr. Mastrototaro as “the boss of Worcester” and “the fourth most powerful boss in the current New England hierarchy of crime.”
There are numerous references in the book to Mr. Mastrototaro, some linking him to Mafia-backed casinos that operated in Haiti and pre-Communist Cuba, as well as to Meyer Lansky, a notorious figure in mob annals who was regarded as a financial genius.
Despite his testimony that helped convict Mr. Mastrototaro, Mr. Teresa, who died in 1990 while in the federal witness protection program, had an obvious admiration for the Worcester resident. “He was as honest as they come in the mob when you dealt with him,” Mr. Teresa wrote. “If you had a cent and half coming from him, it didn't make a bit of difference if you didn't show up to collect for six months. When you got there, the money was there waiting for you.”
Far less well-known about Mr. Mastrototaro was his distinguished record as a Marine serving in the Pacific during WWII. That service earned him a Purple Heart and the Silver Star, the military's third highest award for valor in the face of the enemy.
In his later years, Mr. Mastrototaro spent time at the Leatherneck Lounge on Lake Avenue and on rare occasions, friends say, he would open up about his military service from 1939 to 1944.
The Silver Star, he confided, stemmed from fighting in the Mariana Islands in the fierce Battle of Saipan in June and July 1944. On watch late one night while others in his platoon were asleep in foxholes, he detected shadows from behind, yelled a warning to fellow Marines, then jumped up and opened fire. He killed eight or nine Japanese on the perimeter of the platoon's camp.
Mr. Mastrototaro and several others in his company were badly wounded by mortar fire a few weeks later in the Battle of Tinian, also in the Marianas. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and later sent home with a medical discharge. His wounds, he told friends, actually saved his life. Much of his company was wiped out when they moved on to the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Mr. Mastrototaro helped found the Marine Corps League chapter in Worcester and was a member of several veterans' organizations.
Thanks to Jay Whearley
Friday, October 09, 2009
Bonanno Organized Crime Family Ruling Panel Member, Captains, Soldiers, and Associates Indicted for Racketeering, Assault, and Other Offenses
A 33-count indictment was unsealed in Brooklyn federal court charging members and associates of the Bonanno organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra (the Bonanno family) variously with racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, assault in-aid-of racketeering, conspiracy to commit assault in-aid-of racketeering, threatening to commit a crime of violence in-aid-of racketeering, use and possession of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, bank fraud, illegal gambling, extortion, extortion conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. Those defendants arrested earlier today in New York are scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Marilyn D. Go, at the U.S. Courthouse, 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn. The case has been assigned to U.S. Senior District Judge Charles P. Sifton.
The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Joseph M. Demarest, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, FBI, New York Field Office.
As alleged in the indictment and detention memorandum filed today, Joseph Sammartino, aka “Sammy,” is a Bonanno captain and member of the Bonanno ruling panel; Anthony Sclafani, aka “Scal,” is a Bonanno captain; Joseph Loiacono, aka “Joe Lefty,” and Anthony Pipitone, aka “Little Anthony,” are Bonanno family acting captains; Frank Pastore, aka “Big Frank,” and Paul Spina, aka “Fat Paulie,” are Bonanno family soldiers; and Manny Bana, Peter DeFilippo, Frank DeRosa, Vito Pipitone, Joseph Spatola, and Natale Terzo are Bonanno family associates. The indictment is the result of a lengthy investigation by the FBI, which involved numerous law enforcement techniques, including consensual recordings, cooperating witnesses, confidential sources, and surveillances. The indictment and detention memorandum detail a pattern of alleged mafia violence and intimidation, including threats to murder victims of Bonanno family extortion schemes. For example, on one occasion when a loanshark victim fell behind in payments, Bonanno family captain Sclafani allegedly told him, “you’re lucky we don’t saw you in half and leave you in the woods.” The recordings also captured Bonanno family members and associates discussing their participation in a violent stabbing assault of two individuals in 2004 in Whitestone, Queens.
