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

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Big City, Bad Blood

The private detective novel is constantly revitalized by authors with vision who take the conceit of the knight-errant and push it forward with a contemporary spin.

Authors such as Laura Lippman, Robert Crais, Steve Hamilton and S.J. Rozan continue to refresh this sub-genre. To that list, add Chicago author Sean Chercover, whose debut Big City, Bad Blood signals a true talent.

Like the best authors of private detective novels, Chercover doesn't just give a thrilling plot -- and it is indeed a story that starts strong and only accelerates -- but he also looks at his city, its past and present, movers and criminals, its beauty and its chaos.

Chercover's conflicted, complex hero perfectly matches his plot. A former newspaper reporter disillusioned with journalism, Ray Dudgeon has found another career as a private detective. Both jobs brought him in contact with some of Chicago's best and worst residents, especially in his latest job. Ray agrees to be the bodyguard for Bob Loniski, who's in Chicago to find sites for a movie shoot. Bob ventured into unknown territory and witnessed a crime. Bob needs protection from the "Chicago Outfit," the current term for the local mob. Soon the case extends to blackmail and corruption among city officials.

Chercover keeps the suspense high and also knows just how far to use violence as a plot device and when to pull back. Ray is a multilayered character; readers will look forward to exploring this new detective's personality and history.

Big City, Bad Blood will rank high on the list of the year's best debuts. Ironically, one of the other top debuts of 2007 is Chercover's fellow Chicagoan Marcus Sakey's The Blade Itself: A Novel.

Thanks to Oline H. Cogdill

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Measuring "The Sopranos"

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

Based on all the hype for the return last Sunday of HBO's "The Sopranos," you would have thought a veritable mob of viewers would be camped out in front of their sets to see Tony, Carm, Bobby and Janice playing a rock 'em, sock 'em game of Monopoly in the first of the critically adored pay-cable series' final nine episodes.

Didn't exactly happen that way.

Only 7.7 million viewers that night caught the first new episode of "The Sopranos" since June 4. That's 1.8 million fewer than tuned in for the series return for a sixth season 13 months ago and way off the show's fourth season opener, in September 2002, when almost 13 million tuned in.

This might be a matter of one dream sequence or stereotype too many for some fans. And, perhaps, it reflects the fact the broadcast networks have beefed up lineups for Sunday night. But if "The Sopranos," technically resuming its sixth season, is no longer appointment viewing, the reason also may be the realization that an appointment is no longer needed.

Although the popularity of "The Sopranos" probably crested with that fourth season, anyone with HBO today knows its programming repeats several times over the course of a week and on several HBO channels. Plus, the show is available on demand for subscribers who have figured out how to use that service.

It's like calling McDonald's for a dinner reservation. If you show up for supper in shoes and a shirt you can get a table and some McNuggets.

For last year's 12 episodes James Gandolfini and "The Sopranos" averaged 8.6 million viewers on Sundays. Yet, by the end of a given week, its cumulative audience bulged to 13.1 million. Another 1 million viewers kept pace through HBO On Demand, according to HBO.

That doesn't take into account the "Sopranos" fans who, fed up with the long waits between seasons, decided they might as well wait for DVD sets to come out, and would-be viewers who settled for the sanitized version on A&E, which requires no subscription.

Chris Albrecht, the head of HBO, likes to point out that those who cite only the ratings for its shows, particularly those who cite declining ratings for its shows, don't understand HBO's business model. It's not about delivering viewers to advertisers. It's about getting subscribers and keeping them for cable systems, whether it's through series such as "The Sopranos" and "Entourage," theatrical movies, original movies, Bill Maher, boxing, "Real Sex" or whatever.

Then there's the extra money to be made from DVDs and rerun rights of original content.

Actually, as TV audiences--the audiences for all media, really--continue to splinter, it might be time for everyone to rethink the old metrics of viewership, listenership and circulation.

Online availability is seen as a way to build up the audience for some TV series, just as it expands the reach of radio and print outlets. But there's also a growing recognition that Internet streaming of series is siphoning off some audience. In broadcast TV the effect has been seen particularly in receding viewership for reruns.

People who want to see an episode have never had more opportunities to keep up--and the options don't play into the "who watched what Tuesday night" mentality embraced for decades. Nielsen Media Research is trying to expand its accounting to include time-shifting, viewing outside the home and on the Web.

That presumes Nielsen numbers can be relied upon, of course. The New York Times' public editor last week awakened to the fact that Nielsen doesn't provide a margin of error to its ratings, long an accepted standard, and said reports should carry a disclaimer calling ratings audience "estimates."

It's interesting that ABC's "Desperate Housewives," the night's most popular show, drew only an estimated 15.7 million viewers opposite "The Sopranos," nearly 2 million viewers off the hit soap's average this season and the lowest ratings for an original episode in its three-year history.

The old gang may not be what it once was, but it still has some muscle.

Thanks to Phil Rosenthal

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20% Off "The Sopranos: The Book"

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

Say goodbye to the nation's favorite bad guys with The Sopranos Deal of the Week. This week take 20% off the pre-order of the new book that chronicles the behind-the-scenes story of the making of this revolutionary show, "The Sopranos: The Book."

