The man Gotti was talking about was Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.
Gotti’s conviction on April 2, 1992, brought the same kind of screaming headlines that his indictment and arrest had generated nearly two years earlier. JOHN GOTTI, GUILTY AT LAST was the headline on a New York Times editorial the next day praising the prosecution for “a major achievement, a community and national service.”
Sliwa was one of the many other commentators who jumped on the story. He had been blasting all the Gottis in his radio harangues, including Vicky. Junior decided enough was enough. The tipping point was apparently a postconviction broadcast on WABC-AM in which Sliwa appeared to be popping a bottle of champagne in celebration.
A month after the conviction, three thugs attacked Sliwa with baseball bats. He fought them off and was back on the air continuing his harangue. A few weeks later, according to the testimony of DiLeonardo, Junior met with him and several other mobsters at the Carousel, a diner on Cross Bay Boulevard in Queens. During that meeting, DiLeonardo said, Junior ordered a “hospital beating.”
“Put him in the hospital,” a frustrated Junior said of Sliwa, ordering DiLeonardo and the others to beat Sliwa “as bad as you can without killing him.” Like Alite earlier, DiLeonardo said he questioned attacking a member of the media, even someone like Sliwa, whom other reporters and commentators considered a self-promoting blowhard.
“If you attack a member of the press,” DiLeonardo said he told Junior, “whether they’re in good standing with other press members, is one thing. [Sliwa’s] still a member of the press. You’ll get destroyed. We’ll be destroyed.”
Sliwa, who lived in the East Village at the time, routinely went to the radio station each morning in a taxi. On the morning of June 19, the taxi he hailed was being driven by mobster Joey D’Angelo. Scrunched down in the front passenger seat was mob associate Michael Yannotti. The taxi had been rigged and as soon as Sliwa got in the backseat, the doors locked. Yannotti popped up from the front seat, pulled a gun, and shot Sliwa in the thigh and groin. D’Angelo later testified that he was as shocked as Sliwa. They were supposed to beat the radio talker, D’Angelo said, not shoot him.
Sliwa, who would testify about the incident at three different trials, said he desperately fought his way out of the rogue taxi, flailing away and climbing over the armed Yannotti and jumping out the front passenger window.
D’Angelo later pleaded guilty to the assault. Yannotti was acquitted, but convicted of several other charges and sentenced to prison. Junior beat the Sliwa charge three times. Like his father, he had some judicial Teflon when it came to the radio host’s assault. To Alite the attacks on Sliwa were confirmation of what he had been anticipating. Junior Gotti didn’t know how to run a crime family and if he remained in charge, they would all end up dead or in jail.
Five days after the Sliwa shooting, John J. Gotti was sentenced to life in prison. The hearing, in the same federal courthouse in Brooklyn where he had been convicted, drew several hundred supporters. Denied access to the jammed courtroom, they rallied in the streets outside the federal building, chanting, waving signs, and singing the praises of John J. Gotti. It was a great show and it attracted lots of media.
But it was a meaningless gesture, another Gotti flashpoint that the media jumped all over.
“Junior and some other guys set that whole thing up,” Alite said. “I didn’t want any part of that nonsense. They had kids from the neighborhood and guys from some of the unions that we controlled.”
The so-called rally went on for two or three hours. Several cars were overturned and traffic disrupted. The sentencing hearings for Gotti and Locascio, on the other hand, were over in about fifteen minutes. Judge Leo Glasser imposed life without parole on both defendants.
Gotti declined to comment.
Locascio, loyal to the end, told the judge that he was “innocent.” Then he added, “I am guilty, though. I’m guilty of being a good friend of John Gotti. And if there were more men like John Gotti on this earth, we would have a better country.”
U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney, whose office prosecuted the case, tried to provide the proper perspective for the Gotti conviction, describing the trial as “just one more battle” in the war against organized crime in New York. He also said “media buildup” had helped create the myth of John J. Gotti and “media hype” had fueled the demonstration that was taking place out in the streets.
Gotti’s lawyers promised an appeal.
