This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (27 page)

Meanwhile, one day after Dad’s trial began, I went into labor. My water broke while I was at my parents’ home awaiting news of the first day of the trial. At first I thought I’d wet my pants and ran to the bathroom, flushed with embarrassment. But when the painful contractions began, everyone went into a full-on panic. The baby was over a month early and everyone feared the worst. When I arrived at the hospital, there was a full staff waiting, including two neonatal specialists in case the baby was in distress. My sister Angel came with Carmine and me to offer support and calm my fears. During the fourteen-hour labor, Angel tried her best to keep me distracted from all the pain and commotion that was going on in the hospital. At one point she made me laugh so hard, I
really
did pee my pants! Dad found out a few minutes after he left the courthouse and raced to Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Nine hours later I gave birth to a baby boy. He was a mere five pounds. When the doctor told my father that the baby and I were healthy and resting, he was ecstatic! He stayed at the hospital, just staring at his grandson for nearly twelve hours. Dad visited daily for the next few days. He was in such a good mood, he ordered dinner every night from all the finest restaurants in Manhattan for the entire hospital staff. He also passed out hundred-dollar tips to anyone who entered my room. Even the janitor couldn’t wait to mop up every afternoon around two. Enough flowers to fill two hospital rooms arrived from all over the country. It seemed everyone wanted to congratulate John Gotti on the birth of his second grandson.

It wasn’t until a few days later I learned that the premature birth had resulted in a severe left eye and left foot deformity. The pediatrician came by to examine my son, and the moment he suspected there were problems, the doctor sent for all the appropriate
specialists. It took two surgeries to correct the lazy muscles and poor vision in his eye, and one surgery to correct his club foot. He was also forced to wear a patch over his left eye and a leg brace for the next three years. No matter—Carmine Gotti Agnello was truly a blessing from God.

Meanwhile, the trial continued. The prosecutors assigned to the case were John Gleeson and Diane Giacalone from the Queens DA’s office. Giacalone was the more outspoken of the two and let the media know early on that she intended to use every resource to get a conviction of Gotti. Giacalone had grown up next to the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens—my father’s known hangout. She knew exactly what she was dealing with, and also seemed to have a personal vendetta against my father—at least that’s what most reporters said. Also, she favored red suits for court and was dubbed “the Lady in Red” during the trial.

Giacolone was at odds with the FBI from the start. Not only because she was trying to steal their thunder—rather, she made some telling mistakes early on. The most profound mistake was that Giacolone exposed a rat, a member of my father’s crew, “Willie Boy” Johnson. He was an informant, unbeknownst to anyone except the FBI for nearly twenty years. He had been arrested at a young age for being involved in a drug deal and rather than go to jail, he agreed to become a rat. For the next twenty or so years, Willie Boy played both sides. He gave the FBI just enough information to keep himself out of jail, yet not enough to indict anyone on anything more serious than bookmaking and loan sharking. The FBI warned Giacalone about exposing Johnson—they did not want to lose a key informer on the inside, and they especially did not want to be responsible for getting Johnson killed.

In the middle of an important bail hearing just following the arrests of my father and his associates, Giacalone announced to the packed courtroom that bail should be denied given that the
defendants would attempt to intimidate witnesses and use the same threatening tactics that got Dad’s earlier case dropped. She used Johnson as backup ammunition and announced that he was a federal witness. The courtroom was in an uproar. All eyes were on Willie Boy, including my father’s. While FBI agents shook their heads in disbelief, Giacalone continued her argument. In the end, Giacolone won, but at a very heavy cost. Many men on the street went into a panic, wondering what Johnson had divulged about them and whether or not they would be arrested, too. Giacalone’s revelation had put Johnson in grave danger. Predictably, Johnson was later shot and killed as he walked down a Brooklyn street.

