Original subtitles

You have to remember, two months previous, my father was acquitted.

He was facing 25 for life, so you can understand also we're riding that high.

We're all happy. We're all happy. We got a good decision.

The whole city should be happy.

We just won a case. He just got his life back.

I just got my father back.

We just got our leader back.

By the 80s, the boss of the Gambino family was basically the boss of the

in the United States.

We're riding the high of John's invincibility.

I was asked questions, and asked questions about my heart, basically.

How I felt about certain things, and where I hoped to go in my life.

And it meant a lot to me, because I floated home.

I walked in the door, but I floated out.

I had to go straight into the back room and see my father.

It was just by his body language, by his actions, you had to understand what he

was feeling and what he wanted.

You more or less say to yourself, now I get it.

Now I get it.

What he did say is you have to enjoy these moments because you never know

it's going to be your last.

I have to either follow John as I had said I would off a cliff to the end, or

I've got to protect my family the best way I can.

I was granted a visit to go see my father, who was...

a battle in cancer that was in the late stages at Springfield, Missouri.

And at that point, and at that meeting, is when my father and I had our

discussion that I wanted to move on. I wanted to move on in my life.

To make my father understand, a die -in -the -wool street guy who loved and

lived by the streets, to now say that what you loved and lived by, I don't

and live by so much.

I don't think there's a place in America where we can get a funeral.

They are.

My wife and I were engaged for several years. We've been dating since we were

kids. We just wanted to go off and get married and be quiet about it. I didn't

need anybody, as we say in Italian families, to boost it.

I just didn't want the fanfare. I wanted to just move on and do this as quietly

as possible.

And, well, my father wasn't having none of that.

His position was, I'm somebody.

And that means you're somebody.

And your wife is marrying you. That makes her somebody.

Just do it the way I tell you to do it, and make sure you do it right, and make

sure your wife has a good night.

So what my father had done was he booked the Helmsley Palace.

He was friendly with Leona Helmsley, and I don't think at that time there was

ever more an opulent wedding than that one in Manhattan. People flying in from

all over to attend the wedding. We had Jay Black and the American thingin',

Jimmy Roselli, high -end entertainment.

We're splendid in our full battle regala.

our tuxedos on. We all looked the best, the proudest, the tallest, the

strongest. That's who we were.

The FBI tried to infiltrate the wedding. They couldn't penetrate.

And they tried applying for jobs and everything, kitchen help, any way to get

there. But now the screening process was raised several notches.

She put a freeze on all hiring in the hotel.

And to add insult to injury, she had a 20 by 20 Italian flag, which was

for visiting dignitaries.

The day of my wedding, she had a fling outside the hotel.

I don't think I had a relaxing moment at my wedding.

Myself, as well as Bobby Boriello, he was my best man. I think we've worked

harder than anybody else at that wedding.

My father was the statesman, the ambassador, greet everybody, be John

we had to make sure he was okay and everything around him was okay.

And my poor wife, how could the most special day of her life be her day?

If you're sharing the room with John Gotti, How could the room be yours? How

could the day be yours? It just, you were in a backdrop.

You were an afterthought to my father. You know, he walked in the room, he was

the star.

I believe the wedding was everything he could have hoped for, and maybe then

some.

And then when the wedding was over, it was back to the battlefield.

The FBI was spending over $100 million to get my father at that time, and

everybody wanted that prize.

They failed three times previous.

And the fourth time, the FBI, the government wanted to pick up all those

and be successful.

Gotti established the Ravenite as headquarters, so big mistake.

This is supposed to be a secret society.

You're not supposed to meet all these guys in public, which he did, so...

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and Thursday, different captains would come

their number one guys, sometimes their soldiers, and they'd meet with guardians

by the club. Sometimes they would take walks around the block. We'd call them

walk talks.

There was a brand -new condominium being constructed at the corner of Houston

and Mulberry Street.

Our special operations people put a $100 ,000 camera in there, state -of -the

-art, to do videotapes of the Ravenite.

And we also learned from our informants... that Gotti was discussing

the club. The club is pretty small. There's two rooms.

He sat in the room towards the back, and we got a court order for electronic

surveillance.

Now comes the hard part. How do you put the bug in the Ravenite?

In most of the Italian areas, we call it like Indian country. It's no man's land

because everybody knows everybody.

But our special ops people, they put a bank in, in the club, and they wired it

back to our office at 26 Federal.

Generally, electronic surveillance in social clubs is unproductive because the

audibility is just so poor. There's so much background noise that it's very

difficult to get clear conversation.

We got too many people in a small place, and we really couldn't pick out good

conversations. So we tried everything for months and months, and we finally

down in December of 1988 and said we've got to regroup and reanalyze the

problem.

And after a few months, all roads were leading back to Ravenite. This is where

Gotti was holding business.

It was frustrating for myself and the squad because a lot of people said,

you're not going to do it. He's untouchable. You're not going to get

Teflon down.

You hear all the talk.

But we just kept at it.

We went to our informants again. They said, oh, by the way, I was in the club

the other night, and I saw Gotti and Tommy Gambino go out through the back

And they walked into the corridor, and they were talking back there.

A couple weeks later, the same informant says, oh, by the way, I saw Sammy

Gravano, Gotti, and Locacia go out that back door and go upstairs.

And he found out later there's an apartment above the club on the third

which is occupied by Mrs.

Sorelli. And what Gotti would do is give her like 100 bucks and tell her to go

to her neighbor and watch TV.

And they'd go up in her apartment and use it for high -level administrative.

That was a break we needed.

Fresh night, federal FBI agents and New York police detectives arrested John

Gotti, allegedly the boss of the Gambino crime family. The federal

racketeering indictment that outlines a pattern of mob activity, ranging from

loan sharking to labor racketeering.

And the feds say it's all backed up by murder.

About a half dozen murders will be named in the indictment. He's expected to be

charged with ordering the hit on the man he allegedly replaced at the top of the

mob. Gotti spent the night in jail. The last time he was arrested, Gotti was out

like nightfall.

No questions? No questions.

You ready for this next case? I'm always ready.

Are you worried about it? No.

John Gotti had been remarkably successful with a legal team consisting

lawyers, Bruce Cutler and Jerry Shargell.

One or the other of them had won every case that John Gotti ever had.

So the government decided, first thing we have to do is get rid of these

lawyers. And they made a motion to disqualify Jerry Shargell and Bruce

the grounds that their names may come up in the evidence in the case.

So Judge Glasser deprived John of his attorneys that had been so successful

him. I don't for a minute think they were afraid of me. He was already

according to the FBI by then, by the room bug in the apartment above the

Ravenite. Gandhi's winning streak is about to screech to a halt. For the

government, this is a must -win case.

They've said it before, but this time the feds say they've really got the

to lock the reputed godfather away for life.

I heard

those tapes.

It's a suffocating case for John.

He knew it.

On Monday, it was a steady shower of rain that fell on the Brooklyn house

Bartholomew Bobby Borriello lived.

Saturday night, it was a shower of bullets that killed the longtime

chauffeur, and friend of John Gotti.

Borriello was also considered a friend, sources say, of John Gotti Jr.

He was my best man.

