John Gotti Jr. sat at the defense table, the weight of his family history and whatever we have learned from countless movies and TV dramas about the Mafia, swirling around him.
This was the fourth time in the last four years that prosecutors have brought a case against him, this time for murder and racketeering, and just like the previous three trials in the ornate federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, a jury of 12 ordinary citizens have not been able to decide if he is guilty of the crimes charged.
"They have exhibited strength, intelligence, compassion and truthfulness and should be doubly commended for standing tall and firm for their beliefs and disbeliefs," Victoria Gotti, John's sister, told Fox News, acknowledging the proceedings have been a "difficult and exhausting trial." That slow journey will continue after the Thanksgiving holiday, with the jurors returning for more deliberations next week.
The jury announced it was deadlocked, just as the last three juries have since 2005, potentially handing federal prosecutions a stalemate. The U.S. government has so far been unable to convince 48 people that Gotti continued to follow his father's line of work. He has said he quit, in 1999, when he plead guilty to racketeering charges and went away for six years. At the time he said he thought that plea, and the sentence, would wipe the slate clean, but he was slapped with new charges when he left prison four years ago.
Prosecutors have ridiculed the claim that he quit.
"This defendant has lived the Mafia life," declared Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Trezevant, "and he never, never quit that life." They say the claim was concocted as a legal strategy and tried to show you just can't give the mob walking papers.
They presented the testimony of Bonanno Family Capo Dominick Cicale, who said you can only leave the Mafia by cooperating with the federal government or by dying. But others have walked away and lived to tell about it.
The most noted examples were the founder of the Bonanno crime family, the late Joseph Bonanno, and his son, Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno. Bill told Fox News in 2006 that he thought John Gotti Jr. had indeed left what they call "the life," in 1999, seeing what the world glamorized by "The Godfather" had really become.
In his book, "A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno," Bonanno wrote: "The world I grew up in is gone and what is left is in ruins. The Mafia stories continue, however, regardless of the emptiness behind them."
Bonanno wrote those words in 1999, not only the same year Gotti, Jr. claims he dropped out, but the year that the "The Sopranos" debuted on HBO, giving America a new, fictional mob fascination.
"The Sopranos" ended with the famous, and controversial, black-out scene. No Tony in handcuffs, no Tony walking away. Just Tony eating with his family. We think he's still out hustling in New Jersey and then dining at the Vesuvio with Carm. But in real life, organized crime careers have voluntarily ended with the finality viewers were denied by "The Sopranos" nebulous ending.
"You can quit the mob, I've done it," former Columbo crime family Capo Michael Franzese told Fox News.
The 58-year-old Franzese is the son of John "Sonny" Franzese, "a kingpin of the Columbo crime family," as Michael's Web site, MichaelFranzese.com, puts it. But after being released from prison, he became a born-again Christian, motivational speaker, producer and author. His latest book, "I'll Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse," applies what he learned in the mob to the business world - legally.
"You've got to be crazy to stay in the life," says Franzese. "Like me, John wasn't destined for this life and neither was I. I was going to school to become a doctor. I question my own self at times. I did this for my dad. At one point I wanted him to be proud of me, and I think John shares a similar feeling like that. So we got into it for one reason and realized what it was all about, and maybe had second thoughts."
The most intriguing, and surprising evidence of precedent for departing the ranks of wise-guys and not being stuffed in a barrel and dumped in the ocean, was a 1985 F.B.I. wiretap of Aniello Dellacroce. The then 71-year-old mob patriarch suffered from terminal cancer, and as the reputed underboss of the Gambino Crime Family at the time, he actually explained how the Gambinos had kicked someone out.
Dellacroce, who was the mentor of John Gotti Jr.'s father, was secretly recorded talking about a dismissed crime family member on June 9, 1985, in his home on Staten Island, New York, six months before he died.
"We threw him out of the Family," Dellacroce explained.
"So, youse knocked him down," responded a listener, meaning the man in question was demoted.
"No,"responded Delleacroce. "He's out of the family."
"He's out?" asked his friend, incredulously.
"Yeah," said Dellacroce. "We threw him out. Out."
"You threw him out?"
"Out. He don't belong in the Family no more. Any friend of yours, any, any friend of ours in the street...that you see...you tell them. This guy, he ain't in the family no more. You don't have nothin' to do with him. That's it."
Four days later, another FBI wiretap heard the group discussing their lawyers, and their visit to one lawyer's office.
"My God, what a layout he's got. They got more customers... Michael Franzese was there," noted one speaker, impressively.
During that tape, they resumed discussing the banished former Gambino.
"This guy is out, We threw him out," the group was reminded and then they start arguing about that possibility.
"I heard (this guy) was just taken down, he wasn't thrown out." said one.
"This guy was thrown out. Ya understand?" Dellacroce snapped. "Nobody's gonna bother with him...I wouldn't bother with him and nobody else would...I'll explain to him a little better this time…Maybe he didn't get the message right... Threw him out, that's, that's right. We threw him out...They don't understand English," said Dellacroce, trying to finally get his message through.
Even Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, who later served as the Gambino Underboss, quit by agreeing to testify against the senior Gotti in 1992. Gravano wrote in his book, "Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia," that he when he walked in to meet Gotti's prosecutor, he declared: "I want to switch governments," meaning from the Gambinos to Uncle Sam. He later was caught running a drug ring in Phoenix after he served five years for 19 murders, and is now back in prison.
The current, active members of Cosa Nostra may not agree, but history shows that even their leaders, at the highest levels -- including the bosses of two crime families- have walked away. And now a jury, once again, is trying to determine if John Gotti, Jr. did just that.
"I can tell you, unmistakably, that he has left that life," John's sister, Victoria, told Fox News. "We're not talking about a guy that is being paraded out there and there are videotapes or audio tapes of John with present day mob members," she notes, indirectly alluding to the avalanche of wiretaps and surveillance videos the Feds used as evidence against her father.
"John is no part of that life anymore," she adds. "I believe they know that deep in their hearts and in their brains."
Meanwhile, John Gotti, Jr. waits for a verdict -- if there is one.
Thanks to Eric Shawn
Showing posts with label Aniello Dellacore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aniello Dellacore. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
John Gotti: How the FBI Made the Charges Stick
Friends of ours: John "Teflon Don" Gotti, Gambino Crime Family, Paul Castellano, Aniello Dellacroce, Thomas Bilotti, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano
He was slippery, yes, but even the “Teflon Don” couldn’t escape justice forever.
Despite the future nickname, John Gotti—a violent, ruthless mobster who’d grown up on the streets of New York—had been in and out of prison several times in his early career. In 1968, for example, we arrested him for his role in a plot to steal thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Gotti was sent to prison, but was released in 1972.
And quickly made more trouble. Within two years, we’d arrested him again for murder. Same story: he went to prison and was out in a few years. Soon after, he became a “made man” for the Gambino family, one of the five most powerful syndicates in the Big Apple. Gambling, loansharking, and narcotics trafficking were his stocks in trade.
The heat was on. By the early 80s, using Title III wiretaps, mob informants, and undercover agents, we were beginning to get clear insights into the Gambino family’s hierarchy and activities (and into the other families as well) and were building strong cases against them as criminal enterprises. A break against Gotti came in late 1985, when mob violence spilled out on to the streets of Manhattan.
The scene of the crime? Sparks’ Steak House, a popular hangout for major criminals. On the evening of December 16, 1985, 70-year-old-mafioso Paul Castellano—the apparent successor of recently deceased Gambino boss Aniello Dellacroce—was gunned down along with his number two in command, Thomas Bilotti, in front of the restaurant. Gotti, who’d been watching from a car at a safe distance, had one of his men drive him by the scene to make sure his deadly orders had been carried out. [Thanks to several readers who pointed out that Dellacroce was actually not the boss. It was best put by pointing out that Dellacroce was the underboss, & had been under Carlo Gambino. Castellano had been the boss since 1976 (when Gambino died). In 1976, there was fear Dellacroce, as underboss, would resist Gambino's choice of Castellano as boss, since Dellacroce was above Castellano in the family. However, after being given almost complete autonomy over several crews, Dellacroce acquiesced to Castellano's appointment as boss. Murder Machine
(Capeci & Mustain) has more details of all this.]