The case continued with the DA and the FBI constantly criticizing each other. It was a battle of the wills to see who could successfully “get Gotti.” In the meantime, the case also continued to unravel. One of Giacalone’s key witnesses disappeared from a hotel room on the eve of testimony. He left a note scribbled on a hotel pad saying, “Sorry, I’ve changed my mind. Good-bye and thanks.” His whereabouts were unknown. Another witness, Matthew Traynor, a self-confessed bank robber, was supposed to testify against my father and provide a correlation between the rising boss and the other defendants. Traynor was caught in many lies while being grilled and prepped by the prosecutors and was later disqualified, but not before doing irreparable damage to Giacalone’s case. On February 2, Traynor took the stand and told a jury that the DA had promised him many things in exchange for his testimony. He told a packed courtroom that Giacalone offered him a pair of her panties when he told her he wanted to get laid. Traynor also said that a DEA supervisor provided him with drugs while in prison and that one time he was so wasted during a meeting with law enforcement officials that he puked on Giacalone’s desk. It seemed like quite a coincidence to my father’s lawyers that the other DA’s wife worked at a hospital and had easy access to any drug she wanted.
They subpoenaed the hospital records of John Gleeson’s wife. Notes between the DA and the witness were discovered, one reading, “Sometimes you make me so darn mad, I forget how happy you make me the rest of the time.” This badly embarrassed Giacalone and the state. The case was in tatters. Then news reports claimed that Giacalone was involved in secret meetings concerning a television movie about John Gotti and the case called
Getting Gotti.
Lorraine Bracco was to play the ambitious DA.

T
HE JURY DELIBERATED
only four days and returned a “not guilty” verdict. The Queens DA’s office was despondent, but the FBI was gloating. They realized Gotti was still up for grabs and theirs for the taking if they could only put together an airtight case.

Meanwhile, the trial propelled my father to even larger-than-life status, on the streets and in the media. He was dubbed “the Teflon Don,” and “the Dapper Don,” because hardly anyone ever beat a RICO case, and certainly not with as much style as John Gotti.

I
WAS NOT
present at the trial and relied on news reports and conversations with my father to keep me informed. Because my father was so old-fashioned, women were never allowed in the courtroom.

At the end of his second trial for RICO, I couldn’t take the suspense or the agony of waiting at home once the jury was out. So on the morning most reporters suspected that a verdict would be reached, I went to the courthouse in Lower Manhattan and snuck in through a side entrance.

As I was making my way inside, a crowd of reporters recognized me and gave chase. Little did I know that Dad had decided to exit through the same side entrance to avoid the media melee. We came face-to-face and his expression was mixed with anger and joy. He
was ecstatic about the victory but angry that I had defied him. I thought he was going to kill me, right then and there on the courthouse steps. The look in his eyes said it all. Instead, he ushered me to the waiting Mercedes on the curb, waving politely to reporters and fans. We pulled away from the courthouse and he never brought the incident up again. Perhaps it had much to do with the fact that I was pregnant again. I’d found out when Carmine was not yet two months old. My doctors called it another “miracle.”

I delivered another baby boy on May 5, 1987. He was a robust seven pounds and had swollen cheeks. Dad took one look at him and immediately took to calling him “chipmunk.” Appropriately, he was named after my father—John Gotti Agnello. Not only did he look like Dad, the two shared similar personalities as well. He was an independent, easy-to-please baby and as early as his crib days, he exhibited leadership qualities and always looked out for his older brother, Carmine. And the family was still growing; my sister, Angel, and I were once again pregnant at the same time. She gave birth in September 1987 to a girl, Victoria Gotti Albano. Dad couldn’t be happier watching his brood continue to grow.

I
t was Christmas Eve, 1988. Last-minute shoppers filled the city streets, wide-eyed children held hands with their parents eager for the gifts of Christmas Day. Church bells rang, as did cash registers. Sadly, there are so often monetary motives behind traditions, on both sides of the law. I’ve learned that nothing is what it seems to be, not even the most celebrated holiday.

Christmas is for many the celebration of the birth of a savior, a time of peace on earth, and goodwill toward men—but for my brother John, this particular Christmas Eve was a celebration of his own official rebirth as a gangster.

He was to be inducted into the Family, La Cosa Nostra, or whatever the media and the government calls it. We referred to it as the life.

My brother and a few other soon-to-be made men who were being brought in that day were leaving the old existence and being reborn into another world. They would no longer be civilians—they were getting a passport stamped for travel in the dark realms of the criminal underworld.

