♪♪
Welcome to "Very Scary People."
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
He was one of the biggest celebrities of the 1980s.
His expensive suits and swagger
earned him the nickname "Dapper Don."
But, in reality, John Gotti was a man to be feared,
a ruthless, dangerous gangster who ordered hits on his enemies,
his friends, anyone who crossed him.
How did this common street thug end up
ruling one of the most powerful crime families in the world?
This is "John Gotti."
♪♪
Feldman: Carlo Gambino was, in 1973,
the head of the Gambino crime family.
His nephew was kidnapped and held for ransom.
The ransom money was partly paid,
but unfortunately for the nephew,
the nephew was executed anyway.
This, of course, didn't sit well with Carlo.
Feldman: Vengeance is the order of the day in mob families,
and so a contract was put out to go
after and kill those responsible for killing his nephew.
And that contract went out to, among others, John Gotti.
Gabriel: John's introduction to the family,
or his bona fides,
were gained by participating in the murder of a guy
by the name of James McBratney.
McBratney was suspected of having kidnapped
and killed the nephew of Gambino.
McBratney: My dad was larger than life.
As a little boy, I remember looking up
and seeing how big he was, and he had tattoos all over.
He was funny.
He was loved by a lot of people.
He had gotten caught up in doing some burglaries
and he was sentenced to four years.
When he was in prison, he made plans to kidnap gangsters
and hold them for ransom
because the wise guys wouldn't call the police.
They would just pay.
They put a contract out on my father,
and I was told that my father was aware
there was a contract out on his life.
I met a guy who saw him, and he had told my father,
"Why don't you just leave?
Why don't you just get out of New York for a while?"
And his answer was, "And what?
Leave my children?"
Therein lay the first substantial homicide case
that Gotti got involved in.
They found McBratney at a bar in Staten Island.
Raab: It was Gotti, his pal Angelo Ruggiero,
and a third person who they really didn't know too well.
The three of them walked in pretending to be detectives.
They shot a bullet into the ceiling
to get everyone's attention.
And they approached my father,
and the gentleman who was sitting next to my father
told me that Gotti grabbed one arm of my father,
and they said, "We are taking you with us."
My father wasn't going anywhere with anybody.
The guy told me -- he said, "Your father dragged
Gotti and Ruggiero down all the way
to the back of the bar to the back room."
He was getting out of their grip,
and that's when they killed him.
McBratney was dead on the barroom floor.
When I first saw the photo, my heart stopped,
my breathing stopped.
I don't know anybody who could really see
a picture of their father laying dead on the floor
and not feel shock.
The shoes that were on my father in the photo,
I remembered loving those shoes.
I couldn't wait to wear them.
I wanted to be like him,
like every kid wants to be like his father.
There were three little kids and a wife and mother
who were left so hurt, so broken.
Did I want revenge?
Absolutely, I wanted revenge.
Raab: The three of them shot McBratney in front of dozens of witnesses
who could identify them from rogues' galleries.
Sooner or later, Gotti knew the jig was going to be up.
Schumacher: This was not the smartest hit
that John Gotti was ever involved in,
because they weren't wearing masks.
They weren't trying to hide their identities.
And so it wasn't all that hard to find him once they knew
he was involved in the murder.
Gotti ultimately surrendered and, lo and behold,
got one of the most expensive criminal lawyers in New York,
a barrister by the name of Roy Cohn,
who made his reputation as the chief counsel
for Joe McCarthy in the notorious crack down
on leftists in the 1950s.
He had tremendous influence in New York city.
He was involved in prosecuting the Rosenbergs,
later represented Donald Trump.
Roy Cohn arranged what can be described
as an unbelievable sentence for Gotti.
He eventually copped a plea to manslaughter and served,
I believe, four years in state penitentiary.
Destefano: After Gotti got out of prison for the McBratney killing,
soon after that, he was inducted into Mafia,
became a made member.
And in that world, that's the Holy Grail.