Kim and I were married, and I baptized his second son.

Bobby was a Court Street, Brooklyn guy.

tough guy in his own right, a charming cat, a lot of love, a lot of trust, a

of respect.

By the time I got to the movie theater, the coming attractions were still on,

and already I'd seen my uncle coming down one end of the movie theater and my

other uncle coming down the other end.

I've never seen them cry before, never.

So, you know, even as a kid, I knew from there things would never be the same.

See the look in that little boy's eyes.

I tell you, it just wrenched my heart.

You know, Bobby was close to home, and look, it hurt. It was painful to go

identify Bobby's body, to watch them plug the holes in Bobby. He was shot

times, and I remember telling the mortician that he missed the hole, so he

to put the wax plug, the one that went through his chin. It just reinforced,

know, that this...

My father always had a rule.

His rule was, if you didn't do time, you can't get close to John Gotti.

Everybody close to my father.

Well, Hawking guys that did time. They were from the old neighborhood. He grew

up with these guys, cut his teeth with these individuals, and they all did

Every one of them.

Sammy Gravano never did a day in jail.

The early 80s is when my father had numerous opportunities to be in the

of Sammy Gravano via Frankie DiCicco, who was very close friends with Sammy

Gravano. When Frankie was killed, my father, exercising his diplomatic

had made the decision to make Sammy closer to him as a result of the void of

Frankie DiCicco.

That's what made that relationship.

Where

Sammy

was known, you know, for being around and about and making things happen in

Brooklyn, we in Queens never heard of him. We didn't know him.

Nor do we care.

I'm from Gravesend, Bensonhurst area in Brooklyn, and Sammy Gravano, those were

his stomping grounds. I mean, from a kid, I just remember hearing, you know,

tons of stories about Sammy Gravano and, you know, just different places that he

had, from tallies to players to Plaza Suite.

Very, very ambitious.

It was a running joke. I mean, if you walked into a club, Sammy has a piece.

Sammy has a piece.

He's got a piece of this place.

The one thing that was a known fact, no matter what, was don't cross Sammy.

If you had a problem with Sammy, you might as well get on a plane and leave

because it ain't going to be too good for you.

Federal officials may soon know a lot more about reputed mob kingpin John

John Miller reports that a high -ranking aide is apparently ready to talk.

When Sammy flipped, I think that was the biggest surprise to so many people,

probably one of the biggest surprises in mob history, I would think. I remember

when it was on the front page of the New York Daily News and the Post with the

rat. It was crazy.

I think it was a shock to everybody.

Gravano confessed to 19 murders and was facing life behind bars.

But in return for his cooperation, Judge gave Gravano five years.

The mafia existed for a gazillion years because of the Omerta laws, that people

joined the organization with the promise that they would never talk about it,

they'd never turn informant, they'd never rat.

To have somebody who was that close and loyal to the actual boss of the family

to break ranks was, on many levels, a tectonic change.

If you're a true believer in the street, you have to look at it first with

disgust, and then second with panic.

Gotti's associates had little to say about the trial.

Outside their clubhouse door hangs a yellow ribbon of hope for their boss's

return. But with him or without him, family business goes on as usual.

Mikey Scott, Frankie Fabiano, Joey D 'Angelo. These three, when they were

close to Sammy Gravano, were considered members of his crew. People were

lobbying hard to kill them.

I showed up in the middle of the night.

had other people with me armed outside and took a position and put those

individuals on the carpet and told them, unless this came from our chief, you'll

stand down.

My father thought he was doing the right thing in putting him in a position, and

he questioned himself. He would put his head down, and he would mutter to me,

punk, couldn't do time, punk, which was really him questioning.

That he broke his own rule.

John Gotti is facing life in prison after being convicted of all 13 counts

against him. The jury concluded that he was responsible for murdering five

associates in the Gambino crime family and was guilty of racketeering charges.

Good evening, Mr. Gotti. Are you surprised?

Gleason told the jurors that some eight hours of FBI tapes are more than enough

to convict Gotti, saying things like... The

Teflon is gone,

the Don is covered with Velcro, and every charge in the indictment stuck.

Dottie's sentencing touched off an angry demonstration by some 1 ,000 Dottie

supporters outside the U .S. courthouse in Brooklyn.

It always bothered me that he became this mythic figure in New York, and

throughout the country, people thought of him as some sort of folk hero.

And, you know, I thought of him as somebody who was a criminal. And the

that he was getting respect of the citizens of this country, I thought, was

farcical.

When my father was indicted and eventually was convicted in 1992 of

you start...

questioning a lot of different things. You start questioning the fact that your

family are basically going to be forced to fend for themselves.

I saw him the day after he was convicted on the last case, and it's

obvious he's going to jail for life. I said, John, what can I say? I'm sorry.

He said to me, Charlie, what are you sorry about?

This is a building.

It doesn't kill anybody.

We keep fighting.

We could have woke up this morning and found out we had cancer.

That's something.

And those were the last words he ever spoke to me.

My father hated flying.

He was on his way to serve his life sentence at Marion.

It was a small plane.

They're messing with him a little bit. John, you know.

This must really rattle you. He turns around. He looks at one of them.

He says, hey, I don't give a if this plane goes down. He goes, you guys are

going home to your family.

You know, I'm going to do the rest of my life. I hope this plane goes down. You

know, he just had this, you know, amazing sense of humor and in dark

Mob boss John Gotti was sentenced yesterday to life without parole.

Even more significant, government prosecutors say the verdict found the

knell for the mafia as we know it.

After Gotti was convicted, for a couple of years he had a committee that ran the

family. John Gotti's brother, Peter, became the other head, and then

there was Jackie the Nose D 'Amico.

But there was no way that John Gotti's father was not going to have his trusted

son, who was brought along to be part of whatever triumvirate was going to run

the family.

As John Gotti's son and his brother Pete, my Uncle Pete, were the only two

in the street, right away, you know, there's an expectation. A lot of

responsibility falls onto us. People are coming around by the Bergen now looking

for some guidance and looking for some direction.

And you try your best to fill the shoes and fill their needs.

But you have to understand something. It was very difficult for me because my

heart was with him. It wasn't so much there. So a lot of responsibility to

survive.

fell onto my table.

You know, while my father was away, it was John who was the head of the family,

who all our kids looked up to. There wasn't one thing that John didn't attend

for my kid, and I didn't have a husband around.

So John took over the role.

At such an unbelievably young age, again, you don't realize it, but 25, 26

old, whether he was prepared for that or not.

When the patriarch of a family suffers a grave illness or life in prison,

the oldest sibling is thrust into the middle of the fire, and enormous amounts

of pressure come with it. Is it true that you're the new boss of the Gambino

crime family?

Absolutely not. I'm the boss of my wife and my children.

You're the boss of your own family? That's right, my wife and my children.

I was convinced that John Jr.

was going to be a major power in the family. In its whole history...

is sort of, you know, being groomed and brought along by his father to be part

of the Gambino crime family.

It wasn't foolish to think that Junior was going to have a place at the table,

whether he deserved it and earned it or not.

I would see my father every six weeks

and, you know, ferry back some niceties at the Bergen -Hutton Fish Club on a

Saturday afternoon.