The indictment announced today is the latest in an ongoing investigation that has resulted in the prosecution of more than 125 members and associates of the Bonanno family in the Eastern District of New York. Since March 2002, four Bonanno family bosses or acting bosses—Joseph Massino, Anthony Urso, Vincent Basciano, and Michael Mancuso—have been convicted on racketeering and racketeering-related charges, which included murder or murder conspiracy as a racketeering act.
“Members of organized crime continue to victimize our communities with their brand of violence and other criminal activity,” stated U. Attorney Campbell. “We will not rest until we dismantle the entire Bonanno crime family and each of the other families of La Cosa Nostra.” Mr. Campbell praised the Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who led the government’s investigation.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Demarest stated, “The charges unsealed today are the culmination of another in a series of recent FBI investigations that put to lie the notion that violence is a thing of the past in organized crime. Today, as always, mob families are criminal enterprises bent on making money any way they can. As often as not, violence goes hand-in-hand with mobsters’ illegal schemes.”
If convicted, Bana, Frank DeRosa, Sebastian DeRosa, Loiacono, Lotito, Pastore, Anthony Pipitone, Vito Pipitone, Sammartino, Sclafani, Spatola, Frank Terzo, and Natale Terzo each face a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment; DeFilippo faces a maximum sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment; and, based upon a prior felony information filed this morning, Spina faces mandatory life imprisonment.
The government’s case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Nicole M. Argentieri, Gina M. Parlovecchio, and Duncan Levin.
The Defendants:
MANNY BANA
Age: 42
PETER DEFILIPPO
Age: 47
FRANK DEROSA
Age: 45
SEBASTIAN DEROSA
Age: 66
JOSEPH LOIACONO
Age: 64
RICHARD LOTITO
Age: 46
FRANK PASTORE
Age: 39
ANTHONY PIPITONE
Age: 37
VITO PIPITONE
Age: 28
JOSEPH SAMMARTINO
Age: 55
ANTHONY SCLAFANI
Age: 63
JOSEPH SPATOLA
Age: 33
PAUL SPINA
Age: 54
FRANK TERZO
Age: 24
NATALE TERZO
Age: 52
The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Joseph M. Demarest, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, FBI, New York Field Office.
As alleged in the indictment and detention memorandum filed today, Joseph Sammartino, aka “Sammy,” is a Bonanno captain and member of the Bonanno ruling panel; Anthony Sclafani, aka “Scal,” is a Bonanno captain; Joseph Loiacono, aka “Joe Lefty,” and Anthony Pipitone, aka “Little Anthony,” are Bonanno family acting captains; Frank Pastore, aka “Big Frank,” and Paul Spina, aka “Fat Paulie,” are Bonanno family soldiers; and Manny Bana, Peter DeFilippo, Frank DeRosa, Vito Pipitone, Joseph Spatola, and Natale Terzo are Bonanno family associates. The indictment is the result of a lengthy investigation by the FBI, which involved numerous law enforcement techniques, including consensual recordings, cooperating witnesses, confidential sources, and surveillances. The indictment and detention memorandum detail a pattern of alleged mafia violence and intimidation, including threats to murder victims of Bonanno family extortion schemes. For example, on one occasion when a loanshark victim fell behind in payments, Bonanno family captain Sclafani allegedly told him, “you’re lucky we don’t saw you in half and leave you in the woods.” The recordings also captured Bonanno family members and associates discussing their participation in a violent stabbing assault of two individuals in 2004 in Whitestone, Queens.
The indictment announced today is the latest in an ongoing investigation that has resulted in the prosecution of more than 125 members and associates of the Bonanno family in the Eastern District of New York. Since March 2002, four Bonanno family bosses or acting bosses—Joseph Massino, Anthony Urso, Vincent Basciano, and Michael Mancuso—have been convicted on racketeering and racketeering-related charges, which included murder or murder conspiracy as a racketeering act.