Feldman: Contrary to what many people think,
not every person who was in the Mafia
was considered a full-fledged member of the mob.
In fact, most aren't.
And very few people
are selected to become made men.
Being a made member of the Mafia
was really everything that these guys aspired to.
Gabriel: One of the things you have to do to be proposed as a made member
and actually be inducted is,
you have to participate in a murder.
They want to check your loyalty.
Papa: That earns you merit in organized crime.
You show that you have the courage
or the temerity to do it.
Making your bones basically means
that you're proving you're bona fide.
Gotti made his bones by killing my father.
Destefano: The induction ceremony is a meeting
with other crime-family members,
where you're basically sworn loyalty to the life.
Fingers were pricked to show that you would give your blood.
And they burned a picture of a saint in your hand
with the admonition that if you betray
the brotherhood of the crime family,
you will burn as the saint is doing.
Schumacher: In other words, this is going to be your life,
and you are going to follow the principles of the Mafia
throughout your life up to
and including a complete loyalty to the mob,
even above your own family.
Destefano: And Gotti wanted nothing more than to be a gangster.
That really is a signature moment.
Schumacher: So, a Mafia family has a structure.
You have the boss, of course, at the top.
Right below the boss is the underboss.
And underneath the underboss, there's a series of capos,
or captains, who are really like crew chiefs.
After Gotti became a made man,
he became the captain of a crew based in Queens.
Morrill: From the moment that John came on the scene, you could see,
in the way he walked, the way he held himself,
the way he carried himself,
he had a very strong opinion of himself.
He had the knowledge and understanding
that he could do anything he wanted to do
without anyone coming back at him.
Destefano: Gotti, particularly as a capo and ruler,
could be very demanding, very brutal, very threatening.
Cardinale: If he was not happy, he was not shy
about letting people know about it.
It was almost a storm front if he was mad.
You did not want to get inside that front.
There were times that you would see him,
and he would be adamantly pointing fingers into the chest
of some other member of the crew
so that they should follow his orders
or they would suffer the consequences.
They heard him often berating people who made
what he considered the slightest insult.
And if you weren't convinced by that,
you probably weren't going to survive.
♪♪
To understand the Mafia, it's important to know
its roots in America.
Schumacher: In the late 1800s and in the early 1900s,
the United States saw just a massive immigration of Italians,
and especially Italians from Sicily.
And they were really
almost immediately discriminated against.
They were treated as second-class citizens.
A large majority of individuals would say, "You know what?
We're gonna work hard.
We're gonna just do our best to achieve the American dream."
However, there was certainly a percentage of immigrants
who said, "You know what?
We need a shortcut."
And formed into gangs.
But the street gangs were not particularly well-organized.
There was this notion that things could be better.
And no one saw that more clearly than Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
Raab: Prohibition occurred, and to run an important bootlegging ring,
you had to become almost an executive.
You had to import or manufacture booze and beer.
You had to have a sophisticated trucking system,
delivery system.
So they became big.
But the Italian-Americans were fighting with each other
for territory, killing each other.
There were gang wars.
Luciano saw that this was no good for business
and that the only solution was some kind of setup
where it would be more profitable,
at the same time, less dangerous.
Schumacher: So he created something called the commission,
and the commission was like a board of directors
for the national crime syndicate.
Raab: He organized some 20-odd families throughout the country,
the commission, to resolve all major disputes.
In addition to that, it actually wrote a constitution,
dos and don'ts, how you could become a made guy,
how you were supposed to conduct yourself,
all sorts of rules and regulations,
and that you could never be disloyal to the organization.
Omerta -- never cooperate, never talk with law enforcement.
It's really kind of this whole structured environment.
Feldman: Cosa nostra is what most Americans refer to as the Mafia.
The literal translation is "our thing."
And it is a kind of umbrella title
that encompasses many different mob families.
The mob scene in the 1970s and 1980s in New York City
revolved around the five classic Mafia families.
