Mob Star_ The Story of John Gotti Part 8

About 15 minutes later, Gotti arrived at the United cargo area in a rented Hertz truck. He was accompanied by a younger, slimmer man later said to have looked like Gene Gotti.

"Where's our stuff?" John asked Beatty.

"Right over there, we'll help you load it."

The two hijackers, aided by two cargo agents, loaded forty-seven cartons containing $30,000 worth of women's clothing, electrical gear, and aircraft and machine parts into the truck.

Beatty handed John the airway bills. "Got everything?"

"Sure, no problem."

"I'll need your signature."

"No problem."

John signed the name of the man he had impersonated. He and the slim man then got into the truck and drove away, leaving behind the most valuable carton of all-a box of furs.

Three days later, in Glen Oaks, Long Island, the truck, which had been rented by a man using phony identification, was found abandoned with most of the load still on board. Only ten cartons of women's clothing were missing.

The mostly intact load was evidence of a poorly conceived crime, a random stab at grabbing anything, which resulted in the most valuable item-the furs-being left behind. It showed that John Gotti had room to grow.

Most of the load was hard to fence; among the sidewalk salesmen and flea markets of New York, no great demand exists for aircraft and machine parts. Not so with women's clothes. What didn't wind up adorning the frames of wives and girlfriends found their way onto the racks of neighborhood merchants eager to beat wholesale prices.

After better scores, the hijackers gambled and partied. It was a time of great turbulence in America, the Vietnam era of protest and cultural change, but it had nothing to do with them. Gotti patronized a gambling club located above a car wash on Eastern Parkway run by a former Fulton-Pitkin ally. At night, he retired to such shot-and-beer establishments as the 101 Bar, Bullock's Lounge, Tutti's Bar, and the Colony Bar, according to Matthew Traynor, one of Gotti's former gang rivals. Traynor began hanging around the Bergin in the late 1960s and told the FBI he helped in more than twenty hijackings.

The Colony was in Brooklyn, and Traynor said that after Gotti acquired a taste for loan-sharking he acquired part owners.h.i.+p of the bar when the owner went arrears on a loan. That same year, Gotti threw a party and strutted around the bar charging round after round to the house.

Gotti's personal family now included a fourth child, a boy named Frank. He was living with Victoria and the kids in a new Brooklyn apartment. It wasn't the home of their dreams, but it was a step forward. Gotti was recovering from near financial and personal ruin.

Gotti's new profession, however, was risky. On December 1, 1967, only four days after the United Airlines score, he rolled snake-eyes.

Security at JFK was provided by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police, supplemented by the FBI, which investigated interstate thefts. Lately, the airplanes and s.h.i.+ppers had been more upset than usual because of the rampant pillaging of cargo. A periodic crackdown was then in effect.

From nearby surveillance posts, FBI agents saw a rented U-Haul truck pull up to a pallet of cartons in the cargo area of Northwest Airlines. They saw two people-one walked kind of funny, the other had dark hair combed back-load twenty-three cartons into the truck and drive off.

Agents tailed the U-Haul as it drove away from the cargo area, until it stopped and a Cadillac driven by a younger, slimmer man pulled alongside. They arrested Gene Gotti, driver of the Caddy; Angelo Ruggiero, driver of the truck; and John Gotti, found hiding in the truck behind the cartons.

Gene had acted unsuccessfully as the lookout. But after he was arrested he acted the way an accomplice was expected to. Say nothing. He even refused to say John was his brother. The car was registered to Angelo's wife. The rental truck contained $7,691 of-once again-women's clothes.

All three got out on bail after an appearance at the United States Court House in Brooklyn. They knew the federal charge likely meant time in prison, which is more serious than time in a city jail. Jail is inconvenience; prison is incarceration. They didn't know a state case was then being made against John for his impersonation act on George Beatty and United Airlines.

