♪♪
Welcome to "Very Scary People." I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
He was one of the most notorious Mafia dons in American history.
Born in the Bronx, raised in Brooklyn,
John Gotti clawed his way to the top of the organization
by any means necessary.
Case in point -- the 1985 murder of Mafia boss
Paul Castellano so that Gotti could take over
the powerful Gambino crime family.
Law enforcement and even other goodfellas
considered Gotti dangerous and unpredictable.
And for many years, he seemed unstoppable,
until a secret FBI operation finally ended Gotti's reign.
This is part 2 of "John Gotti."
♪♪
Louis DiBono was an associate of the crime family.
Papa: DiBono was in construction.
Helped build the World Trade Center.
All of a sudden, he disappeared.
Papa: He was missing for a few days.
Nobody could find him.
Gabriel: We had actually gotten informant information
that indicated -- they said, "Hey, Louie DiBono's dead.
He was left in a very public place.
You should be able to find the body."
Papa: The irony of Louis DiBono's death was,
here he was in construction, built the world trade center,
and his body was found in the parking lot
of the World Trade Center.
Gabriel: DiBono was laying dead in his car
for two days in the parking lot.
Somebody that thought this guy was asleep
knocked on the window and realized he was dead.
He'd been just sitting there for two days.
Nobody had noticed.
Papa: Gotti used DiBono, actually, as an example.
He would teach lessons, and if anybody was disloyal
or anybody wasn't listening to John Gotti,
there were fatal consequences.
Gotti, at one point, wanted to talk with him.
DiBono wouldn't meet with him or wouldn't answer his telephones.
DiBono didn't want to do what Gotti was telling him to do.
And for that reason, for not coming
when Gotti wanted him to come, Gotti decided that he had to go.
DiBono was going to his car,
and an assassination team followed him,
cased it out...
shot him dead in the car, and got out of there.
Was John Gotti an evil or vicious person?
Absolutely, he was.
♪♪
Schumacher: In 1985, John Gotti was a capo in the Gambino crime family.
Capos, or captains, are really like crew chiefs.
They're responsible for either different areas of geography
or of different types of crimes that they're focused on.
And these capos have under them soldiers and associates.
The Gambino crime family was the largest crime family
in the greater New York area.
They were extremely powerful and were involved
in just a vast array of criminal enterprises,
everything from bookmaking and loan-sharking,
up to their control of unions,
involvement with the construction industry.
The Gambinos were one of the five Mafia families in New York,
and this was the structure of organized crime.
In 1985, Paul Castellano was the boss
of the Gambino crime family.
Gotti didn't think highly of him at all.
He thought, frankly, that Castellano
should never have been put in the position he was put in.
Gotti decides that Castellano has to go.
DeStefano: And that's what happened.
He went after Castellano and set up the infamous
December 1985 assassination of Castellano
in front of Sparks Steak House.
Schumacher: After Castellano's death,
Gotti makes a bid to become the boss,
and he ultimately does become the boss.
♪♪
Once John Gotti becomes the head of the Gambino crime family,
what emerges is a very unprecedented
and very public head of a mob family.
Elevation to stardom in the Mafia
was a sea change for John Gotti.
Before he became boss,
he was known as sort of a casual dresser,
often seen walking around in jackets,
one of which was for the Oakland Raiders.
And, suddenly, overnight, his whole attire changed.
He started wearing hand-painted ties,
believe it or not, monogrammed socks.
He would show up in these, you know, $1,000 Armani suits.
He would be dapper John.
He got his hair done every day, got a shave.
He switched his whole lifestyle from being a Queens hood
to being this sort of boss-of-bosses-type character.
Morrill: John Gotti was truly a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The John Gotti that I knew was a common criminal,
and crime took no holiday when it was in John's hands.
Cardinale: His presence was such that if he were annoyed
or if he was mad, you couldn't miss it.
It would be like a storm brewing.
You could see it in his eyes.
