Gotti's Rules

by George Anastasia

  Several years later, after GOTTI, JR. was arrested on unrelated charges, an additional cash payment was made to DALY when GOTTI, JR.’S name resurfaced in the SILVA murder investigation.

  GOTTI, JR. stated that after his father was arrested and remanded to prison [December 1990], GOTTI, JR. frequently met with JOE WATTS, who was a close associate of GOTTI, SR. At one meeting with WATTS at the Lum Chin Chinese restaurant, WATTS admitted his involvement in the murder of CENNAMO. Watts also told GOTTI, JR. that the first “piece of work” he (WATTS) was involved in was the murder of VITO BORELLI in approximately 1980, which he committed with GOTTI, SR.

  According to GOTTI, JR. JOHN DALY was assigned to the 106th Precinct during the time he received the payoffs from the Gambino Family and provided information to the Gambino Family about the SILVA murder investigation. GOTTI, JR. added that DALY later went to work for the Queens District Attorney’s Office.

  Oak Point Garbage Dump

  At some point in late 1980’s GOTTI, JR and others wanted to develop approximately 28 acres of land located on the Bronx side of the Triboro Bridge. This tract of land was known as Oak Point and at that time was being used by New York City as a garbage dump. GOTTI, JR. and his associates wanted to build modular homes on the property through a company known as Brite Star Homes. In addition to the housing development GOTTI, JR. wanted to get involved in the construction of the Bronx House of Detention on that site. GOTTI, JR. had received assurances that he would be able to sell the prison to the City of New York for twenty million dollars.

  According to GOTTI, JR., XXX, a partner of GOTTI, JR.’S in this venture purchased the property. GOTTI, JR. advised that bribes were paid to at least two city politicians in order to secure certain city permits required for the development of the project. JOE ZINGARO, a captain in the Gambino Family, had a close association with Bronx politician, XXX. GOTTI, JR. gave $20,000.00 in cash to ZINGARO for ZINGARO to give to XXX. According to ZINGARO, XXX accepted the $20,000.00 GOTTI, JR., using the alias JOHN RUSSO, met XXX at a function they both attended at Alex and Henry’s Catering Hall in the Bronx.

  According to GOTTI, JR., additional bribe money was paid to XXX through XXX. XXX suggested making the payments to XXX. According to GOTTI, JR. on at least two different occasions, he (GOTTI, JR.) gave $25,000.00 in cash to XXX for XXX to give to XXX. GOTTI, JR.’S close associate MICHAEL McLAUGHLIN, delivered the money. GOTTI, JR. again using the alias JOHN RUSSO, also met directly with XXX at XXX’S office. According to GOTTI, JR. the bribes paid to XXX did secure whatever permit (s) GOTTI, JR. and his associates needed to obtain for their project.

  In addition to the payments described above, GOTTI, JR. paid an additional $100,000.00 to $125,000.00 in cash to various city politicians through XXX and the law firm XXX in order to ‘grease the skids” in the development of the housing project and detention center.

  After XXX purchase Oak Point, GOTTI, JR. and his associates continued to operate the garbage dump from approximately January 1989 through late August 1989. GOTTI, JR.’S “guys,” including McLAUGHLIN, worked at the dump. GOTTI, JR. stated that investigators with the Department of Investigation (DOI) or another New York City investigative agency photographed GOTTI, JR. at the garbage dump on several occasions. Once this photographic evidence of GOTTI, JR.’S connection to the property surfaced, his (GOTTI, JR.’S) investors and business associates no longer wanted to be involved and the project was never completed.

  In approximately the spring of 1990, GOTTI, JR. and other Gambino Family members pursued another project involving a garbage dump. This dump was located in Matamoras, Pennsylvania. GOTTI, JR. attended a ‘sit -down” with other members of the Gambino Family, as well as high-ranking members of the Luchese Family concerning this project. On behalf of the Gambino Family (which GOTTI, JR. continually referred to as “our family”) GOTTI, JR., his (GOTTI, JR.’S) uncle, PETE GOTTI, and SALVATORE “SAMMY THE BULL” GRAVANO met with representatives of the Luchese Family, AL D’ARCO, ANTHONY “GAS PIPE” CASSO and PATTY MASSELLI. According to GOTTI, JR., the deal to purchase and operate this garbage dump fell through.