The cargo agents who had helped load the truck identified John as the driver and the man who signed someone else's name. They thought Gene was the other man, but weren't sure. John was arrested in early February 1968-in two months he was a two-time loser. Angelo posted his bail.

A condition of Gotti's bail, of course, was that he obey the law. Forget about it. Forget about it. A man who scorned legitimate work had to make money somehow, even if it meant he had to step up to a high level of crime: kidnapping. It happened during the third hijack, on April 10, two months after his second arrest. A man who scorned legitimate work had to make money somehow, even if it meant he had to step up to a high level of crime: kidnapping. It happened during the third hijack, on April 10, two months after his second arrest.

The case was known as the Velvet Touch caper. The Velvet Touch was a bar in Ozone Park, another Bergin crew hangout and the focus of a police investigation into a stolen-car racket that led to a wiretap on the bar's phone.

On April 10, cops monitoring the wiretap heard several conversations between men at the bar and men who had grabbed two parked tractor-trailers filled with cartons of cigarettes-about a half-million dollars worth-near a restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike. The drivers had been forced into a car and driven by Gotti to a street on the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Though no ransom was demanded, and the men were released unharmed, Gotti would be charged with kidnapping.

The Velvet Touch wiretaps showed that the hijacking did not go smoothly. A future bookmaker for John-the veteran neighborhood hijacker William Battista-had driven one of the tractor-trailers to a drop in Queens, but Gotti's ten confederates, including Angelo and John Carneglia, couldn't get the second truck in gear. They called Battista, who had gone to the Velvet Touch, and others seeking tips but were never able to drive the second truck away, so they left it.

"I remember the guys in New Jersey also were worried about what their girlfriends were doing at the Velvet Touch with their friends," an investigator on the case recalled.

One year later, Gotti was indicted in Newark, charged with conspiracy and interstate theft in addition to kidnapping. By that time, he had already been sent away to a federal penitentiary on the Northwest Airlines airport theft.

Michael Coiro, a 39-year-old Queens lawyer who defended many hoodlums, had represented John, Angelo, and Gene in federal court in the Northwest Airlines case. It was the first of many a.s.signments that he undertook for the Gotti brothers and Angelo over the years; his services would later earn him unwanted national recognition as a "mob lawyer," as well as a serious legal jam of his own. Coiro had been recommended by Carmine Fatico, then in trouble, too: He was named in a plot to murder a businessman.

Coiro advised his clients to plead guilty and bank on the judge's goodwill. Gotti faced eight years, but was sentenced to four, which usually translates to about 30 months actual time. Gotti would have to come back to New York from prison to deal with the state's hijack case and the Newark federal case.

Before sentencing, a probation officer interviewed Gotti and prepared a confidential report for the judge. He wrote that Gotti "appeared lackadaisical and unconcerned about his present situation" and was "very vague and evasive when questioned about his personal life." Gotti had filed no income tax returns the last three years and had "no verifiable employment" in the last four, although his father-in-law had told the officer that Gotti had a "standing offer" of employment at Century Construction, but "failed to avail himself of it."

The officer described Victoria Gotti as a "rather intelligent" woman "who closed her eyes to [her husband's] criminal tendencies." The report carried this final notation: "Leader of crew for this crime, [has] organized crime ties."

A few months after he was sentenced, as he had agreed to do, Gotti surrendered to federal marshals. Unbowed and unashamed-just unlucky, he probably thought-he was transported to the United States Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

It would be difficult to find a worse place to send a mobster-in-the-making.

9.

CLUB LEWISBURG.

THE HIJACKER WITH ORGANIZED-CRIME connections arrived cuffed and shackled at Lewisburg federal prison on May 14, 1969, after a six-hour ride from New York in a mobile cage. From inside the prison bus, John Gotti saw a medieval-looking stone fortress with gun towers rising against low, dark hills.

Once inside, he and others were ordered from the bus and led past guards with machine guns to a reception area enclosed by wire mesh and steel bars. He was given a sheet, a pillow, a blanket, a towel, a toothbrush, and a job emptying garbage cans and mopping floors.

