A Look Back At The John Gotti Trials: My Washington Times On Crime Column On 'The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster'

 The Washington Times ran my On Crime column that covered John Gleason’s The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America’s Most Notorious Mobster. 

Even after all these years, the late John Gotti remains the public’s poster boy for Cosa Nostra crime bosses. Known as “The Dapper Don,” the well-dressed, publicity-seeking, boss of the Gambino crime family in New York, was often in the news, even though Cosa Nostra was a secret criminal society.

 

Like Al Capone before him, Gotti was flashy and flippant around reporters and the public, and he was feared by other mobsters due to his murder of the previous Gambino boss, Paul Castellano, and other brutal and violent acts.

 

Gotti was also called “The Teflon Don,” as he was acquitted in a federal trial, and many believed the Feds couldn’t touch him.

 

That Teflon image would change in 1992 when Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gleeson became Gotti’s chief prosecutor. A former federal prosecutor, federal judge, and today a practicing defense attorney, Judge Gleeson was the lead counsel in the successful racketeering-murder trials of both John Gotti and Vic Orena, the bosses of the Gambino and Colombo crime families.

 

Judge Gleeson offers a look back at the Gotti trials in his book, “The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America’s Notorious Mobster.”  

“The Gotti Wars” recounts the story of Gotti’s rise in Cosa Nostra and his eventual downfall. John Gleeson prosecuted Gotti’s two federal racketeering prosecutions. In the first trial, Gotti was acquitted. Five years later, he was in charge of the second racketeering trial. He had the FBI’s secret recordings of Gotti’s conversations with “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, Gotti’s underboss, and consigliere Frank Locascio. All three were indicted and Gravano “flipped” and agreed to testify against Gotti.

 

I reached out to Judge Gleeson (seen in the bottom photo) and asked him why he wrote this book after all these years?

 

“I wrote much of the book, including most of the events surrounding the Interlude and Second Trial parts, within 3 or 4 years of the verdict in the second case. But then life got in the way: two kids had come along, and I had to learn the job of being a judge, and I was teaching substantive courses at NYU’s law school for both semesters for more than 20 years,” Judge Gleeson replied “I also decided I needed to write the book not solely from memory but like a historian would, so I got the US Attorney’s office files and the trial transcripts from both cases. Rooting it all in those records, and writing about the first trial, was a painstaking process. Then in 2016 I started yet another new phase—private practice.  So it wasn’t a matter of waiting all this time to write a book.  I knew when they were happening these events should be memorialized.  It just took me a long time to get the book over the finish line.”

 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link or below:

BOOK REVIEW: 'The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster' - Washington Times

How And Why Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano Turned On John Gotti

Brad Hamilton at the New York Post offer a piece on former federal prosecutor John Gleeson’s new book on John Gotti.

It was the biggest gamble of John Gleeson’s life.

In 1991, the federal prosecutor, gearing up for his second murder trial of John Gotti in four years, had gotten word that the Gambino crime boss’s underling and co-defendant, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, wanted to meet — without his lawyer.

The only logical reason was that Gravano was ready to flip and testify against the “Dapper Don.” That, however, would be an epic betrayal of the Mafia’s code of silence and the most devastating blow ever delivered to organized crime, given that no one even close to Gravano’s level of power had ever cut a deal with prosecutors before. 

But deputy US Attorney Gleeson, the top mob buster in Brooklyn, was deeply concerned that if Gotti got wind of a meeting with his hitman underboss, Gravano would be targeted for death.

So the prosecutor arranged a secret pow-wow to see what Gravano had to say. They met privately in a jury room at the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn. After shaking hands, Gravano got right to the point:

“I want to jump from our government to your government,” he said.

“Why?” Gleeson asked.

“I think if we manage to beat the case, John will try to kill me when we hit the street,” Gravano replied. “So if we do win, I’d have to kill him or be killed by him. If I kill him, I’ll have to kill his brothers Gene and Pete. And his kid, probably some others too.

“It would get complicated.”

Once closely-connected mobsters, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano (left) turned on Gambino crime family chief John Gotti (right) to help prosecutors finally put the organized-crime boss behind bars.

This is just one of the shocking revelations in Gleeson’s new book, “The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America’s Most Notorious Mobster.” Out Tuesday, it focuses on the five years, from 1987 to 1992, when the prosecutor twice indicted the Gambino boss in a relentless and often frustrating effort to put him behind bars.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Book reveals how Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano turned on John Gotti (nypost.com)

How John Gotti Whacked The American Mafia

Sean Cunningham interviewed veteran organized crime reporter and author George Anastasia (seen in the bottom photo) on the decline of Cosa Nostra in America at realclearlife.com.

