“Should’ve Had Him Killed” - John Gotti Jr Finally OPENS UP On His Father, Gravano & Gambino Family | PBD Podcast | Ep. 519

Patrick Bet-David sits down with John A. Gotti to discuss growing up as the son of the infamous John Gotti, the impact of RICO laws, Roy Cohn’s influence, and life inside the Mafia. Learn how media, loyalty, and legal battles shaped the Gotti legacy and their sworn enemies. ---- 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": ⁠https://bit.ly/41rtEV4⁠ https://bit.ly/41rtEV4 📰 VTNEWS. AI: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3OExClZ⁠ https://bit.ly/3OExClZ 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠ https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh⁠ https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: ⁠https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A⁠ https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC⁠ https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7⁠ https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw⁠ https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or⁠ https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! SUBSCRIBE TO: ⁠‪@VALUETAINMENT‬⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@VALUETAINMENT ⁠‪@ValuetainmentComedy‬⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@ValuetainmentComedy ⁠‪@theunusualsuspectspodcast‬⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@theunusualsuspectspodcast ⁠‪@bizdocpodcast‬⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@bizdocpodcast ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. DISCLAIMER: According to available records, John Gotti clarified that the referenced incident involved a razor blade rather than a knife. Additionally, an account involving Gotti Sr. and Walter Johnson suggests that Johnson, aware of potential threats from the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia within the cell block, preemptively struck Gotti Sr. in an effort to be removed from the block. Subsequently, Johnson was transferred to the West Coast and, upon release, reportedly suffered a stabbing attributed to members of the Latin Kings as retaliation for the altercation with Gotti Sr.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Honey, that flu keeping you up?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't got this.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  You need NyQuil Intense Flu.

• 0:06Speaker 02

  Undo your flu symptoms with NyQuil Intense Flu. The nighttime sniffling, aching, aching fever best leave with a flu medicine. You do got this. Uses directed, keep out of reach of children.

• 0:16Speaker 03

  Let me tell you about John Gotti. This is who he was. If you hurt anybody close to John that he loved, there was no way he wasn't gonna hurt you. What happened to Frankie and what influence did that have on your father? A transit authority cop stops him, he pulls out the gun, kills the cop. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah.

• 0:32Speaker 04

  Did Gravano tell you how he became a rat?

• 0:34Speaker 03

  You would never call him that to his face. Sammy said, "Once a mafioso, you're a mafioso for life."

• 0:40Speaker 04

  Is he still a mafioso, you think? I've never seen anything like this, it was magnificent to watch.

• 0:44Speaker 03

  Have you ever seen that recorded?

• 0:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have it, I have it, and we used it as evidence in our trial. The United States government is the most powerful entity in the world, will you agree?

• 0:53Speaker 03

  For sure, yeah.

• 0:55Speaker 04

  I beat them. They played fair in the first trial. The second trial, now the gloves came off and they got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. And this is what they did.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Now, that's a very interesting twist right there.

• 1:05Speaker 04

  Once and for all, let's end this madness. This is crazy. I mean, the Gotti's are the most tried family in history and I'm the most tried Gotti.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  After six to seven years of speaking with John Gotti Jr.'s camp, he finally agreed to come and do a long form podcast. And it wasn't one hour, not two, three and a half hours. On top of that, he brought a folder this big with stack of documents of himself, of Sammy DeBulgravano. He was not complimentary at all with Sammy DeBulgravano and Sammy and I have done many podcasts together, Mafia States of America. I told him about some of the questions. Hey, if you're saying all these bad things about Sammy, why is it that your father put him as an underboss? Isn't that on your father? You have to kind of hear his answer. Then his case about when he met 40 minutes with the feds. Years ago, he got criticized for meeting with feds and cooperating.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  And he gave his argument, he showed all the documents on when he did it. You'll be able to decide for yourself. I asked him an interesting question. Question about how his father would have felt about him meeting with the feds when he spoke to them for the 40 minutes, you have to hear the answer he gives. Then there was a couple moments where he got very emotional and we talked about his youngest brother Frankie. I asked him about a lot of different folks. John A.Lite's name came up. His answer is very surprising. It's not what you would have thought he would have said about him and many others. We talked about the history, New York today versus the past, the two presidents he was very complimentary about, his family, himself, what he's doing now since he's been out

• 2:42Speaker 03

  for 15 years, how aggressively negative and critical he was about the US government and the Rico system. We talked about that a lot. Anyways, it'll be a historic type of a interview where what I mean historic, if you've been watching the other interviews in the past of the mobsters I've had on, Michael Francis, Sammy Frank Colada, Oscar Goodman, you know, Phil Leonetti, Ralph, there's a lot of them. You're definitely gonna love this, but if you're somebody that's also a person who fancies with movies like Godfather or Goodfellas or power plays or strategies or communication, he's gonna make a case to you where for the last two hours, you're gonna think you're

• 3:26Speaker 03

  sitting down with a lawyer making an argument. The question is, do you buy it or do you find some leaks in his argument? You will be the judge of that. Having said that, here's my three and a half hour sit down with John Gotti Jr.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  So the history of America is filled with a lot of different last names. If your name is Kennedy, you know you're gonna be tied to the Kennedy family. You got Trumps, you got Bush, you got Rockefeller. But when it comes down to this last name and first name, you know where it goes. And it's John Gotti. And today, after I think six years I was trying to do this interview.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  Seven.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Is it seven years?

• 4:30Speaker 04

  Seven years.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  We're finally doing this, John.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, at the fight.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  This is a... At the fight.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  My son Johnny's fight.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  At the fight, that's right. Good memory, yes, at the fight.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  It's pro debut.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  I remember that. And I had something going, I don't know what it was. I'm like, he was talking to Chris, but it's great to have you here.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  It's my pleasure to be here.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  It's great to have you.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  It's an honor to be here.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Yes, likewise. And you know, for me, when I accidentally got into this world of interviewing, you know, the world and different folks, and it was always, Pat, you gotta get John, you gotta get John, you gotta get John. I'm like, look, we gotta figure out how to make this work. And I'm glad we finally did. I got so many things I wanna talk to you about. I mean, your history, family, things that are going on today, things that are going on both politically, how some things are legal today that used to be illegal, where some of the stuff that the life was doing. But starters, just very basic question before we get into the story. John, how much of the life still exists today? Like, are they still acting, like, active gangsters, mobsters in America?

• 5:31Speaker 04

  You know, I'm so far removed. I'm about 26 years removed from that life. I'm only 15 years removed from prison. So you're incorporated. When you're in prison, you're on the compound, you're doing time with, you know, a lot of fellas from the streets. You have to understand what Rico did to understand where the status of where that lifestyle is today. Okay? Rico was a law that was basically constructed... Sort of in the beginning as a civil law. It was good, and it's Robert Blakey, he's a Notre Dame law professor. He constructed the law to be used civilly at first. And then he slowly evolved it to use it in the criminal aspect.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  And at, you know, civilly in nineteen seventy, I believe it was first introduced as a law, if my memory serves me right. And then by nineteen seventy nine, I want to say. Nineteen seventy nine into nineteen eighty. They made two criminal indictments. I believe those were the first two criminal indictments. One was against a guy named Fonzo Waltheiri, Frank Thierry, who they accused of being the leader of the west side, the Genovese family. And again, when I say the names of families. These are names that the government and the media. Had established. I don't know these names. They know these names. They establish them for the press and they identify various names. But. He was accused of being the shot caller for that group. And then you had a guy named Tony Pro Provinzano.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Who was the union leader. The union, the, the Teamsters Union Leader. That was always adverse and at loggerheads with Jimmy Hoffa. Out of New Jersey. So they were respected in seventy nine, eighty, two indictments came about.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Tony Provinzano?

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Tony Pro Provinzano, yep. And he died while in prison. They both were convicted of Rico. Now, I remember driving in a car with my dad. And my father saying to me. He had said that. In seventy nine, he came home in seventy seven. Did the state bid? He came home in seventy seven August. And we're driving in the car. And he heard it on ten ten wins news. My father used to always put on ten ten wins news. That's always in his car. If he went to music, it would be Jimmy Roselli or Engelbert Humperdinck. But he had ten ten wins news on. And when it came over the radio about the first conviction, and again, my memory doesn't serve me correct, which one fell first? I want to say Tony Provinzano. That he fell first. Indictments, like I said, were within a year. My father said, that's the beginning of the end.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  I remember him turning to me and saying, and I didn't understand what he meant. You know, I didn't quite, because I'm in military school at the time. I wasn't, I was a bit naive to certain things.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  But at this point, you already know how dad makes money.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Well, you know what, you pretty much understand, when you come from Howard Beach, and the only way I can really closely make the public understand it, to understand it, you have to make a correlation. And the correlation would be, you ever seen the movie The Town?

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Okay, with Ben Affleck?

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Great movie.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Great movie.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  It's the famous line, right?

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Well, I was away with a lot of those guys. A lot of those guys I was in Raybrook with, all good, solid kids, Irish kids, they had lived in that conclave there, you couldn't, you couldn't, there's one way in, one way out, you know, they used to, how they used to pinch those kids when they used to do a score, is they blocked the bridge and get them every time coming back one way or the other.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Well, Howard Beach is very similar. There's only two ways, one way in, of course, Bay Boulevard, and the back way, dumping into Brooklyn. Close knit, everybody's the same. More than not, people were like my father. I wasn't unique that my father was in prison. My next door neighbor's father was in prison, or uncle or cousin or somebody else was in prison for similar situations, they were all part of the street element. So, really, you were, if you were Italian American and you lived there, you were more so inclined to know or be a part of that life or have a relationships than not. If the answer would be not, then you were the odd duck. You were the exception, I was the rule. Okay?

• 9:28Speaker 04

  You would be the exception and I would be the rule. So, if you were that guy that didn't really know any better, or didn't have a friend, or didn't know somebody that was in the street life, you were the exception. Because the rule was, we all knew each other. We were real tight there, and you couldn't come in or out without us knowing about it, and that's basically the way it went down. So, at that point, you're growing up, you get an understanding. Your father's a bit different. You know, he used to list on his taxes, he's a professional gambler. You know, I should scratch my head, what exactly is a professional gambler? I'm not quite sure, you know? And my mother always was that, you know, solid rah rah person in his corner. You know, she adored my father, you know, and never asked questions, you know, but P S, she would stand up, she'd go nose to

• 10:10Speaker 04

  nose with him if she had to, or if someone, God forbid, would say something negative about my father. She would, she would take you to task. She would tighten your ass up really quick, my mother. So, she didn't ask, we couldn't get those, if I was a kid and I was inquisitive, and I would wanna ask that question to my mother, she would say, "Your father provides very well for us." That would be the response. So you'd have to go out to the streets to learn about what's going on, what time it really is.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Did she grow up in the same streets? Like, did they meet?

• 10:39Speaker 04

  No, no. Well, it's a great story. My mother's from Long Island City. My father's a Brooklyn guy, okay? Risen from the Bronx, evolved from the Bronx, but raised in, in, you know, Brownsville, East New York, Brooklyn area, okay? Uh, home of Murder Incorporated. Albert Anastasia was his idol, growing up. And they had met one day, my mother was seventeen years old, and she was applying for a barmaid job. She was in Brooklyn, hitting the, hitting the circuit, trying to get a barmaid job, and she was being harassed by a guy who followed her out of one of the interviews. So she looked into a bar and she seen a group of gentlemen sitting at the end of the bar, opened the door and walked in, and she says, "Excuse me." She said, "Do you mind I sit here? This guy's bothering me. Some guy's bothering me."