Within the Gambino organization, however, no one expected Senior to return. The only question was who would be in charge. Junior clearly thought he had the mantle. But there were several others who wanted to go in another direction. They wanted Junior to step down. And if he balked, they wanted him dead.
John Alite was asked to handle the problem.
CHAPTER 13
John J. Gotti thought he could run his crime family from prison. While it had been done before by other bosses with varying degrees of success, it was not a very good idea.
“Little Nicky” Scarfo had tried to do it down in Philadelphia. Convicted of racketeering and murder in 1988, he set his son up as his proxy. Nicodemo S. Scarfo was known as Scarfo Jr. even though he and his father (like the Gottis) had different middle names. Like Junior Gotti, the younger Scarfo wasn’t that well liked by other members of the Philadelphia crime family. They saw his father as a bloody psychopath who had used murder to establish his control. The violence had destabilized what had once been a quietly efficient organization. About two dozen mob members and associates were killed during Scarfo’s bloody reign, which had begun in 1981. What’s more, bullets and dead bodies attracted law enforcement. Do the math. A crime family that at best had boasted seventy members had lost nearly half that number to murders or prosecutions. The Philadelphia mob was in shambles when Scarfo Sr. was convicted.
On Halloween night in 1989, Scarfo’s attempt to run the organization through his son came to an end. The younger Scarfo was dining at Dante & Luigi’s, a popular eatery in the heart of South Philadelphia. He was enjoying a plate of clams and spaghetti, sharing a meal with his cousin and another mob associate.
At first no one noticed the masked trick-or-treater who walked into the restaurant carrying a Halloween bag, the kind that kids all over the neighborhood were using to collect their candy that night.
Candy wasn’t the issue, however.
The guy wearing the mask walked up to Scarfo’s table, pulled a 9 mm machine pistol out of his bag, and opened fire. Scarfo was hit six times. The gunman turned and walked briskly out of the restaurant and onto Tenth Street, where a car was waiting for him. Other customers were stunned. It happened in seconds. The shooter, as he stumbled down the restaurant steps, dropped his gun. Was it an accident or by design?
Years later, a mob informant told authorities that the gunman deliberately left the gun. The reason? He knew the elder Scarfo was a big fan of The Godfather, especially the scene where Michael Corleone avenges the shooting of his father by gunning down a rival mobster and his police protector in an Italian restaurant in the Bronx. As he leaves, Michael flips the gun onto the floor as he had been instructed to do by the veteran mobsters who set up the hit.
The shooting of Nicky Scarfo Jr. (he survived) was a bloody homage of sorts to a classic mob movie and was also a way for the shooter—no one has ever been charged with the attempted murder—to thumb his nose at the jailed Philadelphia mob boss.
The shooting effectively ended any attempt by Scarfo Sr. to control the crime family from prison. The Gottis, according to Alite’s accounts of his firsthand involvement, appeared to be headed in the same direction. But then, Alite said, greed got in the way. In the Gambino crime family that the Gottis had created, that was all too often the case.
The plot to kill Junior, his uncle Pete, and Carmine Agnello began to percolate within months of Gotti Sr.’s conviction. Alite knew some of the players and heard about others. John Carneglia, who was convicted with Gene Gotti in the
big heroin case, was one of the instigators. Nicky Corozzo, a mob capo, was also in on it, Alite said. Danny Marino, another capo, may have been involved, or at least given his tacit approval, Alite believes. Charles Carneglia, John’s psycho brother, also played a role.
“John Carneglia was in jail and the Gottis, first the father, then the son, were taking advantage of him,” Alite said. “He still had guys out on the street who owed him money and the Gottis just took it. They told anyone who owed Carneglia that they should pay the money to them instead. It was the same old story, ‘Fuck John Carneglia. He’s a scumbag drug dealer.’ But the Gottis were happy to take the money that he was owed from dealing drugs.”
From prison, Carneglia got word to his brother Charles, who in turn enlisted Alite.
“Charles told me what they wanted to do and asked me, ‘Would you take care of that half Jew?’” Alite said. Anytime anyone wanted to belittle Junior they would bring up the fact that his mother was Russian Jewish on her mother’s side. Consequently, they would call Junior a Jew.
