This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (33 page)

There was to be no grandstanding on the FBI’s end, and they
were not happy. They refused to allow my brother and his lawyer to drive down to headquarters. Instead, they spent the better part of an hour on the phone with Rehbock discussing John’s surrender. Finally, a compromise was made and John and Rehbock drove down to a coffee shop in Yonkers. The FBI met them and took John to another building where other defendants on the case were being held. They were determined to get their perp walk, and they did. When John arrived, the photographers swarmed him. John later told me, “There was more press there than I have ever seen. Obviously the FBI had tipped them off.”

The money shot wasn’t enough. Later that day, a huge press conference was held. The U.S. Attorney was there as well as the New York Attorney General, the director of the FBI, the director of the Secret Service, New York’s police commissioner, the IRS, and the Bronx District Attorney as well as other powerful figures. More than a dozen news stations were at the scene as well. It was quite an overreaction, considering the charges were extortion and phone card fraud and not murder, or RICO. The entire display of grandstanding was downright embarrassing for the government and the FBI.

A
fter the arrest in 1996, John was held without bail. The prosecutors deemed my brother a threat to the community and argued that he should be denied bail and kept in solitary confinement until the trial was over. Also, the rumors suggesting that John’s life was in danger still loomed. These rumors were leaked deliberately by law enforcement sources hoping to incite something—possibly John’s death. Back then, my brother had his guard up, just in case. One night before his arrest, John was summoned to a meeting with a few of the other capos—two men John suspected were extremely jealous of him and my father. The capos claimed they were involved in a beef with a few guys from another Family and needed the matter resolved as soon as possible. The sit-down was to take place in an apartment in Brooklyn. John
and one of his close associates, Mike DiLeonardo, were to arrive at 8
P.M
. sharp. Usually, John ran late. But that night he was nearly a half hour early. When he and Mike arrived, the apartment was dark and unusually quiet. There was some movement around the back, the sound of a few men whispering and shifting some boxes back and forth. Perhaps it was pure paranoia or sharp intuition, but John decided to change the plans that night. He held two fingers up to his lips and gestured for Mike to follow him back to the car. When they were on the Belt Parkway and heading back to Queens, John had Mike call the other capos and apologize, saying something came up and they would not be able to make the meeting. Years later John told me he had the strangest feeling of doom that night, “Like something bad was about to happen.” Later, at one of John’s trials, a rat testified that John and Mike were walking into a trap, a well-orchestrated hit. Even DiLeonardo admitted under oath that he also believed that he and John would have been killed that night if John hadn’t changed his mind about the meeting.

In the end, after numerous bail hearings, John was granted house arrest and was released from Valhalla County Jail in Westchester—but only after I was forced to post my Long Island mansion as collateral toward a $7 million bail package. This prompted the prosecutor to order what’s called a Nebbia hearing. The prosecutor suggested that my home was bought with ill-gotten gains. Bruce Cutler accompanied me to this hearing. I was forced to produce all financial records showing how I paid for my house. This included any invoices and documents showing what was spent on the house and the land. Since my husband and I had purchased the property a few years after we were married and later built a house, I had to call each and every company, from the bricklayers to the pool installers, and get copies of any invoices I could. It took nearly two weeks to gather all the information. The prosecutor was amazed that everything was in order. I believe
she was prepared to find fault with anything she possibly could, anything to keep the bail package from being approved and John released. Besides the $7 million bail, there was an additional cost of nearly $10,000 a week for security. The only way the prosecutors would give up the opposing arguments denying John bail was if my brother agreed to home confinement with extra security other than just an ankle bracelet. The added security consisted of two guards per shift, three shifts daily. John had no choice. If he was to fight the case properly, he needed to do so from home with access to his lawyers. And to keep his sanity, he needed access to his family.

His “freedom” came at a hefty price. Besides the enormous financial burden it placed on John, there were other issues to contend with. His wife and kids could not come and go as they pleased either. Everyone had to be identified at the front gate, sign a log-book, and dispose of any cell phones or computers. No electronic devices were allowed on the premises beyond the entrance checkpoint. Also, there was an approved list of guests allowed to visit and those who were not. Even the children’s tutors needed to be approved by the government before stepping foot on the premises.