• 11:21Speaker 04

  My father's sitting there, he's a nineteen-year-old, young punk, if you wanna say it, okay? With a three-quarter leather jacket, he's sitting there, the hair's slicked back. He says, "Who's bothering you?" And she says, "Well, no, this guy's just, he's just following me and I just feel very uncomfortable." He says, "Sit right over here." Guy opens the bar door and looks in, sees my mother sitting with my father at the bar, and just turns and my father shoots him a look and he just runs out. And they began to talk at that point. She was seventeen, he was nineteen. Uh, they moved in together a short time later, and they were never separated.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Prison only separated, only prison separated them.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Wow. So when, when she, like, at what point did she, I mean, even if you know some of these stories, at what point did she know how he provides?

• 12:05Speaker 04

  His friends. You go into the Copacabana.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Okay, you go to, and that's where my father would take my mother. As his girlfriend, as his bride, as his wife. Uh, constant companion was Angelo Ruggiero, who was my father's boyhood friend since they were ten years old. My Aunt Marie, my Uncle Angelo's wife, became very close to my mother. Uh, you'd see the characters there. You knew exactly what you were dealing with when you walked in the Copacabana. You knew you weren't at the Friars Club.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  So she kinda got an idea. She's like, I'm.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Very intelligent woman, my mother, very perceptive. She understood what time it was.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Now, let me ask you, is, is the culture of when you get into it? Because when my wife and I were getting ready to get married, I told her, I said, listen, I don't know what you're looking for as a, for a husband.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be running, gunning, and this is gonna be the life. Are you okay, okay with it?

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Did they have that conversation or no? It's just?

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, you know, it reminds me of a story. Years later, my mother would get a little, you know, when things really got complicated, you know, and this is like nineteen eighty-five, you know, things got really complicated. And he became now, you know, my father was a local hero, local celebrity in Howard Beach, Brooklyn, in the boroughs, but nobody knew him. He was a local guy, you know? There was a news story, I remember when I was in military school, about the garment center, and it was the first time I ever seen my father on TV. I had seen him on TV, and that was like nineteen eighty, eighty-one, that just flashed on. But now eighty-five, he was basically pushed onto the world stage. You know, the media made him this, created this dapper don situation, this character

• 13:43Speaker 04

  they created, and it became a very complicated life at that point, you know? Everywhere now, we had to be, you know, on our, on our guard, basically. And my mother, at some point, post-eighty-five, my father got pinched in eighty-six, he went back in, they remanded his bail, he was indicted on the eighty, and he was indicted in March of eighty-five on a racketeering case, which he was the first to beat any of the Rico cases. And this was, he was remanded, his bail was remanded in eighty-six, April, I believe. Frankie DeChico was killed in a car bomb, and a short time later, they had a hearing, and they decided to take my father off the street in eighty-six. He came home, we beat the case, first one to win the Ricos, everybody felt, commission case.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  Why is that? Why did he beat him? Is it lawyer? Is it fear? Is it connection?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  The government would want you to believe that my father fixed the case, okay? And they actually, you know, through, through that Gravano character, they said that they got to a juror, a juror. Now, let's be a devil's advocate. Let's say Gravano was correct, said it did happen. Let's say he got to the juror.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  What about the other 11? They didn't exist? There's 12 juries, last I remember, in a felony federal case in America. I've tried many. There's 12 juries that decide your fate. So let's just be, let's pretend that John Gotti did get to that juror. Let's pretend, okay? What about the other 11 jurors that voted not guilty? Okay? They all had their own mindsets. So all 12 across the board voted not guilty, and John was the first one. And you're asking me, why do I believe he won the case? I'm gonna tell you why. Bruce Cutler, at that time, the case started out with Neil Delacroce as the lead defendant. And John Gotti, my father, was accused of being a captain under Neil. And he was the second defendant.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  And then they had, you know, seven more co-defendants right on down the line, including my Uncle Gene. And the lead attorney was Barry Slotnick on that case. Barry Slotnick represented Neil Delacroce. And Bruce Cutler, who was a disciple, was under Barry Slotnick, took my father as the second seed. Once Barry, once Neil Delacroce died of cancer, Barry Slotnick thought he was gonna take my father as the lead defendant. My father says, no. I came to the dance with Bruce. Bruce is gonna stay right here. And that was the creation. And what we got to see, Pat, was an evolution of two individuals. I've never seen anything like this. It was magnificent to watch. Okay?

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Bruce Cutler, here's a guy that, his father Murray was a NYPD police officer, became an attorney. Bruce Cutler became, was a prosecutor at the Brooklyn DA's office. Someone that John Gotti would hate. He would hate any prosecutor. And he would hate his father for being a cop. Okay? My father would, under Norm, would say, I wouldn't even talk to you. You're a prosecutor, and your father's a cop, hit the bricks. But that was the lawyer, that was the structure, that when, when, when Neil took, had got the case, Barry Slotnick came on board, my father was assigned Brucey. But they developed an amazing rapport. And I saw Bruce evolve almost into a...

• 16:54Speaker 04

  An alter ego of John Gotti's. And he had the balls to stand up and actually perform, to go against the government, to say exactly what he felt, to take the indictment that was trash, that was so ill-prepared, to throw it into the garbage pan and say this is rancid. And the jurors watched his theatrics. They were won over. They saw how John Gotti composed himself. They saw how he comported himself. Uh, and I think a lot of them began to fall slightly in love with him, or, you know, evolved to liking his character and how, you know, the humor. One of the co-defendants was a gentleman named Lenny Di Maria. Very funny, very witty guy. Like, he would say little jokes in between, little quips in between. And I think it was the combination, the chemistry

• 17:37Speaker 04

  of those individuals that were on trial that won that jury over. That, the chemistry of those, along with Bruce Cutler and these personality of lawyers, the Santangelo brothers, Richie Raybuck and so on, the personality of attorneys on that case, I believe that's what won the day.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Now, that's, you're born sixty-four. That's eighty-six. So you're twenty-two when this is happening. So you're there every day. You're watching.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Well, the trial was eighty-seven. The trial started eighty-six. It, it, the culmination, it ended in March of eighty-seven.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  When he beat it. When he beat Rico. This has never happened before.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Never happened.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Okay, so when that happened, did, did other ma- men or whoever, were, were they sitting there saying, "Who's the lawyer you used? We can beat these guys. Let's use the same method." Is that kind of what became the model?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  It's sort of, Bruce became a very sought-after attorney at that point, because he was nobody, he was an unknown attorney at that point. He was basically a second seed to Barry Slotnick, who's a very well-known attorney. But Brucey was like, uh, a newly anointed, one of those assistants that would come in, that you'd throw him on a case with you. And a lot of times what the lawyers did, they were cute. So what they would do is they would say, they see, they couldn't wait for a bunch of guys for a big indictment. Uh, you know, one of these groups get indicted, twelve guys, thirteen guys. And if they knew, for example, like Barry Slotnick knew he had Neil Delacroce, he would come with two or three of his lawyers. And say, "Hey, Neil, let's put this one with John Gotti. Let's put this one with this one." So he'd get more money. They'd get more work for his firm, and they would have the case on, on lockdown. They'd have the case on lockdown.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  So, yeah, that was normally what would happen there.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  In eighty-five, eighty-six, is Roy Cohn, does he still carry the same kind of weight?

• 19:16Speaker 04

  I think, I think he died by then. He died of AIDS by then.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Did he die in eighty-six? What year did he die?

• 19:21Speaker 04

  I think, maybe eighty-four, you know, early eighties. He contracted AIDS and he died young.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  But let me, can you pull up what age, what year was it? Eighty, okay, eighty-six, so.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  Eighty-six, he died.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  But at that time, he's no longer as active, right? He had already slowed down for, did he still carry a?

• 19:35Speaker 04

  He wasn't practicing anymore. And I know for a fact that eighty-six, eighty-five, he was no longer practicing. He was very sick. He was deathly ill.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  What, at what point would you say, did you ever have a chance to meet Roy or no?

• 19:45Speaker 04

  I did briefly in Manhattan one night at Harry's Bar in the Helmsley Palace.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  What year was that? What?

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Uh, that was eighty-three, I wanna say.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  So that's three years before he died. So was he already sick and was he already going through it or no?

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Somewhat.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  Somewhat.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  What did your dad think about him?

• 20:01Speaker 04

  He, he used to often tell the story and the difference between, when he would try to lecture me, if I had a comfort level and I had a case, cause my first trial, I was twenty-two years old, it was eighty-seven, my first trial. And when my father was on trial, he'd beaten March, I'd beat my case in June. So, we were basically on trial together, my father. He was in the fed court, I was in the state system on, on trial. So. I was comfortable with an attorney named Mike Corral. And he was the go-to guy from Queens by us. And he was, it was like, almost like a family to us, very close to my father, my uncles and everybody else. So I told my, my dad, with my case, I says, Dad, I wanna go with, I wanna go with Mike Corral. And he says, no, no, I got the lawyer for you. I'm gonna go with this attorney right here. I said, but I'm comfortable. He says, look, listen to me, kid. He says, let me explain a story to you.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  And he told me that, when he got indicted on the McBridey case, okay? And this is a case that there were multiple eyewitnesses, uh, McBridey, I don't know if you're familiar with the case, McBridey was the leader of an Irish crew that were kidnapping Italian bookmakers and Italian money guys.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  And holding, you know, holding for, for ransom. And ultimately, they kidnapped a guy named Manny Gambino. A relative of Carl Gambino's, okay? And I believe a ransom was paid, if I understood the story correctly, and they killed him anyway. So at that point, there was a search and destroy mission, whereas that each group put together three different individuals to hunt down this Irish crew and wipe them out and kill them all.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  And my father was very successful and the last one was the leader was Mc. His name is McBride, James McBride. He was the last one to be tracked down and killed. And on that case, there was a barmaid as a witness. There were patrons in the bar that were witnesses. Tough case to beat. He was a fugitive. He went on a lamb. And he was tricked into coming in, my father, by a cooperator. He saved his life. Meanwhile, years later, the guy was on the, he was a co-defendant in my dad's eighty-five case, but it was, he was exposed as a cooperator. Tricked to coming in. He was pinched at that meeting. And then he had to stand trial for the McBride killing. So at that point,

• 22:12Speaker 04

  a move is made. Carl Gambino and Neil Delacroce move aside. Mike Coro and Roy Cohen steps in. Now, my father telling the story that Mike Coro is sitting there and he's almost pleading with the judge to try to get a delay in the case. And I'm sitting there, my father's standing, and Mike's sitting there, and the judge is showing him no respect at all. He's showing him absolutely no respect at all. Like, no, no, no. Says, John, on cue, the doors burst open. And Roy Cohen, this little diminutive man, walks in. And he's not even paying attention. It's like he's like aloof. His glasses are down. He's reading something. He's just like walking by and people are trying to say hello and he's not even acknowledging them. He's just walking right past them. Like, yeah, he's walking right by, okay?

• 22:56Speaker 04

  And he gets to the front and he says, how are you, Your Honor? He says, Roy Cohen here for John Gotti. My father's looking. He don't know Roy Cohen. He's looking at him. Mike Coro is my lawyer, you know? And he's saying, so, well, Mike. So, no, no, no, no. So Mike's whispering to Roy and Roy tells him, shh, sit down. And he sits down.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  You gotta be kidding me.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  Sit down. And he says, Your Honor, we're asking for an extension here. And he says, John. The whole vibe in the courtroom changed. Everything completely changed. Like that. The judge gave the extension. Next thing you know, he negotiated the plea. Seven years, multiple witnesses, he was accused of murder. Seven years, I had to do three years on this. I do that standing on my head in the box, he said. Three years, he did, and Roy orchestrated that plea. So.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 23:46Speaker 04

  Talk about power.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Is that the first time you met him?