Top hood. Having eliminated the competition, Gotti took over as head of the Gambino family. With his expensive suits, lavish parties, and illegal dealings, he quickly became something of a media celebrity, and the press dubbed him “The Dapper Don.” Following a string of highly-publicized acquittals—helped in large part by witness intimidation and jury tampering—Gotti also earned the “Teflon Don” nickname.
Our New York agents and their colleagues in the New York Police Department, though, refused to give up. With extensive court-authorized electronic surveillance, diligent detective work, and the eventual cooperation of Gotti’s henchman—“Sammy the Bull” Gravano—the Bureau and the NYPD built a strong case against him.
The end was near. In December 1990, our agents and NYPD detectives arrested Gotti, and he was charged with multiple counts of racketeering, extortion, jury tampering, and other crimes. This time, the judge ordered that the jurors remain anonymous, identified only by number, so no one could pressure them. And the case was airtight.
The combination worked. On April 2, 1992, 15 years ago Monday, Gotti was convicted on 13 counts, including for ordering the murders of Castellano and Bilotti. The head of our New York office famously remarked, “The don is covered with Velcro, and every charge stuck.”
Indeed. Gotti had evaded the law for the last time. He died in prison in June 2002.
Thanks to the FBI
He was slippery, yes, but even the “Teflon Don” couldn’t escape justice forever.
Despite the future nickname, John Gotti—a violent, ruthless mobster who’d grown up on the streets of New York—had been in and out of prison several times in his early career. In 1968, for example, we arrested him for his role in a plot to steal thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Gotti was sent to prison, but was released in 1972.And quickly made more trouble. Within two years, we’d arrested him again for murder. Same story: he went to prison and was out in a few years. Soon after, he became a “made man” for the Gambino family, one of the five most powerful syndicates in the Big Apple. Gambling, loansharking, and narcotics trafficking were his stocks in trade.
The heat was on. By the early 80s, using Title III wiretaps, mob informants, and undercover agents, we were beginning to get clear insights into the Gambino family’s hierarchy and activities (and into the other families as well) and were building strong cases against them as criminal enterprises. A break against Gotti came in late 1985, when mob violence spilled out on to the streets of Manhattan.
The scene of the crime? Sparks’ Steak House, a popular hangout for major criminals. On the evening of December 16, 1985, 70-year-old-mafioso Paul Castellano—the apparent successor of recently deceased Gambino boss Aniello Dellacroce—was gunned down along with his number two in command, Thomas Bilotti, in front of the restaurant. Gotti, who’d been watching from a car at a safe distance, had one of his men drive him by the scene to make sure his deadly orders had been carried out. [Thanks to several readers who pointed out that Dellacroce was actually not the boss. It was best put by pointing out that Dellacroce was the underboss, & had been under Carlo Gambino. Castellano had been the boss since 1976 (when Gambino died). In 1976, there was fear Dellacroce, as underboss, would resist Gambino's choice of Castellano as boss, since Dellacroce was above Castellano in the family. However, after being given almost complete autonomy over several crews, Dellacroce acquiesced to Castellano's appointment as boss. Murder Machine
(Capeci & Mustain) has more details of all this.]Top hood. Having eliminated the competition, Gotti took over as head of the Gambino family. With his expensive suits, lavish parties, and illegal dealings, he quickly became something of a media celebrity, and the press dubbed him “The Dapper Don.” Following a string of highly-publicized acquittals—helped in large part by witness intimidation and jury tampering—Gotti also earned the “Teflon Don” nickname.
Our New York agents and their colleagues in the New York Police Department, though, refused to give up. With extensive court-authorized electronic surveillance, diligent detective work, and the eventual cooperation of Gotti’s henchman—“Sammy the Bull” Gravano—the Bureau and the NYPD built a strong case against him.
The end was near. In December 1990, our agents and NYPD detectives arrested Gotti, and he was charged with multiple counts of racketeering, extortion, jury tampering, and other crimes. This time, the judge ordered that the jurors remain anonymous, identified only by number, so no one could pressure them. And the case was airtight.
The combination worked. On April 2, 1992, 15 years ago Monday, Gotti was convicted on 13 counts, including for ordering the murders of Castellano and Bilotti. The head of our New York office famously remarked, “The don is covered with Velcro, and every charge stuck.”
Indeed. Gotti had evaded the law for the last time. He died in prison in June 2002.
Thanks to the FBI
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Godfather of All My Tours
Friends of ours: Carlo Gambino Aniello "The Hat" Dellacore, Joe Columbo, Vito Genovese, Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano, "One Lung" Curran, Owney "The Killer" Madden, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, Ray Matorno, John "Dapper Don" Gotti, Albert Anastasia
The best place to start mixing with The Mob is in St John's Cemetery out on Long Island. This is where the Mafia Dons of New York are buried.
Beneath their sepulchres and towering granite angles lie the bodies of such notorious mobsters as Carlo Gambino and Aniello "The Hat" Dellacore. A few tombstones away are the vaults of Joe Columbo, Vito Genovese and , Salvatore "Lucy" Luciano.
They each headed one of the Families -- the euphemistic name for the gangs who ruled New York -- with the ruthlessness of medieval monarchs. Today they remain identifiable entities only through their names carved in wood and stone. But there is not so much as a chisel mark to commemorate their links -- and fights -- with that other great Mob, the Irish Mafia. Born in the early 19th century out of street gangs protecting and exploiting immigrants from the Old Country, by the arrival of Prohibition the Irish Mafia had become a powerful player in bootlegging -- and all the crimes that went with it: burglarising shops, dominating pool halls, stealing from the docks.
No racket was too small for the Irish Mafia. And like their Italian counterparts, the Irish Bosses attracted colourful names: "One Lung" Curran, Owney "The Killer" Madden, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll.
Hard drinking, flashily dressed and always a girl on their arms, they extended the Irish Mob's influence to all the major US cities. Many of the great crimes were laid at their door. One was the Pottsville Heist, when half a million dollars was stolen in a Philadelphia bank robbery by the K&K gang in 1974. Its members were Irish born Americans, many of them blue-collar workers and the gang had become a powerful player in gambling, loan sharking and mass thievery across the State.
By the 1980s they had moved into drugs. Thirty-six K&K members were arrested. One fled to Dublin. But the gang still thrived. In 2003, its then leader, Ray Matorno, plotted to remove the Italian Mafia's hold over the Philadelphia underworld. He brought in a dozen hitmen for the coming war. But before he could issue the time-honoured order "time to go to the mattresses", he was gunned down on his way to keep a doctor's appointment. His physician was quoted as saying: "The amount of led he took would have required a foundry to plug all the holes".
To visit St John's cemetery is to step back in your mind's eye to the days of the G-men, Tommy-guns and Omerta -- the code of silence of Cosa Nostra, the generic name for the Families. It was this the Irish mafia has continued to subscribe to.
Strolling through St John's I sensed that look of surprise which must have crossed the face of Carlo, head of the Gambino family, as he had left the Brooklyn apartment of one of his mistresses in July 1972 -- to be shot dead as he entered his chauffeured car.
The roll call of names is the history of the Italian Mob in New York. Some died in harness. Most succumbed to a bullet in the head. Their silent tombs don't distinguish. But for those who want a social history of a different kind, a visit to St John's is a starting point for a journey back in time -- one that spawned probably more classic gangster movies than any other genre.
The Irish Mafia sprang on to the screen with a series of film noir movies in the 1940s starring super stars of their day like James Cagney, Spencer Tracey and Pat O'Brien. They became known in Hollywood as "the screen Irish Mafia". You can still catch them on late night movie screenings of, "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938) in which Cagney returns to New York's Hells Kitchen to reclaim his right as the area's Irish Gang Boss; or "The Racket" (1928) where Thomas Meighan plays an Irish Chicago police officer taking on the local criminal syndicate. And don't forget the "St Valentine's Day Massacre" (1967) that captures the mood of the turbulent Thirties for the Irish Mafia as well as any gangster movie. Right up to "Brotherhood" (2006) the relationships, and influence, of the Irish gangs are caught on screen.