Get an exclusive look at the New Jersey-based mob family that has captured the world. This full color book illustrates the birth of the show from the Sopranos creator David Chase's own New Jersey childhood, with an on the set look at the Sopranos Cast and Crew, and candid interviews with stars James Gandolfini, Tony Sirico, Michael Imperioli, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, and many, many more. Add this collectors piece to your own library.

This special sales event runs from April 16 - 22, 2007.

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The Power of the 'Soprano' Women

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

If you are going to have coffee at an Italian restaurant, who better to have it with than the women of "The Sopranos"?

At Fiamma, a chic Italian eatery in downtown New York City, I sat down with Carmela, Meadow and Dr. Melfi — or more specifically, Edie Falco, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Lorraine Bracco.

I had coffee.

As for them? Well they had to listen to my questions. As the show wraps up its sixth and final epic season, I didn't just want to talk about whackings, I wanted to talk about the women of the show.

From the first seconds of the opening credits of every episode of "The Sopranos," we are told that this is a show about Tony. He's the mob boss. He is the one driving the car literally and figuratively. But scratch the surface of this epic drama, and you realize it's not just about Tony.

"Tony happens to be in the Mafia, but I think it's not really just about that," Sigler said. "It's about him balancing all these relationships in his life."

It's about Tony and his wife, Tony and his daughter, Tony and his psychiatrist.

It is the women in "The Sopranos" that give the show its texture and its depth.

"It has to be, you know, three or four or five of the, the better women characters written for television or movies today," Bracco said.

"We're not just the 'goomars' or whatever," Sigler said. "Did I say that correctly?"

"That was perfect," Falco said.

It is safe to say that Falco's Carmela is not just the stereotypical mob moll. There is a certain depth and complexity to her character. "Carmela went through 10 years of a woman's life," Falco said, "as the kids are getting older, as you re-evaluate your marriage, and um, the way any woman would change and grow if they stay alive for a 10-year period, you know?"

Well, not quite any woman, as Bracco — ever the analyst — noted: "[Carmela] is married to someone who is doing despicable things. She's living a good life. She's trying to bring up children in a good way, give them an education, instills things that are important. She has her own family, and she deals with it in an unbelievably dysfunctional family that she's going to feed every Sunday, whether she likes it or not. Am I right?"

Oh, she is right, Carmela has dealt with dysfunction at a level most of us can't imagine — from infidelity to whackings. But she's made it so relatable. She added a touch of ordinary to the extraordinary.

"If you think about it, you find ways to get through every day, even though there are little pieces that just don't match up," Falco said. "And you have no choice but to put them in that little place in your brain where you say, 'I'll deal with that another time.'"

And the women of "The Sopranos" are far from powerless victims. They might not be mob bosses, but they pull the strings in their own ways.

"My power with Tony Soprano is very simple," Bracco said. "I was smarter than him."

Bracco's Dr. Melfi is one of the off-kilter defining roles in this drama. The shrink who tells the mob boss what to do.

Bracco said, "I was a woman that he never met, really, before, or had anything to do with. And I think it was an intelligence game between Melfi and Tony."

But it wasn't just about brains, there is also the matter of the legs. I tried to ask without blushing, "How about the legs? Are the legs empowering?"

Bracco had something of an instant education for me: "I think legs on a girl are always empowering. Come on!"

At 25, Sigler is the youngest of the actresses, and her character, Meadow, is the young ingenue of the show. But even her character knows how to vie for power and work Tony.

"We all knew how to manipulate him," Sigler said. "He was a very simple character to us in that sense, that he was very easy to manipulate."

Even Dead, the Mother Reigns

The most powerful woman in "The Sopranos" was not with us at Fiamma: Livia, Tony's mother.

That character died along with actress Nancy Marchand after Season 2, but Tony's relationship with his mother is, in a way, the basis for the whole show.

"It's all about the mother," Bracco said.

"Oh yes. It is," Falco agreed.

She tried to control him. He tried to put her in a home. She tried to kill him. Ultimately, it drove him to therapy.

The women of "The Sopranos" have not been spared the one aspect that has made the show so controversial: violence, graphic violence. Still, these women defend its use.

"We're not kidding around," Falco said. "It's this really, genuinely bad stuff that they do to other people — illegal, bad, violent death things that in seeing them in your face, you have no choice but to experience the true badness of it."

In Season 3, Melfi is the victim of a rape.

"The whole Dr. Melfi rape episode … was absolutely horrifying," Bracco said.

"Despicable violence against another person, but meanwhile when you look at the statistics of women being raped in this, just to, this, it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women and young girls and women being raped every year. It's unbelievable, the violence against another human being. And it's, we, we just, God forbid we should really look at it for what it is," she said.

It is just one of the aspects of the show some people will miss as it wraps up its last season.

In the hour or so at the restaurant, try as I might, I could not get the three women to tell me how the show would end.

But I did get one tidbit from Sigler. Could her goody-two-shoes character go the way of another famed goody-two-shoes-gone godfather Michael Corleone?

"I think so," she said. "I think so because her family does come first. She's capable of it. She's strong, but if she's anything like you know, her family and like Livia. … You know, she could definitely manipulate and handle these guys."

So is there a chance for a spinoff: "Meadow Soprano!!! Boss!!!"

"I love it. I love it!" Sigler said.

Thanks to John Berman

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