All in the family!
Junior Gotti's night to remember: Sister Victoria Gotti describes secret Mafia ceremony in new bookBY HELEN KENNEDY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, September 25, 2009,
Mob boss John Gotti (left) leaves court with John (Junior) Gotti (in tie) in 1987 (Pedin/News)
Junior Gotti in 2007 (Schwartz for News)
Victoria Gotti dishes on her family in her new book 'This Family of Mine' (Ward for News)John A. (Junior) Gotti became a Mafia "made man" on Christmas Eve 1988 in a shadowy blood ceremony that he compared to joining nobility, his sister reveals in a new tell-all.
"I swear, I did think about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table," she quotes him saying after he took his seat with 10 other "men of honor."
Victoria Gotti likens the criminal organization her brother had just joined to Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
"Many of them did take from the rich and often gave to the poor, while lining their own pockets, of course," she writes in the omerta-annihilating "This Family of Mine," out next week from Simon and Schuster.
While insisting she doesn't condone crime, Gotti calls Sicilian mobsters honorable men compared with hypocrites like corrupt politicians, perverted priests or crooked cops.
She also declares there is no difference between paying taxes to fund police and paying protection to the mob.
Junior Gotti, who for years denied his mob membership until he recently said he'd quit "the life" in 1999, is in the midst of his fourth racketeering trial.
In her book, his sister vividly describes how proud he was to join La Costa Nostra in a somber ceremony in a dimly lit Mulberry St. apartment.
"This was one of the most important days in his life. ... [He] was the happiest man alive," Victoria writes.
Junior wore his lucky red tie. He was surrounded by hard men in expensive suits, she writes.
Their father, Gambino family boss John Gotti, was not present to avoid bad luck and the appearance of nepotism.
He was given a picture of a saint stained with a drop of his father's blood. The picture was set afire as he recited an oath pledging to burn like the card if he betrayed the brotherhood.
Breaking ancient codes, Victoria Gotti even names who was there, among them Underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and Gambino Consigliere Frank (Frankie Loc) Locascio.
After the ceremony, Junior went down the street to the Ravenite Social Club, where his proud father - whom Junior venerated as a god - held court, she writes.
Victoria says that just three years later, in 1991, her brother started wanting out, sickened by the gangland rubout of his best friend, Bobby Borriello.
She called the murder "the beginning of the end" of John's involvement with the mob.
The book describes an unusual childhood with a tough-but-adored father who was often either in jail or in the headlines.
Once, when a gang of bat-wielding toughs set on Junior, her father beat three of them to a pulp and forced others to beg for their lives. The don then made his son fight each of his attackers, one-on-one, to regain his honor, his daughter writes. She portrays her dad as a powerful mob boss who reveled in ill-gotten riches, but never implicates him in murders.
Indeed, she insists he had nothing to do with some of the big killings he famously ordered, including the neighbor who accidentally ran down his 12-year-old son, and the slaying of his predecessor, Paul Castellano.
She says she thinks someone who thought they were doing her father a favor had the neighbor eliminated. She skips over who really killed Castellano.
As to tapes of Gotti threatening to saw people's heads off, she said it was just his style.
In her telling, prosecutors and cops are incompetent, corrupt or out to get the Gottis. Even the famous 1989 tax-evasion case against Leona Helmsley was brought because G-men were barred from Junior's wedding reception at the Helmsley Palace, she claims.
That wedding scene is memorable: "Each New York crime family had a table," she reports.
She also relates a striking moment from her wedding day in 1984, describing how her brother's attractive friend John Alite made a move, planting a long kiss on her.
Alite is the star government witness in her brother's trial. She calls him a despicable, lying coward who made up an affair with her and the charges against her brother.
hkennedy@nydailynews.com
"I swear, I did think about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table," she quotes him saying after he took his seat with 10 other "men of honor."
Victoria Gotti likens the criminal organization her brother had just joined to Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
"Many of them did take from the rich and often gave to the poor, while lining their own pockets, of course," she writes in the omerta-annihilating "This Family of Mine," out next week from Simon and Schuster.
While insisting she doesn't condone crime, Gotti calls Sicilian mobsters honorable men compared with hypocrites like corrupt politicians, perverted priests or crooked cops.
She also declares there is no difference between paying taxes to fund police and paying protection to the mob.
Junior Gotti, who for years denied his mob membership until he recently said he'd quit "the life" in 1999, is in the midst of his fourth racketeering trial.
In her book, his sister vividly describes how proud he was to join La Costa Nostra in a somber ceremony in a dimly lit Mulberry St. apartment.
"This was one of the most important days in his life. ... [He] was the happiest man alive," Victoria writes.
Junior wore his lucky red tie. He was surrounded by hard men in expensive suits, she writes.
Their father, Gambino family boss John Gotti, was not present to avoid bad luck and the appearance of nepotism.
He was given a picture of a saint stained with a drop of his father's blood. The picture was set afire as he recited an oath pledging to burn like the card if he betrayed the brotherhood.
Breaking ancient codes, Victoria Gotti even names who was there, among them Underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and Gambino Consigliere Frank (Frankie Loc) Locascio.
After the ceremony, Junior went down the street to the Ravenite Social Club, where his proud father - whom Junior venerated as a god - held court, she writes.
Victoria says that just three years later, in 1991, her brother started wanting out, sickened by the gangland rubout of his best friend, Bobby Borriello.
She called the murder "the beginning of the end" of John's involvement with the mob.
The book describes an unusual childhood with a tough-but-adored father who was often either in jail or in the headlines.
Once, when a gang of bat-wielding toughs set on Junior, her father beat three of them to a pulp and forced others to beg for their lives. The don then made his son fight each of his attackers, one-on-one, to regain his honor, his daughter writes. She portrays her dad as a powerful mob boss who reveled in ill-gotten riches, but never implicates him in murders.
Indeed, she insists he had nothing to do with some of the big killings he famously ordered, including the neighbor who accidentally ran down his 12-year-old son, and the slaying of his predecessor, Paul Castellano.
She says she thinks someone who thought they were doing her father a favor had the neighbor eliminated. She skips over who really killed Castellano.
As to tapes of Gotti threatening to saw people's heads off, she said it was just his style.
In her telling, prosecutors and cops are incompetent, corrupt or out to get the Gottis. Even the famous 1989 tax-evasion case against Leona Helmsley was brought because G-men were barred from Junior's wedding reception at the Helmsley Palace, she claims.
That wedding scene is memorable: "Each New York crime family had a table," she reports.
She also relates a striking moment from her wedding day in 1984, describing how her brother's attractive friend John Alite made a move, planting a long kiss on her.
Alite is the star government witness in her brother's trial. She calls him a despicable, lying coward who made up an affair with her and the charges against her brother.
hkennedy@nydailynews.com
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 8:23 AM
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