After a few months, John was beyond his breaking point. This was exactly as the FBI had hoped. Soon talks began about a plea deal. The prosecutors offered ten years at first, but John refused. They came back a few weeks later with an offer of seven years. John still refused. In his words, “If I am going to jail and sacrificing years of my life, it better be for something I am guilty of, not these bogus charges.”

The alleged “phony” telephone scam was in fact an error on the part of the company who had distributed the cards. This came out shortly after John’s arrest. The company had issued the cards in bulk to various vendors, one of whom was my brother. The middleman companies purchased phone time in bulk and then sold the
time to various vendors in the form of prepaid phone cards. Initially, John believed this was a great business venture.

“I can’t tell you how great this venture was. We were even written up in a
Village Voice
survey as the number three or four best phone-card company in the business. But the FBI was intent on scrutinizing everything I did. They went looking for a needle in a haystack,” John later told me.

The offices were located in a small Queens neighborhood and the phone cards had the Statue of Liberty logo across the front. It was as American as apple pie—even the name of the company, Nic-O-Dan. John’s first daughter is Nicolette. His business partner’s daughter is Danielle.

“When they came in and raided the offices, some of the agents introduced themselves as Secret Service. I was stunned,” John said. “I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing there. Was I about to be charged with plotting to kill the president? They tore the place apart. They took pictures off the walls. They took Dad’s gold watch and some of his jewelry I had in the top drawer of my desk. How was that evidence? They took legal pads with notes to Dad’s lawyers and transcripts of his trial, all relevant to Dad’s appeal. How was that evidence? Those notes had to do with legal strategy and were privileged, but they took them.”

John told me the agents also took all the phone card records and those cards not yet sold. The business was shut down the moment the cards were confiscated. This distribution company took in many vendors and these vendors paid a hefty price. Most just lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and had to replace the cards they had sold to customers. In John’s case, he was arrested. The government wanted their pound of flesh from John Gotti’s son.

Another charge involved the strip club Scores, and a man allegedly extorting money from one of the owners. Michael Blutrich was not only an owner of the club, he was also a former lawyer. He
worked in a firm alongside former Governor Cuomo’s son, Andrew. He was the FBI’s star witness in the Scores charge. Blutrich was arrested earlier concerning a multimillion-dollar fraud case, and in exchange for no jail time, he agreed to hand over John Gotti Jr. What Blutrich didn’t tell the FBI was that he had made a deal with some mobsters from the Gambino crime family. Blutrich wanted protection from other strip club owners, and the reputation of being “connected.” This way, the club would be much more appealing to customers and make them think twice about ever starting a fight in the club. In exchange, Blutrich agreed to hand over any proceeds from the coatroom concession. John never saw a dollar of this money. Even Blutrich agreed he’d never seen John Gotti Jr. at the club or heard his name mentioned when it came to the money. It didn’t matter. Because law enforcement had reason to believe John was “acting in a supervisory position” in Dad’s absence, John was charged with the crime. Shortly after the case began, Blutrich was busted for downloading kiddie porn on the Internet. Blutrich was forced to admit he was a child molester and the government’s case got weaker.

One defendant on the case was a well-known New York radio personality from WHTZ-100, John “Goombah Johnny” Saliano, who was also charged with extorting money from the coat check room at Scores. Those charges were later reduced and Saliano accepted a plea deal that offered him less than a year in jail. He is now back to work at the radio station.

Yet another charge involved a list FBI agents found at one of John’s offices in Queens. The list had names on it with dollar amounts next to them. The FBI claimed it was a list of Gambino associates and soldiers and was quite telling as to who was who within the Family. They deemed the list “the Holy Grail” of organized crime. In fact, the list was merely all the names of wedding guests and how much they gave as a present at John’s wedding. It
wasn’t strange to those who knew John best that he would keep this list long after his wedding. He was a pack rat; he saved everything. We often teased that he still had the first dollar he’d made from his Communion. The FBI even found nearly $300,000, which they claimed was “mob money from ill-gotten gains.” Once again, it was wedding money, hidden in a wall safe in John’s office.

