His approach was simple and direct. Whenever he was asked a question, he said, he answered honestly. He never tried to sugarcoat anything. And very often he admitted to even more than what he was asked about.
On direct examination, when a federal prosecutor asked him how many people he had shot, he responded, “Me personally? I shot about thirty-five guys. I was involved in probably forty-five shootings. Ten of those I wasn’t the shooter.”
And when he was asked if, in his plea deal, he had confessed to all his crimes, he answered, “It’s impossible. I can’t even remember them all.”
He also offered quips and asides that he hoped would provide a human side for the jury to consider. Early on his second day on the stand he was asked about the money Johnny Gebert made selling drugs and about a vacation he and Gebert had taken to Puerto Rico in the 1980s. Gebert had paid for the entire trip. Alite was asked if Gebert was making enough money at that time to finance that kind of trip.
“He was making enough money to finance this whole room to go to Puerto Rico,” Alite replied.
At another point, when there were questions about Claudia, the woman he lived with for twenty-five years and with whom he had had two sons, he corrected the prosecutor and said she was his “wife” even though they had never been married.
Then he shrugged and looked toward the jury.
“I better call her my wife or I’m gonna be in trouble,” he said almost shyly.
Throughout his testimony, Alite came back again and again to the hypocrisy that was the Gotti organization and to the rules of leadership that applied only if the Gottis wanted them to apply and only if the rules didn’t affect their ability to make money.
“The life is treachery,” he said, unknowingly echoing the opening statement of Carnesi. “John Gotti Jr. [and] his family taught me this life.”
Cross-examination by Carnesi led to some fireworks on the stand and, on one occasion, in the courtroom itself. The defense attorney, who in his closing would tell the jury that Alite was the “centerpiece” of the government’s case, spent two days trying to discredit the star witness. He hammered away at Alite’s criminal history, implying that it was even worse than what he had admitted to. Alite said he wasn’t trying to hide anything but that there was no way he could possibly remember everything he had done.
“I committed crimes every day of my life for twenty-five years,” he said. “I didn’t keep a scorecard.”
And while he admitted to most of the crimes that Carnesi added to the government litany, he clashed with the defense attorney when Carnesi implied that it was Alite who had strangled a woman in a motel after having sex with her. That, Alite said, was an outright lie. It was Vinny Gotti, he told the jury. Everyone knew it. He then went on to explain the background and the events surrounding the murder, as they were told to him by an associate of Vinny Gotti and later by Junior Gotti.
Alite saw the move to link him to the unsolved motel murder as a desperate attempt by the defense to further undermine his credibility with the jury. There was not one shred of evidence linking him to the crime. Everyone knew that Vinny Gotti was responsible, Alite said again.
With the jury already out of the room for a break in that testimony, and as Alite was stepping down from the stand, he says Junior Gotti smirked and mouthed the words “We’re gonna kill you.”
Alite, flanked by two federal marshals, angrily replied, “You got something you want to say to me?”
With that, Gotti went into a rant.
“You’re a dog!” he screamed, according to news accounts in the papers the next day. “You’re a dog! Did I kill little girls, you fag? You’re a punk. You’re a dog all your life. You always were. Did I strangle little girls in motels?”
Alite was hustled out of the courtroom by the marshals. Before the jury was brought back and the trial resumed, Gotti was admonished by the judge for his outburst. He apologized. Later Alite said he was glad the judge got to see the real Junior Gotti. He wished the jury had also had that opportunity.
The outburst made little sense. Who was the “little girl” that Gotti was screaming about? While the motel strangulation was a horrible crime, the victim was a woman in her twenties. Both Gotti and Alite knew that.
The day after the outburst, the New York Daily News headline screamed: CHAOS IN THE COURTROOM; JUNIOR GOTTI RIPS MOB TURNCOAT DURING BREAK IN TESTIMONY.
The incident occurred during Alite’s seventh day on the stand and the reporters for the Daily News, Alison Gendar and Larry McShane, wrote a classic opening line to their story. “And on the seventh day he lost it” was their lead before going on to detail Junior Gotti’s verbal confrontation with his chief accuser.
Victoria Gotti, Junior’s mother, came to her son’s defense and tried to promote the defense’s claim that Alite had strangled the woman in the motel room, not her brother-in-law. In typical Gotti fashion, she ignored the threat made by her son and focused instead on his accuser.
“Alite is a pathological liar,” she was quoted as saying in a New York Post story the next day, “a rat caught in a proverbial trap, caught in his own lies, and he lashed out.”
Never mind that it was her son who provoked the incident. Gotti’s rules continued to apply even during the trial.
“I think he was just desperate,” Alite said several years later as he recounted the incident. “I tried to compose myself after we first shouted at one another. He just went off. To me, it was just another example of John Gotti being the coward that he always was. He thought he was losing the case and he was taking a cheap shot at me. Anyone who knows the two of us knows that if we were together in a room with no one else around, he’d never act like that or say those kinds of things. He’d be afraid of what I would do to him. But he knew I couldn’t do anything so he played the tough guy. The next day or the day after, I forget which, the trial started a little late because Junior apparently didn’t want to come out of his cell. He was frustrated and scared.”