Even in death, John Gotti (seen in the above FBI mugshot) suffers indignities. A Gotti biopic starring John Travolta and directed by Kevin Connolly (“E” from HBO’s Entourage) was scheduled to hit theaters on Dec. 15… only suddenly to be not only yanked from release but reportedly dumped by Lionsgate completely.

Travolta has since pushed back, insisting that it was actually a buyback that will allow for a wider release in 2018. Indeed, they now want the film to compete at Cannes. (It still needs to be submitted, much less accepted.)

This all feels oddly consistent with the Gotti story. By the time he died of throat cancer in 2002 at age 61, his nicknames seemed to mock rather than flatter him. The “Dapper Don” who bragged about wearing $1,800 suits gave up control of his wardrobe in 1992. That was the year he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole as the “Teflon Don” turned stickum. His conviction was particularly bitter since fellow defendant Sammy “The Bull” Gravano flipped on him. Thus Gotti, whose public flamboyance just dared the government to take him down… was taken down. And he remained down until his death.

Which was par for the course during an era when the mob was bold, aggressive, loud, treacherous, and often staggeringly inept, as if watching a season of The Sopranos in which every single character was Paulie Walnuts.

“It’s a dark comedy,” said George Anastasia. Anastasia spent decades documenting the mob in Philadelphia for the Inquirer, but also explored the “big stage” of New York with Gotti’s Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia. (Alite was a friend, enforcer and self-professed “babysitter” for Gotti Jr.)

… Anastasia noted that a Gotti associate turned informant summed it up pretty well: “Mikey Scars—Michael DiLeonardo—once said to me, ‘Cosa Nostra was this thing of ours. Johnny made it this thing of mine.’ That was the difference. He talked about Cosa Nostra but it was very egocentric.”

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a trailer from the film Gotti via the below link:

http://www.realclearlife.com/crime/john-gotti-hurt-american-mafia/ 

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of George Anastasia's Gotti Rules below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

On This Day In History Mob Boss John Gotti Was Convicted Of Murder

As History.com note, on this day in 1992 John Gotti, boss of the New York Gambino Cosa Nostra crime family, was convicted of murder.

You can read about Gotti and the trial via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mob-boss-john-gotti-convicted-of-murder?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0402-04022017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=166512913&kx_EmailCampaignID=10779&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0402-04022017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa  

Mob Boss Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante's Rocky Relationship With John Gotti Detailed In New Book

The New York Daily News offers an excerpt from Larry McShane's book Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mafia Boss Vincent Gigante. 

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/vincent-chin-gigante-john-gotti-feud-detailed-new-book-article-1.2653218

New Book Reveals John Gotti's Role In 'Goodfellas' Murder

Bill Sanderson at the New York Post reports on the claims in a new book about New York gangster John Gotti's involvement in the murder featured in Martin Scorsese's classic crime film, Goodfellas.

It was time for Tommy ­DeSimone to die.

The mobster — famously portrayed by Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas” — killed two made men, tried to rape the wife of his gangster pal Henry Hill and stupidly lifted his ski mask during 1978’s historic $6 million Lufthansa heist.

So John Gotti took care of it — personally.

The handsome capo used a silencer-equipped Colt .38 to shoot DeSimone three times in the skull in January 1979 in the basement of an Italian restaurant on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx, says an upcoming book, “The Lufthansa Heist,” written by Hill and journalist Daniel Simone.

It’s the first time the details of Gotti’s role in the death of the 28-year-old psychopath have been revealed.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2015/07/12/new-book-reveals-john-gottis-role-in-goodfellas-murder/ 

Gotti, Guns & Gay Bars: Inside New York City's Mob History

In light of AMC's presentation of The Making of the Mob: New York, Michael Riedel at the New York Post offers a pictorial tour of the Big Apple's mob history.

Florida has Disney World, but New York has Gangland.

The history of the mob in America begins here, at Ellis Island. Between 1899 and 1910, nearly 2 million southern Italians fled grinding poverty to arrive at the gateway to America — Giuseppe Masseria, Frank Costello and Salvatore Lucania (the future Charles “Lucky” Luciano) among them.

Their exploits and those of successors like Carlo Gambino and John Gotti inspired a slew of film and TV stories, some more glamorous than others. Now AMC’s “The Making of the Mob: New York,” an eight-part docudrama premiering Monday, takes a look at where these wiseguys came from.

Let’s take our own little tour of Gangland to see where the boys plotted, gambled, ate, killed and were killed.

Just make sure men in long coats aren’t following you.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2015/06/13/gotti-guns-gay-bars-inside-nycs-mob-history/

Ex-Mobster John Alite: Gotti Family Ordered Cyber "Hit" On Me

Gary Busio at the New York Post reports on a new kind of mob war.

He’s no Facebook friend of ours.

Instead of using brickbats or Berettas, relatives of notorious Mafia boss John Gotti are delivering a beatdown to a former Gambino enforcer the 21st-century way — on the Internet.

“U go to war with one of us u go to war Witt [sic] all of us simple as that,” declared John “Junior” Gotti’s son John Gotti Jr. on Twitter March 25.

The tweet is just one example of an escalating and bizarre online barrage — which includes phony Twitter accounts, altered Wikipedia pages and doctored YouTube videos — targeting John Alite, who says the Gottis have relentlessly bullied him online ever since he was featured in a book titled “Gotti’s Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia,” which came out Jan. 27.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2015/05/03/ex-mobster-gotti-family-ordered-cyber-hit-on-me/

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of George Anastasia's book on John Alite via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/02/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of.html

New York Mobster John (Junior) Gotti Brags He Lied To Feds, Insists He's Not A 'Rat'

John Marzulli at the New York Daily News offers a piece on John "Junior" Gotti.

John (Junior) Gotti wants to make one thing perfectly clear — he’s not a rat.

In a sitdown with the Daily News, the mob scion and his lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman gave their most detailed explanation to date of Gotti’s stunning decision to sit down with federal prosecutors in 2005 for a proffer session where he discussed crimes of his own — and of other mobsters in the Gambino crime family.

But he insists the “rat” label is unfair, because he intentionally provided bad information to the feds he felt sick talking to.

“No one got indicted,” said Gotti, who recently published a memoir titled “Shadow of My Father.”

“No one suffered but me.”

Gotti acknowledged that his old-school father, the late Gambino boss John Gotti, would never have approved of the legal strategy. But Junior said he was in a bad place at the time.

He was facing trial on racketeering and stock fraud charges that could put him away for 100 years if he were convicted. Gotti was furious over the indictment because he thought federal prosecutors had given him coverage on those alleged charges from a prior plea agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office.

Gotti said he planned to give the feds information that was either useless or out-and-out false, and refused to ever testify against anyone. He hoped that prosecutors would give him a sweetheart plea deal while he would get two of his archenemies, reputed capo Daniel Marino and associate Joseph (Joe the German) Watts, jammed up with the feds.

The plan made no sense to anyone except Gotti — and got him excoriated as a “rat” by his ex-underling John Alite.

Alite cut a deal to get out of prison and somehow got ahold of the five-page summary of Gotti’s blabbing, and published the secret FBI report in his memoir, “Gotti’s Rules.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/exclusive-john-junior-gotti-brags-lied-feds-article-1.2118025

George Anastasia offers the documentation mentioned above in his book on John Alite and the Gotti family.

You can read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of Gotti's Rules via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/02/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of.html

My Philadelphia Inquirer Review Of 'Gotti's Rules'

My review of George Anastasia's Gotti's Rules appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Appearing on ABC some years ago, former Mafia capo Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano told an interviewer about the time he was eating in a New York restaurant with Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.

A nearby couple was staring and whispering and Gotti grumbled. Gravano asked Gotti if he wanted him to handle it.

"No," Gotti told his underboss sternly. "This is my public."

Gravano said he was taken aback. They were both members of La Cosa Nostra, a secret criminal society. And here was a boss who believed he had a "public." Gravano said Gotti's ego and need for public attention led to his downfall.

In George Anastasia's Gotti's Rules, John Alite, an associate member of the Gotti crime family, outlines other Gotti shortcomings, such as rapacity, disloyalty, hypocrisy, and treachery.

As for Alite, Anastasia introduces him to the reader this way: "John Alite was a murderer, drug dealer and thug." For 25 years, Anastasia writes, Alite brutalized people. He stabbed them, shot them, and beat them with pipes, blackjacks, and baseball bats.

"He's not proud of that, but he doesn't try to hide from it, either," Anastasia writes. "It's who he was. But not who he is." Alite's years with the Gotti family ended when he testified in court against John Gotti's son, "Junior."

You can read the rest of the review below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge. 

Junior Gotti On Why He Authored Tell-All Book: I Have The Right To Write Our Own History

Linda Stasi at the New York Daily News offers a piece on why John "Junior' Gotti wrote a tell-all book.

For decades, John A. (Junior) Gotti has kept silent as mobsters, journalists and even hated turncoats spun tales about his notorious family.

No more.

