Kuby an Out for Junior?

Friends of ours: John "Junior" Gotti, John "Dapper Don" Gotti, Sammy "The Bull"Gravano, Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo

On-air rivals Curtis Sliwa & Ron Kuby will be on different sides in court, too. Now it's Curtis versus Kuby. Pony-tailed civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby has been called to testify for the defense in the trial of John A. (Junior) Gotti - the mob scion accused of ordering two thugs to attack Curtis Sliwa, Kuby's radio show partner.

"Usually I try to stay as far away from the witness stand as I can, unless I'm handing a witness a sheaf of papers," Kuby said yesterday. Kuby said his testimony likely will not involve snitching on his longtime partner but will focus on his past representation of mobsters. He joked that he doubted Gotti attorney Charles Carnesi would ask, "Well, Ron, is it true you wanted to kill him, too?"

For a decade, Kuby has played the liberal foil to Sliwa's conservative lock-up-the-bad-guys views on their WABC-AM talk show, "Curtis and Kuby in the Morning." In recent weeks, Kuby has counseled Sliwa to come across as more likable to jurors at Gotti's retrial so they won't leave the courtroom thinking "it's not a bad thing that you got shot." The result was a less-confrontational Sliwa in court.

The Guardian Angels founder told jurors this week how he leaped out the passenger side window of a cab as he was being fired on by a masked gunman who had popped out next to the driver from under the dashboard. Prosecutors say Gotti, 42, ordered the 1992 ambush to silence Sliwa's unrelenting rants against the Gotti family following the late Dapper Don John Gotti's federal murder conviction.

Kuby has represented Junior Gotti's former brother-in-law, Carmine Agnello, the ex-husband of Victoria Gotti, as well as other alleged low-level mobsters. His late mentor, William Kunstler, once represented the Dapper Don. Kuby was named as the target of a mob hit plan hatched by Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, according to the 2000 testimony of a Gravano associate arrested on drug charges in Arizona.

Gravano was upset with Kuby for representing the families of some of Gravano's 19 murder victims in a civil lawsuit. He planned to lure the lawyer to Texas where he would be gunned down, according to the testimony. After Kuby learned last weekend he might be called as a witness for Gotti, he said he purposely stayed away from the trial.

Prosecutors wrapped up Thursday. Much of their case rests on the testimony of mob snitch Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo, who has linked Gotti to the Sliwa kidnapping as well as to more than $1 million in construction extortion payoffs.

Gotti's first trial ended in a hung jury.

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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.

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Guardian Angel's Cab Ride from Hell

Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family, Junior Gotti, John Gotti.

Radio host Curtis Sliwa captivated a federal jury with an action-packed account of how he was kidnapped and shot in a stolen cab by two alleged Gambino goons - and then narrowly escaped death by hurling himself out the window. Testifying at the trial of John "Junior" Gotti, who stands accused of hatching the plot to stop Sliwa from bad-mouthing his father John "Dapper Don" Gotti, the radio host described how a cab ride to work turned into a nightmare in which he was shot at "like a duck in a duck pond."

Sliwa, 51, said he sensed trouble when the taxi made a sudden wrong turn the morning of June 19, 1992. "Hey, Mack! Turn this hack around! You're going in the wrong direction!" Sliwa recalled barking at the driver.

Seconds later, Sliwa - founder of the Guardian Angels civilian patrol group - said he heard rustling in the front seat. "All of a sudden there was this guy who had popped up. His backside was on the dashboard. He was pointing a gun at me," said Sliwa. "The gunman said, 'Take this you son of a bitch,' " Sliwa told Assistant U.S. Attorney Joon Kim. "The gun sounded like a cannon . . . I saw the fire of the gun."

Sliwa said he heard three shots and felt excruciating pain in his abdomen and legs as he tried to escape the rear of the taxi, which had been stripped of its door and window handles. "I'm stuck in a corner. I'm thinking in a matter of seconds I'm going to be dead," Sliwa said. "He's shooting you like a duck in a duck pond."

The radio host said he grabbed his two-way radio and shouted, "Angel One! Code Red!" He said he then felt a gust of wind from the front passenger area as the speeding taxi rounded a turn. "I used the back seat like one would a trampoline. I bounced off there," Sliwa said, describing a death-defying stunt that propelled him past the gunman and through an open window. Sliwa said he underwent extensive surgery for damage caused by two bullets and was forced to wear a colostomy bag for a year.

This is the second time Sliwa has taken the witness stand against Gotti in Manhattan federal court. Last year a jury failed to reach a verdict on the kidnapping charge against Gotti and acquitted the alleged shooter. The admitted driver of the cab, mob turncoat Joseph D'Angelo, is set to testify.

Under cross-examination, Sliwa said he could not identify either the gunman or the driver, but said, "I had always been suspicious of the Gottis and the Gambinos."

Defense lawyer Charles Carnesi asked Sliwa if he'd said on his radio show that before he testified he planned to "rub onions in your eyes so you would be crying." Sliwa acknowledged making the statement, but said it was a joke. "I wouldn't do that," he said.

Sliwa also acknowledged six instances in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he staged acts of heroism to get positive media attention for his fledgling Guardian Angels group.

"I appreciated the opportunity of being able to tell the jury my story a second time," Sliwa said, speaking outside of court. "I should have been dead long ago."

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Mourning Good Guy Who Went After Wiseguys

Friends of ours: John Gotti, Peter Gotti, Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, Junior Gotti

Federal mob investigator Kenneth McCabe scoured the death notices for the names of mobsters so he could be sure and pay his respects. Or he turned up at their weddings, where they'd greet him with a slice of cake and coffee that was always refused. For more than three decades, first as an NYPD detective and then with the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, McCabe deftly handled skittish government cooperators while charting the Mafia underworld's every move with his camera.

His work provided the backbone for dozens of successful prosecutions, including the late mob boss John Gotti and his brother Peter, that have left the city's Mafia families weakened to the point of extinction.

McCabe, 59, died last Sunday after a year-long battle with cancer.

His intense preparation and his shun-the-spotlight manner won the 6-foot, 6-inch former college basketball player the respect of colleagues - and of the mobsters he arrested. They would regularly counsel their attorneys not to ask McCabe a question when he took the witness stand, said former Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley. "The mob is all about playing by the rules," said Kelley. "He didn't lie. He dealt with them fairly. They got arrested fair and square."

At his funeral Thursday at St. Thomas More Church in Breezy Point, Queens, a priest told the story of a wiseguy who ambled up to McCabe's car while he was conducting another surveillance. "You know, Kenny," he said. "I'm thinking of retiring. I'm getting too old for this." To which, McCabe replied: "Make sure it's someplace warm because I'm tired of freezing out here."

Mob informant Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo paid tribute to McCabe during his testimony at John A. (Junior) Gotti's federal kidnapping trial last week. Asked to identify a surveillance shot, DiLeonardo guessed that it was probably taken by McCabe. "He was relentless," DiLeonardo said.

McCabe was reared in Park Slope and attended Cathedral High School before playing power forward for Loyola College in Maryland.

His photographs allowed prosecutors to piece together mobster associations and link them together at key moments in a conspiracy. In some shots, smiling mobsters wave hello to McCabe.

Less known was McCabe's handling of wiseguys-turned-informants. "The cooperators had a tremendous amount of respect for him," Kelley said. "He didn't pull any punches. He told it like it was."

Thanks to Thomas Zambito

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