Mob Star (9 page)

“I’m not going to go against Mister Gotti. I’m going in his behalf. I don’t want to hurt Mister Gotti.”

All the press coverage was upsetting another member of the Gotti family, Mrs. John J. Gotti Jr. She wrote a letter, too, to the
Daily News,
complaining of harassment and attacking all press “vultures,” particularly another
Daily News
reporter, David J. Krajicek.

In another time, when she and Gotti were first married and they were struggling financially, she had aimed her anger at him and taken him to court. But that had been patched up and now Victoria Gotti passionately came to her husband’s and family’s defense.

She said John Gotti was too rich to steal: “In 1981, I inherited a little under a million dollars from a beautiful, hard-working lady whose family before her … came to this country for a better life. That lady was my mother. The point is, my husband needs nothing. Not three cents, much less three hundred dollars.”

Victoria Gotti also was perturbed by a column Krajicek wrote for the Queens section of the newspaper in which he described John A. Gotti, age 22, the couple’s oldest son, as a “baby bully” and poked fun at the way he talked. Young Gotti’s mother said he had been graduated from New York Military Academy, upstate on the Hudson River, and didn’t have a grammar problem.

“After reading that bit of trash you passed off as journalism, I’m not surprised that people like Sinatra, Madonna, and Diana Ross kick, punch, and spit on you … you are tantamount to vultures that will print anything, no matter how inaccurate, to sell a paper, or make brownie points with the boss.”

At the time, John A. Gotti was facing assault charges, too. He was accused of striking an off-duty cop during a fight at a Howard Beach diner. His mother wrote, “My son ‘Baby Bully’ went to the aid of a friend who was getting hit by two cops, who did not identify themselves as such.”

She added that she didn’t wish the “pain and agony in my heart on anyone.” She ended her letter with what she described as an “old Indian saying”: “Don’t criticize your neighbor until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.” The letter was handwritten on embossed stationery and mailed via certified delivery. Its authenticity was never questioned, except by her husband’s lawyer, who said the
Daily News
should not print the letter, “whoever it is from.”

In his column, Krajicek said that when he and a photographer appeared outside the Gotti home in Howard Beach, young Gotti threatened to “start choppin’ heads off” if they didn’t leave.

 

 

The 22-year-old Gotti was president of Samson Trucking Company in Brooklyn. A few days earlier, Angelo Ruggiero had told him that a Gambino captain friendly with the president of a Teamsters local was told that the local could toss jobs young John’s way. The electronic surveillance at the Bergin annex also demonstrated how and where the young trucking executive may have developed his proclivity for the use of menacing words.

In a conversation on March 2, the same day Krajicek’s column was printed, John Gotti complained to his son about someone who had mentioned his name over the telephone, an unauthorized and intolerable breach of Family etiquette.

“I’m gonna give him a kick in the fuckin’ ass,” father Gotti said. “The fuckin’ guy uses my name on the fuckin’ phone.”

“You serious? This guy’s so full of shit it ain’t funny.”

“You tell [the person] next time, don’t be mentioning no fuckin’ names on the phone or I’ll put him in the fuckin’ hospital. And before you do anything or he does any fuckin’ thing, you tell me first … There’s fuckin’ reasons why I don’t want people to go bothering people on the fuckin’ phone.”

“All right.”

“Now make sure tomorrow you see me and I’ll tell you what I want you to do there.”

“All right.”

 

 

On March 8, a Queens judge, Ann Dufficy, denied the request to withhold jurors’ names in the Piecyk case—state law didn’t allow it—but ruled their business and home addresses could be kept secret. Jury screening began that day.

Jury selection in Gotti’s case in federal court in Brooklyn was not far off either. In fact, a lot would be happening in Gotti’s two cases over the next few weeks, not all of it publicly reported.

On March 13, Gotti placed a mysterious, apparently prearranged, call to a public telephone booth in Manhattan and spoke to a man who identified himself only as “Frank.” They talked about the Piecyk case. Frank thought he could be helpful.

“Hello, is this John?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Frank, John, I’d like to meet with you. I think I got something to help you out. I’m sure of it. In fact, I, it’d be worth, very worth your while.”

