The Last Don of New York City

By David Pietras

Born on October 27, 1940, in the South Bronx, New York, John Gotti would face run-ins with the law several times, including a four-year prison term for manslaughter, before becoming head of the Gambino crime family. Nicknamed "Teflon Don" for his ability to remain free, Gotti was eventually convicted on multiple criminal counts and sentenced to life in prison. He died on June 10, 2002. We will journey through the life, crimes and jail time of "The Last Don of New York City".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamondback Publishers International
• Release date: Nov 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386591474

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I'm a man's man. I'm here to take my medicine, — John Gotti

The John Gotti Story:

Introduction

The American gangster has become as American as say - apple pie! For decades people have both marveled at and been reviled by this genre of criminal activity in the United States.

Few organized crime figures have completely captured the attention of the public as John Gotti has over the past 20 years. We have had our celebrity mobsters in the past. Underworld figures like Al Scarface Capone and Jack Legs Diamond captured the public's fascination during the 1920s. In the 1930s it was a different brand of criminal that became popular. Bank robbers like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson were the rage of what was known as the Mid-West Crime Wave.

The 1940s brought us Benjamin Bugsy Siegel and the killers of Murder, Inc. Along with the glamour these individuals provided, their murders made for exciting front-page headlines, not to mention sensational photographs.

While there were no prominent names during the 1950s, that decade nevertheless brought organized crime to the forefront, due to the efforts of law enforcement.  It began with the televised Kefauver hearings in the early 1950s and made a big splash with the infamous Apalachin conclave in 1957.

The Apalachin Meeting was a historic summit of the American Mafia held at the home of mobster Joseph Joe the Barber Barbara in Apalachin, New York on November 14, 1957. Allegedly, the meeting was held to discuss various topics including loansharking, narcotics trafficking and gambling along with dividing the illegal operations controlled by the late Albert Anastasia. An estimated 100 Mafiosi members from the United States, Canada and Italy are thought to have been at this meeting.

Local and state law enforcement became suspicious when a large number of expensive cars bearing license plates from around the country arrived in what was described as the sleepy hamlet of Apalachin. After setting up roadblocks, the police raided the meeting causing many of the participants to flee into the woods and area surrounding the Barbara estate. More than 60 underworld bosses were detained and indicted following the raid. One of the most direct and significant outcomes of the Apalachin Meeting was that it helped to confirm the existence of the American Mafia to the public, a fact that some, including Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover, had long refused to acknowledge publicly.

The top guns of organized crime were holding a summit at the country home of gangster Joseph Barbara near Binghamton on Nov. 14, 1957.

The turbulent 1960s passed none too quickly with its political / sociological upheaval and in gangland we saw for the first time warring within the various crime families - the Gallo / Profacci War and the Banana War. As the 1970s dawned gangsters began not only vying for newspaper headlines, but now television airtime. Mortal mob enemies Crazy Joe Gallo and Joseph Colombo were the media targets of New York City and the city knew how to promote them. Both flamboyant characters would meet brutal, albeit well-publicized endings.

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Crazy Joe Gallo

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Joseph Colombo

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John Gotti

By the mid-1980s federal law agencies, with the help of local law enforcement, began to dismantle organized crime families across the country. In the midst of this effort, John Gotti stepped forward and captured the public's attention in what seemed like the final gasp for the Hollywood-style gangster to leave his mark in the annals of American criminal history. Gotti became the darling of the New York media.

With his habit of coming through criminal trials unscathed and penchant for expensive and fashionable attire, he became the icon of the American gangster.

As Gotti rose to the top he left behind a bloody trail of bodies, as well as an assortment of embarrassed law enforcement agencies. Putting him away became an obsession that would cause the government to go after him with no holds barred. In 1992 the man who had gone from the Dapper Don to the Teflon Don was convicted of RICO charges in Brooklyn's federal district court. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Looking back at Gotti's reign one can see that his only true achievement as a Mafia chieftain was to captivate the public's attention. At this, Gotti had few equals. But as a leader he was quite lacked the ability that characterized the careers of such mob luminaries as Capone, Luciano, Lansky, Torrio, Costello and Gambino. In the end it was Gotti's ego and carelessness that led to his downfall.

At the end of his first decade in prison, the 61-year-old Gotti died on June 10, 2002 from complications of head and neck cancer.  It seems almost ironic, as if Gotti were having the last laugh at the federal government by cheating them – having spent only 10 years behind bars. If there is anything positive that can be said for Gotti, it's that he took his punishment like a man. Still defiant of the government, one is left to wonder if John Gotti, the Dapper Don, would have wanted it any other way.

Early Life

John Joseph Gotti, Jr. was born on October 27, 1940. He was the fifth child of John J. Gotti, Sr. and his wife, Fannie. The family grew to eleven children - seven boys and four girls. Due to poor medical care some of his siblings died during childhood. Gotti's father was described in early writings as a hardworking immigrant from the Neapolitan section of Italy. Years later, Gotti would tell a very different story about his father to Salvatore Sammy the Bull Gravano (the Gambino Family underboss who would become the most infamous mob rat in America):

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Sammy the Bull Gravano

These fuckin' bums that write books, Gotti complained, they're worse than us. My fuckin' father was born in New Jersey. He ain't never been in Italy his whole fuckin' life. My mother neither. The guy never worked a fuckin' day in his life. He was a rolling stone; he never provided for the family. He never did nothin'. He never earned nothin'. And we never had nothin'.

While this description of his father's work habits was overblown, the family was raised in a dirt-poor, poverty-ridden section of the South Bronx. By the time Gotti was ten; his father had saved enough money to move the family to the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn. This proved to be a definite step up from their four-room flat in the South Bronx. A year later, another move placed the family in an area of Brooklyn known as East New York.

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The Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn

At any early age, young Johnny Boy learned to use his fists. He had a quick temper and a burning anger as he looked on in disdain at those who had a better life. Instead of aspiring to become a businessman or doctor, his goal was to be one of the wiseguys he saw on a daily basis hanging around the Brooklyn street corners. Thus, Gotti had barely turned twelve before he was caught up in the street activity of the local mobsters. Along with brothers Peter and Richard, Gotti became part of a gang that ran errands for the wiseguys. While Gotti was getting a street education, he seldom had time for a formal one. A habitual truant, when he was in school his teachers considered him a disturbing distraction. Because he was a class bully and a routine discipline problem, they showed little concern over his absence.

In 1954, Gotti was injured while participating in a robbery for some local hoods. He and some other kids were in the process of stealing a portable cement mixer from a construction site when the mixer tipped over landing on Gotti's toes, crushing them. After spending most of the summer of his fourteenth year in the hospital, Gotti was back on the street with a new gait that would last him for life.

By the time he was sixteen Gotti quit school for good and became a member of the Fulton-Rockaway Boys, a teenage gang named for an intersection in Brooklyn. Gotti rose rapidly to leadership. The Fulton-Rockaway Boys differed from other turf-minded teen gangs in that they were into a higher level of criminality. Gang members stole automobiles, fenced stolen goods and rolled drunks.

Also, with brothers Peter and Richard, Gotti teamed up with two other young men who would become life-long friends. The first was Angelo Ruggiero, a hulking youth whose penchant for non-stop chatter earned him the nickname Quack-Quack. The second was Wilfred Willie Boy Johnson, an amateur boxer whose father was of American Indian descent. Johnson was constantly teased and degraded about his roots, and because of it, he could never become a made member of the Mafia because of it.

Between 1957 and 1961, while a member of