John Gotti

John grew up in a neighborhood dominated by the Mafia, or the honored society, the organization, the mob, the syndicate, the outfit, or La Cosa Nostra, depending on who was talking. By whatever name, it was organized crime. While John Gotti was growing up, the most notorious capo of a Mafia gang was "Lucky" Luciano, who inevitably became an idol for Gotti to worship (Cummings and Volkman, 1990, pp. 21-29).

John Gotti attended Public School 113 in the Bronx, and, rather than being victimized by the local borgata, gangs of boys, Gotti, with his violent temper, soon organized his own Borgota and soon was doing odd jobs for the local "men of respect." His father, worried about how the neighborhood was affecting his sons, managed to move his family to an apartment on the Brooklyn waterfront in 1950--thus unwittingly jumping from the frying pan into the fire as far as his family's safety was concerned. This was the neighborhood dominated by the Mafia Don Toddo Marino (Cummings and Volkman, 1990, pp. 20-22, 29-32).

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golden years for Gotti and his gang. He was the favorite of his underboss, who praised him highly to Paul Castellano, boss of the entire Gambino organization. In 1980, Castellano appointed John Gotti capo, replacing the ailing Fatico. However, by 1981, Castellano began to be worried by Gotti's obvious ambition to be the boss himself, and began keeping a closer eye on him, considering the real possibility of assassinating him (Cummings and Volkman, 1990, pp. 101-108, 127-130). In 1980, the FBI revised its strategy for dealing with organized crime: instead of going after individuals, it began using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in order to attack the structures of such crime directly. By 1982, it had bugged the houses of the major Gambino chiefs, had recruited major informants within the Mafia, and was making sweeping arrests on drug charges; these hit directly at Gotti's operations (Cummings and Volkman, 1990, pp. 181-187). In 1984, John Gotti became a grandfather; the baby was named Frank, in honor of the son who had died in an accident at age 12 and whom the Gottis mourned for years. Gotti's other son, John, Jr., followed in his father's footsteps: at age 22, he was head of a Brooklyn trucking
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Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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