Among the gravestones at St John's cemetery you remember the voices of other stars who played the mobsters: George Raft as the head of a Family; Mickey Rooney, the swaggering hit-man for another; Marlon Brando in his greatest of all roles, "The Godfather".
Here in the graveyard, with the wind whistling in from the Atlantic and the distant sound of planes coming and going from Kennedy Airport, you can conjure up again those memorable words of Brando: "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."
I'll make you a promise, spend a morning in St John's and you won't regret it. Here they are, the bad and the ugly, the fat and the profane, rich beyond dream. And most venerated -- at least within the closed world of the Mafia -- is the godfather of them all. The Gangster they called the "Dapper Don".
To the untold millions who have watched the movie trilogy, The Godfather, he was the inspiration for the memorable role Marlon Brando created. The "Don of Dons" was feared even from within the prison -- but a life-without-parole-prison-cell -- where he died in June 2002. He was ten years into his sentence, and the cancer finally did what no bullet had been able to do.
All it says below the brass cross on the polished wooden door to vault 341, Aisle C in the cemetery is "GOTTI". Below this word that once instilled terror throughout New York are the words: "John 1940-2002".
Born into an era when the Mob ruled New York, Gotti was given a funeral that has not been seen since those days.
Many of his peers ended their lives in New York's East River or out somewhere beyond the Statue of Liberty. Weighed down with their feet encased in concrete blocks, or iron bars welded around their waists. But instead of being laid to rest with the fishes, Gotti was carried in his hand-polished coffin through the streets of New York's Little Italy. His hearse was festooned with wreaths in the shape of horses' heads (Gotti was a great gambler); a giant cigar (one was always in his mouth); a winning hand of cards and a champagne glass (his favourite game and tipple).
The drive from the funeral home to the cemetery where he now lies in his air-conditioned vault takes about ten minutes.
For those who want to recreate the drive, a New York cabbie will oblige. Or you can do it in style, renting a gangland style white Cadillac from one of the firms which specialises in unusual tours. They're listed in the New York Yellow Pages.
Viewers of the smash-hit TV show, The Sopranos, will recognise some of the places en route to the cemetery.
There is Russo's Ice Cream Bar and Vincent's Original Clam Shop (both are close to 85th Street at 160th). Here you can sample some of the best ice cream in a Little Italy that prides itself on serving an unbeatable selection of iced confections. Or, if you fancy something more substantial, Vincent's clams are as juicy and perfectly cooked as you will find anywhere. Both places were where Gotti liked to sit with his hitmen, his accountants, and the lieutenants who ran his rackets.
Most mornings he would stroll down from his home at 160011 85th Street, his bodyguards fanned out around him, jackets bulging with guns. It must have been a scene no movie director could better.
Gotti's home is small for a man with such a huge appetite for everything criminal. It's a wood and brick fronted bungalow in Cape Cod style. The only unusual addition is the huge satellite dish on the roof, and the state-of-the-art security camera covering the front door and windows.
Gotti ran his operations from an office behind the city's Old St Patrick's, New York's first Roman Catholic cathedral. It was also the setting for the christening at which Michael takes up his duties at the end of The Godfather. The scene was recreated in a studio. But many a future Mobster was christened at the cathedral font.
Gotti's actual headquarters was at 247 Mulberry Street, just south of its junction with Prince Street. On almost any day you can see some of his men strolling along the pavement, their destination is often Umberto's Clam House. It's one of the best in Little Italy. The waiter will take your picture at one of the tables the Dapper Don like to sit at.
A slow walk away -- everyone in Little Italy seems to have that special not-quite-a-stroll way of moving -- is Mare Chiaro, at 176 Mulberry Street. The bar has been in the family for almost a century. It's also one of those places that will instantly be recognisable to anyone who has seen such movies as Kojak with Telly Savales, or Contract On Cherry Street with Frank Sinatra.
As you sip an ice cold beer you can listen to Old Blue Eyes belting it out on the jukebox in the corner. The time to go is mid-evening. The place then seems filled with characters who could have stepped out of any Mobster movie: hard-faced men and their over-painted women exchange rapid-fire dialogue few movies have ever captured.
Sparks Steak House at 210 East 46th Street has some of the best meat in town. But to eat like a Godfather you can expect to pay $100 a head -- and then comes the tip. You forget that extra 15% and you would be wise not to return.
As well as fine food Sparks is part of Mafia folklore. It was on the kerb outside that Paul Castellano, then the "Don of Dons", was assassinated on a pleasant day in 1985 by his own bodyguard -- John Gotti. Locals still walk carefully around the place where the body fell. To walk over the spot is deemed to be bad luck.
Over in Hells Kitchen, west of Time Square, is Druids on 10th Avenue. This was the headquarters of the Westies, the gang who became immortalised on film as the Goodfellas. The bar staff will tell you the bar was the place of countless murders -- and that at the end of every night their Mobster clients would always smash their glasses to destroy any evidence of fingerprints.
One evening so the story goes, a mobster took a head from a hatbox and rolled it down the bar. As it passed each drinker, he poured his beer over the head. True? Who knows? When you take a tour of the Mafia sites, it becomes hard to know what is real and what has been actually created on film.
Remember all those scenes in the old movies where a gangster is shot dead in a barber's chair? Well it did happen, more than once, in the barber's shop in the Park Sheraton Hotel at Seventh Avenue on 55th Street.
The most famous victim was Albert Anastasia who ruled Murder Incorporated until that day when a hitman shot him while he was being shaved.
The chair is still there. But the barber doesn't like to discuss it. Those days are gone, he will smile.
Maybe. But the flavour of that period still remains. And there is no better way to sample it than the New York City Mafia Tour Guide. Read it in your hotel room while watching the original Godfather. Then go out and see how many locations you can spot. It's fun -- and a rewarding way to get to know the city that never sleeps -- and where many a Mafia mobster rests, if not in peace, at least in that magnificently ornate cemetery at St John's, where the shadow of the Irish Mob hangs over their tombs.
Thanks to Gordon Thomas
The best place to start mixing with The Mob is in St John's Cemetery out on Long Island. This is where the Mafia Dons of New York are buried.
Beneath their sepulchres and towering granite angles lie the bodies of such notorious mobsters as Carlo Gambino and Aniello "The Hat" Dellacore. A few tombstones away are the vaults of Joe Columbo, Vito Genovese and , Salvatore "Lucy" Luciano.
They each headed one of the Families -- the euphemistic name for the gangs who ruled New York -- with the ruthlessness of medieval monarchs. Today they remain identifiable entities only through their names carved in wood and stone. But there is not so much as a chisel mark to commemorate their links -- and fights -- with that other great Mob, the Irish Mafia. Born in the early 19th century out of street gangs protecting and exploiting immigrants from the Old Country, by the arrival of Prohibition the Irish Mafia had become a powerful player in bootlegging -- and all the crimes that went with it: burglarising shops, dominating pool halls, stealing from the docks.
No racket was too small for the Irish Mafia. And like their Italian counterparts, the Irish Bosses attracted colourful names: "One Lung" Curran, Owney "The Killer" Madden, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll.
Hard drinking, flashily dressed and always a girl on their arms, they extended the Irish Mob's influence to all the major US cities. Many of the great crimes were laid at their door. One was the Pottsville Heist, when half a million dollars was stolen in a Philadelphia bank robbery by the K&K gang in 1974. Its members were Irish born Americans, many of them blue-collar workers and the gang had become a powerful player in gambling, loan sharking and mass thievery across the State.
By the 1980s they had moved into drugs. Thirty-six K&K members were arrested. One fled to Dublin. But the gang still thrived. In 2003, its then leader, Ray Matorno, plotted to remove the Italian Mafia's hold over the Philadelphia underworld. He brought in a dozen hitmen for the coming war. But before he could issue the time-honoured order "time to go to the mattresses", he was gunned down on his way to keep a doctor's appointment. His physician was quoted as saying: "The amount of led he took would have required a foundry to plug all the holes".