  Queen’s District Attorney’s Office

  GOTTI, JR. also stated that Gambino Family member ANTHONY “TONY LEE” GUERRIERI and his relationship with local politician, XXX, the Gambino Family had “influence” with the Queens District Attorney’s (DA) Office while JOHN SANTUCCI was the District Attorney. GOTTI, JR. identified XXX as the Gambino Family’s “go to guy.” GOTTI, JR. also advised that after GUERRIERI died, the Gambino Family lost most of their influence with the Queens DA’s Office.

  Eight months after the proffer session, John A. Gotti was at the defense table as his first trial for the Sliwa kidnapping began. The trial opened in August 2005 in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan. It proved to be one of the best shows in town. Hopeful spectators lined up in a hallway outside the courtroom an hour before the trial began for one of the few available seats inside. When Sliwa testified, in late August, it was a standing-room-only affair, a perfect storm of the mob and the media. Sliwa, the radio personality on the witness stand. Gotti, the celebrity mob boss, at the defense table. And Vicky, the tart-tongued Mafia princess with the flowing blond locks and heavy eye shadow, sitting in a back row, there to show support for her brother after making an appearance on a morning network TV show to tout the start of a new season of Growing Up Gotti.

  “I called John Gotti Sr. America’s number-one drug dealer,” Sliwa said from the witness stand when asked what he had been saying about the Dapper Don during his radio rants back in 1992. But his testimony also included admissions that as the leader of the Guardian Angels he had at times hyped or fabricated details in order to enhance the law enforcement legend of the urban, red-beret-wearing vigilante group. After a mistrial was declared, one of the anonymous jurors told a reporter that some members of the panel had found Sliwa a bit much to take, calling him bombastic and arrogant. The panel had apparently hung 10–2 and 7–5 in favor of conviction on the two counts tied to the Sliwa abduction. But despite their efforts of those voting for conviction, there was no way to break the logjam and the judge ultimately declared the jury hung and the case a mistrial.

  A retrial was quickly scheduled. In the meantime Junior was granted bail that September and allowed to go home. He was placed under house arrest and put on electronic monitoring. His family and friends, including his sister Vicky, posted property as security for the $7 million bond on which he was released. He would remain a “prisoner” in his home in Oyster Bay Cove on Long Island’s Gold Coast, spending his days with his wife, Kim, and their then five children.

  There was no bail for Alite despite attempts by his Brazilian lawyer to convince judges that his client was entitled to it. In fact, Alite says that had he been granted bail, he would have fled the country. Instead he spent the next two years fighting to survive and trying to escape.

  Beatings, riots, and murder were part of the daily routine in the prisons of Brazil. Inmates were divided into factions. Those linked to organizations like the Red Command appeared to carry the most weight, but that was a relative concept depending on the location and the mind-set of other prison authorities. On the lowest level of the inmate scale were poor Brazilians who had no connections, no money, and no way to protect themselves. They were often brutalized by guards, tortured, beaten, and raped.

  The prison authorities were also factionalized. There were military police who maintained order along the perimeter of the prison facility, guarding against jailbreaks and, in theory at least, providing the first level of screening for anyone entering the compound. They were heavily armed and politicized. Inside the facility there were jail guards—functionarios—and there were trustees. The guards were in charge of order inside the cell blocks. They were aligned with the warden, the deputy warden, or the Red Command. Everyone took bribes and allegiances were constantly shifting. The trustees, on the other hand, were beholden to the warden or deputy warden. They were usually lifers who had cu
t deals in order to ease the conditions under which they were being held. Most were brutes. Often strung out on drugs or steroids, they were the enforcers for the warden and deputy warden. They would administer the beatings and they would also serve as eyes and ears for the administration inside the cell blocks.

  Most Brazilian prisons, like Ary Franco, were overcrowded, vermin-infested hellholes. Toilets were little more than drain holes cut into the floors of the latrines. The holes emptied into old, corroded pipes. Sewage from the upper floors constantly leaked from those pipes that ran along the ceilings of the cells underneath. The smells, the noise, and the hot, humid, fetid conditions created an environment that was beyond miserable.