You had to see how nice he looked. He sends you his warmest regards.

He sends you his warmest regards. He wants to know how you're making out with

this, that, or the other thing.

By seeing me and by hearing the words come from my mouth and knowing they're

coming from John Gotti, my father, I guess it made them feel secure.

He's actively involved in personal aspects of their lives or other aspects

well.

My mother said, why is he going to see his father every six weeks?

Well, I'm doing what a dutiful son would do.

But there was like deference being shown to me now, and everybody's giving me

the attention they would have given my father.

She was nobody's fool, my mother.

She was smart enough to understand.

He's exiting the store.

All right, he's dressed in red, jogging to show up on a red cap. I just got

blocked out by a man.

I'm blocked, but he is acting.

Looks like he's going to come around and out the other side.

So young John Gotti Jr.

became the acting boss. He's probably 30 years old, running the Gambino family.

So he loved being the boss, giving orders, making all the money.

But then the fun wears off because he realized he's a target of law

So he's going to be followed. He's going to be electronically surveyed. We're

going to be doing search warrants. We're going to be after him ad infinitum

until he goes to jail. And he realized that.

Once my father was convicted in 92, in the words of Bruce Mell, I became top

target.

So they stepped it up against me.

John the Father ruled by fear.

Sammy Gravano was very sharp.

And together they kept the Gambino family going forward.

Junior, for all of his skills and being the son, you know, to be on that high

level of organized primedom, you know, you need a certain characteristic,

certain kind of smarts.

It was maybe 1995.

I was a 20 -year -old kid. I look at the front of the newspaper.

There's a big, beautiful bullseye on my brother's head.

In this article, it identified me. I was an acting leader of the Gambino family.

There's going to be a hit squad that's going to come over from Italy, and

they're going to try to take me out.

And my mother buried my brother 13 years previous.

I've got to race to her house before she sees it. She used to get the papers

delivered to her doorstep. My mother's an early riser. I hope she's getting up

late today.

And when I went in the house, she was, you know, crying.

What's this? And I told her, Ma, it's all nonsense. It's all nonsense. This is

bull.

She drove to Kennedy Airport, jumped on a plane, and had a car waiting for her

in St. Louis, Missouri, to take her to Marion, Illinois, in federal prison.

She went in, and she confronted him.

My mother was a raving lunatic.

He went and he told him everything she had to say, which wasn't nice.

She was very bitter. She was very angry.

And she said, if something happens to my son, you know, I hope you rot in hell.

You know, my father saying, I don't know, what are you talking about? You

what are you out of your mind?

Newspapers are nonsense. But she wasn't buying it this time.

trying to make a reputation, thinks what they read in the paper is true or

something. I get sick every day.

You can't get sicker than I do.

I'm his mother. How much can I do?

And she slammed the phone down, and she walked out on my father.

I said, Ma, I'm not your little kid anymore.

She says, You're always my kid, and I have the right to do this.

He didn't have the right to do this.

I was here always. He was not here always. He was away in prison doing his

thing. And I buried my son as well. It wasn't just his son, Frankie boy. It was

my son as well. He came out of me.

And I'm traumatized and I can't function because of it. And you want to now do

this to me?

I can't forgive him. I can forgive everything else, anything else. I can't

forgive this.

And she didn't visit him for a couple of years.

I was trying to keep my father.

you know, happy and satisfied in his position.

I was trying to keep my family, blood family, happy and satisfied with me and

their position.

And you're trying to keep all, as my father would say, your extended family,

your cousins and nephews and uncles, happy in their position.

And it was just too much for me.

Junior, in many ways, I think he was a liability to the organized crime

He was caught with lists of organized crime figures in his house. We

what some in this investigative team have referred to as the Holy Grail,

of made members.

So he was making some mistakes, and plus he's the son of John Gotti. So they're

forever going to watch him, hunt him, and by extension, anybody around him. So

now you're in 92, 94, 96, constantly getting hit with subpoenas left and

constantly fighting these investigations.

And, you know, I had lawyers full time on my payroll.

And in February of 97, after they got done and ransacked everything and took

apart my main office in Jamaica, Queens, and removed all their bugs and all

their wiretaps and took my computers out, there was this brief moment of

My secretary's crying.

She's stunned what just happened. They came in like stormtroopers. That moment,

a bang on my door. Boom, boom, boom.

So the kid Anthony Plumatella, who was a partner at that time in the phone card

business, comes over and says, John, he says, people bang on the door. They say

the FBI.

I thought it was friends of mine breaking balls, and I was in no mood for

breaking balls.

I basically said, excuse my language, tell them to go fuck their mothers.

Next thing I know, my phone rings, my office.

I answer the phone. Hello.

Hi, John. This is Bob Vendette from the FBI.

Hey, Bob.

What do you want?

He says, well, we're outside, and I will not go with my mother.

They're outside.

Open the door.

They see the office. They says, who tipped you off? I basically said, either

did it, or someone pretended to be FBI from the White Plains office just came

through my office like a whirlwind.

He gets on the phone, and sure enough, they were stepping over each other in

investigations with me. It was getting so crazy.

Remember when John Gotti Sr.

was known as the Teflon Don because he beat so many attempts at putting him

behind bars?

Those days ended when Gotti was sent away to the federal lockup in Marion,

Illinois, for life.

Now his son and namesake is looking at a minimum of 20 years in the slam if he

is convicted of the new charges against him.

Feds say the younger Gotti had been running the Gambino organized crime

since they locked up his dad.

When I was arrested, I was detained without bail.

And I get the news that my father's dying of cancer.

I was the person that spoke to John.

I was so distraught, but I tried really hard to be cool for him, and I said,

Daddy has cancer.

At that point, John didn't even care about getting bail.

He was diagnosed after four months of complaining that he had lumps in his

throat. After four months, they were kind enough to check him out.

And they realized that he had stage four head and neck cancer. The reality was

setting in that my father was indeed going to die in that tomb.

As you would say, this is my tomb. This is my destiny. It is what it is. He

accepted it.

I didn't.

Now at some point in 1997, we were denied the appeal.

The reality was setting in that I was going to be accepted too.

My purpose in that life, in the street life, was my father.

He was now fighting for his life.

So as far as I was concerned, my cause was done.

He was my number one priority.

He took priority over my own children, and he was gone.

And at some point, in a conversation with my daughter, she was eight years

She had asked me if Pop -Pop, my father, would be coming for her birthday.

And I says, no, baby, he can't come.

I said, I can't come. He has to stay where he's at. That's where he has to

He has responsibilities.

So, Daddy, at some point, are you going to have those same responsibilities that

you can't come to my birthdays anymore?

You'll stop coming to my birthdays?

And it hit me.

I have to either follow John as I had said I would off a cliff to the end, or

I've got to protect my family the best way I can.

And I've got to resolve this case.

take a plea, go to jail, pay my debt, and come

home and just raise these kids because I don't know how they're going to survive

without me.

At that point, I said to myself, I said, let me think about possibly pleading

guilty on this case, minimize the time as much as possible so I can get home

keep our family intact, salvage our family.

I wanted to have the ability to just get a fishing pole and spend time with my

children. and put our blood family back together.

