December 2, 2008
Tapes Called Gotti Murder Motive
When a close associate of John Gotti refused to turn over secretly recorded tapes about narcotics transactions to former Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano, prosecutors say he gave Gotti a motive to kill.
Prosecutors maintain that Angelo Ruggiero's refusal to give the tapes to Castellano was one reason why Gotti had to order Castellano's Dec. 16, 1985, slaying. Those tapes - recorded by the FBI in Ruggiero's home in 1982 and used to convict Gotti's younger brother and others in a heroin-smuggling conspiracy - could have meant death for Gotti allies.
Ruggiero, Gene Gotti and others had been indicted in 1983 and they had obtained the prosecution's secretly recorded evidence against them through usual court procedures. But they didn't want Castellano to hear the tapes, prosecutors said. Castellano had issued an edict against drug trafficking: those who did it faced being killed.
Other more recently recorded tapes played yesterday in Gotti's murder-racketeering trial reveal that Ruggiero refused to turn the 1982 tapes over.
In a conversation taped on June 8, 1985, Castellano is heard telling his reputed underboss, Aniello Dellacroce, that he knew Ruggiero and his attorney had the 1982 tapes. "I gotta get them," he said. Dellacroce said he would talk to Ruggiero.
The next day, Ruggiero is recorded telling Dellacroce and John Gotti that he couldn't turn over the tapes because they would implicate good friends of his. "If you two never bother with me again, again in the rest of my life, I ain't givin' them tapes up," he said in a conversation taped by the FBI. "If you never bother with me, the rest of my life. I can't. I can't."
Gotti, reportedly an acting crime captain at the time, suggested that Ruggiero ask Castellano, who was awaiting trial in connection with a stolen-car ring involving several murders, how he planned to use the tapes. "If he shows you how, he's the boss," said Gotti. "While he's the boss, you have to do what he tells you."
Gotti then added: "Angelo, what does Cosa Nostra mean?"
Dellacroce interjected: "Cosa Nostra means that the boss is your boss. You understand? Forget about all this nonsense."
But Ruggiero said he couldn't comply. "La Cosa Nostra - I'll tell my boss, or tell me to turn against you, I won't do that."
"I've been tryin' to, I've been tryin' to take your part with these tapes from the very, very, from the very, very beginning," said Dellacroce. "That you don't have to give them to him."
Dellacroce also told Ruggiero that Castellano was insistent about getting the tapes and kept asking for them. Dellacroce, who has been described as Gotti's mentor, died of cancer on Dec. 2, 1985. Prosecutors have charged that Gotti and Ruggiero, who also later died of cancer, orchestrated the slaying of Castellano in order for Gotti to take over the Gambino crime family.
According to the indictment, Castellano was killed shortly after he informed Gotti that he planned to break up Gotti's crew and reassign its members to other crews in the crime family. Prosecutors charge that Castellano became angry when he learned that Gene Gotti, Ruggiero and other members of Gotti's crew were involved in drug trafficking.
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