“Members of organized crime continue to victimize our communities with their brand of violence and other criminal activity,” stated U. Attorney Campbell. “We will not rest until we dismantle the entire Bonanno crime family and each of the other families of La Cosa Nostra.” Mr. Campbell praised the Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who led the government’s investigation.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Demarest stated, “The charges unsealed today are the culmination of another in a series of recent FBI investigations that put to lie the notion that violence is a thing of the past in organized crime. Today, as always, mob families are criminal enterprises bent on making money any way they can. As often as not, violence goes hand-in-hand with mobsters’ illegal schemes.”
If convicted, Bana, Frank DeRosa, Sebastian DeRosa, Loiacono, Lotito, Pastore, Anthony Pipitone, Vito Pipitone, Sammartino, Sclafani, Spatola, Frank Terzo, and Natale Terzo each face a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment; DeFilippo faces a maximum sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment; and, based upon a prior felony information filed this morning, Spina faces mandatory life imprisonment.
The government’s case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Nicole M. Argentieri, Gina M. Parlovecchio, and Duncan Levin.
The Defendants:
MANNY BANA
Age: 42
PETER DEFILIPPO
Age: 47
FRANK DEROSA
Age: 45
SEBASTIAN DEROSA
Age: 66
JOSEPH LOIACONO
Age: 64
RICHARD LOTITO
Age: 46
FRANK PASTORE
Age: 39
ANTHONY PIPITONE
Age: 37
VITO PIPITONE
Age: 28
JOSEPH SAMMARTINO
Age: 55
ANTHONY SCLAFANI
Age: 63
JOSEPH SPATOLA
Age: 33
PAUL SPINA
Age: 54
FRANK TERZO
Age: 24
NATALE TERZO
Age: 52
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Al Capone Reputed Hideout Purchased by Wisconsin Bank
The reputed hideout of infamous mobster Al Capone sold to Chippewa Valley Bank of Wisconsin for $2.6 million, according to CNN affiliate KBJR affiliate in Duluth, Minnesota.
Locals say mobster Al Capone used his family's Wisconsin property as a hideout.
The bank was the only bidder at the auction Thursday at the Sawyer County Courthouse in Wisconsin. The previous owners, Guy and Jean Houston, purchased it for $4.25 million in 1959, KBJR said.
The two-story stone lodge, tucked away on 407 acres in Couderay, Wisconsin, was owned by the Capone family in the 1920s.
The Houston family purchased the property in the 1950s and transformed it into a tourist spot. Visitors paid a few dollars for a walking tour of Capone's reputed hideout.
The property includes a 37-acre lake and eight-car garage.
There is no indication of what will happen to the property.
It holds enormous nostalgic value, bank Vice President Joe Kinnear said. After all, he noted, Al Capone's name is closely associated with Chicago, Illinois.
"This guy really has incredible fame power," said John Russick, senior curator at the Chicago History Museum. "He became this icon for a whole profession of underworld figures, and people are fascinated with that."
With his expensive suits, wide-brimmed fedora and cigar, the gangster who relished the media spotlight became the face of lawlessness during the Prohibition era.
From 1925 to 1931, Capone was Chicago's most notorious organized-crime boss. He ruthlessly relied on intimidation, bribes and violence, according to gangster lore.
Even some state and local law enforcement officers turned a blind eye when Capone's gang committed crimes, leaving the feds to chase him, historians say. But life as a crime kingpin brought a growing list of enemies, said Arthur J. Lurigio, a professor of criminology at Loyola University Chicago, who is also working on a documentary and book about organized crime in Chicago.
"He wanted to get away from his enemies," Lurigio explained. "He had already escaped death several times."
No one can say for certain whether Capone ever stayed in the Wisconsin lodge. Because he operated an illegal business, there are few written documents with clues on where he spent his time, historians say.
State University of New York at Oswego professor emeritus Luciano Iorizzo, who wrote "Al Capone: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies)" in 2003, said he has never come across evidence that Capone visited the Wisconsin hideout
Henry Binford, a professor of history at Northwestern University, theorizes that the hideout was a stopover in the transportation of liquor to Chicago during Prohibition. It's rumored among locals that planes from Canada that were filled with alcohol docked on the small lake on the property.