“What’s it like? What about it?”

“It’s about your case in court.”

“Yeah? Which one? I have two cases pending, uh, Frank.”

“The one with the, the, the, the jerk-off there that took the three hundred and twenty five dollars off of, the one that ya got all the publicity about.”

“Yeah.”

“I know it’s a nothing case but they, they could break your balls considering who you are.”

“Yeah, well that’s for sure. You, you can’t tell me what it’s about …”

“I don’t want to talk over the phone, John.”

“Huh?”

“[I’m] totally paranoid about talking over the phone. It’ll only take five minutes of your time. I’m sure it will be helpful to you.”

“You’re sure this is gonna be helpful to the case now, Frank, this is not gonna …”

“… Guarantee you don’t get convicted, how’s that?”

“You guarantee I don’t get convicted?”

“I can’t guarantee you get acquitted, but I can guarantee you don’t get convicted, you understand that?”

For a courtroom veteran like Gotti, it wasn’t at all hard to understand. “Frank” was promising a mistrial, probably in the form of a hung jury, probably by buying a juror. Of course, such a guarantee had its price.

“I ain’t workin’ for nothin’,” Frank said.

“Yeah.”

The men made plans to meet at Teachers Too, a Manhattan bar, at ten o’clock that night.

“All right, I hope you’re gonna be helpful,” John said.

“It’s more than helpful, John.”

“Okay, buddy.”

Gotti stood up Frank later that evening. Organized Crime Task Force agents who conducted surveillance also did not spot any Gotti men. A man who answered to Frank was in the bar, but was not identified. At least four scenarios were possible: Frank had a Piecyk juror in his pocket, and Gotti decided to pass; he was a scam artist working a bold one; or an undercover agent on a law enforcement sting; or a nut case.

Opening arguments in the Piecyk case were held March 18. John Gotti’s trial lawyer was Bruce Cutler. Like Gotti, Cutler was a stout dynamo out of Brooklyn, and good at what he did, which was to take the prosecution’s evidence, spin it, scuff it, twist it, and pound it to a pulp, until it was nothing more than a lumpy pile of reasonable doubt—just as he did with opponents when he was an undefeated high-school wrestler and a college-football linebacker.

Up until 1981, Cutler was a prosecutor for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. For several years afterward, new lawyers were still being told stories about his cunningly ferocious courtroom style; but he was working the other side of the street now, a familiar career path for lawyers whose skills are worth Manhattan apartments and homes in the Hamptons.

Piecyk was drunk and picked the fight, Cutler told the jury as the trial began. Gotti intervened because he knew the 46-year-old Colletta had a heart problem. “And so he goes to pull this bully off the little man,” Cutler explained.

Piecyk was due to testify the next day, but failed to appear. He was located two days later in a hospital where he had admitted himself for elective surgery on his shoulder. He was taken into custody on a material-witness warrant. In the Queens District Attorney’s office that night, he began to cry and asked to speak to Sgt. Falco alone.

“He apologized for his behavior,” Sgt Falso said later, “and stated he wasn’t really mad at us. He did not want to testify. He was afraid for himself, his wife, and he again stated that he was afraid of Gotti’s people.”

On March 24, the reluctant witness, wearing dark glasses and chewing on his fingernails, took the stand and took an oath to tell the truth, which was that he was scared out of his mind.

The court was crowded with reporters and spectators. They fidgeted as the assistant district attorney, Kirke Bartley, led Piecyk through a set-the-scene thicket of questions, anxious for the moment when Bartley would ask him to identify the defendants. At the defense table, John Gotti, employing a style he would employ again, was as nonchalant as an easy chair, a man bored with the channel.

When the questions came close about the day in Maspeth, Piecyk invoked the Fifth Amendment. This was because a lawyer had advised him to seek immunity for anything he said—because the assistant district attorney could use Piecyk’s grand jury testimony to prosecute him for perjury if his story changed at trial.

A recess was called, and Piecyk got his immunity.

Finally, Bartley asked Piecyk whether the men who “punched and smacked” him were in the courtroom.

“I ask you to look around the courtroom,” Bartley said.

“I don’t see them now,” Piecyk said, without looking up.