They were the Genovese, Gambino,
Lucchese, Bonanno, and Colombo crime families.
Feldman: The Gambino family, which was the family
that John Gotti ultimately ended up heading,
was at one time considered the most powerful
of the five Mafia families in New York city.
It was powerful because it had its tentacles
in many different areas,
from construction to airport operations.
Cardinale: There was nothing, according to the government,
that was built that involved concrete
that they didn't have some involvement and made money from.
Gabriel: Organized crime and the Mafia families survived
by the revenue that they can generate, basically,
from criminal conduct.
They were bookmakers.
They were loan sharks.
They were extorting businesses for protection money.
You'd go into a restaurant or a store in your neighborhood
and warn them something might happen
unless they paid you some fees.
"I'm going to protect you or I'm going to beat you up.
Which one are you going to pick?"
These threats often were very effective.
If you knew that something bad could happen to you,
you would find a way to pay.
The threat of actually being killed
is something that was very real at that time.
By definition, you cannot be the head of a mob family
without being feared both by the public
and, more importantly, I suppose,
by the people who work for you in that family.
They're dangerous, ruthless people.
Killing is in their fabric.
When you're doing street crimes and robberies and hijackings,
you need tough guys.
John Gotti had a reputation of being a tough guy.
So somebody steps out of line,
you need folks who can enforce it.
John Gotti and his crew were enforcers.
Whether it was as simple as giving somebody a beating
or escalating it all the way up
to actually having to take a life,
he was known as a reliable person that can do that.
Feldman: John Gotti rose through the ranks
by things like loan-sharking.
Schumacher: Loan-sharking is the notion of giving out loans
to someone who needs money fast, who needs cash,
and they're expected to be paid back quickly.
In the case of Gotti's crew,
they were extremely effective at getting their money.
And if they didn't get their money,
people knew what the consequences were.
Gotti and his enforcers could be very ruthless.
One of the main methods of organized crime to gain funds
was hijacking.
By the time the early-to-mid-'70s came along,
he would actually go out on hijackings.
Destefano: The trucks would come off of the JFK area.
They'd be pulled over by a couple of cars
that blocked their way.
The hijackers would go up.
They would tell the driver, "Listen, give us the truck.
And by the way, from your license, we know who you are,
so don't go running to the cops."
You got goods that you could fence.
Destefano: And that's how John got his footing
into the organized-crime arena.
♪♪
Woman: Mrs. Gotti was extremely nice and polite
as she refused our request for an interview,
saying her husband had joked he'd take her to the dentist
and have her mouth glued shut
if she did any more talking to the press.
Gotti got married fairly early, when he was 22, to Victoria.
Victoria Digiorgio was a very striking dark-haired woman.
Papa: But they had a rough time.
I think he maybe wasn't the easiest person to deal with.
Raab: First of all, he was fooling around a lot
with other women, which she knew.
He would disappear for days.
Destefano: In the early days, they didn't have much money,
and the story was that, at one point,
Gotti sneaked Victoria
and one of their children out of the hospital
because he couldn't pay the bill.
Mom is, in a nutshell, to sum up --
she's an old-fashioned woman, very traditional,
raised with the belief that her children, her husband,
her home is the most important thing, in that order.
Papa: John Gotti and his family lived in Howard Beach, Queens.
It was not some big, flashy house, McMansion.
It was a modest home right on the block.
And that's where he lived for many, many years.
Gotti had five children -- three boys and two daughters.
King: What was it like growing up a Gotti?
Victoria: Growing up a Gotti.
It was regimented, warm.
We were -- I think early on, it was instilled in all of us
that we were a close-knit family.
We had to remain a close-knit family.
And I think that, growing up, my dad executed the values
and the morals that he wanted us to take through life.
Cardinale: His sons and his two daughters were a big,
big, big part of his life.
You could tell that just whenever he spoke about them.
Papa: He was very close to his kids.
He loved them.
I think he wanted to be protective
and he wanted to do what he could for them.