Alite weighed his options. His view of the Gottis had changed.
“When I first got involved, I would have died for that family,” he said. “But the longer I was around them and the more I saw, the less I believed in what they were saying and doing.”
There was also a very practical underworld assessment. With Senior in jail for life, the family was splitting into factions. Whose side did Alite want to be on? Junior was a bumbler who didn’t know how to run a criminal organization. The odds were he would end up dead or in jail. Did Alite want to go down with him or roll the dice with someone else?
Alite agreed to be part of the murder plot. A few weeks later, John Carneglia’s mother-in-law passed away. Junior put out the word that no one was to attend the wake or funeral, but Alite went to the viewing with his own crew of four or five guys.
“There was a big snowstorm that night,” Alite said. “While I’m at the funeral parlor I’m told there’s a phone call for me. I pick up the phone and it’s John Carneglia. Somehow he had gotten the use of a prison counselor’s phone and called.”
Inmate phone calls from federal prisons are monitored and recorded. But calls from a counselor’s phone are not. Alite said John Carneglia asked him, “Can you take care of Junior?”
“Sure,” Alite said. “No problem.”
One of the great ironies was that Alite intended to use Junior Gotti’s own guns to kill him. Earlier Charles Carneglia had borrowed a 9 mm handgun and an Uzi machine gun, along with ammunition, from Junior.
“Junior had bought several machine guns and Charles asking to borrow one wasn’t any big deal,” Alite said. “Everybody knew Charles was crazy and a killer.”
Charles Carneglia gave the guns to Alite, who stashed them at a friend’s tattoo parlor. The idea was to make Junior “comfortable,” set him up, and then blow him away, the same routine that had been used on Grosso and Gotterup. Alite and some associates had begun to “clock” Junior’s movements. They learned that he was going to the same restaurant for dinner on Friday nights. Alite’s plan was to show up there and take him out. Everyone was on board. Nicky Corozzo, Alite said, hated Gotti Sr. and despised the son. That’s one reason he got involved in the murder plot. But somewhere along the way, Alite said, Corozzo saw a way to cash in. He decided to trade bullets for dollars.
“Nicky Corozzo sent his nephew to visit Gotti Sr. in prison and to deliver a message,” Alite said. “The word from Nicky to Senior was that ‘We can’t protect Junior on the streets. He’s gotta slide over or he’s gonna be killed.’ Senior knew right away what was going on. And he worked out at deal.”
Alite believes that from prison Gotti arranged to have several hundred thousand dollars funneled to Nicky Corozzo. The payoff ended Corozzo’s involvement in the murder plot. Corozzo had turned the planned hit into an extortion scheme. He shook Gotti down the same way Gotti had shaken down dozens of others when he was running the crime family. Shortly after Corozzo backed out, Charles Carneglia began complaining about being “caught in the middle.” Carneglia sold out for a lot less.
“He was a killer, but mentally he was very weak,” Alite said. “You couldn’t depend on him for anything. Not even his brother could count on him,” Alite said. “Gotti arranged for Carmine Agnello to put Charles on the payroll at the auto salvage yard he owned. They were paying him seven hundred and fifty dollars a week.”
Once he started collecting his weekly pay, Charles Carneglia told Alite the hit on Junior had been canceled.
“It’s off,” he told Alite. “Give me back the guns.”
“What do you mean, it’s off?” Alite asked.
“Change of plans,” said Charles Carneglia.
Alite was dumbstruck. He also was adamant about the guns.
“You’re not getting them back,” he told Carneglia.
“But Junior wants them,” he said.
“Fuck Junior,” said Alite.
At this point, Alite’s relationship with Junior was broken beyond repair. He was spending most of his nights in New Jersey, but he was in Queens almost every day. He and Junior were still making lots of money together, he said, but as he later told a jury, “It was like a bad marriage. We stayed together, but we weren’t getting along.”