“You don’t see them now?”

Piecyk now looked around. He glanced toward the rear of the court. He looked to the left, he looked to the right. He cast his eyes here and there until finally, briefly, on the easy chair of John Gotti.

“I do not,” he said.

Bartley tried to save the day, but it was a lost cause. He asked Piecyk several more questions about the dispute outside the Cozy Corner Bar, such as whether he recalled how the man who first slapped him was dressed.

“To be perfectly honest, it was so long ago I don’t remember.”

Piecyk didn’t remember who slapped him either. “I don’t remember who slapped me … I have no recollection of what the two men looked like or how they were dressed.”

The media played the story big. “I FORGOTTI!” said a large headline in the
New York Post.

The next day, the judge ruled the prosecutor could not admit Piecyk’s grand jury testimony into evidence because “The witness is not missing or dead.” But “surely his memory is missing or dead,” Bartley argued.

The judge then granted a defense motion to dismiss the charges and Gotti left court through a mob of reporters and bodyguards—one case down, one to go.

“The confusion has all been cleared up,” he said.

Piecyk was cornered for a comment, too. He said he was not frightened into forgetfulness, but added: “Any human being would lie to save his life.”

Piecyk went off to nurse his ego, which would suffer more self-inflicted wounds in the days and months ahead. Gotti went off to Ozone Park to celebrate and that night all the king’s men came to Queens to cheer him. Almost all, and the king reminded one of his subjects of this the next day.

The absentee celebrant was Joseph LaForte, an elderly Gambino captain from Staten Island, who claimed the press of other important business and then apologized:

“You know I’m not selfish, John, you know I’m not selfish. You know it.”

Gotti responded in a typically hyperbolic way. “Hey, Joe, you’re trying to tell me then that everybody else, Angelo, Frankie, his Uncle Joey, Joe Gallo, ah, all of Eighty-sixth Street [in Brooklyn], all our people there, Jersey people, all these guys [are not] as important as you. They run cities, they run towns, countries!”

LaForte said he wasn’t saying that.

“You pick up the fuckin’
Post
to find out how your fuckin’ friend made out in court.”

In the aftermath of victory, Gotti felt so lucky that he called a bookie.

“What are they bettin’?” he asked after calling a number subscribed to by a car wash in Ozone Park.

“They’re goin’ with Boston tonight,” a man he called “Carmine” replied, referring to the Boston Celtics professional basketball team. “They’re bettin’ Boston, Washington, they’re taking the points with Atlanta.”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, oh, they’re bettin’ that Wyoming [wins] in the college game.”

“They’re crazy. What’s the spread there?”

“Five and a half, Ohio State.”

“I love Ohio State.”

“Ya like them that much?”

“I swear to God.”

The boss who loved Ohio State steered the conversation to horses running that day at Roosevelt Raceway. He placed bets on the first two races and on the Daily Double. He bet the way he felt, on the favorites, to win.

 

 

On March 31, 1986, the plane-fearful boss traveled to Florida by limousine. His federal case was due to start April 7, and the sun would coat his face with a healthy polish in time for jury selection.

His family stayed behind, but his Family went along. He was accompanied by his driver, Bartholomew Borriello, and Joseph Corrao, a captain close to the late Paul Castellano. In Florida, he was spotted aboard a yacht with Ettore Zappi, a captain now based in Miami; James Failla, the captain from Eighty-sixth Street in Brooklyn who was Frank DeCicco’s “rabbi,” and Frank Dapolito, an official of a New York Teamsters local.

On the day Gotti departed, one of his codefendants in the federal case, Armond Dellacroce, disappeared. Armond was the son of Gotti’s mentor. He was 30 years old and had dropped out of high school to emulate his father. He had pleaded guilty to racketeering after his father died late in 1985 and was on bail awaiting sentencing; he faced up to 20 years.

Maybe two decades in jail is why he failed to show for sentencing; maybe it wasn’t. He had been regularly contacting the pretrial services division since the plea hearing, when his bail was set at $250,000. He was a good bail risk, his lawyer had said then, because bail would be secured by a deed to a Manhattan town house owned by his aunt and uncle. No Armond, no more town house.