Mob Star (54 page)

As a columnist, Victoria can write virtually what she wants, and one of the first items on her agenda was another salute to her ailing father. It came as she recalled a chat with a public relations woman named Lizzie Grubman: “We kicked around the pros of having traditional patriarchs. Of how our fathers laid the foundation for us early on—rules and regulations and never forget about building character.”

The item makes it clear how she intends to have both a public life and deal with her father’s criminal life. It is the same way he would have—make no admissions, no concessions, no nothing. The Marion prison tapes, however, show she knows a lot about his Mafia career—at one point, they discuss a list of “made” men—but that column you will never read.

In the Grubman column, Victoria displayed defense-lawyer instincts her father would have cheered, if he had been still well enough to read it. Readers were never told why she and Grubman were chatting or what had happened two weeks before—when Grubman was behind the wheel of a car that veered wildly out of control outside a nightclub and injured 16 people. Without any context, Victoria rose to defend Grubman against the media whipping that ensued: “… [her] dedication is still there … Amid all the tasteless jokes and unwelcome whispers, she enters her office each morning.”

It’s easy to understand why the playful
Post
hired Victoria—the name, the glam look, the growing affinity for Manhattan life (she keeps an apartment there now, although she still has her Long Island mansion). It’s harder to say if her novels would have been published but for her last name. Her father had his doubts.

This began coming out on the videotapes made in prison in January of 1998, when Gotti recalled for his daughter a talk show he had recently watched on his little prison black-and-white. On the show, a woman said her child was mercilessly teased about a skin condition by classmates, until a cousin came along and straightened the matter out. “He dusted a few of them up and now when they see the kid they treat the kid special,” Gotti summarized. “They don’t want an ass-kicking. You read Machiavelli, fear is a stronger emotion over love.”

Victoria protested that this is what her soon-to-be ex-husband would have done, and had done, after a similar incident years before. “[He] showed them to be the animal they think he is. Proved to them that he was the animal that people said he was … we’re not like that, we’re not animals.”

“Yeah, but, either you gotta be proud of who you are, and fight for it, or you gotta be ashamed of it and do like some other lowlifes do, and change their names.” Gotti then said Victoria’s son would not have been teased if Victoria had used her married name, Agnello, instead of Gotti. “I mean, if you ask a guy next door, ‘Hey, what do you think about the Agnellos?’ He’d say, ‘Who are the Agnellos?’ … You should stay off television. You should stay off the book covers. You should use Victoria Agnello, and they won’t know who the kids are, and they won’t be faced with this problem. Am I correct or incorrect?”

“How does me staying off book covers—is that something bad to do?”

“They won’t know your name.”

“Oh, come on, dad. They won’t know who we are?”

“Look, if you think that my name has nothing to do with you, take your mother’s [maiden] name.”

Victoria didn’t reply, but she could easily have argued that the name is at least as much a curse as a blessing. She could have pointed no farther than the case of her brother Junior, who was indicted a week before that conversation. But for his father’s name, Junior would not have been acting boss of the Gambino crime Family. But for his father’s name, the media would not have cared much about his legal troubles. And but for his father’s name, Junior would not have amassed a fortune so impressive he could afford to leave $350,000 in cash wedding gifts hidden in a basement for eight years.

Most likely, Junior also would not have been hit with new charges five months later that alleged he robbed a drug dealer. That one prompted a protest call to
The News
from his mother Vicky, who hadn’t been heard from for a while. “He doesn’t have enough money, so he gets involved in drugs? Please,” she told reporter Greg B. Smith. “Can’t they come up with something better than that? “You’ve investigated what he owns,” she said, referring to a story in which Smith described Junior as a millionaire. “He’s going to steal $4,000? Please. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s beyond ridiculous. I shouldn’t even respond to it. I just want you to know what I feel.”

In April of 1999, as sister Victoria was working on her third novel, Junior wrote the end to his mob story—at least for several years. On the day jury selection was about to begin in his case, he broke sharply with his father’s tradition and pleaded guilty. He forfeited nearly one million dollars, his wedding money, and multiple vacation homes before going off to prison for six or so years.