• 23:48Speaker 04

  It's fir- no, I ne- my father met him for the first time, yes.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  That's the first time your father met him?

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've never met him, I I met him later on in life.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Eighty-three, right.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  Up until that point.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  So at this point, when he he just walks in.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  He has no idea he's gonna walk in.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  No idea.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  But he knows who he is, or he does.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  He knows who he is, he knows he did a lot of work.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  The reputation.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Did a lot of work for Call, he did a lot of work for Neil. Uh, but he he knew of him, never met him.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Did did you watch the recent movie that came out, Call the Apprentice? The story of Trump, okay?

• 24:16Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Because he's the he's the main character in the movie that makes it.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Um, wha- wha- what was his business model for having the kind of power that he had? Was it the OG blackmail business model, is that what he had?

• 24:27Speaker 04

  It goes back to McCarthyism. I mean, he was powerful back then. Senator McCarthy, when he he saw something, he saw a quality in this young Roy Cohn. And again, I've never watched anything on Roy Cohn, but it's an observation that you're making when you're reading books and things of that nature. Uh, having only met him one time, and bits and pieces of tidbits of stories that my father had told me. Uh, that there was a persona there. He was sort of identified as the prince of the Velvet Mafia. And you know what the Velvet Mafia was? Velvet Mafia was the underground of New York, uh, the gay community. That these guys had a lot of powerful influential people were there, and Roy knew everything. Roy knew all the bodies were buried, he knew who was who and what was what, okay?

• 25:10Speaker 04

  He knew what high-ranking individuals, what judges, what all, everybody played a different role.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  The Velvet Mafia.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  That's what we used to call them back in the day.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Velvet Mafia, the gay men who helped.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Shaped music.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  I've never even seen this before.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  That's wild, the Velvet Mafia.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, so.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  So is it is it like when you say what they knew, the bodies were buried? Is it like they knew who liked men and they knew who came to those parties?

• 25:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it it's it's it's today, today, you and I, society, we accept everything. We accept, if you're a good person, you're a good person, whatever your choices are, okay? Then they did not. Then in the fifty, sixty, seventies, they discriminated against people. You couldn't, you, it could not happen. So it was like almost a sin to be gay back then, okay? Because society was harsh on that. Religion was harsh on that. Well, Roy was that. And he was the guy who knew all the secrets and all the answers. And understanding also, this is even before that point of the velvet mafia in the sixties into the seventies. Remember, he was a powerful attorney that in his own right, uh, won a string of cases.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  McCarthy saw him and wanted this kid. He wanted this young guy, this brash young gentleman. He wanted them next to him, guide him on the law. And then they began to go through the blacklisting of Hollywood and the communism trials and all that other stuff. And that was the McCarthyism, the era of McCarthyism. That was the beginning of it, his power with the senate. It only grew and then it evolved into what you see the velvet mafia.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Wow. Did your dad ever tell you a story about a time that somebody wanted to kill him and take him out? Cause that's too much power.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Roy?

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Roy.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  I've never heard that, no.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Okay, no. Yeah, because you think about having, and by the way.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  I would think the government, if anybody, when you say somebody would want to kill him. I would probably say, if you see what's going on today now, like with this P Diddy trial and Jeffrey Epstein.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  When he hung himself, okay?

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Allegedly.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I was in that unit. It's pretty tough that all the cameras failed. But anyway, that being said, uh, when you see today, when people have that kind of information. When they possess that wealth of information on other powerful individuals. Sometimes you outlive your, your useful purpose and you become expendable. And Roy Cohen was a very powerful individual that knew a lot on a lot of different people. So, you know, maybe aides did them a favor, did some powerful individuals a favor. But I don't know if someone would have wanted to kill him. I would, if anybody would want to kill him, I would believe maybe it'd be somebody within the government. Or some high executive in some big business. It's only specul- you know, speculation on my part.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Sure, of course, yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  But in speculating, I would believe that that would be the case.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  Wow, so he was he was hated more by the government by than by the mob. He was actually friendly with the mob.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. Well, why would the why would the mob, why would why would the street element hate him? Why? If you were you were friendly with, say, for example, Carlo, okay, and and other individuals, okay? And you were there, you were ready to do your job, you were ready, when you were called, you came in and you produced these remarkable results. What I I would embrace you. I don't care what you did, as long as you could achieve the results that we need to accomplish our objective, you're okay, why me? So I would say that if anybody would want to have hurt Roy Cohen, it would have been probably either a governmental aspect, you know, element, or it would have been maybe an executive of some big company, or maybe in Hollywood, where they were a lot of them were persecuted.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  He's a very powerful man with a lot of money. And he began with him and Senator McCarthy, destroyed a lot of careers. I mean, you're talking about boatloads of money sailed out as a result of these guys getting blacklisted, couldn't produce movies, actors on the shelf for life.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's wild. I mean, when you hear stories about this guy, there's so many documentaries on him and interesting books on him. He is a he he's a he's a very unique character.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Very interesting to uh uh read about. Going back, John, I think.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  I'm gonna be sure to watch that.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  I think I think you'll be I think it'll be entertaining, especially for you to watch.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Going back to when I when I go through the story and I, you know, think about the young John, yourself, with your father.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Is it true that, you know, the first time you met your father, you were eight years old?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  No, no, that's not true.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Cause he was gone for a few years? What was it?

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, well, always met my father. I used to visit my father.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Meaning he was in jail. Did you guys go visit or no?

• 29:43Speaker 04

  My first birthday, my father was doing a year in Riverhead. He was doing a a larceny bid in, I think, auto theft bid, rather, in Riverhead. He did a year there. Uh, that was my first birthday, he was there. And then he came home for a brief amount of time. And then he went back in in nineteen sixty-eight. He got the hijacking charge. So I was four years old at that time. He went in and did, he came out in seventy-two. So he did four years on the hijacking charge. So if you want it, he came home in March of seventy-two. So that would make me just eight years old. So most of my life, young life, my father was in prison. Uh, but like I said, I mean, I visit him regularly. My mother was dutiful, she was loyal. She always took us, she would pile us in the car.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  And my grandfather, one of my uncles, would drive us to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Uh, we'd pile in the visiting room. In fact, I've got, you know, I still have several. In my book, Shadow of My Father, I have a picture of me as a little buck in the visiting room with my father.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  How often would you guys go visit?

• 30:46Speaker 04

  Well, again, it's not like today, you know, it's easy, it was far more accessible today, but back then, uh, my mother would probably go every couple, every two or three months. Uh, we would go, you know, she'd break the kids up, it was hard to take us all. So maybe I seen my father in the course of a year, I'd see him three times, maybe, possibly four.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  In your first eight years, how long was he out?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  First eight years, we got one, four, five, I wanna say in and out, I would say by the time I was, well, I say this, by the time I was thirteen, he had nine in. So first eight years, I, let's say, uh, five, but by the time I was thirteen, he had nine in.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  So thirteen years old, he's only been with you for four years in the house, where you come home, you see him.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Got, and then at this point, you still don't know what he's doing, you don't know what business he's in.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  You know he's different, you know he's different, you know, you know he's absolutely different. Uh, look, I mean, he walked different. He talked different, and it was remarkable, cause I used to, as I got older, I would watch my father, and I would be in amazement, like we would, and, and, you know, we'll, we'll discuss that maybe a little bit later about the evolution of what he became, but at that point in my life, you look at him and you say to yourself, I know this much. I know I played Little League baseball, and I know my coach. I know my kids in the block, their fathers, uh, you know, who's a blue collar worker, hardworking individual, whatever have you. I know how they've all comported themselves, everybody spoke, uh, Brooklynese.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  We all similarly spoke, but John was different. The first day he came home, when he came home from Lewisburg, he was different. Brown Lincoln Continental, that's what he came home in, a chocolate brown Lincoln Continental. Car pulls down the block, pulls in his driveway, we live in a row of row houses, second off the corner, little green awning, simple house. And he gets out of the car, he's got a light brown mock neck, chocolate brown suit with a matching overcoat. And he gets out of the car with jet black hair, and I've described it in my book, it was Tony Curtis with muscles. He came out of the car and he looked, and he just surveyed the area, got out of the car,

• 33:01Speaker 04

  he shot his jacket, he fixed it, looked down, he saw, I waved to him. And he just walked like he owned the place, like he, he never saw the house before. Because we moved there from South Brooklyn when he went to prison. So he found the house, okay, he drove himself home, found, parked his car, saw me, walked up the stairs like he always was there, like he owned the place, literally, so to speak. So, in watching him, and watching his mannerisms, watching how my mother deferred to him. Look, he was different than my friends' fathers, that's for sure, that much I did know. So, that starts, that's the foundation. And then as you get a little older, also Pat, you become more perceptive, okay?

• 33:41Speaker 04

  People gossip and say, you know, your father's in prison. No, my father's not in prison, my father's at a military camp and they, he's in a construction aspect, they have to build things there. Oh yeah, okay. And then you evolve more and more, you become more and more.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  When was the first time you realized he is really in prison? How old were you?

• 34:02Speaker 04

  I would probably say, maybe it struck me as a little odd, you know, when I was eight years old.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  At eight years old, got it.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  It's kind of like a Santa Claus.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Seven, seven, seven, eight, seven years old and eight, I turned eight in February of eighty, seventy-two. Uh, he came home in March. And around that time you understand, because he's coming home, he's coming home, he's coming home, and you start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. You know, listen, we don't give kids credit. The kids today are a lot smarter than we were because they're stimulated by computers and everything else and far more in interaction in that respect, but they don't have the personal skills that we have in personal interaction, but they're literate. They read so much, they can hit a button, true or not true, and they can find almost anything they want to find. But you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together and you come to an understanding that everything's a little different here.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  That makes sense because even back, I mean, there's not internet. It's not like you're on TikTok. John Gotti, you know, was back in, you don't have access to that, right? You're living in this community.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  You're either in the newspapers or it's like word of mouth. That's it. Pony Express.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  You go to military academy in your, is it seventy-nine when you go? I think seventy-nine.

• 35:13Speaker 04

  Seventy-eight to eighty-two I was there.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Right. So when you go there, what's the story where you're sitting there and there comes a story on TV? You know, John Gotti and everybody's watching like, wait a minute. What was that story when that happened?

