Gotti Dies in Prison

The former 'Teflon Don' led the modern mob to its demise

By Anthony M. DeStefano | STAFF WRITER

June 11, 2002

John Gotti, the "Dapper Don" whose mouthy style as America's most visible crime boss led to the demise of the modern mob, died yesterday in a prison hospital, where throat cancer had left him without a voice.

The U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., said that Gotti, 61, serving a federal life sentence for murder and racketeering, was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m. EDT. An autopsy will determine the cause, officials said.

Gotti, who rose to the heights of mob celebrity after starting his criminal life as a small-time hood out of Queens, had a number of operations after his diagnosis with throat and neck cancer in 1997. The cancer gradually spread, ultimately leaving him unable to speak, friends said. In recent days, Gotti was comatose, one source said.

Gotti was sent to the Springfield facility from the nation's toughest prison at Marion, Ill., in September 2000. He was serving life on his 1992 federal murder and racketeering conviction in Brooklyn.

Investigators who probed John Gotti were unanimous in their harsh appraisal of his reign.

"In the final analysis, he was a disaster for the mob and the Gambino family," Ronald Goldstock, former head of the state Organized Crime Task Force, said in an e-mail from the Netherlands, where he was on business. Goldstock said Gotti was a brutal bumbler.

"He was unable to avoid electronic surveillance (he was caught on three different occasions); he promoted individuals based on friendship and relationship, not on competence and ability - and some of them turned on him; he created internecine warfare within Cosa Nostra, he caused law enforcement and the media to focus all their attention on the mob."

But Bruce Cutler, the burly and bombastic Manhattan attorney who defended Gotti in several criminal cases, called him a "most remarkable and special man."

"I will miss him," Cutler said in a statement issued yesterday. "It has been my privilege to have known him and to have represented him all these years. You will never see the likes of John Gotti again. He is a champion in my book."

Gotti, who also had been dubbed the "Teflon Don" after he escaped convictions in previous trials, was convicted in 1992 of racketeering conspiracy-including six murders-and sent to Marion with no chance for parole.

The passing of Gotti - celebrated as a neighborhood hero by some for sponsoring illegal Fourth of July fireworks displays off rooftops near his Bergin Hunt and Fish Club headquarters in Ozone Park that drew thousands - was observed with little public fuss at his home in Howard Beach and his old hangouts.

Outside the Bergin, Linda and Joe Donofrio were among the mourners who left candles, flowers and scribbled notes and defended Gotti. Joe Donofrio said Gotti got him a job with the electric company years ago.

"What he did, that was his business," Donofrio said of the Gotti activities that drew law-enforcement attention. "That was none of our business. In this neighborhood, he did nothing but good."

In life, Gotti, who climbed to the top of the Gambino family by orchestrating the murder of boss Paul Castellano in December 1985, reveled in the limelight.

The media attention followed him through his dying days. For the past year, frenzied reports told of each medical crisis Gotti faced. In October, he was hospitalized at a civilian facility in Springfield for the administration of blood thinners to combat clotting believed to be brought on by chemotherapy.

Gotti is survived by his wife, Victoria, who had made her home in a spacious frame house in Howard Beach; daughters Victoria, a novelist and writer for the New York Post, and Angela, and sons John A. Gotti, who is in prison, and Peter. Another son, Frank, was 12 when he was accidentally struck and killed by a neighbor's car in 1980. The neighbor was kidnapped months later and never seen again.

Funeral arrangements were pending. Bureau of Prison officials have said that funeral homes in the Springfield area usually handle preliminary arrangements.

Staff writers Bobby Cuza and Bryan Virasami contributed to this story.