His eyes, in my view, would literally change color
and become really, really dark when he was really infuriated.
He was somebody who had no issues at all
about brow-beating people within his organization.
He sent out a warning to the capos
and everybody else in the family
that if they were picked up on any kind of recording or bug,
they would be met with death.
Gabriel: These guys are dangerous people.
Killing is in their fabric.
They're able to turn on people on a dime.
If they feel threatened in any way, their reaction to it is,
"That guy's got to go," period, and he goes.
And it's your friend who's doing it.
So there's a different level of ruthlessness behind that.
And John Gotti was the epitome of that.
If you crossed John Gotti,
you were probably going to be dead within 24 hours.
It was part of his whole homicidal character.
He didn't care what the consequences were.
♪♪
There comes a time when John Gotti allegedly
has a dispute with a refrigerator repairman
named Romual Piecyk.
Raab: Gotti went to a bar in Queens,
and he double-parked.
And Gotti saw this guy honking, whose car he had blocked,
and he walked over and told him to go [bleep] himself.
And this repairman talked back to him.
So, in typical Gotti fashion,
they started beating up this guy.
Cardinale: Gotti was a street guy.
He was not a kind of person you'd want to get mad.
Raab: They took his money and then drove off.
Gotti didn't expect any problem.
Cardinale: The guy then goes to the police,
claims that he was attacked for no reason,
and John gets arrested.
Gabriel: It's not until a year or two later,
that matter now comes to trial.
Raab: And, suddenly, Gotti, instead of being
this almost nobody in Queens, now is a big figure.
He's the head of the Gambino family.
The refrigerator repairman,
suddenly realizing who he got into a scuffle with,
got this case of amnesia.
Papa: He realized who he was dealing with
and he didn't want to deal with the consequences.
He testified that he didn't know who that man was.
He didn't know who John Gotti was.
He didn't remember anything that happened to him.
And so that whole case just went up in smoke.
Raab: Of course, Gotti walked.
To him, it was an example of how invincible he was.
♪♪
Man: John Gotti was in Brooklyn federal court on Monday.
Gotti and six co-defendants were charged under the Rico Act,
which stands for racketeer influenced corrupt organization.
Gabriel: He's indicted in the early '80s.
It's street-level criminal activity.
It's a loan-sharking case.
It's gambling. It's some hijackings.
It's been lingering for a while, so in '86,
when that case finally comes to trial,
this is a another shot to take him off the street.
Man: John Gotti had been free on $1 million bail, pending trial.
Officials say they confiscated several cigars
and locked Gotti up.
The alleged godfather is a man with considerable charisma.
But prosecutors hope to put that charisma behind bars
for the next 40 years.
The prosecutors were not particularly experienced,
but they were optimistic that they could
somehow pull this off.
This case went on and on.
It went on for months.
We would ask him, "How's it going in the trial?"
And he would say, "Oh, we're going to
win this case no problem."
Man: None of the people on trial looked nervous,
even though they could have faced 40 years
in prison if convicted.
Ultimately, the jury in march of 1987, declared Gotti not guilty.
Papa: He was acquitted in that case, as well.
Raab: The truth is, it was a fixed trial.
Gotti had no way of losing.
DeStefano: His underlings had learned about
the identity of a juror
and approached the juror with an offer --
$60,000, give or take.
And the juror was essentially agreeing to hang the jury.
Schumacher: In Gotti's world, Sammy Gravano was his underboss.
He was his right-hand man on all the important endeavors.
Sammy Gravano was actually the guy
that delivered the money to pay this juror off.
Gravano: I worked out a deal with him for $60,000 to find him not guilty.
DeStefano: It wasn't a case of good defense
in that case for Gotti.
Simply a classic corruption case.
♪♪
Announcer: Welcome to "Larry King Live."
Tonight, will they finally get the godfather?
King: Reputed to be the boss of the nation's
most powerful Mafia crime family,
Gotti is charged with ordering the shooting
of a union official.