Gotti knew Lewisburg wasn't going to be like a city jail. It was a long-term home for hard-core criminals. It had two sets of laws: inst.i.tutional and inmate. The trick was not to offend either and do your time as peaceably as possible. At least he would have some company-his gumbah, gumbah, his good friend Angelo Ruggiero, had been sent to the same prison and so had a heroin dealer named Anthony Rampino, who would become, later on, Gotti's chauffeur, or "John's man," as "Tony Roach" Rampino described himself. his good friend Angelo Ruggiero, had been sent to the same prison and so had a heroin dealer named Anthony Rampino, who would become, later on, Gotti's chauffeur, or "John's man," as "Tony Roach" Rampino described himself.

At the time, 2,000 men were incarcerated at Lewisburg, including many big-time Family men from the Crime Capital. The biggest mobster was 5 foot 3 Carmine Galante, the fiery fifty-seven-year-old boss of the Bonanno Family, who was doing heroin time after deciding that the Apalachin drug ban didn't apply to him.

The prison had 1,200 black inmates, but the 400 Italians were more unified and thus dominated prison life. "Mafia Row" extended its umbrella of protection and influence to all prisoners of Italian descent, especially those with Family ties. It introduced them to the prison's underground economy, its bookmaking operation, its network of friendly "hacks" who could be counted on for favors. They might even get invited to "Club Lewisburg," a room where Galante and others played cards, ate purloined steaks, and drank liquor hidden in after-shave bottles. Another Lewisburg inmate, former International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, had designated Club Lewisburg as Teamsters 865. Outside prison, Galante was ill-tempered and ruthless, but inside he did not allow fighting; everyone was expected to keep their cells clean and the noise level down.

Gotti spent the summer on the sanitation crew, but in September he was transferred to the yard detail, a sign he was moving up fast in prison prestige. He began putting on extra muscles by pumping Lewisburg iron.

In October, Gotti was driven back to New York to stand trial in the state's hijacking case pending against him in Queens. If convicted, he might have to go directly to state prison once his expected 30-month Lewisburg tour was over. The federal Velvet Touch caper was still hanging over him, too.

Gotti was kept in the Queens House of Detention as jury selection began. Once again, Michael Coiro was his attorney and after the jury was seated, Coiro once again came up with a deal Gotti couldn't pa.s.s up. Gotti would plead guilty and would get no additional jail time.

For several more years, Michael Coiro would often demonstrate an amazing touch with the officials in Queens.

Feeling fine, considering, Gotti rode back to Lewisburg and Mafia Row and settled once more into the abnormal routine of prison life. He had more than two years to go, two more years with some of the most incorrigible criminals in America. In Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., people were trying to figure out what to do about such men.

Six years earlier, another descendant of immigrants from Naples, Joseph M. Valachi, had started a national debate on how to fight organized crime by revealing the secret ways of the Families. Valachi, a Genovese Family soldier, told his story to a U.S. Senate committee after killing a man-at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta-who he mistakenly believed intended to kill him. Valachi thought that his boss, Vito Genovese, had ordered him killed because Genovese believed he had cheated him out of money.

Facing the death penalty in Georgia, Valachi contacted the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, and agreed to cooperate with the federal government. Soon he was a star witness before a Senate rackets committee and on the front page of newspapers across the country.

Valachi gave a new name to the Families-La Cosa Nostra, our thing. He named bosses and described their schemes and methods; he discussed his own 30 violent years in crime. His testimony pushed the Republicans to a law-and-order campaign in 1964 and prompted the victorious Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, to announce "a war on crime" that would include a Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, which would appoint a special task force on organized crime. our thing. He named bosses and described their schemes and methods; he discussed his own 30 violent years in crime. His testimony pushed the Republicans to a law-and-order campaign in 1964 and prompted the victorious Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, to announce "a war on crime" that would include a Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, which would appoint a special task force on organized crime.