• 35:27Speaker 04

  I was in the day room. I was in the day room and we had a TV. The TV was in the day room. So when we had some downtime, we were in drilling, whatever have you, or playing sports, you go to the day room, watch TV. And I'm watching and it was like an undercover operation. They're talking about the garment center. And I had a picture of my father with a gray sport jacket on and he had a bandage on his hand because he was here in Florida and he knocked the biker out at a red light. So he had, I remember that when that happened, he had a chipped tooth in his hand, got infected. So you'll see that surveillance scene with a gray sport jacket on or a gray silk shirt and he's talking to, if I remember correctly, he's talking to Alphonse, a guy named Funzi Siska in front of the Ravenite. And he's got his hand like this and he's talking and you see his hands bandaged up. And that was

• 36:12Speaker 04

  the same exact time they showed that picture. And this is, let's say eighty-one. I mean, I could be awful slightly on my dates. I'm trying to piece together my head, eighty-one. And it said, this man, John Gotti, is a captain in so-and-so Gambino crime family and the garment center is controlled by Tommy Gambino and all these players. And I'm looking, I'm looking. And I see I'm sitting in the back watching the TV. And all of a sudden, I'm like sweating a little bit, like I'm getting nervous. Like, you know, my sphincter's tightened up now. I'm sitting there, oh shit, I'm getting very uncomfortable. And all of a sudden in the front row and they're like talking to each other and they all turn and they're looking at me now. He's got the same name as you. I says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure does, yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  The guy says, another one of the cadets says, "Oh, I saw him here. God, he was here with you two weeks ago." "Yeah, yeah, it's my father." And all of a sudden, everybody got quiet, you know, everybody got quiet and they're watching the TV. And I'm like, "Oh, God, please." Like, I'm counting the seconds for this ends. This program's gotta end now. You know, I'm counting the seconds here. And that was really, like, now I became educated, okay, so to speak. Now you're educated, okay? That's the point, we become educated.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, when I, when I, when I try to, you know, over the years, when you read about your father.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  So many different stories written about him, right? Persona, personality, King of New York, all this stuff, you know, all these great nicknames that he has. But at some point, you know, something happens where the level of rage can go to a whole different level for different people, for me. One day, my dad and I are sitting down, and we're having a conference. He's watching all these mob interviews. He says, "What do you think about these guys? They did this, and they did that, and they killed, and they did this." And I say, "Yeah, I mean, that's the life they were raised in." He says, "Well, you know, I could never kill anybody. I could never do this, I could never do that." I'm like, "Look." At the time, he had only one grandkid and daughter, I mean, Grace. I said, "What would you do?

• 38:18Speaker 03

  What are you capable of if somebody does something to your granddaughter?" You just see my dad, like, you know, suddenly gets the rage going, right? And he says, "I'd be capable of doing anything to protect my granddaughter." I said, "Totally, totally right." The, the story with Joseph Kennedy. Joseph Kennedy, for me, is one of the guys I really like to study on because he's the guy that could have been a gangster. Some say he was a gangster. For him to be able to build a family, the-

• 38:46Speaker 04

  You're talking about the father or son?

• 38:47Speaker 03

  The father, the father, Joseph Kennedy, the OG OG.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. I mean, the father, he was a bootlegger.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right. I mean, he was, you know, later on, he became the, you know, chairman of SEC, and I think he was, all these different things that he did.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  But something happened to him when his oldest son died, right? When that took place, it changed him.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  The, the story about your, I think it's your younger brother.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  My brother Frankie boy, yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Frankie. What, what happened to Frankie and what influence did that have on your father?

• 39:14Speaker 04

  Well, you know, look, I mean, we've, at that point in our lives, I'm sure my father experienced a lot of losses in his life, meeting friends and whatnot, but we've never experienced something so close to home. So he didn't, he was away a good portion of Frankie Boy's life. Nevertheless, he was like the apple of his eye, he really was. Frankie was a good kid, he's a chubby kid with curly hair, uh, you know cherub face, his little cherub face.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  What bothered him the most, well, naturally he lost his son, but that particular day Frankie was always, he was a tough kid. He was always fighting in school, always getting in trouble. So finally my father had enough, he used to call my mother Butch. It's a nickname for my mother, he said Butch, go get this kid and bring him home right now. She went and got my brother Frankie and I was away at military school at the time. She brings him in the house and she tells my father, my mother would take beating for us if she had to. She was fiercely loyal to our kids. She says Johnny, I'm telling you right now, don't put your hands on him, keep your mouth shut, go get him. Walks in the house and as soon as he comes in the house and he had it with Frankie. And he gives him an ass whipping, gives him an ass whipping.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Are you there, you were seeing this?

• 40:23Speaker 04

  No, I'm in military school away.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Heard afterwards and that's just where my father, it ate him up. It completely ate him up because he gave him, he never put his hands on Frankie, but he had enough. That's it, he says this kid needs, my father was raised in a house where his father used to beat him just to let him know he was there. Okay, so, but yet he showed a lot of restraint and hit his own kids. If my father gave me five beatings in my life, I probably deserved fifteen. Okay, showed a lot of restraint in his own children, okay, never hit my sisters, never would raise his hands. And Frankie Boy, you know, he was, he was the, the, younger than I was, he wasn't, he wasn't the fifth. My brother Peter's the fifth, but Frankie Boy was, sort of like, treated like, almost like the baby there.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  And he gave him this beating and that was it, he told him, it's it, up to your room, you're punished, that's it, ba ba ba. He told my mother, he's not to leave this house, you understand me, he don't leave this goddamn house, that's it. And my father leaves. Well Frankie sneaks out of the house and meets up with some friends, goes on a minibike and gets hit by a car and gets killed.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  I didn't know that story, Jack.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what happened, so he came off the Belt Parkway and a car, the sun was low and a car nailed him, hit him. Dragged him about, uh, several hundred feet, he was stuck under the car actually. And, uh, yeah, it was, my mother got the call and she raced barefoot three blocks down to where this happened. And she saw him in the street.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  When did you hear about it? When did they call you?

• 42:03Speaker 04

  My father sent the car to come get me at military school. And they came to my room. They told me that, put your service uniform on and someone's coming to pick you up. Someone's coming to pick me up, put my service uniform on. It didn't make any sense. We don't know anything else. So I had to go to my quarters, put my service uniform on, my white gloves, my hat. And I waited. I sat there and waited. Car pulls up and driving the car was a gentleman who did time with my father in Lewisburg. His name was Charlie Deek, Charlie DeCano. And another gentleman named Mark, he recently died in prison. They picked me up, got in the car. They wouldn't say anything. They wouldn't talk. They were very somber.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  And like Mark was sort of like holding back and crying. So I'm saying something ain't right here. I'm not asking any questions. I'm figuring maybe something happened to my father. I don't know. And then we get home, I pull in front of the house. They tell me, wait here. I see everybody by my house. Lot of people there. They both get out of the car and I'm in the car by myself now, in the backseat. Wait here. I can't get out and go in my own car, my own house? And I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there, I'm fidgeting in the car. And I'm saying, once I see my father walk out, I went, he's okay. What could this be all about? Never hit me. And he takes me out of the car, takes me for a walk. He says, you know, your brother's gone.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  He told you this?

• 43:32Speaker 04

  Did.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Man, I am so sorry. I did not know this whole story. Wow. And at this point, while this is taking place, I mean, it's,

• 43:44Speaker 03

  holy moly.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was, you know, you sort of think to yourself, you say, maybe if I didn't go away to school and I was here, it wouldn't have happened. So for several years, I beat myself up over that, but. I know my father most certainly beat himself up over it. He would never show that emotion. He was, he was the, my father was a true soldier. He sat for three days. We had Frankie's wake for three days. Three days, he postured by that coffin. And he greeted people from all over. They came from Buffalo, Pennsylvania, they came from all over. And he greeted everybody and he'd walk them over and show them his son, brush his hair back. And he kept it all together. He kept, I couldn't, I couldn't keep it.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Oh my god, no way.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  I couldn't keep it together. But when he had his own quiet time, when he had his own time, that's when he would mourn. You know, you'd hear him at night, he'd mourn.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  You ever, you ever saw him in front of you, like, when he?

• 44:41Speaker 04

  No.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  Never showed it in front of you?

• 44:42Speaker 04

  Never one time. He wouldn't show me that weakness. He wouldn't show anybody that weakness. He wouldn't do it. He just wouldn't do it. He would do it, my bedroom was attached to his den. So the vent was right there, it was a thin wall that's attached. So where my bed was, there was a vent to the right side of my bed, and that's where the couches were, and there was a fireplace in his den. And I would hear him. I'd hear my father. He would mourn on his own terms to himself.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  How did, how did that change him? Like, how did you see that change him?

• 45:12Speaker 04

  You know, he was a strong guy. It changed my mother forever. She's still not well today. She's still not right today. I mean, she often drifts, drifts back to Frankie boy all the time. She's still in the same house. She won't change his room. She's never gonna move on. I ask her to, you know, ma, move out to the island with us, get rid of the house, stay with us. No, no, no. She says, my, I, my son's in this house. I, I still hear my husband come up the stairs at night.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  I'm staying here. This is my house.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Frankie's room is still the, is still the?

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Still the, still the same, still the same. So my mother, it had this profound effect on her that she, she never recovered from. She's still, you know, Frankie's dead forty-four years, and she never recovered from it. She never recovered from it. But my father, you know, he was a soldier. He, when we had the opportunity, when he was in Marion, Illinois, which was the only level six prison in the country, when he was in deadlock, we weren't allowed to touch. So we had a plexiglass between us. He had to pick up a phone to talk.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  That's your visit.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  So for seven and a half years, that's how I visited my father. And he'd come down and he'd be shackled up and unchained and put in this locked area. And then he'd pick up the phone and we would talk. That's how. And at so, at times, he would, you know, drift back and talk about Frankie Boy and you'd see. That's when his eyes would change, his facial expressions would change. But he, he was a soldier. He was a tough guy. He kept it right here. He knew exactly how to control his emotions. And he expect, he had the same expectation from me. And back then, I couldn't do it. And still now, talking about it, I get emotional. My brother and I, we shared the same bed. So I still can't. I'm not him. But he had that ability. He had that ability.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Is it, is it when that took place? And I'm, and I'm wondering like, is that what got? Did anything about his temperament, rage, anything change? And I've read a lot of different things about the story of the individual. Was it intentional? Was it accidental? Did you, did you ever get to the bottom of what, what this accident, uh?

• 47:14Speaker 04

  You know, I don't know all the particulars. There were stories that the guy was drunk. I don't know. I mean, again, you know, I'm, I'm limited in my knowledge and what I would want to look at. I did know this. They lived around the corner. I was friends with his son.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  I liked the family. I did. So it's, two families got torn apart. You know, he ended up missing sometime later. And I don't know all those particulars. But if we would say that Frankie's death would sort of bring my, make my father into a different character, or as you say, there's a rage aspect there. No. Let me tell you about John Gotti. This is who he was. John Gotti was a guy that when he loved you, he loved you to a fault. He used to say it all the time. John, you know me. I have, I have a tough time showing people the door, John, even when they're wrong. Okay? He loved you, he loved you to a fault. However, if you got on his wrong side, you had a problem. And if you hurt anybody close to John that he loved.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  There was no way he wasn't gonna hurt you. It's just the way he was. That's it. That's the way he felt.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  So the speculation is that it may have been somebody, like, he may have been directly involved in him being missing four months later.

• 48:32Speaker 04

  Is it possible?

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Do I know? Would, if you were to tell, if you were to show me irrefutable proof, right now, you would show me that. Would I go, "Oh, my God, oh, my God"? No. You know what I would say? Okay?

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Not surprised.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Okay, you know, it's... That's... John was a street guy. I pretty much, pretty, I pretty much summed him up. If he loved you, he loved you. You weren't gonna hurt somebody close to him, but not him hurting you. It's just the way it was.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  What, what did you, I, I heard you say something, you said something about, if you were a prosecutor, if you were a cop, you know, what did he love, what did he fear, what did he hate?