Feldman: During the late '80s, John O'Connor
was a union leader in New York City.
And he ended up having a confrontation
with the Gambino crime family.
And in retribution, John Gotti and the Gambino family allegedly
went after John O'Connor.
And O'Connor was shot multiple times,
although he did survive the shooting.
A lot of people who observed the trial at the time
thought the evidence was pretty strong.
There were tapes where he said, "I'm going to bust them up.
Man: But O'Connor, the man with the white hair,
was subpoenaed by Gotti to testify for the defense.
He dealt the government a major blow.
Raab: He testified, in effect,
that he never heard anything from John Gotti.
He didn't know who shot him.
Man: The Gotti case will go to the jury early next week.
If he is found not guilty,
it would be the third time in a row
that the government would have failed to convict Gotti,
and that, said one longtime courtroom observer,
would make the government look "pretty stupid."
Man: We find him not guilty.
He was acquitted in that case
and he walked out of there scot-free.
What was unknown until later, that this jury
also might have been fixed.
Gravano: He knew that, at bare minimum,
he had a hung jury.
He wasn't going to get found guilty.
I got it.
Woman: A shake and a kiss from his lawyer, and with that,
he was off and running, Gotti looking more like Rocky,
pumped up with the victory of his latest legal bought.
[ People cheering ]
When he left the courthouse that day,
there were thousands of people
waiting outside, cheering for him.
Man: It was his third acquittal
in three separate cases since 1986.
DeStefano: That gave him the reputation as the Teflon Don,
when no charges could stick, it seemed.
Man: Legal experts say the bumbling of state
and federal prosecutors in the past four years
has given Gotti an aura of invincibility.
Here, we have this guy that just keeps thumbing his nose
at law enforcement, keeps winning
these criminal cases in the public's eye,
and we got to find a way to put him in jail.
The feds were getting pretty frustrated
and really wanted to take this guy down.
Subsequent to that, the FBI made Gotti a priority.
Woman: The way things have been going, though,
no one's betting on who gets the last laugh.
♪♪
What did you think when you would read your father's name
and the word "gangster"?
What did you feel, think?
Well, it was never about that.
It was always about the exposure.
It was always about dealing with the publicity.
It was overwhelming.
It's something that you really have to get used to,
and I think you really never fully do.
Mob bosses normally like to be as low-key
as they possibly can be
so as not to attract the attention of law enforcement.
Gotti was a different kind of guy.
He was not low-key.
Schumacher: He was not afraid of public attention.
He was a little bit like Al Capone
in that he really reveled in becoming a celebrity.
And the New York tabloids in particular just loved him.
John took on this persona. "I'm John Gotti, world.
Come see me and know me."
Raab: He decided that he was so important
that nobody could touch him.
He commanded large print headlines
in all the local tabloids.
He wanted the attention. He loved the attention.
How do you feel, Mr. Gotti?
Pretty good.
A real collaborator of John Gotti
and his image was the media.
Feldman: John Gotti and the press had this interesting relationship,
because both parties benefited.
John Gotti felt, I think,
that the press coverage enhanced his bona fides
for the mob family that he was in control off.
The press, in turn, knew he made good headlines,
he made good footage for the evening news.
And Gotti was very good at manipulating the press.
He occasionally would flip cash to homeless people
who might have been camped out in front
of some of the courthouses.
And, of course, he was savvy enough to know that,
what footage made the news that night?
It was John Gotti giving money to the homeless.
He's going to give you some money.
Here's some money.
Man: The head of the Gambino crime family,
a real-life godfather.
There's a two-edged sword kind of here, though,
because the press liked him, didn't they?
Wasn't John Gotti a figure they liked to cover?
Well, he was very likable, just his personality.
He responded to them, he talked to them when he walked, right?
Yeah. I think that without having to respond, he responded.
It was just that kind of a seduction.
The press romanticized him, glorified him, glamorized him.