His uncle Peter Gotti might be headed there, too. And so might another uncle, Richard Gotti, a low-key member of the clan who had remained in the shadows until early June 2002, when he and Peter were indicted on labor racketeering charges in the Eastern District. They and others were accused of extorting dockworkers and companies that do business On The Waterfront in Brooklyn. A couple of the others also were accused of extorting Hollywood action star Steven Seagal.

The indictment alleged that Peter, 62, a former sanitation worker who retired on a disability pension in 1979, had become the official boss of the Gambino Family, and that Richard, 59, had become a captain. Bruce Cutler showed up at an early court appearance, representing “Uncle Pete,” as he always called him, and naturally he dismissed talk of Peter becoming boss. “There are so many versions of who’s in charge,” he sneered. “Now it’s Uncle Pete’s turn.”

It almost certainly is Uncle Pete’s turn, and not much more need be said about the state of the Gambino crime Family 10 years after John Gotti went away.

 

 

In brief, here are accountings of some of the other characters in this book:

Like John Gotti, two important capos in the Gambino Family fought off the government for a while. James Failla, one of those men waiting inside Sparks to meet Castellano for dinner on the night Gotti made his move, also beat a RICO case. So did codefendant and fellow capo Joseph Corrao.

“Go talk to the prosecutors,” Corrao said, sounding much like Gotti after his 1987 victory. “They’re the ones who frame people, not us.”

The prosecutors, however, would get the last laugh on both Failla and Corrao, thanks to the testimony of a major new cooperating witness, turncoat underboss Sammy Gravano. Together with yet more FBI tapes, Gravano sank dozens of Gambino mobsters following the deal he struck with John Gleeson.

Meanwhile, George Pape, the corrupt juror whose 1987 dive enabled Gotti’s reign, was convicted of bribery and sentenced to three years in prison. He served two and was released.

On the first day of 2000, Pape’s fugitive bagman, former Westies boss Bosko Radonjich, was arrested at Miami International Airport, aborting a planned vacation in the Bahamas.

Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney, back in private practice with a top Manhattan law firm, was elated. He was confident that with the testimony of one-time underboss Sammy Gravano, who nurtured the Pape-Radonjich deal, Radonjich would be made to pay.

“As imperfect as it is, we consider the jury system sacred and when someone tampers with it, he deserves the maximum possible penalty under the law,” said Maloney.

Less than two months later, however, Gravano became a less than ideal witness when he was caught returning to a life of crime and arrested for drug trafficking. Radonjich was cut loose and returned to his Serbian homeland.

Breaking Gotti’s rule about making admissions. Failla pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Thomas Spinelli, the Failla soldier who broke a Gotti rule about grand jury testimony. He got seven years, and died on August 4, 1999, at age 80, at a federal prison hospital in Forth Worth, Texas, about six months before he would have been released.

Corrao also departed from Gotti rules, pleading guilty to bribing NYPD detective William Peist for inside information. He got 70 months. In November 2001, after serving his sentence, Corrao succumbed to kidney failure at age 64.

Peist went to the can too, and was released just before Christmas, 1999.

Dominick Borghese, who helped dispatch William Ciccone, the poor soul whom the paranoid Gotti crew mistook for an assassin, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Spinelli, a murder that resulted in his promotion to “made man.” He got seven years.

More than a year after Failla and Borghese pleaded guilty to the Spinelli murder conspiracy, Joe Watts, the unmade man who was Paul’s pal, Sammy’s pal, and then Gotti’s pal, admitted taking part, too. He got six years, one less than the others because he did a little bit of secret spying for the FBI against Gotti and the others during a 13-month period in 1994-95.

In time, Watts also would be called to account for the torture murder of Ciccone. He would beat that charge, but go down for tax fraud and, in June 2002, money-laundering charges. He took a six-year plea deal as Borghese, who helped him kill Ciccone, was waiting in the wings to testify against him, after emulating Gravano and making a deal for himself.

Tommy Gambino, severed from the 1992 trial that ended with Gotti’s conviction, was found guilty when he finally went to trial, but of lesser racketeering charges. He served five years and returned to his Family and his Garment Center businesses in May of 2000.