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Loved loyalty. He loved loyalty. Loved his family, loved loyalty, loved his friends, he loved the camaraderie. I think he loved the camaraderie of what he was. A little bit more than he loved his family, possibly. I'm not sure. I, I believe maybe he had some, some, some reservations about that later on in life, but I know that in the heat of it all,

• 49:34Speaker 04

  he should have been born

• 49:37Speaker 04

  2,000 years earlier and he would be Hannibal. He should have been born, that's the kind of ca... Look, I wanna spend the next several hours just talking about John Gotti, but you, you, you can't give me that kind of time. And I can go into it and I can make you understand. When I'm done, if you didn't like him, I'll get you to like him, if you liked him, I'll make you love him. Because when he walked into a room, he lit it up. He was handsome and charming, very charismatic individual and super intelligent. We would go out. Here's what we did, and I kept the tradition for years. We would go the first week of every month, and my father would take all the lawyers, all the high-powered lawyers in New York to dinner. And it'll be, you know, the usual cast of characters with my father, it'd be Jackie D'Amico,

• 50:20Speaker 04

  Jackie the actor, myself, Bobby Borello. We'd be there and then there'll be ten lawyers. And we'd be, you know, you'd pick the restaurant, whether it was our place, we had a restaurant called Annoy on Seventy Fourth and New York, or it was another place in particular. But he'd pick a different place, he would tell Jackie, Jackie D'Amico was in charge, Jackie knows, was in charge of that. Pick the place and every first of the month, first week of the month, we'd take all the lawyers to dinner. And the last week of the month, we'd take doctors to dinner. Tommy Gambino would come to dinner and he had Schneider Pavilion, Long Island Jewish Hospital. Because we did a lot of fundraising through Tommy. Tommy raised an enormous amount of money. Tommy was a pillar of society, great, great guy. Raised enormous amounts of money for Long Island Jewish Hospital, especially the Schneider Pavilion, which is the cancer wing of children.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  And through my father, they raised millions. I know Tommy himself raised millions. So, we made it customary, like the end of the month, my father would have dinner with Tommy and some of the old timers. And Tommy would bring like a lot, a lot of the doctors back then to dinner. And I would watch my father hold court with the lawyers. And his vernacular would be beautiful, wonderful, he'd perfect talk. Trees became threes, okay? Same with doctors, same thing. And then all of a sudden, we'd be at dinner with all the fellas. And this would be John Gotti, one handed, pants like this. You know, and I just lost three thousand dollars, three thousand on these fucking rat jets, three thousand dollars I just lost. He'd become Brooklyn all over again.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  He had a one forty IQ and he had the, the ability to adapt to his environment.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  He had a one forty IQ.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  He had a one forty IQ and we didn't test him, Bureau of Prisons tested him, he had a one forty IQ. And he had the ability to adapt to his environment. So, if he was sitting with lawyers, he'd hold court appropriately. If he was sitting with doctors, he would hold court appropriately. If he was sitting with gangsters, hoodlums, street guys, he'd hold court appropriately. He wasn't gonna start now, you know, all of a sudden being prim and proper and suddenly, you know, his, you know, tea and his finger. He was a hoodlum, he was a hoodlum's hoodlum. He was described on Wiretap. From hardcore guys would say, you see that guy, John Gotti? That is a hoodlum's hoodlum.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  I think it's the highest compliment you can get if you're a hoodlum, bio hoodlum.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, that's, um, and by the way, while you're there at the peak of your father's popularity, where he can't walk anywhere, who else at this time is, who, who else are the kings of New York at the time? Would you put Trump at that level or not yet?

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Well.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  Trump, I mean, eighties, he is already, right?

• 52:54Speaker 04

  His dad, Fred Trump was, was, was an iconic figure in the construction industry. I mean, especially we come from in Queens. So Jamaica Estates, I believe that's where they're from. And Donald Trump and I were alumnis because he graduated class of sixty-four. I'm class of eighty-two, New York Military Academy. We both graduated the same school. So we have that in common. We're both Queens guys. His dad Fred was an iconic figure in Queens. He built a lot of buildings there. And Trump at that point was beginning to evolve into his own right. Donald Trump was now into the eighties, starting to evolve into his own right. He was taking the mantle from his dad and he was carrying it, moving forward. And I believe he described one time in an interview that his brother was an alcoholic. Donald Trump's brother was an alcoholic.

• 53:35Speaker 04

  So basically, everything, the responsibilities of the family were bestowed onto his shoulders, Donald Trump's shoulders. And he had a great reputation in construction back then. I know that he always spoke well of my dad in any conversation, any off-camera conversations he had with individuals. I know my father spoke highly of him for his business prowess. I'm not sure if they had a relationship or not. I'm not sure, you know, you have other liars and punks that make things up, make stories up that they, yeah, we knew Donald Trump, we paid Donald Trump. Listen, for the most part, it's probably all bullshit. Everybody can make any story they want to make up, but the reality is the reality.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was a, a story, I think Sammy did, Sammy the Bull. He says, "We tried to buy him out and we couldn't do it."

• 54:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  He turned us down and.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Well, I could tell you this much. You, I've seen and dealt with a lot of cooperatives. If the government had employed in my tenure, in my trials. Uh, a hun- over a hundred cooperators came against me. And they forgave a hundred and ten murders to bring these guys against me. And many of them were complete frauds and fakes. Sammy Gravano was who he said he was. He was part of John's administration. He found his way through the door from, because of Frankie DeChico. Because Frankie was a somebody and Sammy was not a somebody. He found his way on Frankie's coattails. When Frankie got killed, Sammy s- became a somebody. John being that consummate diplomat. Okay, and always looking loyal to Frankie DeChico, was a tough guy, really good guy. That was his, one of his proteges.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  So he was brought along for the ride and became more than what he should have become. But, that being said, to my father's fault, he did, Sammy did evolve to that point. But many of the stories he had told was one more bullshit than the next. He sort of took himself and put himself in John Gotti's light and put John Gotti almost in his light. And to me, what really makes me, and again, I'm a civilian, twenty-six years. I have no axe to grind. People say, "Well, you're angry." Why am I angry? I won. I won. The United States government is the most powerful entity in the world. Will you agree?

• 55:48Speaker 03

  For sure, yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  Have they toppled governments?

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 55:51Speaker 04

  Have they killed heads of state?

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Many times. Some say just happened.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. I beat them. Five trials in thirty-seven months, five federal indictments, thirty-seven months, I'm here talking to you. I'm not bitter. I'm excited. Christmas is coming. I'm gonna be with my grandkids. I'm gonna be with my family. I'm excited. I feel bad for my brothers that I left behind in prison. But I am, I am the happiest guy you're ever gonna meet. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm not bitter. But when you've got to view all this nonsense over and over again, and the lie after lie. And the fact that they've given absolution to a hundred and ten murders to over a hundred individuals. And you can watch someone like Sammy Gravano, that can sit there, who took the coward's way out. A coward. He is a coward. Let's make no mistake about that, okay? He didn't do his time. He went into wi- witness protection program.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  He went into witness units, comfy cushy units. He was, if he wasn't in a, at a safe house in Quantico, Virginia, then he was in a comfortable witness unit. Even his last bid, he talks about how he got a, uh, a- A badge of honor from the Aryan Brotherhood, a clover on his arm. He was in a rat unit in ADX Colorado with other rats. So he took the easy way out. He doesn't have the right. Just go do your time. You did your time. You got away, whatever you got away with. You got caught selling drugs to kids. You were released again from prison. Go on with your life. Tell your stories, even if half of them are fabricated. Go tell your stories.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Don't you tell my that my father or John was gonna sell me out first. Listen to me. There's not a rat that would tell you that. There's not a stand up guy. You won't find a guy like John Gotti. John Gotti, as we say in the streets and in prison, he walked it all the way to the gate. He never won time. He could have been released from Marion, Illinois anytime he wanted to. All he had to do was sign a document. Everybody else that went there signed that document. There was a document that you're agreeing. You're no longer the person that you were. And you're agreeing to it's called a step down program. So when you get there, you have to be in Marion for a total of 18 months usually. And then you can leave Marion, Illinois. You can go to a regular penitentiary, a level five facility. Marion was the only level six in the country at that time. Okay. My father refused to sign that paper.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  So he stood for 10 years in solitary confinement. Everybody else signed it. Anybody who went through Marion, Illinois, signed that document, basically stating, I'm no longer the person I am. Here I am, gonna sign. I'm gonna go to unicorn. I'm gonna work. I'm gonna be a good boy and you could bring me to a regular prison. Cause I'm gonna be a good guy. Okay. And I'm not saying that I begrudge them for taking that position. Cause maybe I would have signed it too, probably. It's not you. You're not ratting anybody out. You're just basically saying, yeah, I'm no longer that guy anymore. Yeah, I'm no longer that guy anymore. I'm not a threat to you. No problem. My father's ego and his pride would not let him sign that paper. He should tell them shove it up your ass. Shove it up your ass. And that's why he spent 10 years in Marion, Illinois.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  He could have been out 10 years prior to that.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  He could have been out 18 months. He could have been on eighteen months.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  Now, when you're talking, you know this? You and your mother know, you know this?

• 58:58Speaker 04

  I know this because I handled the attorneys, and the attorney I hired for my father to try to get him out of Marion was Linda Sheffield. She was great with, you know, BOP, you know, post-conviction issues. I hired her. And she came and said, "Look." She showed me. I says, "Well, there's nothing wrong with this paper. This is basically saying that..." I do this every day. Would you say I was? "No, I'm no longer that guy." "You got it. You're right." Okay. She says, "Well, I'm bringing this to your father." "Bring it to my father. Tell him. This is how we can get him out of there." And he told her, "You go back and tell my son, he ever sends something like this again, he can never come up and visit me again."

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  And that was the end of it. He never signed the paper. He wouldn't conform to their program. He wouldn't go along with what they wanted to say, "Okay, I'm no longer John Gotti anymore." He was gonna die John Gotti. The way he lived is the way he was gonna die. And I've interviewed people for projects I'm working on, which we're gonna be coming out shortly with. People that were in Marion with my dad. Shot callers for la eme, Mexican mafia. Shot callers for the Aryan Brotherhood. Shot callers for the Latin Kings. Interviewed them all. And what they had to say, of what it was like to be around this man, the aura that he had. The shot caller's name was Black Bob for the Mexican mafia. He used to refer to my father...

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  What was his name, Black, uh?

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  Black Bob.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Black Bob.

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  For the Mexican, for la eme. He used to refer...

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Latin King guys, keep an eye on the general. He used to call him Generali. Generali. He's like this with his fingers, Generali. And the stories you heard about how they received and accepted and loved and adored my father. This is how you do in time. He taught people how to do time. He taught people how to be a man. How to comport yourself like a man, okay? He did. And then you got someone like Sammy Gravano, who took the shortcut, abandoned his wife and kids, left them in the streets, knowing that people were gonna kill his family, wanted to kill his family. Left them like a dog that he was, went into WITSEC units, cared only about himself. And you wanna sit there now and you wanna bash someone like my father? You wanna sit there and try to damage his character?

• 1:01:03Speaker 04

  Shame on him. Shame on him, and shame on the government that released him.

