John A. “Junior” Gotti wasn’t just defending his name and his father’s honor when he allegedly dispatched bat-wielding and gun-toting Gambino family gangsters in two separate assaults against radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa, Gang Land has learned.

The Junior Don was also out to avenge the honor of his older sister Victoria, according to Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo, the turncoat capo who sunk family boss Peter Gotti three months ago and is poised for an encore performance against Junior later this year.

Junior explained his reasons for the assaults against Sliwa in early 1992 during a meeting at a Howard Beach, Queens, restaurant that was attended by DiLeonardo and several other family mobsters, according to FBI documents obtained by Gang Land.

“At this meeting, Gotti Jr. expressed his anger with Sliwa [for] making derogatory remarks on his radio program about the Gotti family, [and] complained that Sliwa was badmouthing both him and his sister, Victoria,” wrote FBI agent William Hekel.

Sliwa is still at it. These days, the motormouth WABC radio personality often lumps Victoria into his frequent rants against Junior and their father, late Gambino boss John Gotti.

Sliwa yesterday invoked his Italian heritage on his maternal grandparents’ side, tossing in a couple of southern Italian colloquialisms for emphasis. He told Gang Land that Victoria’s so-called reality TV show, “Growing Up Gotti,” was against everything hardworking Italian-Americans stand for: “It’s ‘Growing Up Degenerate Gotti’ with Gottilocks and her three little dons in their deformative years. These citrolos are so bad, they have to use subtitles so the rest of America can understand them.”

In 1992, the loquacious Sliwa took every chance to bash her old man as a drug-dealing killer and his son as a chip off the old block, but the only times he railed against Victoria was as an afterthought to his diatribes against another frequent target, her then-husband, Gambino soldier Carmine Agnello.

“I bashed Carmine on a regular basis, and would tell my Queens listeners that if their car was stolen, forget about it, it was already at Carmine’s Jamaica Salvage Yard and shredded,” recalled Sliwa. “And then I used to say, ‘But I feel a little sorry for the guy, he’s married to Victoria. Marrona.’ “

At the mob sit-down to discuss the shooting of Sliwa, Junior told two associates who were later inducted into the family – co-defendants Michael “Mikey Y” Yannotti and Joseph “Little Joe” D’Angelo – “to put Sliwa in the hospital,” DiLeonardo told agent Hekel.

Gotti instructed veteran capo Nicholas “Little Nick” Corozzo, a target of a continuing Manhattan federal grand jury investigation into the assault, to “handle the details of the attack,” said Mikey Scars.

Yannotti, who had been crouched down in the passenger seat of a stolen taxicab that was being driven by D’Angelo on June 19, 1992, allegedly shot Sliwa three times after he hailed the cab outside his East Village apartment.

Three months earlier, three of Junior’s close associates attacked Sliwa with baseball bats across the street from his apartment, according to another FBI report by Hekel.

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It’s been six years since Bruce Cutler defended Junior Gotti in his first federal case in 1999. Even longer since the often outrageous lawyer slam dunked a copy of an indictment into a trash can and won an amazing – but tainted – 1987 acquittal for the late John Gotti that transformed him from the Dapper Don into the so-called Teflon Don.

Recently, Gang Land heard some chatter from lawyers and others that the bombastic attorney had visited Junior at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and might soon be raising his voice and trading barbs with the quick talking Sliwa when the Junior Don goes to trial later this year.

Cutler, who briefly represented Peter Gotti when Junior’s uncle was hit with racketeering charges three years ago, certainly didn’t squash that notion, telling Gang Land that he had visited his former client and was ready, willing, and eager to jump into the fray.

“He looked very good, very determined, very articulate. If I am asked to come in,” he said. “I will do my very best to make certain that he comes home.”

That’s not likely to happen, according to what Gang Land has heard via the MCC grapevine from Gotti, and from his current lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman.

“Jeff is the lawyer I want to defend me on this case. He’s not afraid to take on the government,” was the message Gang Land received from Junior.

“I’ve been John’s lawyer on this indictment from day one and expect to exonerate him,” said Lichtman, firmly. “We are preparing for trial and I will defend him, as I do with any client that has stood with me in court, with my heart and soul.”

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Onetime Madonna pal Chris Paciello made his debut as a prosecution witness this week and told how he used his share of a $1 million Brooklyn bank robbery to open his first Miami Beach nightclub and hobnob with beautiful people and high-level gangsters.

The entourage of beauties that accompanied him to prior court appearances was nowhere in sight as he fingered old cohort Edmund Boyle as an accomplice in the 1994 bank heist as well as a former mob associate who, like Paciello, was “on record” with the Gambino family. Other than reporters, Boyle’s mother and sister were the only spectators in the courtroom.

Paciello, 33, expressed remorse for the 1993 shooting death of Staten Island housewife Judith Shemtov in a botched home invasion robbery he planned and partially executed, saying it was a “heinous crime” that he has regretted “up to this day.”

Under questioning by defense lawyer Martin Geduldig, however, Paceillo conceded that he earned enough money in his new life to give expensive gifts to new mob superiors and pay $600,000 in legal fees – including $350,000 to lawyer Ben Brafman. He gave a $5,000 watch to acting Colombo boss Alphonse Persico and chipped in with other Colombo wiseguys to buy a “truck” for the late Colombo underboss William “Wild Bill” Cutolo, who fancied the SUVs that are popular today.

But, Paciello admitted, he never sent any money to the grieving Shemtov family until he was ordered to do so by the court.

His testimony about Persico and Cutolo was a preview to his expected appearance as a government witness later this year at the racketeering and murder trial of Persico, who is charged with Cutolo’s murder in 1999.

Paciello, who had been “with” the Gambino family, was officially released to the Colombos during a sitdown at a Brooklyn warehouse between Persico and Mikey Scars DiLeonardo in 1997, according to FBI documents.