Every one of them being inducted that day was extremely proud to be where they were standing. All men at the time of the ceremony are excited and hopefully ready to take on the responsibilities and dangers. It is supposed to be an honorable induction, one to be proud of.

Back then, my brother John stood dressed in his best suit, wearing a red tie for luck, in a dimly lit apartment on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. More than a dozen others, hard men in expensive suits, stood with him. They were the elder statesmen of organized crime, come to take part in this time-honored ceremony. They had come to welcome the new blood into the organization.

John was handed a picture to hold in the palm of his hands—a picture of a saint—that had received a drop of blood from his father’s finger, pricked by a knife. The picture was burned while an oath of loyalty was recited. John pledged that he would hope to burn like the picture if he were ever to betray La Cosa Nostra.

“Getting made” is a Sicilian ceremony that has its basis in Catholicism, but it certainly wasn’t in church that the government learned of the conduct of the initiation.

These ceremonies don’t take place at a catering hall, and there are no photographers. They take place in a small Lower Manhattan apartment. The ceremony is somber and dramatic—maybe like Christmas is supposed to be.

John felt that he was being officially welcomed into a sacred brotherhood—a mutual protective society where men looked out for each other and for each other’s families, an organization that ironically mirrored a military organization, complete with its
captains, lieutenants, and soldiers and its own code of conduct. In a sense, they were like Robin Hood and his Merry Men, as many of them did take from the rich and often gave to the poor, while lining their own pockets of course. That, also, is a part of their history.

H
OW OFTEN—IN HISTORY
, in mythology—is the outsider, the outlaw, lionized and idolized?

It isn’t hard to understand, really. It’s about the awe of the common downtrodden man, the uncommon strong ones who stand up to the system that treads upon the average citizen; the respect for those who never bow their heads or bend their knees to neither king nor cardinal. Leaders of all kinds are men set apart, be they artists or assassins, cops or criminals. What sets them apart is often feared
and
respected. Often, men desire, secretly or openly, to emulate those special ones, set apart. It is not merely the desire for their power; it is the wish for their degree of freedom from outside rule, their desire for such a rebellious nature and the freedom to wear it visibly on the outside of their skin as opposed to hiding it deep within their souls.

History reveals that the Mafia was originally created (at least in part) for the protection of people and to establish an unofficial system of justice, when the ruling powers spit on the average citizen, when there was no justice for the poor in the courts or the Church.

This perception of honor among those who could fairly be called thieves might seem strange to those whose view of the life comes from newspaper clippings by outsider journalists, or Department of Justice press releases. How could anyone be proud to be a mobster? How could anyone joyfully embrace membership in an organization dedicated to criminality?

Remember, the brotherhood concept was what gave the mob
meaning.
It was the sense of belonging, of being a part of
something larger than their individual selves, that motivated mobsters more than just money. It originated in Sicily, and found its way to America. People were tired of being oppressed, of living under tyrannical rule. It was an uprising over what they believed to be their lack of civil rights and proper protection.

The activities that gave rise to the income to support those in the brotherhood, albeit illegal, were not substantially different than the revenue-raising methods of government, or the actions of so-called legitimate business. It took great financial means to initiate and keep up such an organization. The only way the common people could raise funds was by working and taking part in criminal activity. These criminal acts were often committed against the rich, commonly referred to as “piggish aristrocrats.”

When an unofficial organization demands money for protection, it is extortion. When the government takes a percentage of your income, for protection (police department), your purchases, your sales, your house, your phone bill, your electric bill, that’s legal, because
they
have declared it to be legal. It’s called taxation, or surcharges. I’m not justifying one group or another—I’m just calling it as the “little guy” sees it, and I am definitely not condoning crime—whether organized or in the White House. I’m merely pointing out the difference between a mobster and a politician—there is none. The large number of politicians being arrested or indicted these days is astounding, prompting many to ask, who really is the good guy or the bad guy? Or is there a significant difference between a gangster and a government? These days you can’t put the evening news on without hearing about a senator, governor, or even a president caught up in some illicit scandal: prostitution, bid rigging, extortion, or bookmaking. There is no difference between these two groups, mobsters or government—one group has organized crime stamped boldly after their names, while the other has the same crime phrased much more eloquently.