Mob Star (55 page)

Heroin dealers Gene Gotti, John Carneglia, and Anthony Rampino fared worse. Gene and Carneglia are in federal prison until 2018. Rampino is in state prison until 2012.

After getting away with feigning insanity for three decades, Gotti nemesis Vincent “Chin” Gigante, long-time boss of the Genovese Family, was convicted of labor racketeering and put away for 12 years, thanks again in part to testimony by Gravano.

The Gigante trial was Gravano’s last trip to the witness stand for the government. It helped promote sales of his life story, which had come out a few months before. Later in 1999, however, the
Arizona Republic
disclosed that he was living in the Grand Canyon state, and Gravano gave its reporter some quotable words.

“I’m not running from the fucking Mafia,” he said. “I was a boxer. I know what it’s like to get hit. I know what it is to fight. You lose your fear. I could go to Montana and live 20 years in a cabin and be scared to death. Or I can live here … I choose to live here.”

At the time, Gravano ran a Phoenix construction company. He and his supposedly estranged-wife Debra also operated a Scottsdale restaurant. But these were not their most lucrative operations. On the side, they and their two adult children were also running an illegal party-drug business.

State authorities caught up with them first and later the federal government weighed in. For his part, Gravano pleaded guilty and is headed off to prison for a good long time.

Jack D’Amico, who served on a three-capo committee that helped Junior carry out his father’s wishes from prison during the mid-1990s, was indicted in the same case that led to Junior going away for six or so years. D’Amico pleaded guilty too, but only to bookmaking, and he served 17 months before getting out in September 2001.

The summer Junior and D’Amico went away, a woman who mounted an impressive Gotti fan club on the Internet and ran it for four years, called it quits and closed the site. She took down hundreds of upbeat items and photos of Gotti, Junior, Victoria, and Cutler.

In a last message to Gotti fans, Melissa (Ravenna) Angelini wrote, “Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.”

The end for John Gotti went on a long time. The first stories hinting that the end was near appeared in the fall of 2000. In the meantime, various treatment crises prompted more stories and transfers between a prison hospital and a hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Each time, his lawyers and spokesmen kept saying what a fighter he was and how, even as they complained about this or that condition of confinement, he never complained about anything. Even if he were no longer in charge of orchestrating public opinion, how the public perceived him remained a large part of the John Gotti story.

If his Family has its way, he will be buried next to his son Frank and father John Sr., in a famous old cemetery in Queens where several infamous gangsters, including Carlo Gambino and Aniello Dellacroce, are buried.

These gangsters from Gotti’s life, and most others there, lie in crypts marked only by their names and dates of birth and death. No slogans, no last words. No use giving writers anything to work with. But Gotti leaves his warehouse of tape-recorded words, including those he employed to describe the way he believed things went in his crime Family after he went away for good.

“If I had to give a mark, a grade on how every situation was handled—the lawyers and everything else, jobs and getting jobs and working and all that—I can’t put a passing mark on one incident,” he told brother Peter in 1998, in prison, before the cancer came.

Naturally, he had his reasons why, and no one who ever knew John Gotti or came to know him would be surprised. “Why do you think this group of people fell apart without me?” he asked, before providing, as he often did, his own answer:

O
N JUNE 10, 2002, three days after we finished this book, John Gotti died, giving us this last-second opportunity against a tight publishing deadline to make a few last comments.

We had every reason to suspect it, because we have been on the story 17 years and seen what happens in the media when a big Gotti headline comes along, but we were still amazed at the amount of coverage his death generated. Front-page stories and full-page photographs. Lengthy obituaries. Lots of essays by columnists. Much man-on-the-street. Many sidebars on this or that aspect of the man and his legacy. It went on several days, with follow-ups about disputes that erupted over shipping his body home to New York from the prison hospital where he died in Springfield, Missouri.

We didn’t measure the inches, but from the memory of our participation in that story, too, the death of Frank Sinatra—a big hero in New York who had a much longer time at the top—didn’t get near the attention Gotti’s did.

Naturally, we contributed. The
New York Daily News
published our obituary on Gotti and excerpts from one of our other books. The
New York Post
excerpted this book.
The New York Times
invited us onto its op-ed page. Reporters and broadcasters from Los Angeles to Auckland and New York to London called to ask for our comments.

All of it was evidence that for all the bad he did, Gotti was good on one level—as we said earlier, he lived up to our expectations of what a gangster is. The Gambino crime family is in ruins, because of him, but he looked, sounded, and acted like a gangster, and with such enthusiasm that we all became at least interested in his story, if not captivated. Our expectations come from our gangster movies, and Gotti was right off the big screen.

Ordinary people picked up on that, and used movie terms to talk about him. “He played that tough-guy role to his dying breath,” the former warden of the prison hospital where he died told the
Daily News
.

Meeting expectations, Gotti became part of our popular culture—he often was a case of life imitating art imitating life, but people were interested enough to pay attention. This is why the media gave us terrible new details about the suffering and indignity of his last few months of surgically imposed silence. It is why we learned he was to be buried in a crypt alongside son Frank, the boy on the minibike, in that Queens cemetery where so many gangsters lay. It is why we were told that while Roman Catholic officials would not grant his relatives’ wish for a Mass of Christian Burial, they would permit a church memorial service, but with no coffin present.

Nobody asked us, but we think his Family should have been able to say good-bye the way they wished. Death is always a sad ending, even for the villain’s family.