The task force issued its report in 1967. It urged Congress to adopt many anti-organized-crime weapons; over the next three years, many were. Special federal Organized Crime Strike Forces of specially recruited prosecutors were created in cities with a Cosa Nostra Family. Under certain conditions, wiretapping and other electronic-surveillance methods were legalized. The power to empanel grand juries was taken away from judges and given to prosecutors, who also received greater power to immunize witnesses and a program to protect and relocate those who jeopardized their lives by testifying. Finally, a sweeping new law, the Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, was pa.s.sed. "RICO" made it a separate crime, punishable by long imprisonment, to belong to a criminal organization.

Many Italian-American groups were upset by the publicity given Valachi's disclosures. They protested that the feverish coverage of a 4,700-member secret network of criminals was a libel on 15 million law-abiding citizens of Italian heritage.

Protest was then at its peak in America. For every cause there was a movement, and in 1970 a most surprising protest leader came forward-Joseph Colombo, boss of the Colombo Family in New York. In April, his son was arrested for defacing U.S. currency; Colombo picketed the offices of the FBI in Manhattan, claiming hara.s.sment. Over the next few months, the size of his demonstrations swelled and he founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League. It had an amazing but brief history, and so would Colombo.

In its first year, the league sponsored a Unity Day, which drew 50,000 people and most major city and state politicians to Columbus Circle. It was a protest against discrimination and offensive stereotyping of Italians in television commercials and the media. The league became a forum for airing legitimate grievances, but Colombo was a cynical leader with a hidden agenda. He wanted the government to cease its Family investigations so that he could operate as freely as he wanted.

Colombo's gambit backfired. The government retaliated with stepped-up investigations of all the Families. Gambino Family underboss Aniello Dellacroce, for instance, was hauled before grand juries in Manhattan and Brooklyn. He refused to talk to either-even after offers of immunity-and was later jailed for a year. The Internal Revenue Service also opened a separate tax case that would result in another jail term.

After only one year, Carlo Gambino had seen enough. His wife had just died and the government was trying to deport him. Colombo's high-profile activities had jeopardized Gambino's goal of living out his final years quietly. He and other bosses spread the word among unions and along the docks-where Gambino's support was the greatest-that attendance at the second annual Unity Day would not be appreciated.

On June 28, 1971, only 10,000 people showed up, one-fifth of the previous year's crowd. Even so, Colombo was besieged by reporters and photographers in Columbus Circle. One lensman was only acting. He was really a hit man and he shot Colombo in the head and neck. A few seconds later, the hit man was. .h.i.t, by a man who fired three fatal bullets and melted into the crowd.

Colombo survived, but was paralyzed and incapacitated; he died in 1978. By his side that day was a young Brooklyn lawyer admitted to the bar at age 21. Barry Ivan Slotnick, who would wind up representing Aniello Dellacroce, had helped Colombo start the Italian-American Civil Rights League.

A few days after Joseph Colombo was. .h.i.t, three Italian-Americans in Lewisburg got a gift from the law G.o.ds. Prosecutors in the Velvet Touch hijacking case pending against Gotti, Angelo Ruggiero, and John Carneglia moved to dismiss the indictment. A new state wiretap law had been declared unconst.i.tutional and recordings from the bar phone were useless as evidence.

Gotti had gotten a sentence break on his first case; Coiro had made the second go away; and now the government had taken away the third. He got the news in the middle of July 1971. He now had only six more months to serve. For the three hijackings he was caught in, he would do less than three years.

10.

HOODLUM'S HOODLUM JOHN GOTTI GOT OUT OF Lewisburg in January 1972. The thirty-one-year-old ex-con joined Victoria and the four kids-the oldest was almost 10 now-in an apartment at 1498 East Ninety-first Street in Canarsie, a safe and solid neighborhood south of Brownsville-East New York.