To visit St John's cemetery is to step back in your mind's eye to the days of the G-men, Tommy-guns and Omerta -- the code of silence of Cosa Nostra, the generic name for the Families. It was this the Irish mafia has continued to subscribe to.
Strolling through St John's I sensed that look of surprise which must have crossed the face of Carlo, head of the Gambino family, as he had left the Brooklyn apartment of one of his mistresses in July 1972 -- to be shot dead as he entered his chauffeured car.
The roll call of names is the history of the Italian Mob in New York. Some died in harness. Most succumbed to a bullet in the head. Their silent tombs don't distinguish. But for those who want a social history of a different kind, a visit to St John's is a starting point for a journey back in time -- one that spawned probably more classic gangster movies than any other genre.
The Irish Mafia sprang on to the screen with a series of film noir movies in the 1940s starring super stars of their day like James Cagney, Spencer Tracey and Pat O'Brien. They became known in Hollywood as "the screen Irish Mafia". You can still catch them on late night movie screenings of, "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938) in which Cagney returns to New York's Hells Kitchen to reclaim his right as the area's Irish Gang Boss; or "The Racket" (1928) where Thomas Meighan plays an Irish Chicago police officer taking on the local criminal syndicate. And don't forget the "St Valentine's Day Massacre" (1967) that captures the mood of the turbulent Thirties for the Irish Mafia as well as any gangster movie. Right up to "Brotherhood" (2006) the relationships, and influence, of the Irish gangs are caught on screen.
Among the gravestones at St John's cemetery you remember the voices of other stars who played the mobsters: George Raft as the head of a Family; Mickey Rooney, the swaggering hit-man for another; Marlon Brando in his greatest of all roles, "The Godfather".
Here in the graveyard, with the wind whistling in from the Atlantic and the distant sound of planes coming and going from Kennedy Airport, you can conjure up again those memorable words of Brando: "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."
I'll make you a promise, spend a morning in St John's and you won't regret it. Here they are, the bad and the ugly, the fat and the profane, rich beyond dream. And most venerated -- at least within the closed world of the Mafia -- is the godfather of them all. The Gangster they called the "Dapper Don".
To the untold millions who have watched the movie trilogy, The Godfather, he was the inspiration for the memorable role Marlon Brando created. The "Don of Dons" was feared even from within the prison -- but a life-without-parole-prison-cell -- where he died in June 2002. He was ten years into his sentence, and the cancer finally did what no bullet had been able to do.
All it says below the brass cross on the polished wooden door to vault 341, Aisle C in the cemetery is "GOTTI". Below this word that once instilled terror throughout New York are the words: "John 1940-2002".
Born into an era when the Mob ruled New York, Gotti was given a funeral that has not been seen since those days.
Many of his peers ended their lives in New York's East River or out somewhere beyond the Statue of Liberty. Weighed down with their feet encased in concrete blocks, or iron bars welded around their waists. But instead of being laid to rest with the fishes, Gotti was carried in his hand-polished coffin through the streets of New York's Little Italy. His hearse was festooned with wreaths in the shape of horses' heads (Gotti was a great gambler); a giant cigar (one was always in his mouth); a winning hand of cards and a champagne glass (his favourite game and tipple).
The drive from the funeral home to the cemetery where he now lies in his air-conditioned vault takes about ten minutes.
For those who want to recreate the drive, a New York cabbie will oblige. Or you can do it in style, renting a gangland style white Cadillac from one of the firms which specialises in unusual tours. They're listed in the New York Yellow Pages.
Viewers of the smash-hit TV show, The Sopranos, will recognise some of the places en route to the cemetery.
There is Russo's Ice Cream Bar and Vincent's Original Clam Shop (both are close to 85th Street at 160th). Here you can sample some of the best ice cream in a Little Italy that prides itself on serving an unbeatable selection of iced confections. Or, if you fancy something more substantial, Vincent's clams are as juicy and perfectly cooked as you will find anywhere. Both places were where Gotti liked to sit with his hitmen, his accountants, and the lieutenants who ran his rackets.
Most mornings he would stroll down from his home at 160011 85th Street, his bodyguards fanned out around him, jackets bulging with guns. It must have been a scene no movie director could better.
Gotti's home is small for a man with such a huge appetite for everything criminal. It's a wood and brick fronted bungalow in Cape Cod style. The only unusual addition is the huge satellite dish on the roof, and the state-of-the-art security camera covering the front door and windows.
Gotti ran his operations from an office behind the city's Old St Patrick's, New York's first Roman Catholic cathedral. It was also the setting for the christening at which Michael takes up his duties at the end of The Godfather. The scene was recreated in a studio. But many a future Mobster was christened at the cathedral font.
Gotti's actual headquarters was at 247 Mulberry Street, just south of its junction with Prince Street. On almost any day you can see some of his men strolling along the pavement, their destination is often Umberto's Clam House. It's one of the best in Little Italy. The waiter will take your picture at one of the tables the Dapper Don like to sit at.
A slow walk away -- everyone in Little Italy seems to have that special not-quite-a-stroll way of moving -- is Mare Chiaro, at 176 Mulberry Street. The bar has been in the family for almost a century. It's also one of those places that will instantly be recognisable to anyone who has seen such movies as Kojak with Telly Savales, or Contract On Cherry Street with Frank Sinatra.
As you sip an ice cold beer you can listen to Old Blue Eyes belting it out on the jukebox in the corner. The time to go is mid-evening. The place then seems filled with characters who could have stepped out of any Mobster movie: hard-faced men and their over-painted women exchange rapid-fire dialogue few movies have ever captured.
Sparks Steak House at 210 East 46th Street has some of the best meat in town. But to eat like a Godfather you can expect to pay $100 a head -- and then comes the tip. You forget that extra 15% and you would be wise not to return.
As well as fine food Sparks is part of Mafia folklore. It was on the kerb outside that Paul Castellano, then the "Don of Dons", was assassinated on a pleasant day in 1985 by his own bodyguard -- John Gotti. Locals still walk carefully around the place where the body fell. To walk over the spot is deemed to be bad luck.
Over in Hells Kitchen, west of Time Square, is Druids on 10th Avenue. This was the headquarters of the Westies, the gang who became immortalised on film as the Goodfellas. The bar staff will tell you the bar was the place of countless murders -- and that at the end of every night their Mobster clients would always smash their glasses to destroy any evidence of fingerprints.
One evening so the story goes, a mobster took a head from a hatbox and rolled it down the bar. As it passed each drinker, he poured his beer over the head. True? Who knows? When you take a tour of the Mafia sites, it becomes hard to know what is real and what has been actually created on film.
Remember all those scenes in the old movies where a gangster is shot dead in a barber's chair? Well it did happen, more than once, in the barber's shop in the Park Sheraton Hotel at Seventh Avenue on 55th Street.
The most famous victim was Albert Anastasia who ruled Murder Incorporated until that day when a hitman shot him while he was being shaved.
The chair is still there. But the barber doesn't like to discuss it. Those days are gone, he will smile.
Maybe. But the flavour of that period still remains. And there is no better way to sample it than the New York City Mafia Tour Guide. Read it in your hotel room while watching the original Godfather. Then go out and see how many locations you can spot. It's fun -- and a rewarding way to get to know the city that never sleeps -- and where many a Mafia mobster rests, if not in peace, at least in that magnificently ornate cemetery at St John's, where the shadow of the Irish Mob hangs over their tombs.
Thanks to Gordon Thomas
Sunday, May 21, 2006
And the Oscar goes to ... Gregory DePalma?
Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family, Gregory DePalma, Vincent "Chin"Gigante, Joe Bonanno, Gennaro Angiulo, Stefano Maggodino, Aniello "Neill" Dellacroce
Friends of mine: Ilario Zannino
Gregory DePalma, the powerful Gambino family captain, allegedly bragged about his Academy Award-caliber performance playing a desperately ill man looking for a sentence reduction. It worked; a federal judge jailed DePalma for less than six years instead of the 13-year maximum back in 1999.
