Real-Life ‘Growing Up Gotti’

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The New York Sun

The TV listings say a show called “Growing Up Gotti” airs on cable on Sunday nights. It’s about the daughter of the late mob boss, John Gotti, and her three sons, whose last names happen to be Agnello.


A real-life version of “Growing Up Gotti” was on display yesterday in courtroom 14C in the federal courthouse in Manhattan in the form of grainy color videos of visits to the late Dapper Don in the supermax federal pen in Marion, Ill.


The inmate and his visitors sit face-to-face in small wood and Plexiglas booths and talk on black telephones. On the video, John Gotti, fleshy and graying in an orange jumpsuit, sits on the inmate’s side; his brother Peter on the visitor’s side.


John rants, raves, and rages about mob turncoat Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano, prison life, prosecutors, reporters, lawyers, his wife, and just about everyone else.


The language is lewd and crude and the gabby Gotti – who apparently never let anyone get a word in – cradles the phone in his right hand and punctuates every sentence with his left.


Most of his venom is directed at Gravano, whose testimony put Gotti away until the day he died. Peter Gotti and his sidekick, Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro, are on trial for conspiracy to kill Gravano, and prosecutors say the tapes show that intent.


“These are the lowlifes in this world,” John Gotti says in an obscenity laced September 6, 1996, conversation. “Every once in a while we let them close to us, ya know what I mean?” – a reference to Gravano, who was once his underboss. “They’re selfish people, Pete….You understand where I’m coming from?”


“I understand exactly what you’re saying,” Peter replies. “He was always a sneaky rat.”


“How many people really liked him?” John Gotti asks.


“Nobody,” Peter Gotti says.


“They all hated him,” John says. “They tolerated him because a me. …That’s a bill that’s gotta be paid some day, just like every other bill, ya know what I mean? Just like this Gravano and the rest of them; then that bill’s … gotta be cashed … ’cause I gotta be able to sleep.”


The next day, John Gotti started a bitter rant about how his mob fell apart every time he went to jail. Then he switched back to Gravano and how the press “lies.”


“Everybody got a little hate in them, or dislike in them, ya know what I’m saying?” John Gotti asks his brother. “So it would be normal for me to have some hate for this Gravano punk liar, right? …


“I was a little hot yesterday, but I got a right to be, Pete. I read about mutts, tough guys, I’m nobody. I read about heart attacks I never had. I read about gardens I don’t have. I read about me crying to get out of jail. … A punk is terrified of me. He lays in the cot two hours, he takes a sneak punch and runs away. I read I got the s– kicked outta me. … Everything about me becomes a lie.”


The he launched into a tirade about the way some of his relatives were behaving.


“I’m not going to lose control of my blood family,” he says.”…I’m not gonna have a circus. They wanna be like, like the Kennedys or something. …


“Pete, ya know I’m a realist. I’ve been one all my life. I was a realist when I knew there was no-win situations. But it hadda be done and I went and do it whatever the heck hadda be done.”


In an angry May 23, 1997, rant, John Gotti curses his wife Victoria for reportedly saying their son “Junior” was better off in jail. “I mean you let, you and the rest of them f— morons let her get away with believing that.”


Then he goes after the feds.


“Pete, they gotta hate me because I became a legend. Jimmy Breslin said it. He said, ‘I could write down 53 books where you’re mentioned in,’ ” the increasingly daffy don says. “Fifty-three books. You can’t find 53 with Abraham Lincoln was mentioned in.”


And he vows revenge.


“I dream every night a chopping these motherf—- up in little pieces,” he vented. Every f—night….I’ll remedy this. You can bet your f— life I’ll remedy it.”


He never did, of course. John Gotti died of cancer two years ago in a federal prison with, as he saw it, many debts uncollected.


And now, with summations set for tomorrow and the jury to get the case Friday, Peter, 65, is looking at the same kind of future – with lots of days ahead in which he’ll sit on the inmate’s side of the Plexiglas, curse the gods, and vow revenge.


The New York Sun

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