John Gotti, who died in federal prison after a short but glorious reign as the swashbuckling Dapper Don of the Gambino family, must be turning over in his grave this week – for several good reasons.

There is the matter of his ingrate son, Junior, picked up on prison bugs cruelly badmouthing his old man and his way of life; there is daughter Victoria, who seems determined to turn the name Gotti into shorthand for a greedy, dysfunctional family, and then there is the matter of the massive excavation in a Queens lot launched this week by the FBI to search for bodies the Dapper Don may have carefully hidden years ago.

Let’s start with the big dig.

On Monday, the FBI began mining for corpses at The Hole, a long-forgotten mob graveyard near Gotti’s old stomping grounds in Lindenwood, Queens, not far from his one-time Howard Beach home. Authorities say they are looking for bodies dumped there by several crime families, but Gotti would be right for believing they’re most interested in unburying some of his old crimes.

The FBI learned 19 months ago, from high-level Bonanno turncoat Salvatore “Good Looking Sal” Vitale, that there were remains at the site, but did nothing until it picked up new info from an unnamed source who talked about Gotti’s gang also using it.

Vitale told the feds last year that ca pos Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera and Philip “Philly Lucky” Giaccone – killed in 1981 along with Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato – were buried there. In relating the murders of the three capos, the former underboss said that his brother-in-law, Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, had indicated that much about the two missing capos, according to an FBI report obtained by Gang Land.

“Massino once commented to [Vitale] that the bodies of all three captains had been disposed of at the same place. Massino was surprised that only [Sonny Red’s] body had surfaced,” the report said. (Not only does it make sense that the killers would bury all three in the same location rather than lug them to different parts of the city, it raises a question: Why did authorities never dig for the others in 1981, when they found Indelicato, a few weeks after all three disappeared?)

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn had plenty of time to search for the bodies before Massino’s trial – they did conduct two separate digs for other victims, one successful – but opted against it. Neither the U.S. attorney’s office nor a FBI spokesman, Jim Margolin, would explain the delay.

A primary reason for moving on the information now, three months after Massino was convicted of the murders, was recently acquired intelligence that three Gotti rubout victims, including a former neighbor, John Favara, were also buried there. As Gang Land reported in March 2001, investigators believe that a Gotti hit team abducted and killed Favara and disposed of his body in 1980, four months after he killed young Frank Gotti in a tragic car accident.

“All murder victims are important, but some are more important than others,” said one law enforcement official. “Favara was a totally innocent victim. He was not involved in organized crime. That’s certainly a factor.”

Sources say the other Gotti victims believed to be buried there are Thomas DeSimone and his brother-in-law, Joseph “Joe the Barber” Spione, who disappeared in 1979.

Authorities declined to say from where the new information emanated, but did say the FBI believed it was credible and stressed that closure wasn’t the only reason for the huge, costly undertaking in Queens, which could take weeks. They noted that even after so many years it was possible that evidence still remained linking a suspect or two to one of the murders. One of the three Gotti rubout victims may have been wrapped in plastic, said one source, who declined to elaborate.

The Dapper Don took even tougher digs, however, from his son John A. In a textbook case of mob nepotism, the late Mafia boss made Junior a millionaire by bringing him into the family business and promoting him way beyond where his experience or capabilities would dictate. Now, although he never dared say it to his father’s face, Junior has been badmouthing his late dad to his friends, cohorts, and even his personal attorney. Worse, the quotes wound up on tape and in the newspapers.

“I know my father loved me, but I got to question how much, to put me with all these wolves,” Junior said last year. “My father couldn’t have loved me to push me into this life,” he added, according to an FBI transcript of the jailhouse conversation. “I am ashamed of who I am,” Junior despaired at another point. “I would rather be a Latin King.”

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On the other hand, Gotti’s daughter Victoria has never been heard to utter a disparaging word about her father – but she’s found ingenious other ways to stain his “Man of Honor” reputation. For many months now she has been hustling her father’s notorious name in “Growing Up Gotti,” her so-called reality show on the A &E Television Network.

When the late Dapper Don was still alive, he angrily told Victoria in a jailhouse rant to use her married name – Agnello – on the book jackets of her novels. This would spare her sons taunts about their gangster granddad, which she had complained about.

Smart and cagey as he was, the old boss just didn’t understand modern marketing methods – not to mention the profit potential of proper product “branding.”

To hype her cable show, Victoria and her three sons, all dressed in fashionable black, struck gangsteresque poses for photos snapped in front of their luxurious Westbury mansion. The picture has been widely used by A &E to promote the program in magazine and newspaper ads. A month ago, promoters upped the publicity another notch, adorning black pizza boxes that A &E distributed to pizzerias in Los Angeles and Manhattan.

On the sides of the boxes, along with the usual extra toppings like pepperoni and extra cheese, customers were also offered “special toppings” including jewelry, luxury cars, and hair products.

“We’ve done many things designed to drive tune-in,” said an A &E spokeswoman, Vicky Kahn. “We also had Victoria Gotti look-alikes, giving out bisGottis, you know, instead of biscotti.”

And, Ms. Kahn assured Gang Land, these promotions are all authorized by the star of the show. “We run everything by her, definitely.”