There was just one problem: The federal government was secretly taping DePalma's post-sentencing review. And now he's back in court, allegedly battling another debilitating illness as prosecutors attempt to convince another jury that DePalma is a racketeer.
The 74-year-old mobster, sitting at the defense table with an oxygen tube in his nose and his feet resting on a small stool, is the latest Mafiosi caught in a medical controversy over competency to stand trial. The government inevitably insists the defendant is a healthy candidate for prosecution; the defense is equally insistent that he is not.
"Surveillance photos will show you Gregory DePalma on the move, an energetic, active man," Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Marrah said in his opening statement at the reputed mobster's trial in Manhattan.
Not so, said defense attorney John Meringolo. DePalma was "a broken-down man who has a big mouth and is living through the past," Meringolo argued.
Trying to dodge prosecution through illness _ the "Sicilian flu," as federal agents once derisively called it _ is a long-standing Mafia defense. The most famous of all was Vincent Gigante, the so-called "Oddfather" who avoided conviction for nearly three decades by publicly acting like a loon.
Gigante strolled through his Greenwich Village neighborhood in bathrobe and slippers, whether it was time for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Gigante avoided conviction from 1970, when he first launched the ruse, until a 1997 conviction for racketeering and murder conspiracy.
FBI agents serving Gigante with a subpoena once found him standing naked in a running shower, clutching an open umbrella.
"With some of these guys, it would be hard to tell if it's dementia or just the way they are," said mob expert Howard Abadinsky. "They're that nutty."
The majority of cases run to heart problems rather than head cases.
Joe Bonanno, one of the founding fathers of New York City's mob, was summoned to testify in 1985 at a federal prosecution of the Mafia's ruling "Commission." Then 80, he was retired and living in Arizona - where he was definitely too ill to take the witness stand, said his lawyer, William Kunstler. The stress of testifying, Kunstler insisted, was too much for the octogenarian mobster. Bonanno did 14 months for contempt, coming out of prison in 1986. He died ... 16 years later, at the ripe old age of 97. Kunstler had died seven years earlier at 76.
Ilario Zannino, an associate of New England mob underboss Gennaro Angiulo, managed to avoid prosecution - albeit temporarily - after he was hospitalized with heart problems in 1985. He died in jail 11 years later at age 74.
Buffalo boss Stefano Maggodino, following his arrest, once claimed he was too sick to get fingerprinted. At a bedside arraignment, he told the assembled authorities, "Take the gun and shoot me. That's what you want!" He survived for another five years.
Not everyone lived as long as those three. Aniello "Neill" Dellacroce was arraigned by telephone in April 1985 from his Staten Island home, where he was laid up with heart disease and cancer. Dellacroce was dead before the end of the year.
"When you start to think of the lifestyles these guys live, there's a good chance it's not going to be so healthy," said Abadinsky. "One of the things that always fascinated me is that these guys didn't die earlier."
The Gigante case, with a mob boss feigning dementia to maintain his freedom, has become part of pop culture. Junior Soprano, on the hit HBO show, went from malingering to menacing mobster this year when he shot nephew Tony in a case of mistaken identity. The long-running hit TV show "Law And Order" did an episode using the Gigante premise. And author Jimmy Breslin did an entire book, "I Don't Want to Go to Jail: A Good Novel," that parodied Gigante with a character called Fausti ("The Fist") Dellacava.
"Gigante got a lot of exercise walking around the Village," Abadinsky said of the mobster who lived to age 77. "He just said he was nuts."
Thanks to Larry McShane
Friends of mine: Ilario Zannino
Gregory DePalma, the powerful Gambino family captain, allegedly bragged about his Academy Award-caliber performance playing a desperately ill man looking for a sentence reduction. It worked; a federal judge jailed DePalma for less than six years instead of the 13-year maximum back in 1999.
There was just one problem: The federal government was secretly taping DePalma's post-sentencing review. And now he's back in court, allegedly battling another debilitating illness as prosecutors attempt to convince another jury that DePalma is a racketeer.
The 74-year-old mobster, sitting at the defense table with an oxygen tube in his nose and his feet resting on a small stool, is the latest Mafiosi caught in a medical controversy over competency to stand trial. The government inevitably insists the defendant is a healthy candidate for prosecution; the defense is equally insistent that he is not.
"Surveillance photos will show you Gregory DePalma on the move, an energetic, active man," Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Marrah said in his opening statement at the reputed mobster's trial in Manhattan.
Not so, said defense attorney John Meringolo. DePalma was "a broken-down man who has a big mouth and is living through the past," Meringolo argued.
Trying to dodge prosecution through illness _ the "Sicilian flu," as federal agents once derisively called it _ is a long-standing Mafia defense. The most famous of all was Vincent Gigante, the so-called "Oddfather" who avoided conviction for nearly three decades by publicly acting like a loon.
Gigante strolled through his Greenwich Village neighborhood in bathrobe and slippers, whether it was time for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Gigante avoided conviction from 1970, when he first launched the ruse, until a 1997 conviction for racketeering and murder conspiracy.
FBI agents serving Gigante with a subpoena once found him standing naked in a running shower, clutching an open umbrella.
"With some of these guys, it would be hard to tell if it's dementia or just the way they are," said mob expert Howard Abadinsky. "They're that nutty."
The majority of cases run to heart problems rather than head cases.
Joe Bonanno, one of the founding fathers of New York City's mob, was summoned to testify in 1985 at a federal prosecution of the Mafia's ruling "Commission." Then 80, he was retired and living in Arizona - where he was definitely too ill to take the witness stand, said his lawyer, William Kunstler. The stress of testifying, Kunstler insisted, was too much for the octogenarian mobster. Bonanno did 14 months for contempt, coming out of prison in 1986. He died ... 16 years later, at the ripe old age of 97. Kunstler had died seven years earlier at 76.
Ilario Zannino, an associate of New England mob underboss Gennaro Angiulo, managed to avoid prosecution - albeit temporarily - after he was hospitalized with heart problems in 1985. He died in jail 11 years later at age 74.
Buffalo boss Stefano Maggodino, following his arrest, once claimed he was too sick to get fingerprinted. At a bedside arraignment, he told the assembled authorities, "Take the gun and shoot me. That's what you want!" He survived for another five years.
Not everyone lived as long as those three. Aniello "Neill" Dellacroce was arraigned by telephone in April 1985 from his Staten Island home, where he was laid up with heart disease and cancer. Dellacroce was dead before the end of the year.
"When you start to think of the lifestyles these guys live, there's a good chance it's not going to be so healthy," said Abadinsky. "One of the things that always fascinated me is that these guys didn't die earlier."
The Gigante case, with a mob boss feigning dementia to maintain his freedom, has become part of pop culture. Junior Soprano, on the hit HBO show, went from malingering to menacing mobster this year when he shot nephew Tony in a case of mistaken identity. The long-running hit TV show "Law And Order" did an episode using the Gigante premise. And author Jimmy Breslin did an entire book, "I Don't Want to Go to Jail: A Good Novel," that parodied Gigante with a character called Fausti ("The Fist") Dellacava.
"Gigante got a lot of exercise walking around the Village," Abadinsky said of the mobster who lived to age 77. "He just said he was nuts."
Thanks to Larry McShane
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Randy Don's Rendez-Ruse
Friends of ours: John "Dapper Don" Gotti, Ed Grillo, Aniello "Neal" Dellacroce, Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, John "Junior" Gotti
John Gotti would often send mob soldier Ed Grillo on assignments so the godfather could have sex romps with Grillo's wife, Shannon "Sandy" Connelly, in her Staten Island home. Dapper "Don Juan" Gotti had a racket going on to score time with his mistress - he'd send her mob-underling husband out on jobs so they could have sex in her home.
John Gotti found it was the easiest way to go to the mattress with Shannon "Sandy" Connelly, the buxom bride of Gambino soldier Ernest Grillo and the reputed mother of Gotti's teenage love child, sources said. "Gotti used to send Grillo out on assignments so he would know where he was," the source said yesterday, adding that the mob don blatantly used his authority to facilitate his adulterous affair. But even more shocking, authorities informed Grillo that the married mob boss was having sex with his wife, and the hard-headed soldier refused to turn on his Gambino crime family boss. He stoically shrugged off the news and kept his mouth shut.