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  Because they knew exactly what he was gonna do. I have his psychological report right here. I have Sammy Gravano's report. You know what the report says? The report says that, A, he's got selfish intend- his tendencies lean towards his selfishness, his self-preservation. And it goes on to say, if released from prison, he is a tremendous aspect in his qualities of life that he would certainly avert back to, and I'm trying to piece together word for word, his criminal ways, including violence. And yet, two different psychologists, two different government psychologists had issued these reports. And both were right, and the government still released him

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  and put him, made him somebody else's neighbor. They didn't make him their neighbor. The FBI agents didn't put him next door to their house, they put him sort of somebody else's house. And what did he do, once he went to Colorado, what did he do? Well, he was in a relationship. Uh, I guess it was an abusive relationship. Something happened there, signed himself out of the program and found his way back to Phoenix, Arizona, where he became a narcotics pusher to kids. Okay, and tried to recruit other individuals. And the government, the FBI, knew a lot of what was going on here. This is why the Attorney General in Arizona, Janet Napolitano, the name is, they get it right. Janet Napolitano had to do a secretive investigation on him and wouldn't even let the FBI or any federal agency know, or anybody else outside of our office,

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  know what was going on, because she was afraid it was gonna be compromised. Now, my point is this. I don't, I hardly knew him on the streets, Sammy Gravano, I hardly knew him. Okay, he certainly does not know me. He could say anything he wants about me, he doesn't know me. Okay? That being said, I'm a Queens guy, he was a Brooklyn guy. I stood in Queens, my father was a man of the world, I was not. I was a Queens guy. Quite simple. But you took the easy way out. What happened to when you met somebody in battle? And you either won or you lost? What happened to giving that that person if you respected that individual? That individual showed up and fought that fight? And you respected him as a man? What happened to giving that respect in death? What happened to honoring that?

• 1:03:21Speaker 04

  Could you sit here and say if I? This guy hit me the hardest and he he never quit him fighting. And what I'm gonna say now, he was a piece of cake, he was a dog. No, you're supposed to turn around and say? This guy was a worthy adversary. This guy really took it to me. He was something special. My father took it to the government. He gave them fits. Took them four trials to convict him. He beat them three in a row. Okay? Took them four trials. Give that man his credit. He was intelligent enough to maneuver you. When everybody else lost, he won. Remember that? And he refused to back down and be anybody else. Me? I would drive a minivan. And I would put a sweatsuit on. Put a hat over my eyes. Okay? John? Right in your face. He was afraid of no one and nothing. You give that man his credit.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  And certainly in death, you give a man an honorable death. You give him his credit. To sit there and take the position that this coward had taken and repetitively takes? To me is a disgrace.

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  Can I ask you a question? So for me, when I did that interview? Um, I I go to New York all the time. I love New York. I love the people. I get along with the people and.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  You know, later on in life, when I did ancestry, you know, when you find out what your background's all about? Apparently, I'm eighteen percent Italian. Someone in my family hooked up with an Italian. We don't know about, right? So I've always gotten along with Italians. I go to New York and you you you have to. You would be like? How could you interview Sammy? He is lying, he's this. He's that. And then I would have some guys that would come up there and say? But look, you heard the recording? You know, recording when John kind of threw Sammy under the bus?

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  It never happened.

• 1:04:56Speaker 03

  And what I'm saying to you is in the recording, so Sammy.

• 1:04:59Speaker 04

  John should have killed Sammy, quite frankly.

• 1:05:01Speaker 03

  Well, that's what Sammy said he thought he was gonna kill him.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  He should have killed him earlier. He should have killed him. Listen, Sammy was a guy that was green eyes, he was a monster. Okay? This is a guy, and he talks about, you know, this is an amazing thing, because when they go in front of the judge, when they're gonna get their sentence reduced, all of these cooperatives, what they do is they cry and say, "I only pulled the trigger one time." Including Sammy. He said he only pulled the trigger one time. Now he boasts, "19 kills, I killed 19 people." No, he conspired, he schemed, and killed 19 people, let's get that straight. And including two innocent people. Nobody wants to talk about the two innocent people, why? Why doesn't anybody wanna talk about Alan Kaiser? A 16-year-old boy that through mistaken identity, not Louis Molito, Sammy Gravano shot Alan Kaiser in the head.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  I know this because I've interviewed people in his crew. When Sammy flipped, okay? I brought them into the lawyers' offices and told them, "Look, guys, open up, be truthful here." Because, they knew I was their protector. They knew that there was a faction within the group that wanted to kill all of them for being loyal to Sammy at one time. Including Sammy's family. I wouldn't let it happen. There's another cooperator named Mikey Scars-DiLeonardo. He knew all the particulars. In fact, I was using Michael to drive them in. Drive them into the city, I trusted Michael. I says, "Michael, they got my word, safe passage." I made him bring them up to my Pocono house. This way they felt comfortable. We hunted together. They were suspicious, thought maybe I was looking to kill them. We met, spoke.

• 1:06:33Speaker 04

  I says, "Look, nobody's gonna harm you guys. Nobody's gonna harm you."

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  This is Mikey Scars, or no?

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  This is, Mikey Scars was close to me, and Michael bringing them in. And I assured all of Sammy's crew, "Nobody's gonna harm you guys, okay? But, I'm keeping you guys, I'm helping you, I'm here, I'm in your corner. John, unless John, that order comes from John, and it never will come from John, you guys are safe. But you have to cooperate here with us. You have to go in and talk to the lawyers. You have to tell us everything about Sammy Gravano." John Gotti met Sammy Gravano for the first time in 1977, when he came out of prison. He met him for the first time. And he only met him through a couple of nightclubs coming and going, okay? He didn't really know Sammy well enough. He began to know him later on in life, so we needed to get all these facts put together. So I established what I call the Eddie Garofalo file. Okay?

• 1:07:22Speaker 04

  Which was his brother-in-law. Eddie Garofalo was his brother-in-law. His older brother-in-law. And he opened up. And I have all that, all the interview we've done. He opened up, we have it all typed up. And he talks about the rift between Sammy Gravano and Louis Molito. And the rift happened because Louis Molito, who was a tough guy, stand-up guy and a real tough guy in his own right. And Sammy had a problem. Apparently, he had a problem with what he thought was some bikers. They roughed him up or whatever. He went and got Louis and came back. And both had guns on him. Sammy says, "That's one of them right there." They rolled up on the kid. Sammy rolled down the window and shot the kid in the head. He always said that Louis Molito did it. Louis Molito never forgave him for putting him in that position.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  Kid went down as a John Doe at first. Until at some point later on, they came to a conclusion who this kid was. And even when the FBI was issuing the reports of all his murders, that kid was down as John Doe. Okay? Which is an insult to his family. Alan Kaiser was down as John Doe, which is an insult to his family. But Louis Molito never let Sammy live that down. That he was put in that position and an innocent 16-year-old kid was shot in the head and killed. He never let him live that down. And Sammy, at some point, conspired, because Louis was a... Louis would slap Sammy. Louis was a tough guy and Sammy wasn't. And at some point, they had it, it just, it came to a point and Sammy went to the chief and basically made up a story.

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  Uh, this guy's, uh, you know, was loyal to Paul or whatever. It was a cockerbeam-y story. Okay? It's probably above my pay grade.

• 1:09:02Speaker 04

  But ultimately, in the end, he conspired and got Louis Molito killed. Okay? This is what he does. But you take that, for example, and you take his brother-in-law, ex-brother-in-law, Nick Scibetta. He talks about how Paul authorized him to kill Nick Scibetta. If Paul knew who Nick Scibetta was...

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Excuse my crassness, am I allowed to curse?

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:09:23Speaker 04

  Whatever's not nailed down in this room, you could shove up my ass. How's that sound? If Paul knew, had any idea who a guy named Nick Scibetta was. He was a civilian. From what Mikey Scars told me, he told me they went to school together. He said he was a happy-go-lucky kid, riding his bicycle in the area. Yeah, he had some problems, like everybody else, a lot of other people did at that time. But he didn't warrant the kill. He got killed because he knew some deep, dark secrets, maybe about Gravano. But that certainly was not a warranted mob killing. Those were two killings there, that you could take them immediately off that list. Those were civilians.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  So to sit there and, and, and, and, and project yourself as this guy, this good guy. He was never a good guy, he was a treacherous, scheming guy. Money was his god. His family was alive because of me. My father, when Sammy first flipped, the first visit with the see him. He was sick to his stomach. He said, you know what, I violated my own, my own ethics, he said.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Who sang this, Sammy?

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  My father sang this to me.

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 04

  In the visit in MCC, when they walked Sammy out that night. Night, the previous night, actually. I think it was November 8th, if I'm not mistaken.

• 1:10:33Speaker 04

  Says punk couldn't do any time. He said the punk couldn't do any time. He says, that's it, couldn't do time. And I says, well, and I'm, watching him vent a bit, my father, he's like this, and he's looking back, and he's completely beside himself, like, you know, he's, he's disappointed, not that he didn't expect. He's disappointed in himself for allowing this guy to move up. He's disappointed. His love for Frankie De Chico and some of the old timers that were proponents of Gravano for listening, John, for listening, John had better choices and he allowed this guy to become what he is. And he fully knew, before they got pinched, what he was. He started now to pay attention and see what Sammy really was, okay? And I'm waiting for instructions like, what are we supposed to do?

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Here we are, we're sitting here, I'm here, Jackie D'Amico, my Uncle Pete, we're listening to my father. And then he turns to me and he says, you make sure, John, nobody harms his family. We don't do that. Make sure nobody harms his family. I left, gathered everybody up and went to everybody, went to all the social clubs, spoke to everybody. And I said, make sure, make sure, make sure. And I got a lot of pushback. There was a group of individuals that wanted to take his house down. They wanted to take his house down with his family in it. And they wanted it, and they couldn't have, they couldn't have his crew, they wanted them. And I told them, it's not gonna happen, it's not gonna happen. This is not Italy, okay, this is America. John Gotti is not those men.

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  It's not gonna happen, and that's that. And we did not let it happen. Did he care? Did he care? He went into the program, now remember now, he went to the program and did this when the mob wasn't squeamish on hurting people. Maybe they are now. But they had a pension for hurting people back then, a lot of people, okay?

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  John, let me, is it fair to say, you know, for the, for the audience that's watching this, rightfully so, you have to defend a hundred percent your father, nothing, you know, so emotionally.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  And always will.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  And, and, and, and by the way, no one expects anything different, right? Now, you know, for the viewer who is not emotionally connected to, like, I remember when I interviewed Sammy. Your sister came after me, I don't know if you remember the, the, you know.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  I, I've never watched the interview.

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  Okay, well, I'll tell you, I mean.

• 1:12:52Speaker 04

  I'm not computer literate, I never watch any podcasts, I don't do it.

• 1:12:55Speaker 03

  Well, I, I, I, I think that's good for you because it's more peaceful.

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  I don't, I just don't do it.

• 1:12:59Speaker 03

  But, I mean, I got tweets after tweets, you realize what, you know, all this stuff, I'm like, okay, messages, phone calls, all this stuff, but for somebody that's not attached to it emotionally, did you ever listen to the recording, you know, the recording that they say where your father is?

• 1:13:15Speaker 04

  I have them, I have the original tapes. I have the original tapes, it's he talking to Frankie Lucasio and saying Frankie, he's looking, Frankie was an older man. Frankie was one of the classiest operators in that world. Was probably one of the youngest guys in history to get the job, to go into that world, to go into that life. I think he was about twenty-three when he got the job, Frankie. Frankie was a, and my father trusted Frankie, he was an elder statesman. Men have very limited words, very limited words. In fact, the only time I really ever had him have, he had a open conversation or really spoke at, was at his sentencing. It's when he told Judge Glasser that I'm innocent. Uh, you're giving me a life sentence. However, it's an honor to be John Gotti's friend.