Woman: Gotti oozes mobster mystique from his silver hair
to his supposedly monogrammed socks.
"Dressed to kill" is how the tabloids describe him.
He was a celebrity, plain and simple.
Raab: Gotti was not only popular with the press in New York,
he was popular in his neighborhood.
Woman: Hundreds of people gathered for an all-day block party
with free hot dogs and hamburgers,
all apparently courtesy of the man
they call the "Dapper Don,"
reputed New York crime boss John Gotti.
John Gotti seemed to be the Robin Hood
in his neighborhood.
He would have a fourth of July party
and he would fund the party and the fireworks.
I know him as a lovely person who always says hello.
People really regarded him, in a way, as a folk hero
and as somebody who brought joy to their neighborhood.
They looked at him as a leader,
as someone who was protecting them.
There's always been this aura in this country with the Mafia.
DeStefano: It was part of the myth at that mafiosi or the Mafia
was really a benevolent association.
What they didn't appreciate, of course,
is what that was hiding,
and what was hiding was somebody who was a ruthless killer.
Schumacher: We know for sure that John Gotti was involved,
in one way or another, with five murders,
but being the boss of the Gambino crime family
and being a capo before that,
it's almost certain that the number is higher.
There was never really a lot of coverage
about what a murderous criminal he was.
This is not some Robin Hood.
This is a person who is a plain hood.
♪♪
Welcome back to "Very Scary People."
In public, John Gotti was known for his swagger, coiffed hair
and brash personality.
Many in his neighborhood of Howard Beach
considered him generous, a modern-day Robin Hood.
But behind the scenes, gangster Gotti was running
the violent Gambino crime family.
Time and time again, he proved
he would let no one stand in his way.
♪♪
DeStefano: Gotti was a guy who wanted to be a gangster,
and in his mind, to be a gangster,
you had to be tough.
You had to want to kill.
The Robert DiBernardo case was key in point.
DiBernardo was a very well-known
and respected member of the Gambino family.
Papa: DiBernardo was sort of an independent operator
but made a lot of money in the porn business.
Gabriel: Word gets sent to John that Robert DiBernardo
was talking behind John's back, he's being disloyal.
So John says, "Alright, if that's true, kill him.
He's got to go."
John is that quick to turn on him.
DeStefano: Gravano said he tried to talk him out of it.
"That's no real reason to kill him.
For insults?"
Gravano: When he ordered a hit,
he wanted it done yesterday.
He would send me to supervise or control it
or make sure the job got done.
And I obviously did.
DeStefano: So, they had DiBernardo come
to a meeting in Brooklyn to --
I think it was Sammy's office.
And while they were making coffee and DiBernardo
was distracted by talking to Gravano,
an old man, "Old Man Paruta,"
I think was the name, came up behind DiBernardo
and shot him in the head and killed him right there.
Papa: Robert DiBernardo was never seen
or heard from again, and they never found his body.
♪♪
Feldman: John Gotti was the number-one target for the government,
partly because he was rubbing it in their faces,
and government officials at the time
were very open about saying that.
He was somebody they could not permit
to have that kind of power, if you will.
The feds were going to have to make a better case.
How do you do that?
They needed quality evidence.
♪♪
Papa: John Gotti inherited the Ravenite Social Club
in Mulberry Street in little Italy.
And this is where he had his meetings with his colleagues
and with his crew members.
The feds actually rented a location
about a block or two north.
And they started video surveillance
of Gotti along that street.
They would see his habits
and they would see who was showing up.
But that wasn't quite enough,
and so what they needed to do is,
they needed to have recordings
of John Gotti having conversations.
He would come out and do what we dubbed "walk talks."
So they would walk down the street --
sometimes, it's whispering --
so they can have a good criminal conversation,
where it's very tough to bug.
So I started experimenting with parabolic mics.
I'm putting them in roof racks of vehicles,
trying to cover as much of the street as I can.
But it didn't lead to very much evidence.