Authorities were hoping to convince the Gambino soldier to testify against his criminal cohorts. At the time, authorities were keeping tabs on Grillo, and would see him drive away from his home on West Fingerboard Road in Staten Island on mob business. Minutes later, John would "pull up" and go inside, where Connelly was waiting, the source said. The Dapper Don spent "enough time to get what he had to get done," the source said. "He wasn't coming for cake and coffee."
The West Fingerboard home previously was owned by the late Aniello Dellacroce - the Gambino underboss who had been both stepfather to Connelly and a mentor to Gotti. The Grillos had two young daughters at the time, and Gotti had four living children with his own wife, Victoria.
Sources have told The Post that during Gotti's affair with his goumada, she became pregnant, and bore a third daughter in 1987. Authorities who later staked out Grillo's home "were amazed by the amount of people who were at the baby's christening - including John Gotti." And, "a lot of high-level mobsters were there," a source said, adding their presence was "very unusual." Because of their presence, investigators probing the Gambino family from then on assumed the Grillo's third child was actually fathered by Gotti.
Grillo was busted in 1988 and accused of running a racket on the Upper East Side with Gotti's approval. Prosecutors said Grillo's crew operated an illegal casino, took over an apartment house and forcibly opened a valet parking service at a chic nightclub. In April 1989, Grillo, now 49, pleaded guilty to state charges of enterprise corruption, which included the shooting death of a gangster named Kevin Hogan. He was sentenced to six to 18 years in prison, and released in
October 2000.
Gotti died in federal prison in 2002. Grillo, who is now divorced from Connelly, ran away from a reporter yesterday when approached at his Staten Island home. Connelly, 49, could not be reached for comment, but on Sunday said Gotti was just "a family friend," and said Grillo, not the Mafia don, had fathered her third daughter. "They're false allegations," she said of claims that she bore Gotti a bambina. But sources close to the family pointed out what is obvious to a reporter who saw that daughter at her Staten Island home - the college freshman looks different than her two older sisters, who both resemble each other.
While the older sisters' hair color mirrors their mother's auburn tresses, the youngest daughter's hair is black - just like the natural hair of Gotti's two legitimate daughters, Angel and Victoria. And the woman's dark eyebrows naturally arch in the same distinctive way as her purported dad, Gotti.
Gotti's philandering ways have made headlines in recent days after Gambino turncoat Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo testified that the don had had a Staten Island mistress who bore him a child. That woman, was someone else other than Connelly - meaning there are allegedly at least two illegitimate Gotti children from the borough.
Gotti's family originally scoffed at DiLeonardo's claim, which was made at the ongoing federal racketeering retrial of John "Junior" Gotti in Manhattan. DiLeonardo also has testified that Junior emulated his father by having a mistress named Mindy. But the Dapper Don's widow, Victoria, since has said that if DNA tests prove her husband fathered children out of wedlock, they would be welcomed by his legitimate family.
John Gotti would often send mob soldier Ed Grillo on assignments so the godfather could have sex romps with Grillo's wife, Shannon "Sandy" Connelly, in her Staten Island home. Dapper "Don Juan" Gotti had a racket going on to score time with his mistress - he'd send her mob-underling husband out on jobs so they could have sex in her home.
John Gotti found it was the easiest way to go to the mattress with Shannon "Sandy" Connelly, the buxom bride of Gambino soldier Ernest Grillo and the reputed mother of Gotti's teenage love child, sources said. "Gotti used to send Grillo out on assignments so he would know where he was," the source said yesterday, adding that the mob don blatantly used his authority to facilitate his adulterous affair. But even more shocking, authorities informed Grillo that the married mob boss was having sex with his wife, and the hard-headed soldier refused to turn on his Gambino crime family boss. He stoically shrugged off the news and kept his mouth shut.
Authorities were hoping to convince the Gambino soldier to testify against his criminal cohorts. At the time, authorities were keeping tabs on Grillo, and would see him drive away from his home on West Fingerboard Road in Staten Island on mob business. Minutes later, John would "pull up" and go inside, where Connelly was waiting, the source said. The Dapper Don spent "enough time to get what he had to get done," the source said. "He wasn't coming for cake and coffee."
The West Fingerboard home previously was owned by the late Aniello Dellacroce - the Gambino underboss who had been both stepfather to Connelly and a mentor to Gotti. The Grillos had two young daughters at the time, and Gotti had four living children with his own wife, Victoria.
Sources have told The Post that during Gotti's affair with his goumada, she became pregnant, and bore a third daughter in 1987. Authorities who later staked out Grillo's home "were amazed by the amount of people who were at the baby's christening - including John Gotti." And, "a lot of high-level mobsters were there," a source said, adding their presence was "very unusual." Because of their presence, investigators probing the Gambino family from then on assumed the Grillo's third child was actually fathered by Gotti.
Grillo was busted in 1988 and accused of running a racket on the Upper East Side with Gotti's approval. Prosecutors said Grillo's crew operated an illegal casino, took over an apartment house and forcibly opened a valet parking service at a chic nightclub. In April 1989, Grillo, now 49, pleaded guilty to state charges of enterprise corruption, which included the shooting death of a gangster named Kevin Hogan. He was sentenced to six to 18 years in prison, and released in
October 2000.
Gotti died in federal prison in 2002. Grillo, who is now divorced from Connelly, ran away from a reporter yesterday when approached at his Staten Island home. Connelly, 49, could not be reached for comment, but on Sunday said Gotti was just "a family friend," and said Grillo, not the Mafia don, had fathered her third daughter. "They're false allegations," she said of claims that she bore Gotti a bambina. But sources close to the family pointed out what is obvious to a reporter who saw that daughter at her Staten Island home - the college freshman looks different than her two older sisters, who both resemble each other.
While the older sisters' hair color mirrors their mother's auburn tresses, the youngest daughter's hair is black - just like the natural hair of Gotti's two legitimate daughters, Angel and Victoria. And the woman's dark eyebrows naturally arch in the same distinctive way as her purported dad, Gotti.
Gotti's philandering ways have made headlines in recent days after Gambino turncoat Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo testified that the don had had a Staten Island mistress who bore him a child. That woman, was someone else other than Connelly - meaning there are allegedly at least two illegitimate Gotti children from the borough.
Gotti's family originally scoffed at DiLeonardo's claim, which was made at the ongoing federal racketeering retrial of John "Junior" Gotti in Manhattan. DiLeonardo also has testified that Junior emulated his father by having a mistress named Mindy. But the Dapper Don's widow, Victoria, since has said that if DNA tests prove her husband fathered children out of wedlock, they would be welcomed by his legitimate family.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Gotti's Girl
Sandy Grillo, yesterday on Staten Island, denies being the late John Gotti's paramour.
A woman who was one of the late mob don John Gotti's mistresses - and allegedly the mother of a secret love child - lives on Staten Island with her three daughters. Meet Shannon "Sandy" Grillo, the estranged wife of reputed Gambino associate Ernesto Grillo - and the woman who had an affair with the Dapper Don, according to several sources. She's now the center of speculation that she has a child by the dashing don.
Mrs. Grillo lives modestly with her mother, Rosemary - described as the companion of the late Gambino underboss Aniello Dellacroce - and three kids. She is separated from her husband, purported mobster Ernesto Grillo. Dellacroce was Gotti's mentor.
The bombshell secret love life of one of America's most notorious gangsters was first revealed in court Friday during the racketeering trial of Gotti's son John "Junior" Gotti.
Mob rat and star prosecution witness Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo claimed the younger Gotti told him "his father had a secret second family and a daughter he had fathered out of wedlock."
As The Post reported yesterday, sources said the older Gotti had two mistresses who both bore him children. Both secret families live on Staten Island. The second mistress had a daughter who is older than the one Gotti is purported to have had with Grillo, according to a knowledgeable source. And it was that second alleged Gotti paramour to whom Mikey Scars was referring at Junior's trial on Friday - an affair Scars knew about both from Junior and from another mobster, according to the source. The second woman's identity has not been disclosed.