So long, John Gotti. You were a great story.

 

Gene Mustain
Jerry Capeci
June 14, 2002

Abbamonte, Oreste

Abbott, James (FBI Agent)

Agnello, Carmine

Ain, Stewart

Alesandro, Patricia De

Anastasia, Albert (boss)

Andrea Doria

Apalachin Conference

Arc Plumbing and Heating Corporation, Gotti’s “employment” at

Armone, Joseph

Arnold, Miriam (witness of Jimmy McBratney murder)

attorneys.
See also
U.S. attorneys

Blakey, G. Robert

Cohn, Roy

Coiro, Michael Cutler, Bruce

appeals Judge Nickerson’s decision to deny bail to Gotti

“Brucification” of defendants

complaints of press coverage during federal trial

disqualified from federal case against Gotti

RICO trial

Slotnick, Barry

audio bugs

Augello, Anthony (Colombo soldier)

babania, information on Salvatore Ruggiero’s drug dealings

Bartels, John R.

Bartley, Kirke

Battista, William (Billy)

beatings, Collado, Antonio

Beatty, George

Bergin Club

Cardinali, James

dice game arrests

fight between Gene Gotti and John Gotti

gambling hall

Gotti’s rise to captain position

Gotti’s visibility, Fourth of July celebration

informants

relationship between Dellacroce and Gotti

taped conversations used in O’Connor case

Berkowitz, David

Bilotti, Thomas

events leading up to murder

murder

Gotti voted control of Family after

Gotti’s behavior after

Gotti’s behavior leading up to

naming as underboss by Castellano

rise to power under Paul Castellano

Blakey, G. Robert (lawyer)

Bonanno, Joseph

Bonavolonta, Jules

bookmakers

Borriello, Bartholomew

Borriello, Bobby

bosses.
See also
families; underbosses Anastasia, Albert

Castellano, Paul

appointment as boss

death

discussion with Dellacroce about Caiazzo-LaForte affair

events leading up to murder

family boycott of wake

indictment as beneficiary of conspiracy

murder

naming Thomas Bilotti as underboss

receipt of Mercury Pattern Service problem from Gambino

relinquishment of control over Gambino Family to Aniello Dellacroce

rise to power

taped account of Apalachin Conference

taped conversation with Joe Gallo

“White House” bug

Colombo, Joseph

Dellacroce, Aniello

assignment by Gambino to be underboss

consent to make Gotti captain

death

high profile

pretrial hearing

relationship with Gotti during Bergin days

soldier years

tax case

Fatico, Carmine

loan-sharking cases

Galante, Carmine

Gambino, Carlo

Genovese, Vito

Gigante, Vincent

Mangano, Philip

Maranzano, Salvatore

Massino, Joseph (boss of Bonanno Family)

Persico, Carmine

Riggi, John (boss of DeCavalcante Family)

Salerno, Anthony

show of respect for Gotti after Costellano murder

BQ 11766-OC

belief that Gotti was dealing in drugs

Gene Gotti’s position in Family dealings

hijacking information

on Piecyk case

Salvatore Ruggiero’s continued contact with Gotti

targeting by Giacalone

Brownsville Stompers

Brownsville-East New York, childhood years

bugs.
See also
informants; surveillance

Angelo and Langella’s Brooklyn restaurant bug

Castellano’s “White House” bug

conversations about money-making ventures

drug dealings

Nettie Cirelli’s apartment

conversation between Frank LoCascio and John Gotti

conversation with Sammy about jury tampering

Gotti discusses murders

Gotti talks of murdering DiBernardo, Milito, and DiBono

revelation of tapes to prosecutors

Nice N EZ Auto School

Ravenite Social Club

audio bug

conversation about promoting John Jr.

conversation between Michael Coiro and John Gotti after Coiro is found guilty

video surveillance

Burke, Jimmy, dinner with Michael Coiro

Caan, James

Caiazzo-LaForte affair

Capone, Al

captains

Armone, Joseph

Carrao, Joseph

Failla, James

Gaggi, Anthony

Gotti’s assignment as captain

LaForte, Joseph

Mosca, Ralph

Cardinali, James

beating of Antonio Collado

bus thief capture

cocaine addiction

conversation with Diane Giacalone

dealings with District Attorney’s office

dinner between Jimmy Burke and Michael Coiro

drug dealing

involvement in fight between Gene and John Gotti

meeting with Special Agent Paul Hayes

murder of cocaine dealer

murder of Michael Castigliola

parole terms

prison time

relationship with Gotti

relationship with Willie Boy

RICO trial testimony

sandbagging of Diane Giacalone

Carneglia, Angelo

Carneglia, Charles

Carneglia, John

Carmine Agnello beating

charged for murdering Albert Gelb

FBI-Strike Force investigation for drug dealing

indictment

pleads Fifth Amendment

Sparks case sentencing

subpoena

cases.
See also
indictments

Carneglia, John

Coiro, Michael

conversation with Gotti after his guilty verdict

Gleeson’s prosecution of

Dellacroce tax case

Armond

indictment

federal case against Gotti

closing arguments

DeCicco’s murder during trial

Gotti plans for jail time upon losing appeal for bail

Gotti surrenders to prison time

indictment

Judge Leo Glasser disqualifies Cutler and Shargel from case

jury deliberation

jury selection

Lewis Schilero’s testimony of Cosa Nostra-speak

press coverage

Salvatore Gravano’s testimony