John Gotti

The family had settled in East New York by the time John Gotti was 12, into a poverty his father could not lift them out of on irregular day labor, and the son grew up resenting him for it. He ran with street gangs from about the same age. At 14 he was stealing a cement mixer from a construction site when it fell on his foot, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life. He dropped out of Franklin K. Lane High School at 16 and gave himself full time to the mob-associated Fulton-Rockaway Boys. He married Victoria DiGiorgio in 1962 and tried a coat factory and a delivery truck. By 1966 he had been jailed twice.

He came up through the Bergin crew in Ozone Park, hijacking trucks at Kennedy Airport. He served three years for that and two more for his part in the killing of a gangster named James McBratney. On December 16, 1985, gunmen he had sent shot Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti dead outside a Manhattan steakhouse. Gotti watched from his car. It was the first killing of a New York boss in decades done without the Commission's permission, and on January 15, 1986, 20 capos confirmed him as head of the Gambino family, then the most powerful in the country.

Every boss before him had worked to be invisible. Gotti did the opposite. He wore expensive suits, smiled and waved at the news cameras outside court, and let the tabloids turn him into a character. Three prosecutions between 1986 and 1990 ended without a conviction, and the press named him the Teflon Don. The record behind the nickname is uglier than the nickname. A juror in the 1987 racketeering case sold his vote for 60,000 dollars and was convicted of obstruction of justice five years later. A witness in the 1986 assault case had his brake lines cut and then told the court he could not remember who hit him. FBI bugs apparently caught Gotti discussing another fix in 1990, though state prosecutors were never told.

The vanity that made him famous is what finished him. He ordered his captains to the Ravenite Social Club every week, which identified them for the FBI and told agents where to listen, and the bugs upstairs caught him discussing murders he had approved. Sammy Gravano heard the tapes and testified for the government. The jury convicted on April 2, 1992, and the sentence was life without parole. Throat cancer killed him at the federal prison medical center in Springfield, Missouri, on June 10, 2002. No other New York family sent anyone to the funeral. Half the Gambino family's made men were in prison by the turn of the century. What outlived him is the character, not the organization.

John Gotti's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Bergin Hunt and Fish Club company
  The Ozone Park storefront he ran as capo, and the last stop of his funeral procession 1977
• Killing of Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti other
  Ordered without the Commission's approval, and the act that made him boss 1985
• Weekly capo meetings at the Ravenite Social Club other
  His own rule, made against Gravano's advice, and the reason the FBI could map the family 1988
• The O'Connor assault trial case
  A state prosecution in Manhattan. His third and last acquittal 1990
• United States v. Gotti and Locascio case
  Tried before Judge I. Leo Glasser with the first fully sequestered anonymous jury in a Brooklyn federal case 1992

• 1968 aged ~28 Pleads guilty to hijacking and is sent to Lewisburg for three years Paroled in 1972 and back with the Bergin crew in Queens.
• 1975 aged ~35 Pleads to attempted manslaughter in the killing of James McBratney Roy Cohn helped negotiate the deal. He served two years of a four-year sentence.
• July 1977 aged 36 Released, initiated into the Gambino family and made capo of the Bergin crew He reported to underboss Aniello Dellacroce, his mentor since the 1960s.
• March 18, 1980 aged 39 His 12-year-old son Frank is killed by a neighbor's car The death was ruled an accident. The driver, John Favara, disappeared four months later and was presumed murdered. Gotti was never charged.
• December 16, 1985 aged 45 Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead outside Sparks Steak House Gotti watched from a car. Twenty capos confirmed him as boss a month later.
• March 13, 1987 aged 46 Acquitted in the federal racketeering case brought by Diane Giacalone The press named him the Teflon Don. Juror George Pape had sold his vote for 60,000 dollars and was convicted of obstruction of justice in 1992.
• February 9, 1990 aged 49 Acquitted a third time, in the assault case involving union official John O'Connor FBI bugs had reportedly caught talk of another jury fix, but state prosecutors were not told.
• December 11, 1990 aged 50 Arrested with Gravano and Locascio in a raid on the Ravenite Social Club Charged with five murders, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling and tax evasion.
• April 2, 1992 aged 51 Convicted on every count after 14 hours of deliberation Sentenced on June 23 to life without parole and fined 250,000 dollars. He died in custody on June 10, 2002.

• Lucky Luciano 1897–1962
  Building the Commission that governed the American Mafia built the system he exposed
• Al Capone 1899–1947
  Gangster whose criminal empire made him the defining symbol of Prohibition-era organized crime. earlier celebrity boss
• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. denied the Mafia existed
• Roy Cohn 1927–1986
  Chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy and prosecutor of the Rosenbergs defended by