As for the Grillo affair, Dellacroce, who was not Sandy Grillo's biological father, strongly disapproved of her relationship with Gotti, the source said. Dellacroce, then the No. 2 Gambino boss and Gotti's mentor, died in 1985.
"John Gotti became much more free-wheeling after Neil [Aniello] passed away in his personal and professional life," the source said. It was after Dellacroce's death that Gotti assassinated Gambino boss Paul Castellano, a move Dellacroce - who didn't like Castellano - would nonetheless have disapproved of, and prevented, if he were alive.
When approached at her home yesterday, the attractive, 50-year-old Grillo was asked: "Are you denying you had a relationship with John Gotti?" "Yes," she said politely, yet firmly.
Later, when one of Grillo's daughters was approached, she acknowledged her mom was Sandy Grillo. Asked if she had seen news accounts of Gotti's secret love life, she said: "No." "I don't know anything about this," she said, adding, "That's not true at all," when asked about an illicit affair and out-of-wedlock child involving her mom and Gotti.
The young woman said she lives with her mom, grandmother Rosemary and two other sisters. There's no hint any of the children in the household were treated as anything other than part of the Grillo household.
It's not the first time Sandy Grillo's name has been bandied about in connection with one of the most well-known members of New York's underworld
. The salacious 2004 book "Il Dottore: The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor" recounts a mob doctor's first encounter with the Dapper Don Juan and Sandy Grillo: a house call to tend to an ulcer that hampered the couple's lovemaking.
In the book, the dutiful mob doc is summoned to Manhattan's Barbizon Plaza Hotel on June 15, 1984, to examine Gotti, who complained of stomach pain. "Beautiful broad like Sandy here . . . but a goddamned stomach turns itself inside out right when I'm about to make love to her like Rudolph Valentino," Gotti allegedly told the doctor.
A week later, a fellow mob doctor told the author: "An unspoken La Cosa Nostra rule is that a 'made' man, especially a capo like Gotti, is not supposed to violate another man's wife or children.
"In sleeping with Shannon Grillo, Gotti seems to be violating two sacred oaths with the same woman."
A woman who was one of the late mob don John Gotti's mistresses - and allegedly the mother of a secret love child - lives on Staten Island with her three daughters. Meet Shannon "Sandy" Grillo, the estranged wife of reputed Gambino associate Ernesto Grillo - and the woman who had an affair with the Dapper Don, according to several sources. She's now the center of speculation that she has a child by the dashing don.
Mrs. Grillo lives modestly with her mother, Rosemary - described as the companion of the late Gambino underboss Aniello Dellacroce - and three kids. She is separated from her husband, purported mobster Ernesto Grillo. Dellacroce was Gotti's mentor.
The bombshell secret love life of one of America's most notorious gangsters was first revealed in court Friday during the racketeering trial of Gotti's son John "Junior" Gotti.
Mob rat and star prosecution witness Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo claimed the younger Gotti told him "his father had a secret second family and a daughter he had fathered out of wedlock."
As The Post reported yesterday, sources said the older Gotti had two mistresses who both bore him children. Both secret families live on Staten Island. The second mistress had a daughter who is older than the one Gotti is purported to have had with Grillo, according to a knowledgeable source. And it was that second alleged Gotti paramour to whom Mikey Scars was referring at Junior's trial on Friday - an affair Scars knew about both from Junior and from another mobster, according to the source. The second woman's identity has not been disclosed.
As for the Grillo affair, Dellacroce, who was not Sandy Grillo's biological father, strongly disapproved of her relationship with Gotti, the source said. Dellacroce, then the No. 2 Gambino boss and Gotti's mentor, died in 1985.
"John Gotti became much more free-wheeling after Neil [Aniello] passed away in his personal and professional life," the source said. It was after Dellacroce's death that Gotti assassinated Gambino boss Paul Castellano, a move Dellacroce - who didn't like Castellano - would nonetheless have disapproved of, and prevented, if he were alive.
When approached at her home yesterday, the attractive, 50-year-old Grillo was asked: "Are you denying you had a relationship with John Gotti?" "Yes," she said politely, yet firmly.
Later, when one of Grillo's daughters was approached, she acknowledged her mom was Sandy Grillo. Asked if she had seen news accounts of Gotti's secret love life, she said: "No." "I don't know anything about this," she said, adding, "That's not true at all," when asked about an illicit affair and out-of-wedlock child involving her mom and Gotti.
The young woman said she lives with her mom, grandmother Rosemary and two other sisters. There's no hint any of the children in the household were treated as anything other than part of the Grillo household.
It's not the first time Sandy Grillo's name has been bandied about in connection with one of the most well-known members of New York's underworld
. The salacious 2004 book "Il Dottore: The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor" recounts a mob doctor's first encounter with the Dapper Don Juan and Sandy Grillo: a house call to tend to an ulcer that hampered the couple's lovemaking.In the book, the dutiful mob doc is summoned to Manhattan's Barbizon Plaza Hotel on June 15, 1984, to examine Gotti, who complained of stomach pain. "Beautiful broad like Sandy here . . . but a goddamned stomach turns itself inside out right when I'm about to make love to her like Rudolph Valentino," Gotti allegedly told the doctor.
A week later, a fellow mob doctor told the author: "An unspoken La Cosa Nostra rule is that a 'made' man, especially a capo like Gotti, is not supposed to violate another man's wife or children.
"In sleeping with Shannon Grillo, Gotti seems to be violating two sacred oaths with the same woman."
Tuesday, March 03, 1992
Sammy the Bull Testifes That John Gotti Ordered the Slaying of Gambino Crime Boss Paul Castellano
Reputed mob boss John Gotti ordered the slaying of Paul Castellano out of fear that he faced assassination himself, Gotti's onetime underboss said during his first day of testimony yesterday in a hushed and heavily guarded courtroom.
There were "quite a few reasons" why Gotti wanted the head of the Gambino crime family killed, Salvatore Gravano said in a low and gravelly voice. But, he testified, Gotti's chief motive was self-preservation.
Gravano described the 10 months during which, he, Gotti and others planned Castellano's execution. He said the final plan came shortly after the death of cancer-striken Aniello Dellacroce, the Gambino family's underboss and Gotti's mentor.
"Paul showed total disrespect and didn't go to the funeral," Gravano told the jury. "We were wondering if and when . . . Paul might make a move - if he might strike," Gravano testified. "We wondered if he might shoot John and Angelo" Ruggiero, a close Gotti associate. "Paul Castellano, after Neil [Dellacroce] died, said he was going to wreck John's crew," said Gravano. He said Castellano was angry that members of Gotti's crew had violated a family rule - enforceable by death - against drug dealing.
Gravano, the highest-level mob informant ever to testify against Gotti, was calm and composed as he took the stand under a deal to reduce his prison sentence to 20 years. Indicted along with Gotti and co-defendant Frank Locascio, he faced life in prison without parole if convicted at trial. Gravano occasionally glanced at Gotti, and once during the testimony pointed out Gotti and Locascio as being the boss and consigliere of the crime family.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gleeson, Gravano said others beside Gotti were dissatisfied with Castellano.
"At the time, there were a lot of conversations about Paul. Nobody was too happy with him . . . He was selling out the family for his own basic businesses," said Gravano, explaining that Castellano formed several business partnerships with leaders of the Genovese crime family.
Gravano said Gotti and his followers also were upset that Castellano had allowed another crime family to kill a Gambino crime captain in Connecticut. "You just don't let another family kill a captain in your family," Gravano testified. "That's against the rules."
Gravano said Gotti discussed two other possible plans for killing Castellano that were rejected. In one plan, Castellano was to have been shot at his home on Staten Island. But that plan was dropped because "there was a lot of FBI surveillance at his house," Gravano said.
