End of Road

Procession to take Gotti through old neighborhood

By Leonard Post | STAFF WRITER

June 15, 2002

Mob boss John Gotti's last ride is to begin and end in prayer as his body is carried along the streets of Queens to his final resting place beside the son who died near his Howard Beach home more than 20 years ago.

The motorcade that is to take Gotti from the flower-laden Papavero Funeral Home in Maspeth is to end at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn's sprawling St. John Cemetery in Middle Village.

Elaborate floral displays continued to arrive at Papavero on a rainy Friday in homage to the Gambino crime family boss once dubbed the Teflon Don, who lost his last two public battles - one with the law, the other with throat cancer.

Gotti completed a life sentence for racketeering when he died Monday at 61 in a federal prison hospital in Springfield, Mo.

A private ceremony inside the funeral home is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday. Prayers and blessings are expected to be offered by a priest. But because the diocese would not approve a Mass of Christian Burial for the late crime boss, his body will not stop at a church before being taken to the cemetery.

The procession is likely to travel under cloudy skies, with a chance of drizzle in the forecast. Early Friday, a funeral home staffer said the plan was to drive him east on Grand Avenue, then south on 80th Street into Middle Village and on to St. John.

But Gotti friends later said the procession will drive south from the funeral home to Howard Beach, where it will circle his longtime home and then pass by his old headquarters, the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, before heading north to the cemetery.

St. John's main entrance is at Metropolitan Avenue and 80th Street. It is the final resting place for about 600,000 people, including some prominent mobsters.

Inside the cemetery, the final stop is to be St. John's older mausoleum, tall and white stone, the place where Gotti's son Frank was interred in 1980, called the Cloisters. Frank was killed when he was accidentally hit by a neighbor's car. The neighbor disappeared shortly afterward. Authorities suspect Gotti henchmen.

Gotti intimates expect to gather with family and close friends for a small ceremony inside the mausoleum chapel.

After that, the body is likely to be taken to the Gotti family niche on the third floor, a dark stained-wood section of the public mausoleum, where soft spiritual music is continuously piped in.