We eventually put a bug in the Ravenite.
And those bugs go on for several, several months.
We get snippets of criminal conversation,
but the clubs are very noisy.
The conversations are broken up.
DeStefano: They realized, at certain points,
that Gotti would be absent
from the conversations.
And they were watching the club and they said,
"He never left the building.
Where did he go?"
Gabriel: I'm hearing he's disappearing
for like 45 minutes or an hour.
And, again, I'm checking my surveillance tapes,
and he's still in the building.
He hasn't left.
Where is he?
Papa: Then they realized that John Gotti
was using an apartment over the Ravenite Social Club.
This belonged to an older woman.
And they would go up there,
and they would sit in the living room,
having a conversation.
That was crucial.
Feldman: They needed to plant listening devices
in the old lady's apartment.
But how do you do that?
Because she was almost always there.
Gabriel: I put a device known as a pen register on her phone --
it monitors activity -- figuring that would give me some clues
as to when she was around or wasn't around.
I have a deal with my tech guys that if I can assure them that
she's not in on any given night, that they'd be ready to go.
So they waited and they waited.
There were one or two weekends
where I was reasonably confident,
from the lack of any activity,
that she was probably not around.
And I'd wait till about midnight
and I'd call the number to confirm.
And I'd wind up waking her up.
She'd answer the phone, and I'd feel terrible
and, you know, get myself off the line.
But the third or fourth time,
I had like two days of no activity on the phone.
[ Telephone ringing ]
She doesn't answer the phone.
So that night, those guys --
I call them up and said, "Hey, she's gone."
And they go in and they put the bugs in.
The FBI broke into her apartment,
put bugs in in the lamp, got out and waited.
♪♪
Papa: On November 30th, the feds were finally able to get very clear,
damaging tapes of John Gotti's own voice and in his own words.
When you heard him speak, he was very gruff.
He was very street.
He had a real thick New York accent.
I believe he never really gave interviews
because he didn't want to be heard like that.
Otherwise, he looked pretty slick and sophisticated
and pretty put together on the outside.
Feldman: John Gotti -- he was very comfortable
talking in the confines of that little apartment.
Conversations are turning from different topics,
and it goes into the Paul Castellano hit
and why they killed him.
They were also able to capture him
talking about the murders of members of his family.
Cardinale: Those were the most important tapes
that they got against John.
Raab: It gave them a mountain of evidence,
and that was the key to finally indicting him.
♪♪
John Gotti was arrested on December 11, 1990.
Gabriel: I go barging into the club,
and there's John and Sammy sitting at their table.
And, you know, John looks at me.
He goes, "Oh, we were expecting you.
I know why you're here."
I said, "Well, that's good. That makes this easy."
And he said, "Well, you know, can we at least
finish our coffee?"
I said, "Yeah, enjoy your coffee.
We're not in a rush.
We'll be going home later. You won't be."
There's a classic photo of the table in the Ravenite
with three cups of espresso,
which was the last espresso Gotti ever had,
I believe, as a free man.
Man: John Gotti wore his customary look of nonchalance
as FBI agents led him away from a federal processing center.
They've said they are determined to put him in prison
for the rest of his life.
♪♪
Man: Gotti and three associates in the Gambino family
have been indicted on federal charges
that include murder and racketeering.
Raab: Shortly before Christmas,
the FBI and the justice department
indicted him on a whole bevy of charges
that could lead to a life sentence.
And they also indicted Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
Man: One charge includes the killing of former mob boss
Paul Castellano, allegedly rubbed out
so Gotti could take over.
He's a murderer. He's not a folk hero.
He's charged with four murders in this indictment.
He's charged with conspiring to murder
another member of organized crime in the indictment.
He's a criminal, in our judgement.
Feldman: Certainly, the press at the time were at the point
where it was another John Gotti bust.
Let's see how he gets out of this one.
So, before the trial began, various recordings were played,
and John Gotti and his other defendants,
including Sammy "The Bull" Gravano,
were present to hear that.