Of all the lies and half-truths that were thrown around by the defense, Alite said, the implication that he was somehow involved in the motel murder is the one that still bothers him.
“I know the woman’s brother,” he said. “He knows what happened. Everybody does.”
Then, in an explanation that his therapist has no doubt heard many times, Alite tried to give perspective to his violent criminal history. Anyone he killed, he said, was in the life, part of the underworld. Everyone who got involved knew the potential consequences. But Alite said he never killed “an innocent person” and never killed women. Street justice, he said, should have taken care of Vinny Gotti when law enforcement couldn’t.
“He should have been killed for what he did,” Alite said. “I think the only reason he wasn’t was because his name was Gotti.”
Alite finished testifying on October 8. The trial would run for another month and a half. Kevin McMahon, Peter Zuccaro, Joe O’Kane, young Pete Gotti, and Tim Donovan were among the witnesses called by the defense. All were used to refute parts of Alite’s testimony and to put a positive spin for the defense on other things Alite had said. One example: Alite had testified that Gotti had shot McMahon during an angry dispute. McMahon acknowledged he had been shot, but said it was an accident.
Joe O’Kane claimed he was the shooter of Ciro Perrone’s nephew during the fight at the Arena, not Junior; that Genie Foster had been beaten by Alite, but not on Junior’s orders, and that Junior was “respected” in the neighbhorhood and “despised” those who used or sold drugs.
On cross O’Kane, who was then serving a life sentence on murder charges tied to the Vito Guzzo crew, admitted that he had been part of a plot to kill Alite for Guzzo. Peter Gotti, Junior’s younger brother, refuted the Johnny Gongs story. But during cross-examination, he acknowledged that when he visited his brother in prison, Junior had bragged about beating Jodi Albanese and her boyfriend. Peter Gotti, however, testified that he knew nothing about the boyfriend being brutalized in a basemen
t by Alite. And Donovan, as he had in Tampa, described how Alite and others had forced him out of the valet business. Only this time he was testifying for the defense, not the prosecution.
The issue of Gotti quitting the mob was also the focus of evidence and testimony.
The government played tapes recorded at Ray Brook in 2003 and 2004 in which, prosecutors said, Gotti could be heard complaining about the fact that his uncle Peter and others had taken over the leadership of the crime family and had demoted him to the rank of capo. On one tape he was heard promising to bust their heads once he got out.
The questions that those tapes presented to the jury were clear: If Junior Gotti had really quit the mob in 1999, why would he care about being demoted in 2003? If he was no longer a part of the organization, then how could he have a rank?
The defense countered with the taped conversation of Junior’s meeting with his father in Marion, the tape where he said he wanted out. He wanted “closure.” The defense also offered part of a government document, an FBI 302 in which an informant—identified only as “individual”—provided details about a meeting in 2006 in which then Colombo family boss John “Sonny” Franzese signed off on a plan to kill Gotti Jr. Franzese told the informant that unnamed leaders of the Gambino organization whom he referred to as the “Howard Beach Crew” had sought his approval for the murder of Junior Gotti.
Carnesi read a part of that 302 for the jury and entered it as evidence.
“On April 3, 2006, individual met with John ‘Sonny’ Franzese at a restaurant named Bahama Momma’s in Northport, Long Island. One of Franzese’s nephews was also present. Individual advised that he had previously met with the same nephew at a Dunkin’ Donuts several months ago to talk about a painting contract. During the course of the conversation Franzese advised that he had recently met with the Howard Beach Crew (Gambino Cosa Nostra Family) regarding John, Jr. (John Gotti Jr.). Franzese stated that they were very upset about his recent behavior and noted that there is no such thing as quitting the mob. They believed that John Jr. has millions of dollars stashed and that he can’t do time. Franzese advised the individual that he gave his consent to kill John, Jr. if they thought it was necessary. Franzese told the individual that the guys from Howard Beach Crew are crazy.”
The themes never changed. It was always murder, money, and betrayal. Had Junior “stashed millions”? And were unidentified members of his own crime family—perhaps his uncles—plotting to kill him? There were, of course, no answers. But the document gave the jury something else to ponder and may have helped the “I quit the mob” defense. This was Junior as a target and a potential victim.
Franzese, now in his nineties and back in jail, has long been identified as a throwback, a real gangster, a “man’s man,” says a mob associate who served time with him in prison in Milan, Michigan. But there is also this somewhat ironic twist to the Franzese piece of the Gotti Jr. story. His own son Michael Franzese, a onetime capo in the Colombo family, allegedly became a cooperator in the late 1980s. He has since turned his role as a Mafia turncoat into an occupation, writing books and giving lectures (for a fee) about his life of crime and his decision to walk away. The title of Michael Franzese’s first book? Quitting the Mob.
Jury deliberations began on November 11 and encompassed about ten days in total over a three-week period. The anonymously chosen panel had weekends off. There were a few other breaks and an extended five-day hiatus during the Thanksgiving holiday. One of the first notes from a juror came out even before deliberations had begun. The note writer, identified only as Juror #6, asked a favor of Judge Castel. The juror wrote: “Dear Judge Castel, as you know I’m currently unemployed. By serving on this jury I have missed numerous opportunities for employment. I would greatly appreciate if you could please write me a letter of recommendation . . . stating that I have been serving on the lengthy, high-profile John Gotti Jr. trial. This would greatly enhance my chances for future employment.”