I just wanted to move on.

I wouldn't plead and go to jail on any terms unless my father understood all

particulars, unless my father understood and gave me that permission.

I actually made bail. I was on what's called a home confinement. I had an

on my ankle.

Judge Barrington Parker had said, well, look, how come this case is not being

resolved or being discussed for resolution on a plea?

And Jerry Shaw Gellert said, your honor, my client wouldn't even consider

entertaining a plea without having a conversation with his father. So they

fine, you want to visit him?

You can visit him, but we're going to take the entire, I mean, again,

shooting themselves in the foot, part 212.

It's too perfect.

So the judge says, I'm going to permit a visit with a camera monitoring him,

father and son sitting on opposite sides of a table, and the visit was granted.

I remember being on the plane, flying into St. Louis, and then being driven

to USP Springfield, and saying to myself, over and over, I'm going to get

touch my father.

I haven't specifically touched my father in seven and a half years.

Now he's going to have the opportunity to embrace him, to hug him, to sit

the table and be able to tap him on the hand and see how he's feeling.

And I'm just playing in my mind, like, what's he going to feel like again?

What's he going to smell like?

Then the whole picture, the whole idea, the whole reason and purpose for the

visit jumped back and took off my mindset.

that basically, you know, get a hold of yourself, John.

This is not going to be that joyous of an occasion.

This is a preamble to a video recording at the Medical Center for Federal

Physicians in Springfield, Missouri, on February the 5th, 1999.

The time is approximately 1 .50 p .m. We asked the government. They have no

video. We don't know what you're talking about.

We press it, we press it, we press it, we press it. Guess what?

There's a video.

There's two FBI agents there.

Both stand up, come over and shake my hand. And at first, reluctant to shake

their hand, but I want to show some respect at least. I reached out, how are

you? How are you? Yeah. What can I do for you?

Well, we're going to be here, you know, during the visit with your father.

So I don't think so.

Certainly, my father won't sit in the room with you guys.

And as I'm dialoguing with these two agents, you hear the chains, and my

father's coming, and eight or ten hacks around him, and they're escorting him

down the hall, and all of a sudden he appears by the door, and he sees me and

father, and he's belly chained and ankle chained, and I see half his jaw is

missing, and I'm a little stunned.

He sees the two agents, and he says, who are these fellas?

And the one agent reaches his hand across.

He says, you know, pardon if I won't shake your hand. He says, well, we're

to be here during the visit.

Really.

Turns to me, says, John, I love you.

And I got to tell you, it's amazing seeing you.

He says, but it's not going to happen. He starts backing out of the room. He

tells the guards, take me back to my cell now.

And all of a sudden, the lieutenant jumps in and says, wait, please.

Reads the paper, reads the court order, turns to the FBI agents and says, look,

no way does it say in this court order that you're to be present. This visit

will proceed.

You will not be here. I'm sorry. You have to leave.

Only when they left the room, he would step in the room.

His restraints were removed, and I had the opportunity to walk around the table

and give my father a big embrace and a kiss.

And I became a little emotional.

And that's when I opened up about my thoughts on our family, and I'd like to

take a plea on the case.

You build yourself up to say something. You build yourself up to do something.

You know in your mind exactly how you're going to execute, okay? And you pray it

in there with that thought.

And then once you see him, it's...

You know, you fall under his spell. You fall under his spell. He was that

powerful, that influential individual to me.

Remember,

John Gotti was dying in prison because of this code that he lived by.

He wasn't going to suddenly admit that he was wrong. He could not admit that he

was wrong.

I went

there

with a plan.

And you know what they say, every fighter has a plan until he gets hit.

I walked in there with a plan. I'm trying to move him.

John is just slumped over.

It was like...

You were eavesdropping in on the most uncomfortable conversation between a

father and his son.

I'm trying to move my father, and he's dying in the womb.

He has his way, and he's not going to change.

There's no way he's going to change.

He's basically pleading with his father.

to be released.

I became a federal district judge in 1994.

I received the case of United States versus John Gotti Jr.

The father is taken aback by the son's decision that he wants to leave the life

because for the father, you don't leave this life.

It's who you are. It's your self -definition. And the father was not

think that his son was sort of rejecting the family's position, the family's

history, the family's role.

His father is, it turns, chastising him, correcting him.

John Sr. walks into the room and he's cut up. He doesn't look like himself

the street. And there's John Jr.

who's a weightlifter, bodybuilder, whatever you want to say. But it's the

that's ramrod straight through the conversation. And it's the son. And you

see him almost being crushed by the weight of all the things that he's

He went as far as saying to me, you know, when a man chooses a path, even if

comes to the realization at some point down that road that the path is not the

right path, a real man sees it through to the end.

I differed from my father in that perspective.

I told my father, I says, I don't agree with you. I just don't agree with you.

He has to explain to his father that, you know, I'm not you.

I don't see this. I don't see the value of it. I have a son. His name is John

also. I don't want this to be his future. You're telling your own father.

that I'm parting ways with you, I'm rejecting what you stood for, I'm

the family tradition.

Here I have to tell you on your dying days, I want out of that.

That's a hard thing to do.

To face your father, who means everything to you, who you've spent your

life trying to be like, and know that he's going to disapprove of your

I was getting frustrated.

But then watching my father, watching him, and watching the strength, you

the fact that this man was fighting for his life, still was unapologetic,

believed in what he was at that moment and what he was throughout his life.

And it's just one more time.

When I just came into his orbit, I was just captivated.

And finally, there was like a slight pivot. I wouldn't say that it was

because it wasn't.

The father finally just says, you know what, John, do what you want.

He starts to change.

He starts to say, make sure that you're going to be home in time to save your

children. However.

He couldn't help but give him a couple of slaps while he was saying it. You

to do it?

You go ahead and do it.

You're wrong.

You're going to end up just like me. They get their hands on you. You're

going to get out.

I was convinced I'd be successful.

But by the end of the visit, he wore me down.

Always wanting to please my father and always wanting to be there for my father

and be loyalist to my father to my last breath, or at least his last breath, was

part of the dilemma.

He won.

I walked out of there. I was fighting the case. That was it. I was going to

the course and my family, blood family, a second.

That's that.

I couldn't wait to get to a phone to call Jerry Shargel and give him the

And he was like beside himself, but nothing.

I said, we're going to trial. And while he was trying to dissuade him, he

released him.

The fact that he understood that I wanted to move on with my life, it meant

lot to me.

Even though he wasn't supportive of it outwardly, I think in his heart he

understood. So that flight home, I was relieved.

I mean, I just felt good.

I've always was of the mindset that you have to know when to arrive and you have

to know when to leave in life to be successful. You have to.

As a result of my father and his notoriety, I believe the God he stood a

bit too long.

It just seems that if they were going to allocate $10 million to an

investigation, they were going to do $100 million for a Gotti investigation.

So that would mean that you're going to bring the heat to yourself as well as

every individual around you.

You couldn't be successful.

There's no way you could have been in the street life and be successful under

those circumstances.

So I start to question myself and say, look, what should I be doing? I don't

know.

I don't think there's a place in America where we can get a fair trial.

