Gotti's Era Ended Long Before Death

Nothing but memories left in old haunts

By Joshua Robin, Bryan Virasami and Bobby Cuza | STAFF WRITERS

June 11, 2002

The John Gotti story ended quietly yesterday in the heartland. But on the noisy streets of New York, it was clear the end came long before Gotti died of cancer in a Missouri prison.

In Little Italy - which real estate agents now call SoHo East or NoLIta - the former don's old social club, where the feds taped his conversations, is now a trendy dress boutique.

And in Ozone Park, residents placed memorials at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club where the man who once led the most powerful organized crime family in the nation drank coffee.

For many, the Dapper Don was a memory.

"We lost the community, the Italians," Frankie Cappello, a resident of Little Italy, said of the closing of Gotti's Ravenite Social Club.

"It was safe," he said of the days when Gotti swaggered down the street in his natty suits and silk ties with matching pocket squares. "There was respect. You never had to worry about anything. ... He was a very, very kind, good man to the community. ... He's going to be greatly missed."

The Rev. Michael Verra, 54, who runs the Society of St. Gandolfo Chapel on Mott Street in Manhattan, said he remembers the milk strike of the 1960s when Gotti's pals hired flatbed trucks and drove upstate to haul back milk, eggs and butter for neighborhood families.

"It's kind of the end of an era, isn't it?" said Amy Chan, who runs a women's clothing boutique where the Ravenite stood before being seized by federal marshals in 1997 as part of a forfeiture action connected to Gotti's 1992 racketeering conviction.

As dusk settled in Gotti's former neighborhood in Ozone Park, crowds of somber mourners paid respects at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club.

They left flowers and scribbled notes, and told stories about a Gotti the government never knew - a man who found jobs for the downtrodden, dished cash to the strapped and cleaned up streets for people tired of crime in their neighborhood.

"He was an incredible human being," said Carmine Romeo, 55, who tucked a dollar bill inside the club's locked front door. "The government would say 'Well, where did he get the money?' Well, that's none of our business."

Romeo recounted an example of Gotti's generosity: When a woman lost her apartment in a fire, Gotti not only bought her a new one, but stocked her refrigerator full of food.

"There isn't one person in this world that is free of sin, and who knows? Who really knows what went through John Gotti's mind the last hour that he had in his life?" Romeo said.

Others remembered Ozone Park being safer.

"The neighborhood was under control," said Linda Donofrio, 42. "The kids didn't control the neighborhood the way they're doing now."

She and her husband, Joe, left a candle and a hand-written note on the club's front door.