Judge Castel said he would consider the request after the trial had ended.
Everyone, it seemed, was looking to cash in on the case.
The panel of twelve would arrive each morning at around ten to start the deliberation process. They would usually leave by 5 P.M. The first sign of problems surfaced on November 19 when the foreman sent Castel a note that read: “Unable to reach a unanimous verdict as to counts one, two and three.” After consulting with the lawyers and getting a clarification from the foreman that there was no agreement on any of the three counts, the judge urged the panel to continue.
Five days later, on November 24, at around 3 P.M., the foreman sent another note:
“We are unable to reach a unanimous verdict on count one. We are unable to reach a unanimous verdict on count two. We are unable to reach a unanimous verdict on count three.”
The judge called the jury in and again urged them to continue trying. The next day he recessed the trial for the Thanksgiving holiday. Deliberations resumed on December 1, 2009. At 3:10 that afternoon the foreman sent what would be the panel’s final note:
“Judge Castel, we cannot reach a unanimous decision on any count; we are deadlocked. There is not one member of the jury who believes that we can reach a unanimous verdict on any count.”
With that, Castel declared a hung jury and a mistrial. The Gotti camp went wild. A tie was almost as good as a win. Gotti had now faced down federal authorities four times since 2005. All four cases had ended with hung juries. The evidence and testimony just wasn’t strong enough to convince all twelve members of any of those four panels.
One of the first things that Carnesi did was move for bail. Junior had been held since the indictment was handed down in Tampa more than a year earlier. Castel granted the request. John A. Gotti Jr. was released later that afternoon on a $2 million bond. As he exited the courthouse, he was swarmed by reporters.
“I want to go home and see my children,” he said according to the media reports from that day. “There’s a very good chance, thank God, I’m going to have a healthy and happy Christmas with my family.”
Four of the jurors agreed to meet with the media to discuss the case. All four remained anonymous and it appeared all four had voted to acquit. According to the stories that appeared in the newspapers the next day, the panel had voted 6–5 with one member undecided to convict Junior Gotti of the RICO charge that topped the indictment. But, the jurors said, the votes had been 7–5 and 6–5 with one undecided to acquit Gotti of the drug-related murders of Grosso and Gotterup.
One juror, according to a report in Newsday, also said “the whole jury agreed” that John Alite was the least credible of the government witnesses. The jurors, when questioned, also said they thought the government should not retry Gotti Jr. again.
Enough is enough, they said.
FOR FOURTH TIME, MISTRIAL IN PROSECUTION OF GOTTI said the headline in the New York Times the following day. The piece, written by Alan Feuer, said all that needed to be said in the very first paragraph, which noted that for the fourth time in four years a federal jury had failed “to reach a verdict in the epic prosecution of John A. Gotti, enshrining him as a legendary criminal defendant and a mobster even trickier to convict than his father.”
John J. Gotti had beaten the feds repeatedly in court, earning the nickname the Teflon Don. But he couldn’t beat the feds the last time they came at him and subsequently died in prison. John A. Gotti, who fought the feds to a draw in four straight cases, was going home instead of to prison. On January 14, 2010, he learned that he would not have to square off against prosecutors for a fifth time.
“In light of the circumstances, the Government has decided not to proceed with the prosecution against John A. Gotti,” Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a brief statement announcing that his office had decided not to retry the racketeering-murder case.
Alite learned of the hung jury while being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, not far from th
e courthouse. He took it in stride. A short time later, he was transported back to Florida to await his own sentencing. That’s where he learned Junior would not be retried. There was nothing more he could do. If the feds didn’t want to go back into court, then both he and Junior Gotti would get on with the rest of their lives.
“A mistrial is actually a failure in the process,” Judge Castel had said in the midst of jury deliberations. “It’s not a verdict.”
The bottom line, said Alite, is that half the jury voted to convict Gotti.
EPILOGUE
John Alite was formally sentenced before U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew on April 27, 2011, in Tampa. Federal prosecutors from both the New York and Florida offices wrote letters praising his “extraordinary” and “substantial” cooperation while asking the judge to depart downward from a sentencing guideline range that at the top would have called for a life sentence.
Alite had pleaded guilty to racketeering—murder charges, admitting his role in four murders, two attempted murders, drug dealing, assaults, gambling, and extortion.
During the sentencing, his Florida lawyer Timothy Fitzgerald recalled that the judge read two impassioned letters sent to her by the daughters of George Grosso and John Gebert, whose murders Alite had confessed to. The letters seemed to carry some weight with the judge, Fitzgerald said. But then he interjected. Grosso and Gebert had tried to kill Alite first, the lawyer told Bucklew. The only reason they were dead and Alite was standing before her was that Alite was a better shot.
Asked by the judge, prosecutors confirmed that was in fact the case.
Like everything else surrounding the John Alite story, the weight you give to facts depends on your perspective.
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