• 1:13:58Speaker 04

  If there were more man like John Gotti in this world, this world would be a better place. And he praised my father to the high heavens because Frankie was a traditional loyalist. He adored my father, my father adored him right back. Okay, right back. So this is John Gotti, who has, who does he talk to? Is it so, there's no complaint department? He isn't, the buck stops with John Gotti, right? So he's talking to his number two guy, Frankie, very close to him. He's talking to Frankie, saying Frankie, what do you want me to do here? He says, I've got all skippers coming in, this one's coming, this one's coming, his names, they're coming in. He keeps opening up businesses all over the place. We're not supposed to open up businesses. Paul did that. We're not supposed to open up businesses. We're supposed to let the men open the businesses.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  They gotta earn. Okay, the men have to earn. They'll take care of us, but we can't be robbing contracts, we can't be doing this, that, or the other, we can't be doing these things. Sammy was killing people and then taking over their companies or going into a particular business, whereas that drywall, there was a company that operated and sold, and did drywall, okay? Now, they would do their business, they would comply with the bids, and they would grease the right skids, keep things moving along. But then Sammy, you're an administrator, you're not supposed to have a crew, you're not supposed to have being in business where you can compete with the men and take business away from them. It's a no brainer then, because you're the guy who's assigning the jobs. So you're gonna assign all the jobs to yourself, okay?

• 1:15:25Speaker 04

  And this is what he was doing, and John was at wit's end, and he was looking for a little guidance from Frankie, someone he knew for many, many years, he trusted, like, how do I react to this guy? I'm gonna pull his card, I'm gonna pull him in and address him on this, but Frankie, what's the right approach? And it wasn't just one visit, it wasn't just one wiretap, it was two different separate occasions. There were two different dates, two different wiretaps, where he's talking to Frankie, and then there's a third one, Sammy doesn't talk about, where John is addressing Sammy, okay? And he's telling Sammy, basically, okay, this is at the end of all of this, he comes to terms with it, not in that wiretap, not in any of those wiretaps, he pulls, Frankie goes and gets Sammy, brings him to the chief, late at night, and my father reads him the riot act.

• 1:16:08Speaker 04

  And he basically tells him, enough now, enough. You got, we got men coming in complaining about you, you got skippers coming in so on and so forth complaining about you. You wanna be a captain? I'll reduce you back to a captain. You wanna be a soldier? I'll reduce you back to a soldier. No, no, okay, then enough now, back off, you can't be doing these things. And that was it, there was an understanding. And that's why you hear that tape afterwards, of John saying, I'm getting pinched soon, okay? I'm going away, okay? And I know what I gotta do once I go away, I got a life sentence, I know what I gotta do. But what are you comfortable being? And he's, he's trying to ask him what kind of position you would wanna be in. So obviously, you know, John came to terms, Sammy had the understanding of what John's

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  expectations were of him, and everybody was gonna move forward. Now, you heard those tapes at bail hearings.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:01Speaker 04

  He did, Sammy did. You were John's cellmate, you were my father's cellmate. Why don't you take care of your business? Why don't you take care of your business? He said nothing, he said nothing, okay? He understood, my fa- my father was angry at him.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  Wait, what do you mean by that? Why don't you take care of business?

• 1:17:18Speaker 04

  Should've killed John, you were, you were his cellmate, kill him. That door locks, it's you and the man.

• 1:17:22Speaker 03

  Well, he said he wanted to.

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  He did, and I wanna fly a space shuttle, but it just, I don't know how to, okay? Sammy never did a tough guy thing, other than scheme. And he said he pulled the trigger one time. You believe the story that he got the nickname because he was a good fighter, the Bull? Do you believe that? He told you that, right? Did he tell you that on your show? Did he say that he got the, my nickname, the Bull, came because some old timers say, oh, look at the little bull? No. He got the nickname, the Bull, because he's from Bull's Head, Staten Island. There were three different individuals that were in that group, so to identify Sammy from Bull became Sammy Bull. That's who he became. Because back then, Sammy was...

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  According to this psychological report, they have him here at five foot six, but I'm five nine. I could eat an apple off of his head. So I know he's not five six, he's probably closer to five four, five five. And I remember him back then, he went to beautician's school. He was a very thin guy. He wasn't no bull. He became a bull years later when he thought he was going to prison and he began taking steroids. He became a bull. When he was working out in the gym with Frankie Fappiano and other individuals and they told me he was taking the needles in his ass and they blew up to go to prison because he was so afraid of going to jail. So he wanted to put some muscle on. That's where he became a bull. But before that, he was just little Sammy from Bull's Head, which became Sammy Bull. So the nickname was a lie, okay?

• 1:18:44Speaker 04

  And again, look, I didn't want to come on the air and I'm not here. I don't, I don't give a second thought to Sammy Gravano. I really don't. I don't watch podcasts. I don't, I don't, I'm just not. I'm not computer literate, I don't go online and do it. But he doesn't have the right. He doesn't have the right when a man, a guy that you knew was a man's man. You saw that man, how he comported himself, how John Gotti comported himself. I've never seen anybody like him and I've seen them all. And I'm not saying because he's my father. Would I defend him regardless? Always.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  Always. But I'm going to take it, Pat, not to interrupt you.

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  Please, go for it.

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  But just to tell you this much, there's limits in how far I can go in my defense of my father. But when people, when I have an opportunity to observe this man and when people who did time in the most violent prisons in the country, if not the world, okay? In the most secure places in the world and saw how he comported himself. If they're the ones who are further filling my head, if they're further filling my balloon, my head, to keep preaching the gospel, preaching John Gotti, okay? The attributes of John Gotti. Look, he was the real deal. If he wasn't, you say, he's my father, I loved him. And you can rest on that note and go on to something else.

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  So you know, you know what it does, like in life? I get judged for who I befriend, I get judged for who I marry, we get judged for choices we make, investments, all this other stuff. But then you also get judged for who you make your right-hand guy. Your dad made him the underboss.

• 1:20:19Speaker 04

  Made a mistake.

• 1:20:20Speaker 03

  So if, if he is who you say he is, Sam, that, that means your dad's a bad judge of character because you're, the underboss is like, I mean, it's who John, wasn't John that too? Who was the underboss with Paul Castellano before, you know, he was taken out of state?

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  Remember, Pat, to answer that question, remember Frankie DeChico was the guy. Frankie got blown up.

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  He got killed. Great man, a tough guy. And again, the picture, if there's a picture of my father and Frankie as kids in their twenties, Frankie was I think four or five years older than my dad. My father's 28 years old and Frankie's maybe 32, 33, in Lewisburg Penitentiary with Mickey Boy, Paradiso, and other individuals. These guys cut their teeth in a maximum-security penitentiary together. They put work in together. This goes back to the MCC visit, what my father says, punk couldn't do any time. My father violated his own belief. His belief is if you can't, you didn't do time with John Gotti, he ain't making you nobody. You ain't going nowhere with John Gotti. Everybody in John's circle did time with John Gotti. Everybody. Frankie DeChico was very close to my father because

• 1:21:26Speaker 04

  he did time with my father. He did time in Lewisburg Penitentiary, okay? In the unit, walked the yard with my father, went to wars with my father. See Frankie, that was Frankie's position. When Frankie got killed, John, being the diplomat, did what he believed, he didn't do the right thing, but he did what he believed to be the right thing. Took a Brooklyn guy, Frankie's close friend was Sammy Gravano. He already took Frankie's old position, and now he moved him along and put him in that position, in Frankie, in a somewhat quasi-acting position for Frankie. Frankie's dead, Frankie being dead. He moved him along and cultivated him along. And you have to understand something, okay? The Sammy Gravano that you see today,

• 1:22:09Speaker 04

  the Sammy Gravano that did time, the way he did the time, was not the Sammy Gravano on the streets. Sammy's not a stupid guy. Sammy knows how to say the right things and do the right things. Sammy was an earner. Sammy went out. He knew. He knew how to turn the rocks over. He knew how to go find the money. He knew how to do things. He knew how to talk to people. Okay? And he knew how to get things done. He was a schemer. He was a plotter. He was one of those guys. It takes a unique character to lure your best friend into a place and fully knowing, and you're having a cup of coffee and you can kill him right there on the spot. I'm not sure I'm qualified to do that. I, in fact, I believe I'm not. Okay? So that just goes to tell you the depth of his character. So if he can do something like that, what else could he do? These are different people, you know.

• 1:22:54Speaker 04

  I, I used to say this, not to interrupt you, please. I used to say this. I brought home a lot of good men from prison with me and helped get them jobs. As long as they're civilians, we're friends. Okay? I walked away from my former life, my former existence, and I tell them the same thing. If you're gonna revert back and go back to your, your, the former gang, your crew, whatever have you, please, just leave me out of this. I've been through enough. I've been through enough. My family's been through enough. But if you're gonna do the right thing, okay? You're gonna be a true blue brother in every sense of the word. Take care of your family. We'll be there for each other, but that's as far as it goes. I got your back. There's no problems at all.

• 1:23:36Speaker 04

  But I know these people and I brought them over and I sponsor, I bring these people to meet my family. I bring these people to my son's fights. I brought 500 people to my son's fight in Florida when he fought Floyd Mayweather. 60 were convicts. 60 of them were convicts at the time, either my father or I. And was in, three of them were in Marion or with my, with my dad. And you wanna know what? You can't hide in prison. If you wanna see someone's flaws, if you wanna see their character, you wanna see if they're real men or not, you can't hide in prison. Because I'm with you 24/7. I can see everything about you. I could tell you when you brush your teeth. I could tell you when you wash your ass. You can't hide in prison. In the streets, you could hide. You could hide. You see me. Four times a week, for two hours each time or an hour, and you say the right things. You comport yourself. You open the umbrella when you have to open the umbrella.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  You open the door when you have to open the door. You walk like a gentleman, you talk like a gentleman. You know exactly when you should speak, okay? When the boss is in present, when the boss walks in the room, and the chief walks in the room, in his presence, you know when you're supposed to speak and when you're not supposed to speak. Sammy knew those things. You see him in the pictures, holding the umbrella for my father. You see him. You see him opening the door. You see him. You see him pushing John Miller and the reporters back out of the way, when John is walking down the street. You see him. He did his job. Did a pretty good job, okay? But again, it goes back to come full circle, what John said. You can't put a guy in that position unless you know if he's capable of doing time. My father used to say this, and he said this in Marion, Illinois, and he was a hypocrite in this respect.

• 1:25:05Speaker 04

  He says, "John, looking back, to be a street guy and to live this life the right way, you should never get married, you should never have kids, never get married, never have kids. You have to devote yourself to this, and every guy should be, would have to qualify, should do one year in Marion, Illinois, in a lockdown, maximum level six prison. This is the worst of the worst. Show me you could do this. You could do anything." Hmm. Okay? That's, now I know, you ain't gonna flip, you ain't gonna turn on your brotherhood, you ain't gonna turn. You're gonna be a man, because your honor's gonna keep you intact. Sammy wasn't capable of doing any of that. He fell apart the moment he went to jail. I mean, we've interviewed a guy who was the leader of the Ghost Shadows, kid named Brian.

• 1:25:47Speaker 04

  The Ghost Shadows was a Chinatown gang, and he ended up somehow locked with Sammy. And he was sending messages and kites back to us, "This guy's not comporting himself right. He's not doing time right." And my father began to have reservations about the choice that he made. And then, shortly thereafter, several months later, sure enough, in the middle of the night, they walked him out, and we found out the next day. And my father was, that was him, sitting there.

• 1:26:15Speaker 04

  In the visiting room and questioning what he did. He didn't put the blame on anybody else, he put the blame on himself. Because he made up until that point, he made all the right calls, I believe he did. I mean, as now an outsider looking in. I believe John made the right calls, I did. I think he put the right people in place. He had tremendous amount of loyalty. Take into consideration the impact of Sammy Gravano flipping, okay? He's the guy who, supposedly the top, right? The boss is here, he knows all the secrets. Certainly was a greedy guy, he knew all the money was, that's for damn sure, okay? Now, as a result of Sammy flipping, minimum fifty-seven guys get indicted. Fifty-seven guys, many of them high level, okay?