There was a sense that Gotti and Gravano were in this together,
they were partners in everything they were doing.
The apartment bug, where Gotti was picked up,
ultimately had another twist to it.
Gravano was not always present for these conversations.
And on some of the tapes, Gotti was not, to put it mildly,
charitable in his comments about Gravano.
DeStefano: Gotti is heard complaining about Gravano.
He ruminated about
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano's earning power.
But, more importantly, he implicates Sammy
in like three murders.
Papa: The tapes were being played.
Gravano and Gotti were sitting there.
And it isn't pretty.
You can only imagine what's going on in their minds.
That was going to be a problem.
Gravano: When I heard this tape, I was devastated.
He's betraying me behind my back.
Cardinale: Sammy started to see that he was in deep, deep trouble.
He saw the writing on the wall.
Raab: A major weakness in Gotti
was this misjudgment of characters.
What he really didn't understand about Sammy
is that, very simply,
Sammy had never served any jail time.
Nobody knew what his character would be if he got into trouble.
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano notified the FBI
that he was willing to defect.
Cardinale: One day, all of a sudden,
he is supposedly taken out for medical reasons,
and he never comes back.
And it becomes clear to everyone that the reason he's gone
is because he's decided to become a government witness.
He is actually now working with the FBI.
Feldman: That was a monumental decision for him,
and it was a major win for the government.
Cardinale: It was shocking. There's no question about it.
No one ever expected that to happen.
Gravano knew where all the skeletons
were buried, literally.
John's a double-crosser.
I'm a master double-crosser.
We played chess, and he lost.
♪♪
Man: No tickets are being sold,
but the January trial of John Gotti
promises to be a bout of major proportions.
Feldman: The trial, if you will, of John Gotti started
on the 21st of January in 1992.
Papa: The charges were sensational.
The murders were sensational.
And here's John Gotti.
Will he beat this rap?
That was really the question.
Miller: Entering the fourth trial, it did appear
that the government pulled out all stops.
Papa: This was almost about reputations,
that the prosecutors needed this conviction
because John Gotti was getting away with murder.
Feldman: This case against John Gotti was executed
in a very different way.
So, let's take the jury, for example.
The jury was sequestered throughout the entire trial,
and that was something that was not the norm at all at the time.
There was a genuine concern,
because of the prior jury-fixing incidents,
that, somehow, Gotti or his henchmen
would try to reach out to one or more
jury members to fix the trial.
Unlike previous attempts,
this time, the federal government
had two things going for its case against John Gotti.
The first thing, of course, is it had those recordings,
the recordings that were made where you can hear
John Gotti discussing
all sorts of nefarious operations of his family.
The tapes were very compelling.
Gabriel: What's he going to say? "I didn't say that"?
The evidence was very strong.
Feldman: And the most important thing they had
was Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
Man: Sammy "The Bull" Gravano took the witness stand
in Brooklyn Federal Court Monday.
Feldman: The case has been unfolding now
for a little more than a month or so.
The moment that everybody was now waiting for --
the testimony in court of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
That was a big deal, because it had never happened
before in any Mafia case anywhere in the world, really,
that you would have someone that powerful come and testify
in court against his former boss, John Gotti.
Gravano: I knew at that point my life was over
as Salvatore "Sammy The Bull" Gravano.
I would be called a rat, a traitor, an informer.
I would be called a million different names.
My family would have to live through this horror,
but I was done.
Papa: Gravano came onto that witness stand,
into the seat so quietly.
Everybody really held their collective breath.
It was a very dramatic experience.
Gotti had a kind of smirk on his face.
Gotti might have been thinking,
"If I walk out of this one, good luck, Mr. Gravano."
Man: Gravano admitted that he was the underboss,
the second-in-command,
of the nation's most powerful Mafia family,
the Gambinos, at the time he and Gotti were arrested.