Alite said he had seen the Gottis turn on too many of their top associates to believe that he was somehow going to survive. “I still believed in the life of crime, the life of the Gambino family, the mob,” he said. “I just didn’t have any faith in the Gottis anymore.”
In fact, he had tried to get “transferred” to the Luchese organization. He had friends there and thought he could get out from under the Gottis by making that move. But Gotti and the rest of the Gambino hierarchy wouldn’t approve the shift. So Alite decided to make the best of a bad situation.
He started to use Charles Carneglia and Ronnie One-Arm Trucchio as buffers. He and Junior would usually communicate through one of those two guys. Technically, Alite, an associate, would be answering to the made guys. The reality was Alite was doing whatever he wanted, still making money on the streets and still moving around with a crew whose loyalty he could depend on. They were guys he trusted. Guys he had grown up with. Guys like his young cousin Patsy. Alite didn’t trust Trucchio or Charles Carneglia, but he knew he was smarter than they were and could effectively use them as a safeguard.
Alite, who had been the hunter, was very aware that he could easily become the hunted. He stopped showing up at the social clubs. He varied the way he moved around, avoiding any set pattern. He didn’t come when he was called. If someone wanted to meet with him, Alite would usually use his cousin to set it up.
It was at this time that he started to pick up bits and pieces of information, indications that he had a problem. A friend of another cousin was playing handball with a several of Junior’s associates and heard them joking about Alite, whom they referred to as “the sheriff.”
“The sheriff had a problem,” one of them said. “He was going to be killed. Junior had put out a contract on him.”
Trucchio also offered what amounted to a half-assed warning. He tried to dress it up, but said Junior and others in the administration were concerned that Alite wasn’t coming when he was called. Louis DiBono had paid the ultimate price for violating that protocol. Alite knew the consequences. But he also knew that, unlike DiBono, he was feared. Everyone knew that if they went after him, there would be a fight. There were no guarantees, but Alite was willing to take his chances. He continued to live life in the underworld on his own terms. He wasn’t about to run and hide. And he also continued to follow the other rule.
He had two scores, two robberies, working at this time and cleared both of them with Charles Carneglia, putting them “on the record” with the Gambino crime family. The two heists were supposed to generate serious cash. Alite, who testified about both incidents at Carneglia’s trial in 2009, came away with nothing. But he was so flush at the time that he took it in strid
e.
The first robbery was a Sears store in Vineland, New Jersey, about forty minutes from Alite’s home in Cherry Hill. A kid named Steve brought the deal to Alite.
“I knew him and his brother from the neighborhood,” Alite said. “His brother was a drug dealer and I helped him out from time to time.”
Alite said the kid’s father, George Lopez, was the head of security at the store.
The elder Lopez had worked in the local sheriff’s department and later was the warden at a jail or prison in the area, Alite said while testifying about the heist. He also was a bookmaker who edged off some work to Alite, who was in the process of establishing his presence in the South Jersey underworld.
Alite went down to Vineland and met Lopez. They mapped out a plan to rob the office where the cash proceeds were kept. The robbery was to go down on Labor Day. Alite was told there would be a lot of sales over the holiday weekend and that there might be up to a half million dollars in cash on hand. Alite still shakes his head as he talks about the robbery.
“This guy, he’s an Hispanic guy, right,” Alite said. “I’m in his basement making plans and I see these sheets and hats hanging in the corner. He’s a member of the Klan, the KKK. An Hispanic guy! I can’t believe it. He goes upstairs to get something and I put the robe and the hat on and when he comes down I’m prancing around, just busting his balls. He didn’t think it was funny.”
Alite was dumbfounded.
“I said to him, ‘Whaddaya do, throw a rope over a branch and hang yourself?’”
Alite had recruited a few associates who came down from New York and carried out the robbery. Two guys would go in posing as Secret Service agents. Alite had given them a counterfeit hundred-dollar bill. Their story was that there were a lot of these bills circulating and they wanted to examine the cash that had come through the store that weekend. Lopez said he would send the two security guards working that day out to lunch when the heist went down. He also promised to adjust the security cameras so that no one’s face would show up on video.
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