Gotti’s 1992 codefendant, Frank LoCascio, went to prison for life, a lot of it in a prison hospital and some in solitary after authorities learned that Gotti supposedly had enlisted jailed members of a white-supremacy group to kill him. Gotti turned on LoCascio after learning that Gravano and LoCascio talked about turning on him had they won the 1992 case.

Retired
consigliere
Joe N. Gallo showed great staying power, until shortly after he got out of prison in June 1995. He died three months later at his home in Queens, at age 83.

Would-be adopted son and assistant press secretary Lewis Kasman served six months for lying to the Eastern District grand jury and resumed his role as Gotti’s unofficial spin doctor, especially after Gotti was diagnosed with head and neck cancer a second time.

Gotti pal Carlo Vaccarezza saw his upscale restaurant, Da Noi’s, go south very fast. With more FBI agents than customers in the place on some days, Vaccarezza went south, too, to Miami. He helped his old camera-shy acquaintance, actor Mickey Rourke, open a joint on South Beach. Before long, however, he packed that in, and was last heard scouting Chicago.

Another Gotti pal, Lisa Gastineau, became a boutique manager and did some modeling on the side. “I have great affection for him,” was all she wanted to say when contacted. “I was really disappointed to learn he was never coming home.”

On the other hand, John Gleeson—the young prosecutor when the Gotti saga began, the sage one when it ended—became a federal judge on October 24, 1994, third anniversary of his dramatic face-to-face with Gravano, the first underboss to testify against his boss in court.

The former midshipman, Bruce Mouw—for getting Gotti and a decade’s worth of other accomplishments as boss of the Gambino squad—was given the Justice Department’s highest award for employee achievement. He helped case-agent George Gabriel and assistant U.S. attorney Laura Ward to build cases against the Gotti remnants, then retired.

Gabriel became head of a squad of Long Island-based FBI agents. Ward became a Criminal Court judge in Manhattan. Robert Morgenthau remained District Attorney of Manhattan, and the nation’s most influential local prosecutor.

The first important lawyer in John Gotti’s life, Michael Coiro, was convicted again, this time for lying to the Eastern District grand jury about his one visit to Nettie Cirelli’s place. He was released in February 1998, then moved back to Florida to resume retirement.

The most prominent lawyer in Gotti’s life, Bruce Cutler, was convicted of criminal contempt for violating an order by the 1992 Gotti trial judge against out-of-court prejudicial statements. He got three months’ home detention. A state court panel then suspended him from practicing law for three more months.

He returned with a flourish to represent “young John” Gotti in 1998. Cutler’s bald pate was glistening as he rushed into court just as a pretrial conference for Junior was about to begin. He beamed and shook hands all around, then kissed his handcuffed client on the cheek.

Another key lawyer in Gotti’s life, Gerald Shargel, was already on the case, handling the pre-trial legal arguments as well as the negotiations that led to Junior pleading guilty in 1999.

Inside the court, Cutler let Shargel handle the legal arguments. But outside, he expounded, “I came today to announce to the court and the world that Jerry and I will be representing John Gotti’s son at trial. We helped his father together, and we have a wonderful relationship. It’s great to be back in the arena.”

Cutler expounded when a reputed Gotti sketch of a lion fetched $2,500 in a Miami charity auction—a Leroy Nieman self-portrait got $700; a Muhammad Ali drawing got $600. “People love John,” Cutler said. “He did it (drew the sketch) to help needy, hungry children. And the lion. It’s one of his credos: It’s better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb.”

Fifteen years after he was the star defense witness at Gotti’s 1987 trial, Matthew Traynor, who admitted lying from the witness stand, is still in prison. After five years in federal prison, he’s doing 7 to 14 years for bank robbery and 14 more for parole violation.

By contrast, two more characters from the 1987 trial, Crazy Sally Polisi and Dominick Lofaro, got probation and were released from prison that same year.

Nicholas Corozzo and Lenny DiMaria, the “other guys” in the 1987 Gotti case, fashioned plea deals to satisfy various indictments against them and are due out of prison in 2004 and 2005.