Gotti outlined his plans to his parole officer. He said he had a job waiting for him, working with his father-in-law-Francisco DiGiorgio, a retired sanitation worker-now involved with his own son in the Century Construction Company in a northern suburb. On February 15, 1972, the parole officer put a note in the file indicating Gotti had begun to work at the Dee Dan Company, a Century subsidiary, as a $300-a-week job superintendent.

The job looked good on paper, and that's about all it was. Gotti really had no interest in the construction business, except for the money to be made fixing contracts or causing labor problems. Thirty months in the joint merely confirmed what he had become-a hoodlum; merely pointed the way to what he would become-a "hoodlum's hoodlum," to use the words of a future admirer caught praising Gotti on a hidden tape recorder.

No doubt further seasoned in crime by the career crooks of Lewisburg, Gotti was poised for opportunity. With Bergin Hunt and Fish Club boss Carmine Fatico growing older, he was eager to pursue his future and his fortune.

The Bergin was a few miles away from Canarsie in Queens, in Ozone Park on 101st Avenue, a street of small merchants and small dreams, except for those of the new guy on the block-John Gotti.

Most of the original residents of Ozone Park were of Italian or Polish descent and they remain a dominant force. Over time, many left their jobs in Manhattan, which they call "the city" or "New York," as if they aren't part of it. In many ways, they aren't. Manhattan is an hour away by train; shopping and entertainment are more accessible in Na.s.sau County on Long Island. Many work close to home, at nearby Aqueduct Racetrack or JFK International Airport. Their Ozone Park is a small, manageable world on the edge of the frantic universe of New York City. They mind their own business and let the men at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club mind theirs.

In 1972, the Bergin was still a center of gambling, loan-sharking, robbery, and hijacking. One crew member had opened a chop shop for dismantling stolen cars for resale as parts and, while John was away, brother Peter also got into something new-cocaine, according to what Matthew Traynor, the ex-Ridgewood Saints gang leader, later told the FBI.

Traynor had moved to Florida and met a cocaine dealer. On a trip back to New York, he saw Peter in the 101 Bar and told him about his connection. Traynor flew the first of many cocaine sorties to Florida on behalf of Peter, then still a city sanitation worker. Peter had been previously arrested in 1968, on a felony a.s.sault charge that was later dismissed.

In time, Traynor said Peter began to direct him to a different source, a man later identified as a major southern Florida dealer with Family connections. Traynor said he usually delivered the cocaine to Peter at the Bergin or the 101 Bar. Usually he was paid over $500 for smuggling the c.o.ke, but once Peter rewarded him with $200 and a stash of barbiturates, 500 Tuinol tablets. Traynor didn't complain about the smaller fee; he had also brought back 50 .25-caliber handguns and was having no trouble selling them in Queens bars.

Although he placed Gene as being present at this transaction, as well as another, Traynor never put John Gotti in a room where drugs or cash were pa.s.sed, though he did say he believed John knew what was happening. This was the first of many conflicting stories about John Gotti and drugs. He would never be charged with a drug crime, though in three different investigations, he would be named in connection with drug dealing. He would preach against it to younger a.s.sociates, but close around him, older a.s.sociates would get into trouble over drugs time and time again. Source Wahoo would say Gotti was not involved in drugs; the other FBI informer, Source BQ, would say he was-in a big way. As an ambitious man, Gotti knew he had to appear faithful to the no-drugs policies of Gambino and later Castellano. If his faith was genuine, he can at least be said to have looked the other way, many times.

It was not in John Gotti's nature to look the other way. One night, four months after his release from Lewisburg, John, Peter, and their father were in the Crystal Room, the bar that Traynor said Gotti partly owned. A likely bar topic was the sensational murder of Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo a few days before at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy. The victim was the reputed operations director of the hit on Joseph Colombo, the surprising Italian-American civil rights leader, and doubtless it was Colombo's friends who took their revenge with machine guns.