The son of the late “Dapper Don” John Gotti said he decided to write his memoir — despite the protests of his beloved mother — to set the record straight.

“Our privacy has been invaded more than most families’ due to the selfishness of my father and I, but I can’t keep sitting back and letting this happen,” Gotti, 50, told the Daily News. “At some time you gotta roll up your sleeves and do what’s right.”

The riveting book, “Shadow of My Father,” which will be out Monday as an e-book, is Gotti’s firsthand account of “the life” — how his mobster father lived it as the boss of the Gambino crime family, and how he managed to break away from it.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/exclusive-john-junior-gotti-wrote-book-article-1.2082855

George Anastasia's 'Gotti's Rules': In New Book, Gambino Hit Man And Enforcer John Alite Say John Gotti Jr. Would Turn And Run When Things Got Tough

Sherryl Connelly at the New York Daily News offers a piece on mobster John Alite, the subject of veteran organized crime reporter George Anastasia's new book Gotti's Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia.

Not long after John Gotti went to prison in 1992, Gambino family hit man and enforcer John Alite plotted to murder his son. John Gotti Jr. survived, but Alite still seems to want him dead.

“Gotti’s Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia,” by George Anastasia, is Alite’s final revenge against Junior, an attempt to assassinate him in words.

Spilling family secrets to Anastasia is all Alite’s got left. He already tried to put Junior behind bars.

In 2009, Alite took the stand in the feds’ last attempt to nail Junior, this time on racketeering and murder conspiracy charges. Like the three trials that preceded it, this one ended with a hung jury.
But Alite, who has served time for a slew of crimes from two murders, eight shootings, home invasions and armed robberies, isn’t done with Junior.

In his book, Gotti comes across not just as a vicious criminal but as a coward who never really got how being a mobster worked.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/mob-enforcer-new-book-rips-john-gotti-jr-article-1.2073451

On This Day In Crime History: The FBI Finally Got John Gotti

Below is a piece from the FBI web site on how they finally made the charges stick to the "Teflon Don," John Gotti:

He was slippery, yes, but even the “Teflon Don” couldn’t escape justice forever.

Despite the future nickname, John Gotti—a violent, ruthless mobster who’d grown up on the streets of New York—had been in and out of prison several times in his early career. In 1968, for example, we arrested him for his role in a plot to steal thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Gotti was sent to prison, but was released in 1972.

And quickly made more trouble. Within two years, we’d arrested him again for murder. Same story: he went to prison and was out in a few years. Soon after, he became a “made man” for the Gambino family, one of the five most powerful syndicates in the Big Apple. Gambling, loansharking, and narcotics trafficking were his stocks in trade.

The heat was on. By the early 80s, using Title III wiretaps, mob informants, and undercover agents, we were beginning to get clear insights into the Gambino family’s hierarchy and activities (and into the other families as well) and were building strong cases against them as criminal enterprises. A break against Gotti came in late 1985, when mob violence spilled out on to the streets of Manhattan.

The scene of the crime? Sparks’ Steak House, a popular hangout for major criminals. On the evening of December 16, 1985, 70-year-old-mafioso Paul Castellano—the apparent successor of recently deceased Gambino boss Aniello Dellacroce—was gunned down along with his number two in command, Thomas Bilotti, in front of the restaurant. Gotti, who’d been watching from a car at a safe distance, had one of his men drive him by the scene to make sure his deadly orders had been carried out.

Top hood. Having eliminated the competition, Gotti took over as head of the Gambino family. With his expensive suits, lavish parties, and illegal dealings, he quickly became something of a media celebrity, and the press dubbed him “The Dapper Don.” Following a string of highly-publicized acquittals—helped in large part by witness intimidation and jury tampering—Gotti also earned the “Teflon Don” nickname.

Our New York agents and their colleagues in the New York Police Department, though, refused to give up. With extensive court-authorized electronic surveillance, diligent detective work, and the eventual cooperation of Gotti’s henchman—“Sammy the Bull” Gravano—the Bureau and the NYPD built a strong case against him.

The end was near. In December 1990, our agents and NYPD detectives arrested Gotti, and he was charged with multiple counts of racketeering, extortion, jury tampering, and other crimes. This time, the judge ordered that the jurors remain anonymous, identified only by number, so no one could pressure them. And the case was airtight.

The combination worked. On April 2, 1992, 15 years ago Monday, Gotti was convicted on 13 counts, including for ordering the murders of Castellano and Bilotti. The head of our New York office famously remarked, “The don is covered with Velcro, and every charge stuck.”

Indeed. Gotti had evaded the law for the last time. He died in prison in June 2002.