John A Gotti

Early life

Gotti is one of four children born to an Italian American mobster, John Joseph Gotti Jr. and Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti, whose father was of Italian descent, and mother was of Russian-Jewish ancestry. He grew up in the Italian-American neighborhood of Howard Beach, a section of Queens, New York. He attended New York Military Academy as a member of the Class of 1983 but did not graduate.

He has his sister, Victoria and two brothers, Peter and Frank (deceased).

After leaving the school, Gotti's father helped him start a trucking business, Samson Trucking Company and after the business failed, helped him get a position in the Carpenters Union.

Leadership of the Gambino crime family

According to federal prosecutors, Gotti was inducted into the Gambino crime family in 1988. He was named a caporegime (captain) in 1990, and is believed to be the youngest capo in the Gambino family's history.

In April 1992, his father, John J. Gotti, received a life sentence for racketeering and related offenses. Prosecutors say he made his son the head of family operations with a committee of captains to assist him. As a family member, he was one of the few people allowed to visit his father and Gotti is believed to have relayed his father's orders to the organization from prison.

Remembering how his father had been brought down by FBI bugs, Gotti adopted a more secretive way of doing business. He discussed mob business mainly through "walk-talks," or conversations held while walking alongside trusted capos. He also tried to pose as a legitimate businessman. However, several of his button men didn't think much of him, thinking he was incompetent. He was not nearly as good a negotiator as his father had been, and the Gambinos lost out on several disputes with the other families. The Genovese family was so unimpressed with Gotti that it refused to deal with him at all.

In a 1997 search of the basement of a property owned by Gotti, the FBI found a typed list of the names of the "made" members of his organization, as well as $348,700 in cash, a list of the guests who attended his wedding, along with the dollar amount of their wedding gifts (totaling more than $350,000), and two handguns. Also found was a list of several men who were inducted into other families in 1991 and 1992; a longstanding rule in the New York Mafia calls for prospective wiseguys to be vetted by the other families before being inducted. However, normally these lists are destroyed almost as soon as the inductions take place. The discovery enraged Gotti's father as well as the other bosses, since it put dozens of other mafiosi at risk of government scrutiny. The episode earned him the nickname 'dumbfella' in the New York media.

In 1998, Gotti was slapped with a wide-ranging RICO indictment charging that he was not only the acting boss of the Gambino family, but received millions of dollars from numerous Gambino rackets. Many of the charges related to attempts to extort money from the owners and employees of Scores, an upscale strip club in Manhattan. According to the indictment, the Gambinos had forced Scores' owners to pay $1 million over a six-year period in order to stay in business, with Gotti's share of the loot totaling $100,000. In addition to the lists seized in the 1997 raid, prosecutors obtained transcripts of prison conversations in which he received advice from his father on how to run the family. Faced with overwhelming evidence, Gotti pleaded guilty to reduced charges of loansharking, bookmaking, extortion, and gave testimonial information against other mobsters such as John Alite. He was sentenced in 1999, to 77 months in prison and was released early in 2001, but due to other charges Gotti was found guilty and sent back to Prison in 2002. Federal prosecutors say his uncle, Peter Gotti, became head of the Gambino organization after his nephew was sent to prison.

2004 racketeering and kidnapping charges

In 2004, months before he was released from prison, Gotti was charged in an 11-count racketeering indictment which included an alleged plot to kidnap Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, as well as securities fraud, extortion and loansharking. A radio talk show host for WABC, Sliwa had allegedly angered the family by denouncing the elder Gotti as "Public Enemy #1" on his show. During the trial, two former associates, Michael DiLeonardo and Joseph D'Angelo testified against Gotti. Through his attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, Gotti admitted that he had been involved in the Gambino crime family in the 1990s, and had even been slated to lead the organization after his father was sent to jail in 1992, but claimed he had left criminal life behind after his conviction in 1999. Three juries eventually deadlocked on the charges, the last in 2006, and federal prosecutors decided not to pursue a fourth trial.

2008 racketeering charges

In August 2008, Gotti was arrested and indicted on racketeering and murder conspiracy charges brought in Florida. The charges stemmed from an alleged drug trafficking ring Gotti operated along with former associate-turned informant John Alite and others, and with the murders of two men associated with the ring. Prosecutors charge that the ring distributed at least five kilograms of cocaine in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gotti's trial was later moved to New York, where he pleaded not guilty, and began in September 2009.

In January 2008, Alite pleaded guilty to two murders, four murder conspiracies, at least eight shootings, and two attempted shootings as well as armed home invasions and armed robberies in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida, stemming from his alleged involvement in a Gambino crew in Tampa, Florida. Alite agreed to testify in the trial of Gambino family enforcer Charles Carneglia, who was found guilty of four murders and is now serving a life sentence. He then served as a key prosecution witness against Gotti.

During the trial, Gotti allegedly threatened Alite by mouthing the words "I'll kill you", and engaged in a shouting match with his former associate. After the incident, Victoria Gotti told The New York Daily News that Alite was "a pathological liar – a rat caught in a proverbial trap, caught in his own lies..." Alite testified that Gotti was responsible for at least eight murders, among other crimes.

On December 1, 2009, the 12 jurors announced that they had failed to reach a unanimous verdict on all the charges and the judge declared a mistrial. Federal prosecutors have indicated that they will not seek another trial against Gotti. After the trial, jurors said that they did not find witnesses, particularly Alite, to be credible. Gotti, Federal Bureau of Prisons Register # 00632-748, was released on December 1, 2009.

In November 2013, Gotti was stabbed while breaking up a fight in Syosset, New York.

Personal life

In 1990, Gotti married Kimberly Albanese, daughter of Joseph Albanese, a flooring/carpet installer. They have six children and live in Oyster Bay Cove on Long Island's North Shore.

Movie

In September 2010, Fiore Films announced that it had secured the rights from Gotti to produce a movie about his life, in particular his relationship with his father. According to Variety, several producers had expressed interest, but Gotti chose Fiore, a small, newly created production company. The movie, tentatively titled Gotti: in the Shadow of My Father, will be directed by Barry Levinson. John Travolta is expected to star as Gotti's father, and Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, will play his on-screen wife, Victoria Gotti. Stacy Keach is expected to play Neil Dellacroce, an underboss in the Gambino crime family and a mentor to the senior Gotti. But the production of the film had lost Barry Levinson. On July 25 2016, it was reported that principal photography on the film had begun with Kevin Connolly (best known as Eric "E" Murphy in the TV series Entourage) directing. The film is scheduled for release in 2017.