Destefano: And therein, of course, lay the route
to one of the tragedies in their life.
♪♪
Raab: Gotti's youngest son, frank, of course,
grew up in Howard Beach.
Frankie, who was kind of the apple of his eye,
had a minibike, a small, miniature motorcycle.
And he drove it out in the street one day between cars
and he was hit.
Papa: And the young boy died.
The Howard Beach driver who struck and killed
little Frankie was John Favara,
and he was a person from the neighborhood.
He lived not far from the Gottis,
probably a few houses away.
And that, of course, sent Gotti, his wife, and his whole family
into a tailspin of depression and grief.
Papa: Police, at the time, investigated and they determined
that this was an accident.
The man who ran over and killed John Gotti's son,
at one point, went to apologize to John Gotti and his wife.
I think Victoria Gotti felt that he didn't show enough remorse,
and she did not forgive him.
And there's a story that she went after him with a bat.
Favara knew who he was dealing with,
and I'm sure he was frightened.
John Favara was kidnapped from his place of business
out on Long Island by a group of men.
A few weeks after, a few months, the guy disappeared.
Eyewitnesses claimed they saw him being hit over the head
and put into the back of a car.
Favara was never seen again.
Destefano: The story that we subsequently were able to piece together
was that Favara was killed and that his body,
according to court records,
was dissolved in acid in a junkyard in East New York.
Gotti, as I recall, at the time, had an alibi.
He said he was away in Florida when that happened.
Schumacher: I think there's no question that the disappearance
of John Favara sent a message to the community
that Gotti was someone to be reckoned with.
♪♪
For somebody to just disappear off the face of the earth,
never to be seen again,
that had to send a chill through the neighborhood.
He meant business.
That's where he comes across as scary.
Who was going to mess with that?
Woman: Of such stories, legends are born,
and John Gotti lives up to his.
♪♪
Welcome back to "Very Scary People."
By the late 1970s, John Gotti was working his way up
the ranks of the Gambino crime family
as a solid earner and vicious capo,
determined to not let anything or anyone stand in his way.
Soon, he would become the boss
of a multi-million-dollar criminal operation.
For Gotti, it all started in the boogie-down Bronx.
♪♪
Feldman: John Gotti was born on the 27th of October
in 1940 in the South Bronx.
His grandparents came over from,
as they used to say, "the old country".
He had a troubled childhood.
Raab: His father was a laborer who earned almost nothing.
He had 12 siblings, big family, and his poor father
really couldn't provide for all of them.
Gotti grew up in a very haggard type of way.
He was embarrassed.
He claimed later that when he went to school,
he was wearing different shoes on each foot.
His clothes were ragged.
The other kids made fun of him.
That's when he learned to use his fast fists,
because he had to fight his way
to get any kind of recognition and respect.
Things improved for him when he was just in his teens,
when his father and his mother
moved to East New York in Brooklyn.
If you wanted to exist in your neighborhood
and show your machismo,
you had to be part of a street gang.
He didn't have much of an education,
but he was smart and and he knew how to hustle.
So got involved with people on the street.
Raab: In one situation, he was doing a theft.
He broke into a construction area in the neighborhood
and he dropped a heavy piece of equipment on his foot.
And he actually broke one of his toes,
which gave him a limp for the rest of his life.
Some people thought it was a swagger,
but he obtained it by fouling up on a simple crime.
Mafia bosses and their lieutenants in the neighborhoods
were always on the lookout for possible recruits,
people who were hard and tough and would carry out orders.
And he shined in those aspects.
There's a certain level of respect
that he wanted perhaps that, in his life,
he wasn't really getting it anywhere else.
Here were these guys driving around in flashy cars,
hanging around these clubs, attracting women.
The only chance he had, in his viewpoint,
for success was crime.
♪♪
Gotti, in his teens and early 20s,
was part of a crew that was part
of the Gambino crime family in East New York.
