Gotti Was Like Mob Bosses in Movies
Where Gotti Walked, Attention Followed
By John Miller
John Gotti announced his arrival with the Hollywood hit of Big Paul Castellano, gunned down on a crowded midtown street nine days before Christmas of 1985. Gotti, later convicted of personally running the Castellano hit, took over the Gambino family, and he lived large.
When his son “Junior” got married, Gotti threw a lavish wedding with 300 guests at the Helmsley Palace. Mob bosses from the other four New York families made odd entrances, all wearing black tie with covered faces. They knew the cameras would be there, but none would turn down an invitation from John Gotti.
For an investigator or a reporter, working John Gotti was a breeze. I could set my watch to him.
If I got to his house in Howard Beach, Queens, by noon, I could tail him to the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club. There I would watch Gotti get out of the black Mercedes wearing a jogging suit and step into the club. Moments later, Bobby Peligrino would show up with a freshly pressed Brioni suit on a hanger for Mr. Gotti. A few minutes after that, a barber would arrive. Gotti would go into the back room, where he had his own barber chair, and take his haircut. While Gotti was getting dressed, Peligrino would take the Mercedes to the car wash.
By 1 p.m., I would be sitting under a railroad bridge watching through binoculars as Gotti would emerge, crisp in his beautiful suit, shadowed by his bodyguards Boby Borriello and Iggy Alonga. They would all get into the car and be off into a day of appointments and meetings.
Life Through a Lens
At about 3 p.m. he’d arrive in Little Italy. When I spotted those familiar license plate numbers, 9766-BTV, I would get on the radio and tell my cameraman: “Main subject comin’ at you.”
We would catalogue the long line of visitors. Soldiers from the Gambino family, capos who headed crews of soldiers and, of course, Gotti’s closest advisers, Consiglieri Frank Loscascio and his righthand man, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano.
From an apartment two blocks north on Lafayette Street, FBI agents gazed into the glowing blue screens of their monitors and kept a list of comings and goings. The Ravenite Social Club was then the front office of the Gambinos, a conglomerate that controlled unions, construction, garbage hauling, gambling, loansharking and the occasional murder.
John Gotti was the CEO and didn’t mind his face being associated with the enterprise. Gotti disdained the old bosses who seemed to go to so much trouble to pretend they were not what they appeared to be. John Gotti practically announced: I am a mob boss. Just like the ones from the movies.
And for the most part, the fascination with Gotti transcended the violent realities of mob life. People tended to say, “Well, it’s just mobsters killing other mobsters. As long as they didn’t hurt anybody else, it was all very romantic, right?”
When Gotti was on the front page, the paper sold out.
In the evening, Gotti and his entourage might walk down Mulberry Street to Taormina for dinner, and then play cards into the night with Joe Butch’s crew behind a gray storefront known as the Hawaiian Moonlighters Club. Other nights, it would be dinner uptown at DaNoi. Gotti would hold court at Regine’s, having Jack “Jackie the Nose” D’Amico dropping $100 bills on the pianist to play “Wind Beneath My Wings” over and over.
And you know what? None of the other customers ever complained.
So Gotti had a routine. And his routine led to his undoing. The FBI carefully catalogued everyone who came and went from the Ravenite Club. They videotaped Gotti’s walk-talks with dozens of major figures in the Gambino family. By being a creature of habit, Gotti gave the government what amounted to a family album, an organizational chart of the family.
In Gotti’s last trial, the FBI played all the videotapes showing the mobsters lining up outside the Ravenite to pay homage. Agent George Gabrielle ticked off their names and ranks like a kid flipping his baseball cards. The FBI played all the tapes of Gotti talking mob business, right down to who he ordered killed and why.
“You know why I killed D.B. … You know why Louie’s dying?”
After the verdict, as a small group of U.S. Marshals walked Gotti toward an old, rickety prop plane that would fly him to his permanent home in Marion, Ill., Gotti, who seemed to fear neither men nor jail, stopped, looked at the plane, and deadpanned, “You think it’s too late to say I’m sorry?”
At least he never lost his sense of humor.
The Aftermath
Outside the courthouse, a few hundred people from John Gotti’s neighborhood demonstrated against the life sentence that was imposed. The demonstration turned into a riot. Bottles were thrown and people scuffled with police. Three cars belonging to federal agents were trashed. One was overturned by a group of young toughs who cheered and waved American flags. People called for reinforcements.
An FBI agent who was watching all this turned to me and said, “You know who’s running this, right? It’s Junior.”
Lawyers for John Gotti Jr. said the demonstration was a spontaneous outpouring. They denied Junior organized it.
So that was it. The end of the Gotti era.