December 2, 2008
Life Grim on the Inside
Tony Papa says John Gotti was a hero to many of the inmates at Sing Sing prison, where Papa spent 12 years after being convicted on a drug charge. "One of the prisoners - we called him Tony Cheech - had a picture of Gotti hanging in his cell."
To the Italian inmates, says Papa, Gotti was a hero. "He was a man you had to respect," says Papa, 43. But Papa says the feared Marion Correctional Institution in Illinois, where Gotti was sent after his conviction in 1992 on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to murder, will grind him down.
"He has a real bad life in front of him," says Papa, who was released from Sing Sing a year ago when Gov. George Pataki granted him clemency.
"Prison isn't just the walls and bars they put you behind," says Papa. "Prison reaches out and touhces everyone you love, your family and friends.
"When my mother would visit me in jail, she would cry most of the time. That's what hurt me the most," says Papa, who now works as a legal assistant in a midtown Manhattan law firm and travels to jails around the country talking to inmates.
Papa taught himself to paint in prison and tomorrow night at the Outsiders Gallery in Long Island City, nine of his paintings will be shown along with the work of other self-taught artists.
But even after a year of freedom, Papa still can't shake off the memory of those 12 years. I told him yesterday that Gotti was in a 6-foot-by-8-foot windowless cell. Papa says his cell was slightly larger but was also without a window. "One day I painted a window on the wall. It was better than no window at all," he says.
And he still hates the sound of bells, any bells because "in jail, bells ran your life. You woke up to bells, you ate to bells, you went to bed by bells," he says. "Even now the sound of a bell shakes me. When my timer went off the other day, I went into my room and locked the door."
"You know what he is missing most?" says Papa, who grew up in the Bronx. "He is missing his family, his loved ones. You can adjust to the prison, the bad food, the crazy inmates, but you can't adjust to not seeing or talking to your family."
Gotti has no radio, no television and no contact with other prisoners. That once-sculptured bouffant haircut of which he was so proud is now cut by a prison official who clips Gotti's hair through the bars.
Gotti is allowed no physical contact with the few visitors permitted to see him. His daughter, Victoria, says her father is enduring cruel and unusual punishment, and that he has never been able to hold or hug his four grandchildren.
A few years ago I rode down in an elevator with Gotti, his brother, Peter, and some of his crew. It was at a lunchtime break during one of his trials several years ago when I stood alongside the so-called "Dapper Don." I marveled at the tailored suit he wore and at his air of assurance, one that had been bolstered by beating back several attempts by the feds to jail him. The Dapper Don became known as the Teflon Don.
But as Edward McDonald, the former head of the Organized Crime Task Force, who oversaw a Brooklyn investigation against the Gotti gang, said yesterday, "It was that cockiness that led to his downfall. We were able to plant bugs in the Ravenite Clubhouse on Mulberry Street where the various dons were called to meetings."
McDonald says scenes of the wiseguys enjoying the food, the wine and the good life behind bars is a myth. But in movies like "Goodfellas," the wiseguys are shown drinking Chianti, eating pasta and smoking fine cigars.
About a decade ago, says McDonald, the government began moving blood relatives around in an attempt to prevent them from setting up cozy in-jail empires bought and paid for from the proceeds of crime. "Now they move them to different jurisdictions."
Gotti once claimed he could do jail time standing on his head. But the five-plus years he has spent in what has been termed one of the harshest prisons in the nation has likely taken its toll, say incarceration experts.
And what must be going through Gotti's head today as he ponders the fate of his son, John "Junior" Gotti, 33, who is facing up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted on sweeping charges of racketeering?
The papers refer to young Gotti as a "mob prince," but it now looks as though he may join his father doing hard time, far from the glow of expensive restaurants, handmade suits and shoes, the rough banter and the hugs and kisses of friends.
A high-ranking law enforcement officer said yesterday that "this is no big surprise. Young Gotti is a cocky kid who thought his father's fame was a pass through life. He's not too smart either and if the cops hadn't caught him, maybe the mob might have."
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