And Gambino's second-in-command was a man by the name
of Aniello Dellacroce, better known as "Neil."
Cardinale: Aniello Dellacroce was a very powerful individual
within the Gambino family.
Gabriel: John gets himself fairly close to Neil,
and Neil takes a strong liking to John.
Raab: Dellacroce liked him.
He saw him as a chip off his own block.
Respected the activity that John did,
respected the loyalty that John showed,
and respected the chutzpah that John had.
So they create a very, very close bond.
Papa: In 1976, Carlo Gambino,
the revered boss of the Gambino crime family
and the namesake of the family, passes away.
So who is the successor?
Gabriel: Gambino, rather than taking Neil Dellacroce,
who the whole Gambino family respected and revered,
he names his cousin, Paul Castellano,
the next boss of the family.
That just turned everybody's stomach.
Inside of the Gambino crime family,
there were several factions.
John, being in the Dellacroce faction,
sort of looked at Paul Castellano
as a weak leader.
Raab: They thought he was too remote.
He didn't like them.
He never visited their clubs.
And all he wanted was their dough.
Gotti and some of the people that Gotti surrounded
himself with felt that Paul Castellano
was not the legitimate head of the family.
Gotti felt that Aniello Dellacroce
should have been the rightful heir
to the Gambino crime family.
So that created this long source of resentment
between Gotti's people and Castellano and his tribe.
Schumacher: At the same time, Gotti thinks that he can become
the boss of the Gambino crime family.
Gabriel: Dellacroce had that ability
to keep the Gottis of the world in check.
He was the buffer.
But when Dellacroce died, then all bets are off.
♪♪
Cardinale: John Gotti -- he would make an impression
on anybody that saw him.
He had a certain aura that,
if he walked in the room, you would notice him.
He was somebody that would turn heads
just because of the way he carried himself.
Had a very commanding presence. Let's put it that way.
Destefano: Angelo Ruggiero was one of the core members of the crew
that Gotti was a member of.
Papa: Ruggiero was one of Gotti's best friends.
They grew up together.
They were in gangs together.
They were very, very close.
A big crisis came in 1985.
Cardinale: Angelo Ruggiero, John Gotti's brother Gene,
and a third defendant were charged
in a racketeering case that involved drugs.
The trouble that Ruggiero got into was he had a big mouth.
Papa: His nickname was "Quack Quack,"
because they say he liked to talk a lot.
One of the major pieces of evidence against him was a tape.
His house had been bugged.
He's caught on tape speaking about heroin buys,
and this was forbidden by Paul Castellano.
The Gambino crime family, at the time,
was into a lot of illegal activities,
but he did not want to be involved in drugs.
A lot of people thought the Mafia was involved
in all kinds of drug deals,
and the fact is, historically, they weren't
because it brought on too much heat.
Gabriel: Castellano becomes irate.
He's also now got to deal with wise guys
and bosses from other families,
who are now putting pressure on him,
basically saying, "Hey, your guy got us in this mess."
So now Castellano's got reason to put pressure on.
"I need to know what's on those bugs.
I hear you guys were dealing babanya,
and if that's true, we've got a problem."
Castellano wanted to get copies of all of the tape recordings
from Angelo Ruggiero's case.
Gotti knew that the Castellano tapes
was a probable death sentence for him,
because it was his crew.
This would give Castellano an excuse to kill all of them.
♪♪
Gabriel: The summer of '85,
we got a bug in Neil Dellacroce's house.
Neil was sick. He's dying of cancer.
And John and Angelo were going there frequently.
One of the visits we capture on tape.
Dellacroce realized, "I can't keep Castellano at bay forever."
You're going to have to show him what's on the tape.
So it's clear that this issue is very flammable.
There was a lot of friction, and, at some point,
things were going to come to a head.
♪♪
Destefano: December of 1985, Dellacroce passes away from cancer.
That removed the one sort of buffer
that was keeping the crime family
from spinning out of control and devolving into a war.
