John Gotti’s widow and one-time mistress each deny that he fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter, but the Dapper Don spoke glowingly about a “precious” love child who looked like him, during a videotaped jailhouse conversation obtained by Gang Land.

“I ain’t seen her in over seven years, but she’s a doll, a precious little kid,” he told his brother Peter with a smile, on January 30, 1998, less than a year before the Gambino crime boss would be diagnosed with throat cancer that ultimately caused his death in 2002.

He never mentioned the name of the girl or her mother. But the late Mafia boss left no doubt he was referring to a daughter he had with Shannon Connelly, the daughter of his mob mentor, longtime family underboss Aniello (Neil) Dellacroce, who died in 1985.

Gotti’s videotaped words that day at Marion Federal Penitentiary came at an especially stressful time. A week earlier, his son John A. (Junior) had been hit with racketeering charges that would lead to a 77-month prison term. And so most of the father’s words were angry and filled with expletives and biting sarcasm.

But the voice turned soft, and he had nothing but nice things to say about the little girl, who sources say was born while he was detained without bail and on trial in a 1987 racketeering case that would end in a stunning acquittal that made him a household name.

Before he got around to her, though, he railed on about the little girl’s mother and her grandmother, Rosemary Connelly, and instructed Peter how to handle the grief they were giving him, referring to himself as a “busy guy” who “knows his obligations.”

“When you see that other person again, that Rosemary,” he began. “The daughter annoys me with these f——letters and cards. She thinks we’re like boyfriend and girlfriend again, you know what I mean? You tell her, ‘Lis ten, I don’t know if you know who he is or what he is, but he’s a busy guy, this guy. He knows his obligations. He tries to meet his obligations, and all that. In his heart, he feels what he’s supposed to feel in his heart.’ She’s disappointed. Where does she think this f——money grows? You gotta tell her.”

After Peter responds that he has told her that in the past, and assures his brother he will again, Gotti spells out a plan of action for Peter to get them to stop asking him for money.

“Tell her, ‘First of all, youse are writing to a guy, it’s a holiday for him to get out of the cell for an hour of comfort. Year in and year out you write feeling sorry for yourselves all the time. He feels sorry for you, too.’ I like to show you one of my letters to her: ‘I feel great. I never felt better in my life. I feel like a youngster. I wish you the best. Will try and help you with your problem.’

“You tell her, ‘Listen, any help I could be, I’ll be. But, don’t ask me [pointing to himself], ask you [pointing to Peter].’ If it’s not possible, goodbye. You know what I mean.”

On the tape, as Peter nods his affirmation, Gotti seems to break into a broad grin and states: “You saw [Rosemary’s] granddaughter? Cute kid, eh? Good kid. She look like I told you?”

Yeah, nods Peter: “I thought she was my daughter, or a bigger version of my granddaughter. She’s a nice kid. They’re bringing her up right.”

“I guess so. The mother’s all right,” Gotti agrees, before taking a shot at Shannon’s mental acuity. “She’s a peepee brain. She’s got a peepee brain like Richie’s got,” he said, referring to his brother, Richard. “She’s got a female brain, your brother Richard’s got a male brain. She’s got a peepee brain. He’s got a peepee brain.”

Gotti’s second family was no secret among wiseguys and law enforcement officials for years. The affair was also widely known. Two years before Gotti’s jailhouse chat with his brother, Gene Mustain and I disclosed in “Gotti: Rise and Fall” that the Dapper Don and Shannon were an item during the 1980s.

“She called Gotti ‘Papa Schultz’ – after Dutch Schultz, the heavily romanced gangster-about-town of an earlier New York. He got a kick out of the nickname, and other gangster girlfriends they met around town began calling him that too,” we wrote.

For quite some time, they did act, as Gotti put it to his brother Peter, like “boyfriend and girlfriend.” And the long amorous affair caused a rift between Gotti and her father, Dellacroce, who told his mob protege to stay away from his daughter, to no avail.

But the steamy details were publicly disclosed last week in a tit-for-tat response to defense trial strategy that painted Junior Gotti as a wholesome family man victimized from the witness stand by a lowlife, finger-pointing philanderer. In their retort, prosecutors elicited testimony that Junior also had a comare and emulated his father, who had a second family.

In the end, in his discussion with his brother, Gotti voiced sadness, but not about the off-limits fling with the daughter of his underboss. He pined about not seeing his daughter from that relationship for so many years, and for failing to adequately provide for her.

“I feel bad I can’t do the right thing, but what am I going to do? You know what I’m saying? One day, I’ll be able to do the right thing. Right now, I can’t do it.”

***

Kenny McCabe – a bear of a man who was the most relentless, knowledgeable and important New York organized crime investigator for the last 35 or so years – died last week after a yearlong battle with cancer. He was 59.

I ran into him more times and places than I can remember. One meeting stands out among the others, though.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was slowly maneuvering my car into the parking lot of a small lumber yard on 86th Street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. All of a sudden, an old, beat-up blue Ford Pinto with one yellow front fender that was parked next to the driveway began moving toward my car. And the driver was beeping the horn.

“What are you doing, going into a mob lumber yard?” McCabe said. “I’m clocking you. If you’re not out of there soon, you’re going in my report.”

As I pulled into the lot, Kenny Mc-Cabe leaned back, lifted his binoculars, and zoomed in on the goings on at the Veterans & Friends Social Club, the local headquarters of the Gambino family a block away, a notebook and camera at his side. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Kenny McCabe was on the job, gathering information that might be useful in an investigation or a trial the following week, or maybe even decades later. Like the 2006 trial of Junior Gotti, for example.

He will be missed by Kathy, his wife of 38 years, his four children, five grandchildren, four siblings, and countless friends in the law enforcement community.

We’ll all miss the man. But his life’s work remains, scattered around the town, in court files and the offices of the NYPD, the Brooklyn district attorney, and the Manhattan U.S. attorney, a testament to his tireless work as the best damned mob investigator of his generation.

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.