Remember when John Gotti Sr.

was known as the Teflon Don because he beat so many attempts at putting him

behind bars?

Those days ended when Gotti was sent away to the federal lockup in Marion,

Illinois, for life.

Now his son and namesake is looking at a minimum of 20 years in the slam if he

is convicted of the new charges against him.

The feds say the younger Gotti had been running the Gambino organized crime

family since they locked up his dad.

At that point, I was indicted in two separate cases.

I get out on bail.

and we're getting ready to fight the case.

I'm on home confinement, so I have the anklet on my ankle, and I'm sitting in

yard, my daughter Nicolette's playing soccer with her siblings, and I remember

the thought in my mind, if I'm not successful here, okay, the next time I

her, hopefully I'll make it out in time to walk her down the aisle.

I'll miss all those years of her life.

I have to either follow John, as I had said I would off a cliff to the end, or

I've got to protect my family the best way I can.

Take a plea, go to jail, pay my debt, and come

home and just raise these kids because I don't know how they're going to survive

without me.

Junior Gotti dropped a bombshell, pleading guilty to numerous charges,

them racketeering, bribery, extortion, robbery, loan sharking, and gambling.

It was on my wife's birthday that we had taken the plea, and I remember coming

home that night and explaining to her that I was going to go away for a while,

and she was, you know, very upset.

But I said, look, we know this had to end with me going to prison or dying.

is the best -case scenario.

I said, I'm going to go to jail for another seven years. I'm going to come

and we're going to have a life together. I'm going to take care of the kids, and

I'm going to go out and just, you know, do what I'm supposed to do, be a

productive father.

This was going to be the last case.

That's it.

At that time, my attorney was Jerry Shargel, and I told Jerry, try to get

to say it on the record, that they have no intentions, no more prosecutions

against me, this individual.

That's it.

This is going to be finality.

Sharana, I want to put this on the record. Mr. Gotti is taking this plea in

interest of finality and closure.

No further prosecutions of Mr. Gotti. And it was noted.

Noted, boom, on the record.

I remember it was October 18, 1999.

That was my surrender date.

I was scheduled to arrive at the prison at 2 p .m., so it gave me the morning

with my kids.

I permitted them all to stay home from school that day.

They were all in the playroom, and they're playing, and they're doing their

thing, and they're just relieved that they're home from school.

I remember when it was time, I got my gear together, I came down the stairs,

my wife's sobbing hysterically in the kitchen, and I'm going like this to her.

Stop, stop, the kid, stop, just stop. So she turned and walked upstairs.

Then as I had entered the playroom, I thought I would have the ability to be

like my father.

concrete, stoic, walk over, give them their kiss, and just leave.

But as I started walking towards them, I began to get choked up.

So I quickly picked each one up, gave them a quick kiss, and I said, I have to

go. The fellow driving me turned to go out.

I see the front door.

My wife's there with all the kids.

I got out of the car, walked over, big hug and a kiss.

And I remember my second son, Johnny, saying, I see you later. I see you

Like they thought I was coming back.

It was hard on John because he couldn't be there for the kids.

He couldn't be there for us. He couldn't be there for my mother. You know, while

my father was away, it was John who was the head of the family.

John kind of stepped right in like there was not a missing beat.

He was dad.

He could handle all fatherly duties and brotherly duties and friend duties and

everything else.

When John was locked up, I had the responsibility of helping keep my family

together and to go visit my father in the prison he was in.

That six months was probably the worst and the best six months of my life.

When my father was in the final stretches of the terminal illness, I

wife and children home, and I moved.

to be by his side.

His tumors had basically broken through his skin.

They cut off his voice box.

His esophagus was totally closed off.

They busted a trach right through his tumors and such.

For the last 12 months, he was not able to eat.

A nurse said, why are you fighting so hard?

You're fighting stage four head and neck cancer while you're in isolation in

prison. He said, you know, first of all, I'm staying alive for my family.

He said, second of all, every day I'm alive is another day I stick it to the

government.

I was hearing that he was sick and they wouldn't let him go out to the hospital.

Manny was a high -ranking shot caller in Marion, Illinois, on behalf of the

Latin Kings. Very well respected throughout the system. And he had the

opportunity to serve several years with my father under deadlock, under those

conditions. We all start spreading the word, and we went on a hunger strike.

And we demand that they take out Gotti to an outside hospital.

He's there, and he's in the bed, and in comes a father.

The father says to me, Pete, you know, I'm here to administer less rights to

your dad.

It's like my father comes right alive.

Spins on old Ronnie.

You know, get away, get away type.

My father looks, looks at me. You know, what am I going to do? I'm mortified at

that point.

As he walks out, I look at my father like, you know, dad, you know, come on,

man. You know, what do you want to do here?

And he just looks at me and he winks and puts his head back down, looks up at

the ceiling again.

You know, it's just, it's just him. You know, it's him.

Every day that you're in prison, if you love your family, you think of your

family every single day.

You wonder, are they okay?

You wonder, do they need me?

Not being able to be there for your family is the worst part of it

all. Not to see your daughter in her prom dress. Not to see your son win a

championship in a football game. These are things that I've lived through the

newspapers. I've lived through clippings and pictures.

Because I wasn't there. I missed all too many.

The mob boss called the Dapper Don is dead. 61 -year -old John Gotti died in a

prison hospital Monday of throat cancer.

I found that they sent him to a local funeral parlor.

There's armed guards outside.

I guess they were still very worried about him escaping.

Now, what I found inside was absolutely shocking.

I'm led to a viewing room.

Some of the chairs a little messed up and knocked out of place.

So obviously people were in there.

And there's my father sitting in a casket, okay, with a issued

suit, embalmed and sitting there. So obviously I wasn't exactly thrilled

that.

After they released my father to me, we had to bring him to the airport.

We tried to load a gasket into the plane to not fit, so therefore we had no

choice but to load him onto the plane in a body bag.

I laid him across my lap.

And furthermore, I unzipped the body bag to

expose his head.

I remember how I felt exactly, you know, when I did land.

I looked at him and I said, we're home.

You know, this is where we belong.

When my father

passed away, you know, John was already in the middle of his sentence in

Raybrook.

We knew there was no way that he would be released to go to the funeral under

any circumstances.

I believe that the last visit that John had, he knew that that was the last time

he was going to see his father alive.

It was my honor.

That's what I would say to him.

It was my honor. It was my honor to be around him. It was my honor to know him.

It was my honor to touch him.

It was my honor to see a man like him.

Walk out like he walked in. He walked it all the way to the gate. It was my

honor. You'll never see another one like him again.

John died a Cosa Nostra man's man.

He did not give in and talk to the government.

He said, Cosa Nostra till I die. I remember thinking, he's either the

most stubborn, hard -nosed guy in the world, or he's delusional.

in terms of what's left of that organization.

Because everyone else believes this organization is on the way out.

The Catholic Church refused a funeral mass for John Gotti, but that was just

about the only honor the deceased Don was denied.

Many humble people who lived quiet and productive and law -abiding lives died

this past week across America.

Not one of them received as much attention.

or as many flowers as John Donnie.