  In March 2005, shortly after Alite began his stay, the BBC, Britain’s renowned television network, broadcasted a documentary on prison conditions in Brazil. The report opened with comments from James Cavallaro, a Stanford law professor and founder of the Brazilian human rights organization the Global Justice Center. Cavallaro said he had been in many of the country’s prisons and that all presented the same picture.

  “They’re dark, dreary, wet, and damp,” he told the BBC. “Some of them feel like mediaeval dungeons. And it’s remarkable—there’s the same stench in all of them. Rotting food, urine, excrement, prisoners’ sweat. That prison smell is uniform—it’s teeming humanity.”

  Several years later, Alite’s Tampa-based defense attorney tried to provide the courts with some insights into what Alite had gone through while an inmate in Brazil. Timothy J. Fitzgerald filed parts of government reports from human rights organizations that were attempting to shed light on the systemic and seemingly unsolvable problems in the jails of Brazil. One of the documents filed by Fitzgerald cited a 2008 Human Rights Report from the U.S. State Department that addressed the horrendous prison conditions. The report read in part:

  Prison conditions throughout the country often ranged from poor to extremely harsh and life threatening. Abuse by prison guards, poor medical care, and severe overcrowding occurred at many facilities.

  Prison officials often resorted to brutal treatment of prisoners, including torture. Harsh or dangerous working conditions, official negligence, poor sanitary conditions, abuse and mistreatment by guards, and a lack of medical care led to a number of deaths in prisons. Poor working conditions and low pay for prison guards encouraged widespread corruption. Prisoners who committed petty crimes were held with murderers. According to the National Penitentiary Department, in June there were 392,279 prisoners incarcerated, 40 percent more than the system’s design capacity, and the number increased approximately 3,000 per month.

  Alite also noticed that violence on the street involving gangs like the Red Command spilled into the prisons where one side or the other—law enforcement or gangsters—sought retribution for what had occurred on the outside. A riot in a prison in São Paulo in 2005, shortly after Alite arrived at Ary Franco, was typical. Inmates seized a wing of the prison and proceeded to kill members of another inmate faction. They then cut off the heads of five of their victims and waved them from pikes as they stood on the roof of one of the prison wings.

  Survival was a day-to-day proposition. Alite, after overcoming some initial depression, decided he was going to survive. The first connection he made in Ary Franco was with an inmate named Emerson, who was the leader of the Red Command in the cell block where Alite was housed.

  Emerson gave Alite his bed after Alite was pushed into a cell in the middle of his first night in Ary Franco. The cell, designed to house a dozen inmates, was home to about forty. Not everyone got to sleep on the stone beds that had been carved out of the concrete walls. Many curled up in corners or on the floor. Emerson ordered another inmate out of the bed in which he was sleeping and took it for himself. The move made it clear to Alite that Emerson was in charge.

  The first week was a dismal experience, an emotional and physical assault on his mind and his senses. Alite had no idea if anyone even knew what had happened to him and he had no way to make contact with anyone on the outside. He was dirty and ached from the lack of sleep and the mosquito and rat bites. The cells were also infested with red ants that feasted on the bodies of the inmates during the night. Trying to sleep was a different kind of survival battle until Alite was introduced to the makeshift remedies—creams and skin coverings—that seemed to hold the ants at bay. Alite also found the food inedible. Every meal was the same, a bucket of rice and a bucket of beans to be shared by the inmates in the block.

  “The buckets were crawling with bugs,” he said. “I couldn’t eat it.”

  Emerson told him he had to. It was the only way to survive. And then he told Alite that it was important to stay strong and alert because there were other “possibilities.” It was the first hint that there might be a way to maneuver in Ary Franco the same way he had maneuvered in Fairton and McKean and Allenwood. Money and connections could make things happen. Alite had the money. Emerson had the connections.

  “He asked me who I would call if he could, like a magician, make a phone appear,” Alite said. “He asked if I could arrange with someone to get some cash to one of the guards at a meeting outside the prison.”

  Alite saw that Emerson was dead serious.

