-Mafia Boss John Gotti Dies in Jail
By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer
AP/Richard Drew [17K]
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NEW YORK (AP) — He was known as the ``Dapper Don,'' a mob kingpin with a flair for double-breasted suits and silk shirts. After a series of acquittals on murder charges, a new name stuck: ``The Teflon Don.''
In the end, John Gotti spent a decade under a different identity: a federally issued inmate number. The swaggering mobster who once led the nation's most powerful crime family died Monday in a prison hospital in Springfield, Mo. He was 61.
``He's a man amongst men, a champion,'' said longtime family friend Lewis Kasman.
AP/ [18K]
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Gotti reigned for six years as the nation's most high-profile mobster, passing himself off as a plumbing supply salesman while strutting about in $2,000 suits and sneering at police. Some chroniclers called him the most important gangster since Al Capone, a comparison Gotti did not discourage.
When Gotti finally was convicted by a federal jury in New York, James Fox, the FBI agent in charge in New York, declared: ``The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro.''
When Gotti moved to take over the Gambino crime family, they were the biggest and most powerful of the city's five Mafia families. Their reach extended into the garment district, garbage hauling, construction, extortion and loan sharking.
In 1985, he took charge by murdering ``Big Paul'' Castellano, the boss of the Gambinos. Castellano had angered Gotti with, among other things, his ban on drug trafficking.
Gotti's seizure of power made him a criminal celebrity. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine and was glamorized as a gangster the law couldn't bring down.
Already in 1984, he had walked free when he was charged with attacking a motorist over a minor traffic dispute. The alleged victim refused to identify him in court, inspiring a tabloid headline, ``I FORGOTTI.'' In 1987, Gotti beat a federal rap by bribing a juror, and in 1990, another apparent payoff helped win his acquittal in the attempted murder of a union official.
Embarrassed federal authorities finally made gains through electronic surveillance, planting bugs in Gotti's Manhattan headquarters, his social club and an apartment that Gotti borrowed for private discussions.
In 1990, FBI agents arrested Gotti, Salvatore ``Sammy the Bull'' Gravano and crony Frank Locascio on charges of racketeering and murder, the key charge being the Castellano rubout.
Given Gotti's record of subverting justice, the jurors were tightly sequestered; even the judge didn't know their names. The jury found Gotti guilty on all 14 counts, including murder, racketeering and tax evasion.
Gotti was sentenced to life in 1992 for racketeering and six killings, mostly on the testimony of Gravano, his one-time closest confidant and underboss who turned government witness.
Gravano, branded a ``rat'' by Gotti, continued to testify for the government in one mob trial after another. He eventually dropped out of the federal witness program and pleaded guilty last year to running an Ecstasy scheme.
From his underground cell at Marion, Ill., Gotti allegedly continued to control the Gambino family through his youngest son, John Jr., but his power and influence clearly waned. The younger Gotti eventually was sentenced to nearly 6 1/2 years for bribery and extortion.
John Gotti was born Oct. 27, 1940, one of 13 children of poor immigrant parents from Naples. Gotti quit school at 16 and gravitated to petty crime. His violent ways drew the notice of Gambino family wise guys in his Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1950s.
Within a few years, he was running cargo thefts at Kennedy Airport, for which he served three years. Released in 1972, he killed the murderer of a nephew of boss Carlo Gambino — an act that earned him four more years in prison but helped him climb in mob ranks.
Married in 1960, Gotti and his wife, the former Victoria DiGiorgio, had four other children — daughters Victoria, a successful romance author, and Angela; and sons Peter and Frank.
In 1980, at 12, Frank was killed by a neighbor's car while riding his minibike. Though ruled blameless by police, the neighbor was abducted weeks later and never seen again. No charges were ever brought.
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