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TALENT RISING
If ever there was an incubator for crime it was the Italian Harlem tenements of the
South Bronx. In one of those crowded dirty apartments, a young John Gotti eked out an
impoverished existence with his parents and eleven sisters and brothers. His father rarely
worked and then, only at menial jobs, risking the little money the family had by gambling.
Eventually the family moved to central Brooklyn, which was known as East New York. In
East New York, for a poor boy like John Gotti with nothing in the way of prospects, the
Cosa Nostra represented something to which he could realistic aspire to gain the power and
respect he craved.
He started as many young boys did, running errands for the gangsters, molding himself
into a young bully with a future. His first major incident with the police occurred when
he tried to steal a cement mixer and it fell on his feet, an injury that affected his gait
for the rest of his life.
He quit school at sixteen and rose to leadership in a local street gang of thieves
called the Fulton-Rockaway Boys, named after two streets in their neighborhood. At an
early age he exerted his bad temper, dominance and readiness to engage in fistfights.
These were just the right characteristics to develop his potential as a Mafia boss.
A couple of these Fulton-Rockaway boys would follow him for
the rest of his career as loyal soldiers. One was Angelo Ruggiero and another was Wilfred
Willie Boy Johnson, an amateur boxer of American Indian descent.
In 1962, when Gotti was
22, he married Vicky DiGorgio whose hot temper matched his own. It was hardly a shotgun
marriage since the first child from their union was born in 1961. It was a tumultuous
marriage marred by constant fighting. She made it clear to him and others that she
disapproved of his life of crime and the hours he spent away from home drinking and
gambling. Things got so bad that at point she went on welfare and took him to court for
nonsupport.
In spite of this marital disharmony, they had four more children. Their relationship
eventually settled down as each developed separate pursuits. Vicky became addicted to soap
operas and John to gambling and pretty girls.
John Gotti speaks to a soldier while Angelo Ruggiero (right) listens.
In the mid-1960's, Gotti's boss Carmine Fatico moved his
headquarters out to Ozone Park near JFK Airport. Gotti, his brothers, Angelo and Willie
Boy became relatively successful hijackers. That is, until they got caught in 1968 and
landed in prison.
In 1972, when Gotti got out of prison and went back to Ozone Park, the
headquarters had been imaginatively renamed the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club. Two important
things happened in his life to significantly lift his status in the Cosa Nostra. The first
was that his boss Carmine Fatico faced a loansharking indictment, so Gotti became Fatico's
man on the street to keep him informed about what was happening at a grass-roots level.
The second was that Gotti met Neil Dellacroce, an important under boss to Carl Gambino.
Neil accomplished Carlo's violent dirty work from a headquarters in Little Italy's
Mulberry Street called the Ravenite Social Club.
Neil, who was disappointed that his only son Armond became a drug addict, saw in Gotti
a young protege who was a younger version of his own violent, macho self. Like Gotti, he
had a weakness for gambling and one such episode got him in trouble with the IRS. Neil
ended up in jail for at least a year.
Aneillo (Neil) Dellacroce, the Gambino family underboss who was John
Gotti's mentor.
With both Fatico and Dellacroce in the slammer, John Gotti was
handed a lot of new responsibilities. For one thing, he gained incredible visibility by
reporting directly to Carlo Gambino while Fatico was in jail. Before that opportunity,
Carlo did not particularly value Gotti's crowd in Ozone Park. To the sophisticated Carlo,
they were just a bunch of hotheaded thugs. This was a chance for Gotti to show himself in
a different light.
Gotti brought home to the Ozone Park crowd Carlo's prohibition on
drug dealing. But the warnings fell on deaf ears. Many of the men very close to Gotti were
dealing and using heroin and cocaine. But Gotti kept the faith by warning them: "If
you're dealin,' you're fuckin'playin' with fire, and if you get caught, you're fuckin'
dead."
Through Neil Dellacroce, Gotti and his Ozone Park boys had a chance to vastly improve
their status under Carlo. Carlo had lost a nephew in 1973 to a kidnapper who collected the
$100K ransom and then murdered the boy. Gotti was given the opportunity to get revenge for
Carlo.
Carlo Gambino, the family partriach.
The kidnapper was a man named James McBratney. Gotti, Angelo Ruggiero and
another one of the Bergin soldiers dressed up as cops and shot McBratney is a pub in front
of several witnesses. Angelo was arrested first and later, the police also arrested Gotti
for the murder.
Fortunately for Gotti, Carlo gave the McBratney case to his talented lawyer Roy Cohn
who was able to get the charge reduced to manslaughter. While Gotti was in jail in 1976,
Carlo Gambino had a heart attack and was dying. Carlo made a decision that was to create
problems for the crime family for almost a decade-he named his brother-in-law Paul
Castellano as his successor.
Castellano was not respected and admired like Carlo. Perhaps his insecurity caused him
to keep Neil as his under boss in charge of all of the more violent activities, such as
hijacking. While Paul would focus the family efforts on the more sophisticated criminal
activities like union rackets and bid-rigging in construction projects.
This decision created two separate branches of the Gambino family: Paul's branch and
Neil's branch. The schism did nothing to strengthen the family and ultimately brought
about the assassination of Paul in 1985, when after Neil's death, Paul sought to demote
Gotti and his men and promote his own favorites.