Another rejected plan called for an old-time mobster to walk into a diner where Castellano and his driver, Thomas Bilotti, frequently went before meeting with Castellano's lawyer, James LaRossa. "The old man was known by Paul and would be able to walk in and shoot him," Gravano said.
Gravano, 46, said the final planning session for Castellano's murder came the night before Castellano and Bilotti were shot to death outside Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street on Dec. 16, 1985.
Frank DeCicco, a Castellano loyalist, had informed Gotti and Gravano that he would be meeting Castellano and Bilotti for dinner at Sparks on Dec. 16, Gravano testified. Also among those attending the dinner, said Gravano, would be Thomas Gambino, son of the late Carlo Gambino, for whom the Gambino family is named.
The night before, at a meeting Gotti arranged, Gotti, Gravano and Ruggiero sat down with eight other mob figures at Gravano's drywall construction firm in Brooklyn and outlined a plan to kill two men whose names were not revealed. "We didn't tell them who was going to be hit," Gravano said. "We just said he had to be done."
Gravano said it was decided that the shooters would be John Carneglia, Edward Lino, Salvatore Scala and Vinny Artuso, all members of the Gambino crime family.. The others would serve as backups who would be stationed at various locations.
The next afternoon, the participants - armed with guns and walkie-talkies - met Gotti and Gravano in a small park on the Lower East Side and were told the names of their targets for the first time. "We told them exactly who was going, and that it had to be done," Gravano testified.
The designated shooters were stationed in front of Sparks, Gravano said, and four backup shooters were posted around the block. He said the backups included Anthony Rampino, a convicted Gambino soldier, and Ruggiero.
"Me and John got in the car and went to the Third Avenue side of East 46th," Gravano testified. "I was a backup shooter. If they [Castellano and Bilotti] got away, we would be ready."
At that point in his testimony, U.S. District Court Judge I. Leo Glasser closed the session for the day and ordered Gravano's examination to continue today.
Gravano, known on the street as Sammy the Bull, spent much of his two hours on the witness stand discussing his crime career, which he said began shortly after he dropped out of school at the age of 16. From 1961 to 1964, "I worked on and off. I committed armed robberies, burglaries."
He served in the Army between 1964 and 1966. After his discharge, he said he returned to Brooklyn. "I went back to my life of crime," he said.
Gleeson asked him how many murders he was admitting."Nineteen," Gravano said.
Gravano said he was something of an expert killer. Asked by Gleeson if there was a common expression used by the Gambino family for murder, Gravano said without emotion: "To do a piece of work - to whack someone out."
He described his 1976 initiation into the Gambino crime family in the presence of Castellano. He said during the ceremony, his trigger finger was pricked with a pin, a drop of blood was placed on the picture of a saint and the picture was set afire.
He then repeated his oath of silence: "If I divulge any secrets of this organization my soul should burn like this saint."
Gravano testified that officials of the Luchese, Colombo and Bonanno crime families were notified of the plan to kill Castellano. "They were behind the killing," he said. New York's fifth crime organization, the Genovese family, was not consulted. "We didn't trust them because Paul Castellano was in partners with them," Gravano said.
Thanks to Pete Bowles
There were "quite a few reasons" why Gotti wanted the head of the Gambino crime family killed, Salvatore Gravano said in a low and gravelly voice. But, he testified, Gotti's chief motive was self-preservation.
Gravano described the 10 months during which, he, Gotti and others planned Castellano's execution. He said the final plan came shortly after the death of cancer-striken Aniello Dellacroce, the Gambino family's underboss and Gotti's mentor.
"Paul showed total disrespect and didn't go to the funeral," Gravano told the jury. "We were wondering if and when . . . Paul might make a move - if he might strike," Gravano testified. "We wondered if he might shoot John and Angelo" Ruggiero, a close Gotti associate. "Paul Castellano, after Neil [Dellacroce] died, said he was going to wreck John's crew," said Gravano. He said Castellano was angry that members of Gotti's crew had violated a family rule - enforceable by death - against drug dealing.
Gravano, the highest-level mob informant ever to testify against Gotti, was calm and composed as he took the stand under a deal to reduce his prison sentence to 20 years. Indicted along with Gotti and co-defendant Frank Locascio, he faced life in prison without parole if convicted at trial. Gravano occasionally glanced at Gotti, and once during the testimony pointed out Gotti and Locascio as being the boss and consigliere of the crime family.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gleeson, Gravano said others beside Gotti were dissatisfied with Castellano.
"At the time, there were a lot of conversations about Paul. Nobody was too happy with him . . . He was selling out the family for his own basic businesses," said Gravano, explaining that Castellano formed several business partnerships with leaders of the Genovese crime family.
Gravano said Gotti and his followers also were upset that Castellano had allowed another crime family to kill a Gambino crime captain in Connecticut. "You just don't let another family kill a captain in your family," Gravano testified. "That's against the rules."
Gravano said Gotti discussed two other possible plans for killing Castellano that were rejected. In one plan, Castellano was to have been shot at his home on Staten Island. But that plan was dropped because "there was a lot of FBI surveillance at his house," Gravano said.
Another rejected plan called for an old-time mobster to walk into a diner where Castellano and his driver, Thomas Bilotti, frequently went before meeting with Castellano's lawyer, James LaRossa. "The old man was known by Paul and would be able to walk in and shoot him," Gravano said.
Gravano, 46, said the final planning session for Castellano's murder came the night before Castellano and Bilotti were shot to death outside Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street on Dec. 16, 1985.
Frank DeCicco, a Castellano loyalist, had informed Gotti and Gravano that he would be meeting Castellano and Bilotti for dinner at Sparks on Dec. 16, Gravano testified. Also among those attending the dinner, said Gravano, would be Thomas Gambino, son of the late Carlo Gambino, for whom the Gambino family is named.
The night before, at a meeting Gotti arranged, Gotti, Gravano and Ruggiero sat down with eight other mob figures at Gravano's drywall construction firm in Brooklyn and outlined a plan to kill two men whose names were not revealed. "We didn't tell them who was going to be hit," Gravano said. "We just said he had to be done."
Gravano said it was decided that the shooters would be John Carneglia, Edward Lino, Salvatore Scala and Vinny Artuso, all members of the Gambino crime family.. The others would serve as backups who would be stationed at various locations.
The next afternoon, the participants - armed with guns and walkie-talkies - met Gotti and Gravano in a small park on the Lower East Side and were told the names of their targets for the first time. "We told them exactly who was going, and that it had to be done," Gravano testified.
The designated shooters were stationed in front of Sparks, Gravano said, and four backup shooters were posted around the block. He said the backups included Anthony Rampino, a convicted Gambino soldier, and Ruggiero.
"Me and John got in the car and went to the Third Avenue side of East 46th," Gravano testified. "I was a backup shooter. If they [Castellano and Bilotti] got away, we would be ready."
At that point in his testimony, U.S. District Court Judge I. Leo Glasser closed the session for the day and ordered Gravano's examination to continue today.
Gravano, known on the street as Sammy the Bull, spent much of his two hours on the witness stand discussing his crime career, which he said began shortly after he dropped out of school at the age of 16. From 1961 to 1964, "I worked on and off. I committed armed robberies, burglaries."
He served in the Army between 1964 and 1966. After his discharge, he said he returned to Brooklyn. "I went back to my life of crime," he said.
Gleeson asked him how many murders he was admitting."Nineteen," Gravano said.
Gravano said he was something of an expert killer. Asked by Gleeson if there was a common expression used by the Gambino family for murder, Gravano said without emotion: "To do a piece of work - to whack someone out."
He described his 1976 initiation into the Gambino crime family in the presence of Castellano. He said during the ceremony, his trigger finger was pricked with a pin, a drop of blood was placed on the picture of a saint and the picture was set afire.
He then repeated his oath of silence: "If I divulge any secrets of this organization my soul should burn like this saint."
Gravano testified that officials of the Luchese, Colombo and Bonanno crime families were notified of the plan to kill Castellano. "They were behind the killing," he said. New York's fifth crime organization, the Genovese family, was not consulted. "We didn't trust them because Paul Castellano was in partners with them," Gravano said.
Thanks to Pete Bowles
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