Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992 TAG: 9203290265
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK HAMPSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Witnesses and surveillance tapes have shown Gotti surrounding himself with heroin traffickers, talking constantly about his activities, repeatedly failing to file tax returns and losing large sums at the gambling operations that were his alleged source of income.
Gotti may be intelligent - he's reported to have an I.Q. of around 140 - and even his critics gave him credit for a certain low cunning. What else would explain his rise from lowly mob associate in 1977 to boss of the mighty Gambino crime family in 1985? And his acquittal in three trials in five years?
But FBI tapes, prosecution testimony and Gotti's own words at his trial have made the Dapper Don look like a dummy. The counts in this unofficial indictment:
\ 1. The Gambler
Before the Super Bowl, Gotti advised courthouse reporters to take Buffalo and the points. Washington won and covered the point spread easily.
The real question is why anyone would listen to Gotti. Government bugs show he's not the luckiest gambler.
Gotti and three partners put up $120,000 a decade ago to start an illegal casino. But Gotti began to bet against the house, and after a few nights he was in debt for $55,000.
He fared no better betting on sports. At one point in the 1981 football season, Gotti was down $200,000.
\ 2. The Loose Talker
Gotti was slow to appreciate the quantum leap in the government's electronic eavesdropping skills. Many of his most damaging admissions were recorded in an apartment above the Ravenite Social Club, his hangout in Manhattan's Little Italy neighborhood.
He spent much of January 1990 expounding on the virtue of silence - as the FBI listened in. On Jan. 24, he warned his colleagues about the danger of being recorded: "From now on, I'm telling you, if a guy just so much as mentions `La,' . . . I'm gonna strangle the guy. . . . He don't have to say, `Cosa Nostra.' Just 'La' and they go."
\ 3. The Wrong Friends
Like most things in the Mafia, the ban on drug dealing is both traditional and practical. In recent years, it has become more the latter: Narcotics convictions mean long prison terms, which sorely tempt soldiers to cut deals and testify against their bosses.
While Gotti can be heard on tapes bemoaning drug use, virtually every member of his old crew dealt heroin.
His brother Gene is serving a 50-year prison sentence, and his brother Vincent also is in prison for narcotics trafficking. Some of the people who allegedly conspired with Gotti to kill former Gambino boss Paul Castellano were drug dealers, and several are now serving long sentences.
Castellano, a boss from the old school, had to be dissuaded from killing "Little Pete" Tambone for drug dealing, and wound up banishing him. Gotti later promoted him.
Gotti may simply be a poor judge of character. For example, he told underboss Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano in January 1990 that "everybody in the city's got rats near them. But we ain't got 'em near us, these rats."
A year later Gravano was telling prosecutors all about John Gotti.
\ 4. The Missing Returns
Unable to convict Al Capone of ordering dozens of murders, the government finally got him on tax evasion in 1931. Ever since, mob bosses have been on notice to be as careful with their tax returns as they are with their murder contracts.
Yet between 1984 and 1989, Gotti did not file a single federal tax return.
Over those years, three companies sent the IRS W-2 forms showing they had paid Gotti wages totaling $330,782. Gotti twice asked for deadline extensions, but never filed. He once, without any explanation, mailed the IRS a $5,000 check.
Gotti's lawyer is expected to argue that he did not file returns because his accountant told him not to.
by CNB