Gravano testified that John Gotti helped plan
the 1985 rub-out of godfather Paul Castellano.
In one of the most significant mob defections
in U.S. history, Gravano described,
in blood-curdling detail,
the plot to kill Paul Castellano.
He testified, I think, for nine days.
Thornburgh: He had intimate knowledge that was corroborated
by the actual tapes that were taken of conversations.
Papa: Sammy Gravano knew what was going on.
He knew the people involved.
He knew the people that were murdered.
Man: Gravano also testified about how he was inducted into the Mafia,
how then-godfather Paul Castellano told him that
if he should ever break the Mafia's code of silence,
his soul would burn.
As Gravano testified to this,
John Gotti looked at him and smiled.
Papa: Gravano was not going to be unnerved,
and he wasn't.
He was an excellent witness.
Gravano really was the cement for the case.
♪♪
Man: The jury surprised just about everyone
with the speed of its deliberation --
about a day and a half.
John Gotti has been found guilty
and will face life in prison.
Papa: He was found guilty of everything, and it was over.
Feldman: This was the first time in his career
as a Mafia boss that Gotti had been found guilty.
Cardinale: Five of those counts were murder and aid of racketeering
that carried mandatory life-imprisonment sentences.
The Teflon is gone.
The don is covered with Velcro,
and every charge in the indictment stuck.
Schumacher: Gotti was sent to a maximum-security
federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.
And not only that, he was placed in, essentially --
23 hours a day, he was in solitary confinement.
Papa: It was over for John Gotti.
He was in one of the most punitive prisons in the country.
The "New York Daily News" said, in August,
believes John Gotti is still leading a crime family
from prison.
Under his conditions, that's quite a feat.
Which is what? He's in behind --
He is in 23-1/2-hour lockup in Marion,
which is a super-maximum-security facility,
and there's no communication other than
with an immediate family member once or twice a month.
♪♪
Feldman: For a long period of time,
the name John Gotti actually kind of disappeared
from the public's consciousness because he was behind bars.
But it was known that he was ill.
It was known that he was suffering from throat cancer.
And then, ultimately, on June 10, 2002,
he succumbed to the cancer.
Man: Family, friends, and associates gathered to give John Gotti,
a man convicted of murder and racketeering,
a hero's send-off.
The procession of vehicles, led by limousines
bearing elaborate flower arrangements,
stopped at Gotti's home,
where more people gathered for a glimpse
and to pay respect.
♪♪
Gabriel: For all the fanfare with John Gotti,
he was the least-effective boss that ever existed.
Raab: The truth about Gotti was, he was an incompetent,
almost imbecilic mob leader.
He came in deciding that he was going to remake the Mafia.
Instead, he became a whirlwind for disaster.
Papa: The Gambino crime family continued on
but, I would say, in a more crippled state.
We took the unions away because of his conviction,
which weakened all the other families.
Feldman: And after John Gotti's conviction
and after the turning of Gravano,
more mob members started turning
and became witnesses in various cases
for the federal government.
Gabriel: John Gotti is the boss
that brought the whole Mafia down.
He brought the attention to it,
thinking that he was untouchable.
It's that kind of arrogance that ruins empires.
John Gotti wasn't Robin Hood.
He was a murderer.
Raab: Perhaps what sums him up best, in some respects,
he was talking to one of his daughters, Victoria,
about his life and how wonderful he was and how,
because of him, the Gambino family would be so strong.
And he tells his daughter,
"You will never see another guy like me
if you live to be 5,000 years old."
Can you believe this?
This is what he tells his daughter,
while he's almost rotting in prison.
♪♪
John Gotti, inmate 182-053,
lived nearly a decade in prison before passing away.
The Brooklyn Catholic diocese denied him
the honor of a funeral mass,
but his family went forward with a burial,
laying him to rest in a gold casket.
He is entombed in a mausoleum in Queens, New York,
directly beside his beloved son, Frankie.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg. Thanks for watching.
Good night.