Junior Gotti Visits Father's Grave After Released from Fourth Mistrial

Freshly free after his fourth mistrial, the Teflon Son went to pay his respects to the original Dapper Don on Sunday.

John A. (Junior) Gotti arrived at the gangster-packed St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, at 1:15 p.m. and spent about a half-hour alone with his departed dad.

The elder Gotti, who headed the Gambino crime family before his son, was sentenced to life behind bars after skating on three previous trials. He died in a Missouri prison in 2002. Junior, a 45-year-old father of six, spent the past 16 months behind bars until last Tuesday, when his own fourth racketeering trial ended in a hung jury.

Gotti made a point last week of saying he looked forward to visiting the graves of his father and brother. Junior's little brother, Frank, who was accidentally run over at age 12 by a neighbor who soon vanished without a trace, is also interred at the cemetery's five-story mausoleum.

Wearing a striped black track suit and white sneakers, Junior first went to noon Mass at the Church of St. Dominic in Oyster Bay, L.I., with two of his daughters.

He told reporters he planned to spend the rest of the day enjoying family time. "I'm going to cook. I always cook on Sundays," he said.

Junior made similar pilgrimages to his dad's grave after previous mistrials.

During his most recent murder and racketeering trial, Gotti said he felt his father communicated with him through specific songs that played on the radio at 10:27 p.m.

"1-0/27 is my father's birthday," he explained last week. "To me it's like a message."

Others buried at St. John's include such storied mobsters as Carlo Gambino, Carmine Galante, Vito Genovese, Joe Profaci, Joe Colombo and Lucky Luciano.

Thanks to Helen Kennedy