Gabriel: John read the tea leaves, knew his life
was in jeopardy, feared for his crew.
Papa: He had to decide where his loyalties were,
and they certainly were not with Paul Castellano.
Destefano: Castellano, if he wanted to,
could have him killed for the drug-dealing stuff
that was going on.
Gotti realized, "I have to move quickly.
Castellano's suspicious of me.
He's suspicious of the crew and the drug situation.
I've got to do something."
Papa: He figured he had to move
to save his skin, to save Angelo Ruggiero's skin.
Gotti decides that Castellano has to go.
Schumacher: I think he believed that he was the best person for that job.
He really wanted to run the Gambino crime family
the way he thought it should be run.
Feldman: Gotti felt very strongly that that was the time
to make a move on and to replace, I.E.,
kill, Paul Castellano.
Gotti was very, how should I say, full of himself.
He thought he was the embodiment of the Mafia.
Schumacher: If someone is going to kill a Mafia boss,
you have to get the permission of the commission
in order to do that.
In this case, there's a risk.
♪♪
Once John Gotti makes a decision he's got to kill his boss,
that's no light decision.
There are a lot of rules in organized crime.
The cardinal rule is, you don't kill the boss.
You don't take out the boss of a crime family
unless you're sanctioned.
You have to get the permission
of the commission in order to do that.
Because if you don't have that, then everybody's fair game.
Papa: John Gotti was hatching a plot
without the approval of the other families in New York
to bump off Paul Castellano.
It was kill or be killed.
Raab: Gotti showed some actual brilliance,
how he arranged, engineered the murder of Paul Castellano.
Destefano: He needed certain alliances with certain people,
so Angelo Ruggiero approached Sammy Gravano,
who was a well-respected member of the crime family,
a good earner in the construction business,
but had a reputation for being a brutal guy, a killer.
Feldman: Sammy Gravano, or, as he was known in the family,
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, was a tough guy.
He was somebody who, later on,
admitted to having no issues at all killing people
if he thought that that was something that needed
to be done for the family.
Schumacher: He was a kind of a mastermind
of how to make these things happen
so that they were done efficiently,
with minimal witnesses,
so they could all get away with it.
Gotti sent his right-hand man, Angelo, and he had told me --
he said, "Sammy," he says, "We're going to take out Paul."
Schumacher: And Sammy Gravano was all in.
♪♪
Feldman: The word had reached John Gotti that Paul Castellano
was going to have dinner at the Sparks Steak House in Manhattan.
And the decision was made
that that would be the perfect time to kill him.
Papa: Here it is, it's a winter night.
It's a week or so before Christmas.
Gabriel: John and Sammy had put a crew together
and were very careful in who they selected.
Only about 11 people involved in this hit.
Raab: Almost nobody knew who the target was
until the very day of the murder.
Destefano: The plan was well-choreographed.
All the shooters gathered down by Madison Square Park
in Manhattan.
Raab: Gotti had this whole hit crew dressed in the same way --
long raincoats and wearing Russian fur hats.
This, of course, was done to make identification problematic
later for eyewitnesses.
They were given their assignments,
and they went uptown.
They were told, "Kill them.
And if it means you have to die there,
then die there with them.
Die there in a gun battle with the cops.
Do not back off of this hit."
Destefano: Close in time to this,
Castellano was coming in from Staten Island,
visiting his lawyer,
and then had a dinner date at sparks restaurant.
Paul Castellano left his attorney's office in Downtown
or Midtown Manhattan.
Gabriel: Tommy Bilotti, who's Paul's underboss --
he's driving Paul in Paul's town car.
Raab: They didn't have a bodyguard.
Neither was armed.
He was just so certain of his security
that no one would dare oppose him.
And that shows you his fatal mistake.
Destefano: The streets were packed with a lot of people,
which was another thing the planners figured,
that may be easy to blend in.
Gabriel: So, you had four primary shooters
that were going to attack the car,
and then you had shooters strategically placed
around corners in case
they tried to get away or whatever.
