Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On October 27, 1940, John Joseph Gotti, Jr., the future
head of the Gambino crime family and a man later nicknamed “the Dapper Don” due
to his polished appearance and expensive suits, was born in the Bronx, New
York. Gotti, the grandson of Italian immigrants, was raised in a poor family
with 13 children. Growing up, he did errands for mobsters in his East New York
neighborhood, joined a gang called the Fulton-Rockaway Boys and quit school at
age 16. He racked up a series of arrests for petty crimes, but escaped real
jail time until 1968, when he pleaded guilty to hijacking trucks near New York’s
Kennedy International Airport and received a three year sentence.
In 1974, Gotti was arrested for the revenge slaying of a
man who had kidnapped and killed the nephew of crime family boss Carlo Gambino.
He was sentenced to four years; however, as a result of bribes to prison
officials, he was allowed out to visit his family and associates. After Gotti
was officially released from prison in 1977, he was promoted to captain in the
Bergin crew of the Gambino family, the nation’s biggest and most powerful
organized crime group. In December 1985, Gotti grabbed control of the Gambino
family after ordering the murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside a
Manhattan steak house.
In 1985, the federal government, which had been
wiretapping Gotti and his associates, accumulated enough evidence to indict him
on federal racketeering charges. The subsequent trial, in 1986, resulted in an
acquittal for Gotti, who the media dubbed “the Teflon Don” for his ability to
avoid conviction. The jury foreman in the case was later convicted of accepting
a large bribe to vote for the mob boss’s acquittal.
As head of the Gambino family, Gotti’s swagger and
colorful style made him a tabloid press favorite and he raked in millions of
dollars from criminal activities, all the while claiming to be a hard-working
plumbing salesman. Government wiretaps revealed that behind the showy public
image, he was a ruthless figure who wouldn’t tolerate disrespect from anyone.
In December 1990, Gotti and several associates were arrested on a variety of
charges at the Ravenite Social Club in New York City’s Little Italy
neighborhood. Mobster Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano eventually made a deal
with the government to testify against his boss and in April 1992, a jury found
Gotti guilty of 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. He was sent to
the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was locked in a cell 23
hours a day. On June 10, 2002, John Gotti died of throat cancer at age 61 at a
medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of seven nonfiction books that includes the award winning Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949
and In the Company of Evil Thirty Years
of California Crime 1950-1980 (released in March 2016). Visit Michael’s
website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:
