John Gotti

John Gotti (born October 27, 1940, South Bronx, New York, U.S.—died June 10, 2002, Springfield, Missouri) American organized-crime boss whose flamboyant lifestyle and frequent public trials made him a prominent figure in the 1980s and ’90s.

Gotti was the fifth of 13 children born to John and Fannie Gotti, both of whom were children of Italian immigrants. As a teenager, Gotti became a leader of a local gang in the East New York section of Brooklyn, and he became involved with the Gambino crime family, one of New York City’s Five Families. After dropping out of high school, he frequently had skirmishes with the law and was arrested, mostly for petty crimes, nine times between the ages of 18 and 26.

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Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Gotti on charges of truck hijacking and cargo theft in 1968, to which he pleaded guilty, and he was sentenced to three years in a federal prison. In 1973 he allegedly participated in the murder of James McBratney for his role in the abduction and murder of a nephew of Gambino family leader Carlo Gambino. Arrested the following year, Gotti pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to only four years in prison. While serving his term, Gotti, who apparently bribed prison officials and guards, was allowed to leave the Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York to meet with other mobsters at New York City restaurants and even to visit his home in the Howard Beach section of Queens.

Before he died in 1976, Gambino named his brother-in-law, Paul Castellano, as his successor, though Gotti’s mentor, Aniello Dellacroce, was rightly next in line. Under the tutelage of Dellacroce, who was allowed to control nearly half the syndicate, Gotti quickly rose through the ranks of the underworld after his parole in 1977. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gotti did not conceal himself from the public eye, and by the 1980s he had become the city’s best-known organized-crime leader. Almost like a bootlegger in the era of Al Capone, he enjoyed his role as a celebrity gangster who appeared to be above the law. As the immaculately groomed “Dapper Don,” he became to his many local supporters a kind of romantic hero—a role that proved a major irritant to federal law enforcement.

Gotti lost one of his children, Frank, in a motor vehicle accident in March 1980. The younger Gotti was riding his motorbike when he was struck by an automobile driven by neighbour John Favara. Frank’s death was ruled accidental. However, Favara disappeared without a trace some four months later. He was later presumed dead, and witnesses claimed that they saw Favara being struck in the head with a club before he was forced into a van that left the scene. The incident occurred while Gotti and his family vacationed in Florida, and, although some sources have argued that Gotti planned the kidnapping, he claimed that he had nothing to do with Favara’s disappearance.

In 1985 the federal government charged Gotti with racketeering, and his brother Gene was indicted for narcotics trafficking—an activity that Castellano prohibited under penalty of death. In December Castellano was assassinated in a shooting that Salvatore Gravano (“Sammy the Bull”), a Gotti associate, later claimed Gotti witnessed from a parked car. In 1986 Gotti emerged as the leader of the Gambino crime family.

Following several unsuccessful prosecutions—one of which failed because the jury foreman was paid a $60,000 bribe—Gotti became known as the “Teflon Don” (because criminal charges against him never stuck) who could always outwit the criminal justice system. By 1990, however, the FBI had collected damaging evidence against Gotti through an extensive eavesdropping operation. In 1992, after a lengthy and widely publicized trial in which Gravano, in violation of a fundamental rule of Mafia behaviour, testified against him, Gotti was convicted on 13 criminal counts, including the murder of Castellano and others, racketeering, and obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to life in prison. In 1998 he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He died in 2002 at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.