Driving down that procession and looking at store owners, you know, whether they

knew him or not, coming out of their stores, it was really surreal seeing how

many people with good heart and good soul came out, you know, to pay their

respects. We honor...

the individual. We honor, especially when they rise to fame. And it creates

kind of incessant need for attention that gave us Capone, that gave us Gotti,

and it's given us Donald Trump.

You don't condone things that were done, but there were some good things. I know

a lot of people that he helped. He fostered this whole myth that organized

was something that needed to be respected. And this is delusional. I

people are a bunch of thugs and criminals.

It was just that Dapper Don, that fame that everyone still wants to catch that

last swim spot.

When he left the area of Folsom Park behind,

You know, it was just an area that was very familiar to him.

By the time he came home, he might have not been friends with one person, yet

they were rocking the car, putting their hands on the hearse and such. And

again, you know, it was just one more swing, so to speak, is the way he used

say it.

The core of what the Mafia does is make money.

And so people are fascinated by it because everyone is caught up in this

of trying to make a living. And so when people see mafia stories, seeing people

have the ability to kind of do things that they maybe fantasize that they

do, that I could just go into a room with a gun in my hand and point at some

and just take that money.

I don't have to work 60 hours a week at some job. I don't even like to make that

money. That has tremendous appeal to people.

One thing about my father, he did not have any regrets.

He's not going to apologize, you know, for his life. That's what he wanted, and

he was proud of it. What he became is what he wanted to become.

Ain't it great to be a gangster? To be a gangster.

To be a gangster.

Why hang around a death with a pencil when you could be out there hitting a

heavy bed?

Heavy attendance at the mob boss's last mass.

Hours later, he was laid to rest inside this mausoleum next to his son.

As I'm older now, I'm a father and a husband.

I've come to realize what I missed as a son and what my siblings had missed as

not having a father really there.

He could have been a better man.

his children, my siblings, his wife.

He could have been better.

When I went off to prison, I wasn't going to have a similar approach to my

children my father had to me.

I basically told my son, this is bad boy school.

And Daddy was a bad boy, and I'm in bad boy school.

This is what happens when you're bad.

And if you're bad, you get older, this is where you'll go as well.

I wanted to plant that seed, let them understand that I'm here for a reason.

I'm here because of my actions, okay?

And that's that.

I wasn't going to lie to my children and tell them I was here to build a wall or

whatever have you.

You know, you get acclimated to prison.

The longer you stay, the more you're accustomed to the way things are going,

okay?

As you're doing the time, time speeds up.

And as you're getting closer and closer to that gate, You start to think that

maybe I am going home.

My father was wrong.

I was right.

This plea was a smart move.

Three weeks from release, I'm in the gym working out. I'm on the bench, and I

have a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx named Big Ski. He's behind me, spotting

me, pumping the weights out. I rack him back up. He taps me. He goes, hey, G,

you're on the TV.

John Gotti Jr.

tonight is facing a new federal indictment, including charges that he

the 1992 attempted murder of guardian angel Curtis Lewa.

The junior Gotti is already in prison on a racketeering charge.

A conviction in this case could add more than 100 years to his time. It was

fairly obvious to me and everyone that was watching that they wanted to wring

every drop of blood out of John.

It wasn't a different district that came in and violated my plea agreement.

It was the very same district.

And it was them who kept violating that agreement. So you could understand,

okay, how angered I was and how disappointed I was. I remember the

playing in my head. My father was right.

Once they get me in, they'll never let me go.

I'm never going home.

I'm dying in prison just like him.

This is the favorite portion of my discourse to all of you.

It's called Mob Talk. It's about the mobsters choking on their lobsters. The

geriatric, expresso -sipping, psychotic killers of organized crime.

And I will never be happy until I get the word that the man who was

for having me kidnapped and beaten within an inch of my life, John Gotti

has joined his father, John Gotti Sr., deep in the bowels of hell in that

furnace with Lucifer without asbestos suits on.

Curtis Lewa had been a vigorous critic.

of John Gotti Sr.

all the time Curtis was on the air.

That station was the soundtrack of people's mornings in New York City.

Curtis hated John Gotti Sr.

And then Curtis also started saying things about John Gotti's family.

He was a very outspoken opponent of my father, so much so that he'd be abusive

in his descriptions of my father.

One day, Curtis Lewa stepped out in front of his home on the Lower East

jumped into a taxi, and he ended up getting shot multiple times in the

At first, there was some skepticism as to whether any of that was true, because

Curtis had been accused of staging a number of hoaxes in the past to promote

guardian angels.

Curtis Sliwa, founder and icon of the Guardian Angels, now admits his

to publicity led him to become a kind of compulsive liar.

Sliwa pickled himself with these reports of heroics that turned out to be lies.

Vandals scrawl KKK and white power on Angels headquarters.

A lie. No vandals. Sliwa does it to win sympathy.

Sliwa says he's kidnapped by three men who say they are transit cops.

A lie. No kidnap.

This guy was known to fabricate story after story after story, event after

event. So the accusation against me was that he was kidnapped by a yellow taxi

cab and shot while in that cab on my orders.

Once it became clear he was shot multiple times in the abdomen, it's

nobody shoots themselves multiple times in their gut in order to stage, like,

a hoax.

Curtis and the government came to believe that this was a hit on him

that had been ordered by either John Gotti Sr.

or John Gotti Jr.

Nobody disputes the fact that Curtis was shot. I've seen the holes in Curtis'

stomach. He was lucky to be alive.

The big question was, if this was such a big deal, and if we had information

that John Gotti Jr.

was responsible for this, why wouldn't they have prosecuted this case back in

1992? It was a RICO case, which stands for Racketeer Influence Corrupt

Organization.

And the reason they had to bring a RICO case is because the charges were so old

that they were essentially time -barred.

To bring it current, they had to try to prove that there was an enterprise with

which he was still involved.

A transport came to FCI Raybrook. It was about eight or nine days before my

release date.

And I arrived at the MCC in Lower Manhattan, and I was housed to a unit

Kent South.

It was a level six. It was a super lockdown facility.

There were only six cells in the whole cell block, and they were originally

designed to house Ramzi Youssef and the terrorists, the World Trade Center

bombing.

The windows are blacked out, so you don't even know if it's daylight out.

You're isolated in the cell 24 -7. You never leave your cell.

There's no recreation or nothing. You could tell the time of day by the Muslim

call to prayer.

You try to sleep deprived here in the middle of the night, bang on the door,

with the keys, or flashlight at 12, make sure you get up, you know.

Days earlier, you have the mindset that I'm going to be driving home to see my

children. Now I'm in the most secure cell in the country, and the reality is

that I may be here for the rest of my life.

There were two rats that said John Gotti Jr.

had something to do with Curtis Lee was kidnapping and assault.

Michael Scars DeLeonardo and Joey DeAngelo. Michael was John Sammy in

They were close. They got made together the same night.

They were similar in age.

John was godfather to Michael's son.

They took the blueprint from Sammy Gravano, who knew you can kill 20

It's okay. You cooperate against the god and they let you out. They

underestimated the jury.

An overjoyed Victoria Gotti leaving federal court in Lower Manhattan after a

jury found her son, John Jr. Gotti, not guilty on a securities fraud charge and

deadlocked on three other counts, one of them involving the 1992 attack on

Curtis Sliwa.