"Being an ostensible businessman, he had a lot of channels of supply," Binford said, pointing out that the lodge is located close to the Canadian border.
Capone's illegal activities caught up with him in the 1930s. His most infamous mob war, the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago that killed seven rivals, further enticed federal agents to catch him. In 1931, he was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz prison in California.
This summer, when the hideout tours were shut down, Leslie Strapon, assistant executive director of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce, said her office received hundreds of calls from disappointed tourists.
"Everyone is patiently waiting to see what's going to happen with the place," she said. "It would be nice if it fell into the hands of someone who was wiling to reopen and carry on the tradition."
Thanks to Stephanie Chen
Locals say mobster Al Capone used his family's Wisconsin property as a hideout.
The bank was the only bidder at the auction Thursday at the Sawyer County Courthouse in Wisconsin. The previous owners, Guy and Jean Houston, purchased it for $4.25 million in 1959, KBJR said.
The two-story stone lodge, tucked away on 407 acres in Couderay, Wisconsin, was owned by the Capone family in the 1920s.The Houston family purchased the property in the 1950s and transformed it into a tourist spot. Visitors paid a few dollars for a walking tour of Capone's reputed hideout.
The property includes a 37-acre lake and eight-car garage.
There is no indication of what will happen to the property.
It holds enormous nostalgic value, bank Vice President Joe Kinnear said. After all, he noted, Al Capone's name is closely associated with Chicago, Illinois.
"This guy really has incredible fame power," said John Russick, senior curator at the Chicago History Museum. "He became this icon for a whole profession of underworld figures, and people are fascinated with that."
With his expensive suits, wide-brimmed fedora and cigar, the gangster who relished the media spotlight became the face of lawlessness during the Prohibition era.
From 1925 to 1931, Capone was Chicago's most notorious organized-crime boss. He ruthlessly relied on intimidation, bribes and violence, according to gangster lore.
Even some state and local law enforcement officers turned a blind eye when Capone's gang committed crimes, leaving the feds to chase him, historians say. But life as a crime kingpin brought a growing list of enemies, said Arthur J. Lurigio, a professor of criminology at Loyola University Chicago, who is also working on a documentary and book about organized crime in Chicago.
"He wanted to get away from his enemies," Lurigio explained. "He had already escaped death several times."
No one can say for certain whether Capone ever stayed in the Wisconsin lodge. Because he operated an illegal business, there are few written documents with clues on where he spent his time, historians say.
State University of New York at Oswego professor emeritus Luciano Iorizzo, who wrote "Al Capone: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies)" in 2003, said he has never come across evidence that Capone visited the Wisconsin hideout
Henry Binford, a professor of history at Northwestern University, theorizes that the hideout was a stopover in the transportation of liquor to Chicago during Prohibition. It's rumored among locals that planes from Canada that were filled with alcohol docked on the small lake on the property.
"Being an ostensible businessman, he had a lot of channels of supply," Binford said, pointing out that the lodge is located close to the Canadian border.
Capone's illegal activities caught up with him in the 1930s. His most infamous mob war, the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago that killed seven rivals, further enticed federal agents to catch him. In 1931, he was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz prison in California.
This summer, when the hideout tours were shut down, Leslie Strapon, assistant executive director of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce, said her office received hundreds of calls from disappointed tourists.
"Everyone is patiently waiting to see what's going to happen with the place," she said. "It would be nice if it fell into the hands of someone who was wiling to reopen and carry on the tradition."
Thanks to Stephanie Chen
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Betty Loren-Maltese is Ready to Spill the Beans
After being released from prison and living in Las Vegas, former Illinois politician Betty Loren-Maltese is ready to spill the beans.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Reputed Mobster Joseph Merlino Ran Construction Firm Says Witness
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
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
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
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