Pete Niven - John Gotti, Mafia Boss

JOHN GOTTI, MAFIA BOSS

PETE NIVEN

The Killer in the Dapper Dress

According to the American Dream, with enough ambition and determination anybody can achieve their goals. This is a fine and uplifting concept, and there is still probably a degree of truth behind it. Most people who talk about the American Dream, however, regard it in a positive light. They do not expect it to apply just as readily to the life of a career criminal and killer as to, say, the man or woman from the poorest of backgrounds who dreams of becoming a leading lawyer or powerful politician.

John Gotti was born on October 27th in 1940. His birthplace was that challenging borough of New York City, the Bronx. While theres no intention to teach New Yorkers to suck eggs, for those less familiar with this region of the city possibly at the current time the busiest part of the entire United States it is worth stating that the borough stretches way beyond the run-down tenements made popular by kitchen sink dramas and hoodlum movies of the 1970s and 80s. Robert De Niro does not head out of a dirty building in every block of this metropolis within a metropolis.

In fact, the Bronx covers a huge area - 42 square miles no less and these days is home to an estimated one and half million people. If it were a city in its own right, it would fit comfortably into the top ten largest in the country, vying with Philadelphia and San Antonio for sixth spot. And while those dank, dark tenements might dominate popular perceptions, it should not be forgotten that the Bronx is home to no less than fourteen colleges and universities, and a quarter of it is made up of parklands.

It was around the turn of the twentieth century that the great Italian exodus began to the city. Gottis parents Fannie and John (known as J.) Joseph Gotti (Sr.) would later join that great drift west from southern Europe. The economy grew and the area flourished. The Yankee Stadium was built, to be graced by the great Joe DiMaggio, and the shops and stores of East 149th Street and Third Avenue would challenge the style and elegance of any in Londons Bond Street or Regent Street.

It was not just a burgeoning Italian community that inhabited the Bronx; almost half of the boroughs population were Jewish at this time, many working in Manhattan. The result was an economy strong enough to mean that by the late 1920s 99% of the Bronxs homes had private bathrooms, while figures for running hot water and central heating were almost as high. One in two households could even boast an electric refrigerator. Then the depression struck, and forty plus years of growth ground to a halt.

This was the world into which young Gotti was born. And his surroundings would soon deteriorate further. Whilst in the north of the borough, and around the likes of Riverdale, luxury apartments continued to rise, around the homes of people like him his father was a poor laborer conditions worsened. Slum clearing in other parts of the city brought about another kind of emigration to the borough, this time of the poorest people. The Bronx began to change, and the influx of Puerto Ricans and African Americans who had found themselves cleared out of the slum-homes in Manhattan and elsewhere sought new dwellings in the southern Bronx. By the time John Gotti was approaching his teens, sections of the Bronx were enduring substantial and enduring poverty. It was a perfect breeding ground for crime, and the influence of Italian culture meant the area was ripe for the cultivation of organized crime. It was something into which John Gotti fell with considerable ease.

When he was born just prior to the USs entry into World War II, John was the fifth child out of thirteen in his family. Life back then was unsettled for the large and, it seemed, constantly expanding clan. They moved often during the boys early years, starting in the poor neighborhoods around South Bronx before finally finding a more permanent home, still in the Bronx, but this time in the East New York section of the borough. It seems likely that it was this move that led the already wayward boy into a life of crime. The East New York area was infamous for its youth gangs and criminal activities, and the impressionable twelve-year-old fell easily into this environment. Soon Gotti was working as an errand boy, but not for the most salubrious of employers. Carmine Fatico held the position of captain in the Gambino family, which was the largest of the five crime families which organized crime in New York. Fatico ran the neighborhood which housed the underground club where young Gotti now worked; it is hard to believe that the institution was anything other than a part of the Gambino network.

Another who spent time there was Aniello Dellacroce, and the mobster soon took a liking to young Gotti, placing him under his wing. Dellacroce would go on to become his lifelong mentor. Under Dellacroces influence, Gotti joined and soon became leader of a local youth gang who called themselves the Fulton-Rockaway boys. Robberies and car jackings were their particular specialties.

Nicknames are popular in mafia crews. Later, John Gotti would be known as Teflon Don and another title which stuck to him when he was older was Dapper Don, which he acquired for his easy personality (in public, at least, more on which later), smart dress sense and casual swagger. In fact, the last of these attributes may not have been entirely an affectation. Young John Gotti was just 14 when he and his gang decided to steal, of all things, a cement mixer. Something went wrong, and Gotti found himself trapped by the foot under the heavy object, and his toes were crushed. He was unable to walk normally after the accident. The swagger was born...and it seemed as though the young hoodlum liked the style it gave him. For others, though, another part of an unpleasant picture had been created.

Much to the relief of his teachers and those students who went to school to learn, and perhaps to give themselves the opportunity to climb out of the crime-ridden area in which they lived, Gotti dropped out of education when he was 16. The community of the Franklin K Lane High School breathed a collective sigh of relief. Gotti was not only a young criminal tearaway, he was a bully who made life a misery for many of his classmates.

His education continued in the underworld, however, and by the time he turned 18 he was on the radar of the local police department, ranked as a part of the Fatico gang, albeit in those days as a low-level associate of this criminal enterprise. His first arrest was along with his brother Gene and another gang member who went by the name of Ruggiero.

Indeed, by the time he was 21, Gotti had been arrested on no less than five occasions. The rap sheet was long; car theft had become his particular forte, but the bullying character seen in school had continued out on the streets, and drunkenness in public and fighting featured highly among the reasons for which he attracted the attention of the local police. Still, it seems as though an element, albeit a meagre one, of familial loyalty remained. J. Joseph and Fannie must have hoped, if a little half-heartedly, that their son was beginning to grow up when he announced he was getting married. His wife was Victoria DiGiorgio, who was just seventeen, and four years her new husbands junior. They wed on March 6th, 1962. In fact, the couple already had a daughter, Angela, at this time and number two was on the way. Meanwhile, John Gotti took on the role of loving, responsible husband by leaving his criminal life behind and taking jobs as a presser in a coat factory and then as assistant to a truck driver.