The jury sent out note after note saying it could not reach a verdict, so it

ended with what's called a hung jury, which means that 12 people could not

agree. I guess I just replaced the Teflon Don.

I guess I now become my father.

And the target gets bigger and bigger and bigger to whatever.

We went into the case and we recognized the fact that there were certain things

the government wasn't going to have a problem proving.

Government had a sense of the split of the vote of that jury. It was more in

favor of conviction than acquittal.

So they said we need to retry the case.

The existence of an enterprise.

how that enterprise worked.

Our position was, yes, you're right, those things exist.

You're right, he was a part of those things at one time.

Everybody thought John Gotti was a mobster. It was a joke. There would be

cartoons in the local tabloids about our defense, laughing.

John would be in front of a jury, I swear I'm out of the mafia, and behind

back there was a bloody ax.

that he had.

Big joke, this defense.

However, it's incumbent upon the government to prove that he was part of

conspiracy within the last five years.

The defense...

took at the time what was a very innovative strategy called withdrawal.

They said to the jury and to the public that John was a member of the Gambino

crime family and had taken steps to withdraw from the conspiracy.

And he'd withdrawn from the conspiracy more than five years prior to the

indictment. I remember saying to John, if you want to do this case...

We're going to have to take some chances. If you're willing to take the

do things that are going to be unpopular that nobody's ever done before, we'll

treat this case differently. They're not expecting it. We could win.

While in Raybrook Prison, I guess the government decided to act, okay?

As I was getting closer and closer to my release date.

They decided to wiretap the visiting room. Had they not been such maniacal

lunatics to try to convict John, they wouldn't have taped the visiting room at

Raybrook where he was and also the attorney room where he was meeting with

lawyers. Where John is shunning people from his former life.

I made a choice. I made a choice that when I'm going home, my father's dead.

I have responsibilities to my mother, my sister, my brother, my wife, and all my

nephews and nieces and my children and nobody else.

We start listening to them, and wouldn't you know it, every single thing that

John said was deadly accurate on the tapes in crystal clear content.

Yeah, he made a conscious decision to get out of that life.

They would hear individuals coming in and bringing me warmest regards and

saying, when you come home, John, you know, these guys want you to be the guy.

When you come home, and they touch their face, when you come home, when you come

home, and you'd hear me say, look, look, look.

It's not going to happen.

I gave everything I had.

That's it.

I'm moving on with my life. I'm moving on with my life, okay? And I was like,

God, this defense could actually work.

You know, we had numerous conversations in Raybrook, you know, about him. You

know, done with all the nonsense. He was done with the streets. He wanted

nothing to do with it.

In my heart of hearts, I believe he wanted nothing to do with it long before

then.

The counter -argument to that by the prosecution was you can't withdraw from

organized crime. If you withdraw, the mob kills you.

I think it's quite accurate, actually, because if you look at the history of

organized crime and the history of the mob, nobody leaves the life.

The government's position always was you can leave that life. You can leave it

dead.

or you can leave it as a cooperator.

And basically, you could only leave under their control.

John did not legally make any attempt to declare to

the justice system that he's no longer a member of the Gambino family and he's

out of that life.

The fact that he went to his father and there was some tape recording of it that

he's telling his father is meaningless to us.

You don't leave the mob.

You don't go to the boss of the family and say, I'm out of the mob. It doesn't

happen. It doesn't happen.

He would have probably even had a greater hurdle because he was John

son.

One of the pieces of evidence that the government introduced was a videotape of

John Gotti Jr.'s visit to see his father in jail.

And I remember my reaction to that tape.

This is not so good to the government. This son appears to be really concerned

about his father, really cares about his father. I'm thinking, my God, how many

kids have had this relationship with their father where they're trying so

desperately to be their own men, but they just couldn't.

This wasn't a regular father.

This was everybody's father.

This was the godfather.

If going into this trial, we had asked the government to somehow assist us and

give us the greatest piece of evidence that we could have to explain that he

withdrawn from that life, that was it. The opening line after I introduced

myself was, this is a story about fathers and sons.

Now, the government theory, of course, was that it was a setup. And so he was

acting. It was all a role to someday set up this withdrawal defense. That was

the government theory, but I don't think it played that way. It took a guy who,

to the jury, was a violent mafia maniac, and he just became another vulnerable

kid trying to please his father. Every single person in that jury could relate.

Two trials, two deadlocked juries for John Jr.

Gotti. For the second time, a mistrial has been declared in the federal

racketeering case against the son of the Teflon Don. After only a day and a half

of deliberations, the jury sent the judge a note saying it could not and

not reach a verdict. The jury deliberated, and it was a hung jury

That case ended up 8 -4 for acquittal. Now the government was kind of caught

balance.

and they became much more aggressive leading into the third trial.

Federal prosecutors say the third time is the charm, and they vowed to try

again. But tonight, the jury's foreman told John Noel a third trial would be a

waste of time and taxpayers' money. The government caved after the third trial,

one indictment, three trials. Then they closed that case. It was over.

Dismissed. For the third time in a year, federal prosecutors were unable to make

their case against Gotti. After the three hung juries that I had, I thought

man had been through enough and the government couldn't prove his case and

should have been over. But I think what they really wanted was to get away from

me and see if a different judge would make a difference. So after they

the indictment that I had, they brought a new indictment and they got a

different judge.

The indictment lists racketeering charges that include murder, assault,

tampering and date back to the 1980s.

You violate federal law today, tomorrow, or 20 years ago, the FBI and its law

enforcement partners will pursue the matter.

Only this time the stakes will be much higher.

This time they were seeking the death penalty.

I was home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. I just had put the baby to bed, and I

hear the dogs barking.

I'm saying, Peter just got home late, and I'm cursing under my breath. I got

step to him later on about this, coming home this late at night.

But the dogs knew I was with Peter. I says, that's not Peter. That's not

My wife's laying in bed, and I says, Kim, get up. They're here for me.

here. She says, who?

All of a sudden, the house began to vibrate.

The helicopter was right above the house, and I saw them.

They came storming down the driveway.

They came storming over the fence, body armor on.

I remember shaking my head, saying, this is unnecessary.

This is unnecessary.

My wife had all the kids downstairs in the kitchen waiting for me. And sure

enough, I seen the emotion register in all their faces.

In fact, more so for my oldest daughter, my Nicolette.

And she's telling the agents, no, no, no, no. You got to leave. You got to

leave. You can't go, Dad. You got to stay here.

I says, you got to relax.

You're embarrassing daddy now, okay?

I got my pride.

I got this. Don't worry about it. I got this. Kissed all my kids, kissed my

wife, cuffed up and left.

Gotti avoided conviction at previous trials by convincing jurors he'd been

retired from the family crime business for five years, exceeding the statute of

limitations. But there's no limit for murder, and prosecutors have convicted

killer John A. Light ready to testify.

in exchange for less prison in his own case.

Now I'm facing a death -eligible charge, arresting it all in the head of this

individual named John A. Light.

Government surveillance, audio and video, thousands of hours, numerous

no matter where I went, there they were.