On this night in the Crystal Room, a patron began arguing with the barmaid and Gotti intervened. Cops were called and he was arrested and charged with menacing and public intoxication.

As he was booked in the 75th Precinct station house in Brooklyn, he used an alias for the first and only time. Perhaps as a joke, perhaps as a tribute, the young Carlo Gambino-affliliated hood gave the name "John DeCarlo." Gotti was able to pay a $50 fine and forget about it.

Besides the Crystal Room, another place Gotti now favored was the Sinatra Club, a storefront on Atlantic Avenue near Eighty-seventh Street in Queens. It featured the singer's alb.u.ms and all-night card games, and it's where he met a future nemesis, Salvatore Polisi.

Polisi was a degenerate lowlife who entered the world of crime at about the same time as Gotti, after faking his way out of the Marine Corps on a psychological discharge. Over the years, he would also fake his way out of several criminal charges by reading medical journals and learning to act convincingly crazy; he would fool more than two dozen psychiatrists.

Polisi was once diagnosed as "a chronic, undifferentiated schizophrenic with a pa.s.sive dependent personality disorder, with sociopathic tendencies." It was all the result of a scam, except for the sociopathic tendencies.

"I could put myself up as looking odd and strange sometimes," he later testified.

Polisi went into the Marine Corps to beat a robbery case, and wanted out after a couple of days so that he could rob again. He received a sizable, completely fraudulent disability pension for many years. He stole tape players from cars, robbed gas stations, and carried around a "blue box" to cheat on his telephone calls.

When Gotti met him, Polisi had become a.s.sociated with the Colombo Family through a bookmaking operation he and his uncle operated. Polisi bragged about conning the Marine Corps, and so he became known on the street as Sally Ubatz, Ubatz, the last name a slang rendering of the last name a slang rendering of pazzo, pazzo, crazy. crazy.

Though a.s.sociated with the Colombos, Sally Crazy began hanging out a little at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in 1972, he would later testify. He was friendly with a Bergin a.s.sociate named Ronald Jerogae, who was known as "Foxy." That same year, Sally Crazy and Foxy also went into the cocaine business.

Sally Crazy said John and Gene Gotti were at the Bergin nearly every day. Other club men included the brothers Fatico, the brothers Ruggiero, and the brothers Carneglia. Willie Boy Johnson and William Battista, the hijackers and bookmakers from John's old neighborhood, also were part of the scene, as was Tony Roach Rampino, now out of Lewisburg, too.

"Some days we hung around and did some gambling," Polisi said. "There was other days we conspired to commit crimes."

Polisi said it was clear who at the club had power and respect. As crew leader, Carmine Fatico, now 62, had the most, followed by his brother Daniel. Because the Faticos treated him with respect, John Gotti was next in line, followed by Angelo and Gene.

The elite five, at various times, were called upon to approve high-interest loans to bettors. Loan-sharking is a natural complement to a gambling operation. They are like peanuts and beer; the more the customer eats, the more he drinks. More losses, more loans. If the bettor can't pay his debt, he had better come up with something valuable-a piece of his business, a tip about a horse or an unguarded truck, the key or layout of a warehouse; in Ozone Park and its environs, the bars, hangouts, and union halls were full of bettors.

During scores, the two pals, Crazy and Foxy, played Smart and Stupid-Polisi, of course, was Stupid, although he believed he was Smart. That spring they heard about a hijackable truck. As they were with different Families, permission from spokesmen for each was needed. When Foxy got his from John Gotti, it was clear in Crazy's mind that Gotti was going places. Gotti himself had quit going out on jobs and contented himself with management duties-another sign of his emerging status.

A dispute over the proceeds of a hijacking also showed Gotti rising fast in the Bergin world. Gotti had teamed up Crazy and Foxy with a man who had inside knowledge of a fur s.h.i.+pment, and when the furs were fenced by Angelo and Danny Fatico for a price Polisi thought unfair, Gotti told him, "Tough. You got to take it,"