[ Walkie-talkie chirps ]
Feldman: Gotti and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
were witnessing this from a car just across the street.
Gabriel: Sammy's got a gun, so he's kind of a backup shooter.
And they're positioned kind of as the lookouts
to give the shooters a heads-up
if they were to see Paul coming down.
Sammy's sitting there with a walkie-talkie.
You know, suddenly, they notice Paul's car
pulling up right past them and stopping at the light.
They're just praying Paul doesn't look over,
because he would recognize them in a heartbeat.
Gravano: And I said, "John, they're right next to us."
And I told John, "If he turns in our direction,
I'm going to start shooting right here and now."
Gabriel: Light changes, and Sammy radios to the shooters,
"Hey, they're pulling up right now.
So everybody get ready."
Feldman: So, when Paul Castellano and his driver
showed up at the Sparks Steak House in Manhattan,
they got out of the car, and --
as soon as those doors opened,
Gotti's shooters were right on the scene.
Papa: Before you know it, numerous shots are fired.
And these two men were dead in the street.
♪♪
Gabriel: It went off as planned.
Once they confirm that they were dead,
these guys calmly walked into the crowd, disappeared.
According to Gravano,
he and John watched the shooting take place
and then drove by it
and saw that Bilotti and Castellano were shot
and then drove away.
Raab: They both died at the scene. No chance.
They never even bothered taking them to a hospital.
They went right to the morgue.
Destefano: Of course, it's pandemonium on the street.
The shooting. There's two bodies.
On the curb is Castellano, who was clenching his gloves
in his hand, mouth open, blood all over the place.
Feldman: The killing of Paul Castellano
was not only a big deal in the Mafia world,
it was a big deal in the general public.
This was an execution in the middle of New York city.
Papa: What happened? Why did this happen?
What was going on? Who did this?
A mob boss taken out in broad daylight in Midtown Manhattan,
and, basically, nobody saw anything.
Cardinale: It was huge.
Every single newspaper in New York
had it on the front page.
Papa: To the general public, this was scary.
It was titillating.
It was real tabloid fodder.
And New Yorkers really eat that up.
Destefano: Everybody's figuring,
"Okay, are we going to see a war on the streets now?
What's going on?"
This is a major, major hit.
Papa: This moment changed the trajectory for John Gotti.
The Paul Castellano killing really catapulted
John Gotti into the forefront.
Destefano: Gotti, overnight,
became the premier gangster in the Gambino family.
Papa: This now becomes this power vacuum
in the most powerful crime family in New York.
And John Gotti was stepping into that void and taking control.
Destefano: There was a meeting of the captains in the crime family,
and Gotti was voted in.
Raab: So, here he is, in his 40s -- he's now the head
of the most powerful crime family in America.
♪♪
Feldman: Once John Gotti becomes the head,
what emerges is a very unprecedented
and very public head of a mob family.
Schumacher: Ultimately, Gravano becomes Gotti's underboss,
running a lot of the day-to-day operations
of the Gambino crime family.
Raab: John Gotti was truly a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Destefano: The press romanticized him, glorified him.
John Gotti was the number-one target for the government.
Man: John Gotti stands out as the most powerful leader
in organized crime.
Schumacher: In order to get recordings,
they needed to be inside the Ravenite Social Club.
To try to get him to incriminate himself, basically.
Gabriel: We got to find a way to put him in jail.
Up until Paul Castellano's brutal murder,
John Gotti was barely on federal investigators' radar.
But after he carried out the ruthless hit
and took the throne as the Gambino's godfather,
Gotti became public enemy number one.
Almost instantly, he transformed into the Dapper Don,
running a violent criminal enterprise,
all while wearing a suit and a smile.
In the end, it would take a complex
and lengthy FBI operation
to finally stop him, in part 2 of "John Gotti."
I'm Donnie Wahlberg. Thanks for watching.
Good night.