  “I could call someone,” he said.

  “Then watch, my friend,” said the Red Command prisoner.

  He and Alite walked casually over toward the latrine area, where the one drain hole that served as the inmates’ “toilet” was located. Then Emerson signaled to another inmate, a scrawny kid named Marcello, who, Alite would learn, was one of Emerson’s gofers. Marcello went back into the cell, then reappeared with his right arm covered in plastic from his hand to his shoulder. The covering had been fashioned out of plastic trash bags, but fit more snugly. Emerson looked around, then motioned to Alite to move with him into position, blocking the view of the drain hole. Screened from any guard who might be watching, Marcello got down on his knees, reached into the hole, and after feeling his way around, lifted out a small plastic bag.

  “His arm was covered with pieces of shit,” Alite said. “It stunk. But inside the small plastic bag was a cell phone.”

  Marcello cleaned off his arm and the smaller bag, running them under water from a spigot in the corner of the room that served as the inmates’ shower area. Only cold water. Inmates helped each other wash by pouring buckets of water filled from the spigot over each other. Buckets of water were also used to “flush” the drain hole.

  “You had to pour a bucket into the hole first to scare the rats away,” Alite said. “Then you squatted and got done as quickly as you could. The rats might come back and bite you in the ass or legs or balls if you lingered.”

  The rats had apparently ignored the plastic bag with the cell phone. After he retrieved and cleaned it, Marcello handed the bag to Emerson, who motioned for Alite to follow him to the shower area, a dank corner with walls of uneven concrete covered in scum. Emerson moved toward what looked like a patch of soap on the wall. Using a small Swiss Army knife, he peeled it away and from a small hole that had been hacked into the concrete he pulled out a SIM card. He placed the card in the phone and then he and Alite walked along the walls until the phone lit up. They had made a connection.

  Alite made his first call from behind the bars of a Brazilian prison. He would make hundreds over the next two years, using cell phones smuggled into the prison and SIM cards that had been stashed in dozens of locations.

  Initially, the calls went to a friend who brought cash and personal items—like clothing, soap, shampoo—to a guard at a prearranged meeting in Copacabana. The guard then brought the money and other items into the prison, taking a small fee for his services. The cash allowed Alite and Emerson to begin bribing other guards in order to improve their living conditions.

  Emerson explained how things worked and then introduced Alite to Santana, a black Brazilian guard who would prove to be one of the inmates’ staunchest allies. Santana said that anything they wanted could be
obtained and brought into the prison . . . for a price. The system he and a few of his guard associates had set up was designed to circumvent a different line of corruption that had been put in place by the warden and deputy warden. The wardens were running what amounted to a black market cantina inside the prison walls, allowing inmates to smuggle cash in and then charging substantial fees for items like toiletries, snacks, vegetables, fruit, and clothing.

  Emerson and Alite, through Santana and his network, bypassed the warden’s cantina. Alite liked Santana immediately. He was confident and direct. In a corrupt system, he exuded a form of honesty that Alite recognized from the streets. Everyone was in the game, but not everyone was trustworthy. Santana appeared to be someone he could trust.

  “If we can get what you want, we get one for you and one for us,” Santana said of the smuggling operation. “For example, if you want a pizza, we buy one for you and one for us. And we add a fee that is based on the cost of the item.”

  Alite can laugh about it now as he describes the first “order” he and Emerson put in through Santana—two Big Macs, two large fries, one large pizza, and a six-pack of beer. Santana, like a waiter in a restaurant, wrote it all down, nodded, and said, “You’ll get it when you get it.”

  Three hours later the order was lowered on a rope by a guard from one of the tiers above. Alite and Emerson sat alone in a patio area off the cell block stuffing themselves. Food and grease from the fries and the pizza ran down their chins as they washed what tasted like a gourmet meal down with bottles of beer. It felt exquisite, an experience comparable to sex, Alite would later say with a smile.

  Two hours after their meal, he and Emerson were vomiting and dealing with severe attacks of diarrhea. But it was a price Alite was willing to pay. Slowly, with the introduction of a diversified diet of smuggled food, his system adjusted. Life was becoming bearable.