The last and probably most laughable charge was that John was extorting his own cousin. There was a taped phone conversation where John is complaining to John Ruggiero (Uncle Angelo’s son) about unpaid rents. Ruggiero ran an auto parts store that he leased from John. During this conversation John says to Ruggiero, “I’m looking at my books—it says sixteen weeks in rent, Neptune Auto Glass?” To which Ruggiero replies, “Sixteen weeks?” John repeats, “Yes, sixteen—one, six.” Ruggiero says, “That’s impossible.” John then summons his secretary to get the books out and asks her (while still on the phone with Ruggiero), “When did the last check come in from Neptune Auto Glass?” The secretary responds, “10/16.” John then says, “That was the last check you sent.” John argues with Ruggiero and tells him he needs to come down to his office later that day. He instructs him to bring his books. At the end of the taped conversation, John says to Ruggiero, “This has to be straightened out by today. No one rents for free. At the end of today, it’s either going to be John Ruggiero’s business—or it will be John Gotti’s.”

The FBI claimed John was extorting his cousin. It didn’t matter that the two men were as close as brothers, as close as their fathers were at the very same age. Even when Ruggiero told the prosecutors that there was no extortion attempt, that it was merely a landlord trying to collect rents from his tenant, they refused to drop the charge. Instead, the prosecutors kept “sweetening” the possible plea deal. John’s lawyers went back and forth. Finally, a deal was offered that my brother believed he could live with. It would put an
end to all the unwanted negative publicity and the enormous security bills due each week.

To a man with five young children whom he loves and adores, the stress and uncertainty of a trial can be maddening. John felt that way, even telling me, “I want to guarantee my daughter Nicolette I will dance with her at her Sweet Sixteen and her wedding. I can’t risk a jury finding me guilty and sending me away from my kids for twenty years for shit I didn’t do.”

I understood. My father did not.

So the plea that had taken months of negotiation between John’s lawyers and the prosecutors had unraveled. John would never do anything without Dad’s approval.

The prosecutors still wanted to make a deal. It wasn’t a highly bankable case from their perspective. Witnesses began to change their stories, and many were caught in serious lies. The DA’s office was enveloped in negative press. One of the prosecutors was even reprimanded by Judge Barrington Parker for leaking case-related information to the press. Vincent Heintz, a prosecutor who ran the four-year probe into John’s case, was dismissed when the judge learned he was responsible for the leaks to the press. It was a circus. The prosecutors came back with another offer: five years and complete closure.

It wasn’t the shorter time in jail that attracted John. It was the “closure” clause. John wanted to put his legal troubles and his position in the life behind him. It was a decision he’d made years earlier but dared not tell anyone. He wanted out, plain and simple—and he saw going to jail as an escape from his obligations in the life. Once, John even said to me: “I almost hope I’m found guilty—so I’ll get thrown in jail and get away from the life.” Yet he was afraid Dad would disapprove. Especially since he was away in jail and there was no one left he’d considered “trustworthy” to take care of the family. But my brother stood firm. After many months
of laboring back and forth, weighing the pros and cons, he’d decided his family, his children, were much more important than anything else in the world—even money and honor. I understood. Others did not. Higher-ups in the life refused to accept John’s resignation. They tried hard to convince him to remain one of them. Even my brother’s “Goombah,” John Ruggiero, couldn’t persuade him. During a routine prison visit a few months later, Ruggiero was heard telling my brother he was recently asked to “join up.” In other words, he was a candidate to become a made man. Ruggiero always followed my brother’s lead ever since they were kids and therefore he always valued John’s opinion. John was livid! He went into a tirade, spewing insults at Ruggiero like “Have you not learned anything from watching me? Look where I am—you think I want to be here? You think that life is worth this? Is it worth losing your wife and kids?” A bug had been planted under a chair in the visiting room of Ray Brook Federal Prison. Some of the recording was inaudible, but my brother John’s words are loud and clear: “Run, John. Run like hell. Don’t let these people get their hooks in you.” My brother ended the conversation by saying, “If you accept and embrace that life—you and me are finished. I made a decision, Johnny Boy, and I intend to stick to it. I can’t let you or anyone else pull me back in.”