Yet, you know what wasn't there?

From 1991 up until the time I get indicted?

John A. Light.

89 to 91, he was on record with my crew.

In 1991, I chased him out of New York, and he ran like a rabbit from 1991 on.

You don't even see this guy. Not on one photograph, not on one audio, not on one

video, nothing.

When John A. Light came into warfare, he brought an entirely new perspective on

the investigation into John Gotti Jr.

You are now going to execute me on the word of this animal?

It's hard to swallow.

Because you survived all these government cooperatives. You survived

Gravano. You survived Al Diarco. You survived Mikey Scars di Leonardo. You

survived Joe D 'Angelo and Frankie Fappiano and Dominic Ciccali and all. We

go on down the line. We survived all of that.

That's it.

That's how it has to end for me.

There were several homicides that John A. Light was able to shed some light on

that had been committed either with John Gotti Jr.

or at the direction of John Gotti Jr.

When you say you walk into something eyes wide open, they weren't quite so

Prison was stories my father told, that I wanted those stories.

He made prison sound like it was summer camp.

And you know what?

Several months in the hole, I remember saying to myself, you got any good

stories you want to tell yourself now?

Any good prison stories, John?

How do you feel now, kid?

It's really true what they say. You know, you either die in jail or you get

killed in the streets.

There's nothing positive about this life.

You know, there was no romance to it.

You say to yourself, was it all worth it?

You start questioning things that you've done in your life.

Would I have a better life if I became a cooperator, if I became their punk?

And then I said to myself, what right would I have?

To disgrace my son.

That I feel I can destroy their lives for the things that I've done wrong in

life.

That's what made me endure and stay the course.

If I'd gotten to a point where I couldn't take it anymore, then I would

ended my life. I would have taken myself out.

John barely got out with his life. And I say that, barely.

Same outcome. Even though it was a very different judge.

Again, subject to a hung jury. Same result.

Same result.

John A. Lake, 10 of the jurors, all 10 had said not one of us found him

believable. Not one had found him believable.

Hey, John, how does it feel to be free? It didn't hit me because I was so

convinced that there's nothing I could have done in that courtroom to win.

When you have a picture in your mind, you hear the name Gotti.

What's the picture that's in your mind?

Can you distance yourself from that picture?

It's hard.

It's really hard. I've got to be honest with you. I had doubts at times if they

could do it, if they could really take me out of that perspective and put me

into this perspective now.

I was crying.

And when the prosecutor went over to my brother and put his hand out and said,

good luck to you, Mr. Gotti, I said, maybe they will really leave him alone

time. The Southern District stood up and said, no more.

It's not in the interest of justice to try this case anymore.

And John would always say, you know, no, I think they're coming again.

No matter what they do, no matter what they say, I did walk away from the

streets not like a punk, not like a rat.

I'm my own man, and I'm going to go out that way.

So I came home December 1, 2009.

I was home, I think, my third night.

And I was sleeping with my wife.

She says, you were sitting at the foot of the bed just staring at the door.

I says, to be honest with you, I was sitting up to be counted.

I was so used to in the hole at midnight to come by and bang the door once and

put the flashlight on to count you in the hole.

So I was sitting up to be counted.

And only when she said, what are you doing, did I come out of it, the trance,

and I turned and looked and seen. And the first thought in my head was, what

she doing here?

In your dream, you're trapped. But you open your eyes and you see that you're

your bedroom, in your bed.

You see that familiarity of the ceiling, of the ceiling fan above you, the TV on

the wall.

And you say, it's a dream.

Unfortunately, when you hear the name Gotti,

It's right away, it's become metaphoric with organized crime, with the streets.

That's it.

And I don't see any way you could extricate yourself from this. I don't

way it could be done.

As hard as I try, it's extremely difficult. And you can get back to my

my brother Peter's son John.

John Gotti was first in line, his girlfriend behind him, as they were let

the 113th precinct this afternoon.

It's sad that he really didn't have...

the mindset and the will to understand the message that I'm trying to bring

forward, to embrace my message and pull myself away from that element.

There was enough personal appeal from me, but the fact that I couldn't reach

own nephew, that's one of my failures.

That's certainly one of my failures, something I think about just about every

day.

And the fact because of his last name, he got hit so much harder than anybody

else. A pill case, anybody else would have gotten two years, got eight years.

I mean, to me, it's a heartbreak.

When his sentence is up, I hope and pray that he comes home and he's a better

man. And I know he will be, and he'll live a normal, productive life.

We're a close family.

OK, but every day we're dealing with different issues and different

personalities every day. I've yet to meet the perfect family. I haven't met

yet.

And as you know, my son, John, the choice of being an MMA fighter and so

thank God, successful at it. And so far, thank God, not hurt at it. OK, it's not

the choice I would have had for my son, but he's living and leading a positive

existence.

Proud, still chaining the Gotti name, the reign supreme here in New York.

The attacks that John Gotti Sr.

went through as a young man got passed on to his son and got passed on to the

martial arts and certainly to the guy who's in prison.

Because they're still fighting John Gotti Sr.'s battles without even knowing

When the movie comes out, people are going to go see it for curiosity.

People are going to go see it because maybe a love and attachment or a

fascination with the streets or with John Gotti, or people are going to go

it just to be entertained.

I know that John Travolta did a nice job. I know he acted his heart out.

John Gotti, it was a challenge, and it was something different for me, even

though I've played gangster before, but not at this level. You know, this is a

real, true godfather.

I may not have been as tough as my father, and I may not have been as smart

my father. I may not have been as handsome as him, but I could tell you I

cut from his cloth.

I had said to my father in the February 5th, 1999, our last visit together, you

know, you're twice the man I am.

And he looked down and shook his head and said, yeah, John, but in other ways,

you're ten times the man that I am.

At that moment, for him to say that,

I believe in his heart he had some regrets.

There's other things beyond materialistic things that makes you a

and I believe that in that respect that, you know, maybe he was right. Maybe he

was right. Maybe in that respect I'm a better man than him.

I don't miss an event for any of my children or my nephews or my nieces.

I show up for my whole family when they need me there. I'm always there.

I'll tell you what I am. I'm a civilian.

That's what I am, okay?

If he didn't have the courage to basically be his own man... Right now,

not making this documentary, and John is dying in prison.

Not even a question in my mind.

I remember going to my cousin's wedding.

It was 1995, and it was in Russo's on the Bay.

And probably three -quarters of the people in the audience

were women.

Most of the men were dead or in jail.

And I looked and says, wow. And I remember looking at one table, and Joey

Scopo's widow was there, a wonderful woman, her name was Dee. And I seen the

pain still on her face. Her husband died a few years earlier.

And you see Sue Borello at that table, and we can go on around the room.

Start with my mother. Start with John Gotti's wife, my mother.

She had three strokes.

And you take my wife.

You don't think that thought would resonate in her mind?

It takes a toll on everyone.

You don't think it took a toll on Louis de Bono's widow and children?

You don't think it took a toll on Paul Castellano's widow and children?

It takes a toll on all shapes and forms.

If people are living the life...

the way John Gotti believed that life should be lived, there's going to be a

price to pay. Somewhere down the road, there's going to be pain.