• 1:26:58Speaker 04

  Due to his cooperation. He's a tremendous asset for the government, but he is a tsunami to the streets. There's an enormous panic going on now. People are running and hiding and whispering now, okay? And yet, we had one, that time, all those cases, that barrel of cases that came our way, there was one rat. Sammy Gravano. Wasn't anybody else. You know how many guys got life without parole? You know how many guys got fifty-year bids? My Uncle Gene just came home with twenty-nine straight years, okay? You know how many guys are just coming home now, they're just now coming out, old men, they're drifting out of prison? That was all the guys that were around John Gotti. They grew up around John Gotti, the Bergen Hunting Fish Club crew around John Gotti.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  The guys east New York around John Gotti. The Fattico boys, okay? Around John Gotti, all those guys that grew up with John, okay? You had a confidential informant named Willie Boy Johnson, and you had, that was it, that's all you had, and even he did better time than Gravano. When it came time to testify, they put him twenty-two months in solitary confinement, refused to flip, stood up, went to trial, and they won the trial. Ultimately, in the end, he was killed. But the point I'm trying to make is that up until that point when John became that person, not that low, he became that guy, that administrator, okay? I believe for the most part, he made the right decisions.

• 1:28:25Speaker 04

  Now as an observer on the outside looking in, looking back, fancying myself a historian and replaying the whole scenario in my head, and now as an older, wiser head looking, not a young warrior that's full of testosterone, it's ready to jump into the battle. Now as an older guy with lower testosterone, that would probably make a better general today than he was then, okay? That's me today, and now observing and replaying John's moves, my father's moves. And other than him being a degenerate gambler and a Gravano decision that he made, I don't know of many things that you could have redone differently because John did it from the perspective of what he, how he was raised and taught by his elders, the way they taught him.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  And I think for the most part, those guys did hard time, did it all. Now, was he right going to Ravenite and the clubs and all that? No, I don't, I don't agree with that, but he wasn't gonna back down. That was the problem. It's like a fighter that's tailor-made. Mike Tyson's a knockout puncher. And you don't put, you're not gonna put, say like in my time, a little older than you are, a Jerry Quarry-esque fighter, who didn't know how to do anything else, other tough guy that gonna come forward and you gotta knock him out. And John was one of those guys, he's gonna come forward, he's not gonna dodge and duck. He doesn't know how to, he didn't have that kind of finesse. He was what he was and he wasn't gonna hide it. So he was tailor-made to be knocked out by the government.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  Do you think the situation where he put a hit on Paul Castellano, you think that was the right move? You said two bad moves, right? Gambling and you said Sammy. But how about the hit on Paul?

• 1:29:59Speaker 04

  I don't know, again, that's above my pay grade, okay? I do know this much. Sammy's interpretation of those events differ from the reality of what took place there. Okay, and at a later date, I have, we put together a compilation, we put together pieces together, including visits between my father and I. It's not quite what Sammy says. In fact, I shot, when they were supposed to shoot the movie, the Gotti movie, they screwed up. The budget changed dramatically.

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  First one or second one?

• 1:30:29Speaker 04

  Second one. First one was pretty good, second one, John Travolta did an amazing job, however, the budget was nothing, it was not there. They took a screenplay, they took my book, and they basically, they went someplace else with it. But the ending was supposed to be shot where, you saw the ending of the movie?

• 1:30:45Speaker 03

  I've seen both movies.

• 1:30:45Speaker 04

  Okay, see the ending, Gravano's in the, in, behind the driver's seat? John's in the passenger seat, okay. Then the actual ending, that's how it's ends, and then the actual ending comes back and is a reflection on the stand. And headlights pass into the car. And it's Bobby Borello driving the car and John's in the passenger seat. Sammy wasn't even there. Sammy wasn't even there. Now, again, the truth comes from the teller of the story. So the truth is in the telling. Sammy's the only one that's telling the story. Nobody else is telling the story but Sammy Gravano.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  Wait, you're saying now that your father didn't tell Sammy to go do the job to take out?

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  I'm saying my, my father, in a, in a wiretapped visiting room in Marion, Illinois, talking to me, had said to me, when he's reading the story about how this thing, and they come after this conviction, he looked at me and he says, John, he says, I don't know what happened to that Paul, nor do I care. I don't care what happened to him, he says. But if Sammy Gravano was within ten miles of Paul getting hurt, your brother should rot in hell. He would never say that because he adored my brother. So that was John Gotti's words. Again, me, this was above my pay grade. I was a kid then. This wasn't my, this wasn't my game.

• 1:32:12Speaker 03

  Now, that's a very interesting twist right there because.

• 1:32:15Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  For me, you know, um, this stuff, I, I understand the emotional stuff that when it's blood, it's blood. I mean, it's, and, and not just blood, admiration for father, you're not gonna be able to, you know.

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  I adore my father.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  That's exactly the point. So, th- there's no winning there, but at the same time, you get judged for hiring him, you get judged for promoting him, and I would assume, when it comes later on, like, let's just say, if you got the job of being a boss, by taking out your boss, let's just say if that's the story that we see around, in, in, in the world.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  And again, I can't verify that story.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  I totally get it.

• 1:32:57Speaker 04

  What my pay grade.

• 1:32:58Speaker 03

  That, what I'm saying is, you know, for what's been documented and the people you sit down and talk to, who were maybe in that world where they were that age, I've sat with a lot of different people who are o- older, would, would come to me, you know, Ralph Natali, and Philly and Eddie, and Francis, and I had a chance to one time, I had three visits with Sonny Francis, Michael's father, who did, I think, fifty-five years in jail, I think he died at a hundred and three, a hundred and four.

• 1:33:20Speaker 04

  No, he had a fifty-five year sentence, he did a lot less, but he was a good man, he was a stand-up guy, certainly was a man's man, and a legend on the streets.

• 1:33:27Speaker 03

  That's what everybody says, like, he was a guy that was, Omerta was like, the face of Omerta, he, he would not break four.

• 1:33:32Speaker 04

  Sonny was a solid guy, and I had the pleasure, the honor and pleasure of meeting him at a wedding, a real gentleman.

• 1:33:37Speaker 03

  I took him to an Italian restaurant, and John, Gotti tell you, I'm trying to get him to say, Sonny, I'm dri- I'm his driver, I'm driving him to this Italian, his favorite Italian restaurant, I came and got him from the, old, I think it's like an old folks home, and Michael's there, and we're going out, his lawyer's there.

• 1:33:52Speaker 04

  What, you go to Bimanti's?

• 1:33:53Speaker 03

  I don't know what we went to, I can figure out the name to see where it was.

• 1:33:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:33:58Speaker 03

  Um, but we went there, for three hours, nothing. Why you tell you nothing, John?

• 1:34:04Speaker 04

  He say anything?

• 1:34:05Speaker 03

  No, he spoke.

• 1:34:06Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  But I told him, tell me about Meyer, good guy.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:10Speaker 03

  Tell me about Bugsy, you would never call him that to his face, I'm sorry, he's Ben, he's Mr. Siegel to you.

• 1:34:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Speaker 03

  Tell me about this, tell me about that, right?

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Speaker 03

  But in the world, if you come up fast, in the limelight, and showmanship, and all this stuff, you know, like the movie American Gangster, which is... A story of Frank Lucas where you know Denzel is like, hey, why'd you give me that jacket? I don't want to be seen. I don't want to have this, right? And sometimes, you know, the criticism is the fact that he was seen all the time. So he was, in my mind, when I'm asking Sammy, was he at a point that he's worried that Sammy's about to take him out to do to him what he may have done to Paul?

• 1:34:53Speaker 04

  Listen.

• 1:34:53Speaker 03

  That was my understanding.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  Listen to me, please. And this I have to say.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  Please.

• 1:34:57Speaker 04

  John Gotti would never start a fire he could not put out. What that means is very simply this, and just like when John Gotti went to Marion, Illinois, okay? Anything, anything that may have happened or could, anything that anybody was put in place or anything was done, those are fires that could have been put out at any time they needed to be put out. So let's understand this. Sammy was whoever he was, and he had a large crew around him, and then John had the Bergen crew, had a very large crew around him. What about the ones you've never seen? What about the people you've never seen? We saw everybody around Sammy. We knew them all. That roster had to come in. They had to be vetted, all those guys, okay? John had individuals you've never seen, you've never met.

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  My father had individuals, they weren't allowed to come in, they weren't allowed to go to weddings, they weren't allowed to be seen. Their job was to stay away, and if something's got to be done, they'll do it. They'll take care of it. So that's a fire that John could have put that fire out at any time he wanted to put that fire out. So that's, let's make no mistake about that. That's a fire that could have been put out any time that John would want to put that fire out. And not just with Sammy, moving forward, while he was in Marion. What did people think this guy was? His whole life, this was a true blue hoodlum. His whole life, this is what he aspired to be. Super intelligent individual. You think there was never, there was a plan A and never a plan B? There was never a situation where John would say, what if? What if this went wrong? What do we do?

• 1:36:24Speaker 04

  This is gonna happen. What if I do this? How do I undo this? This is how you undo it, okay? He always had a solution to the problem, and he and I would talk, and we were talking Marion. We would talk, just by looking at each other, we understood, we understood each other. I understood what he wanted, his likes and dislikes, okay? And you think that he couldn't, that he would ever put himself in a position? In fact, he got caught in an unguarded moment on a wiretap. He said, you think somebody, anybody's capable of rocking me to sleep like Paul got rocked asleep? I think he said that on a wiretap, if I'm not mistaken, right? You're not gonna rock John to sleep. He knew exactly what he was doing at all times. If you wanted him, he would be easy to get him, but he had a plan. He always knew what he had to do.

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  My father, every Saturday, same routine, drove to the cemetery to go see my brother. Stood there alone. He insisted. Nobody's allowed to take him. I wasn't allowed to be in the car with him. There was not to follow him. He'd go there, because he wanted to mourn. If you had a problem with him, here he was, okay? But he knew exactly what he was doing at all points in his life. He knew exactly what he needed to do.

• 1:37:27Speaker 03

  Do you think, I remember one time Sammy and I are speaking, and the story was about the fact that, you know, when, let's just say you're running a business.

• 1:37:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:37:36Speaker 03

  And, you know, I'm the guy that's not golfing six days a week, and I'm not even saying, that's just an analogy. So I'm a guy that, I started a company, I'm rich now, I'm worth fifty million. I'm golfing six days a week, I'm going to the spa, maybe I'll come and check out the office and all this stuff. But my right-hand guy is the one that goes and checks on everybody. He's there every day. And he's at the office six days a week. Now the crew, the field, the customers, the clients, are closer to him than they're closer to the one at the top that's the famous guy. Do you think something like that happened with Sammy and your father? You know what I'm saying? The shaking hands?

• 1:38:14Speaker 04

  Again, he's a legend in his own mind. Sammy was very popular in Brooklyn. Queens, he was nobody to us. Nobody. Nobody. In fact, people couldn't care less one way or the other about him. He was, he was very popular with individuals in Brooklyn. Anywhere else, nobody cared about Sammy. We didn't quite understand him and it. That being said, he was no legend to us. He was a cultivation that John moved along. But even think that he can take on the persona of who John Gotti was? Come on. Look, there was something to him. My father was that guy that got in the car. He went to the Bronx, he stood in the clubs in the Bronx with Frankie Lucasio and the fellows in the Bronx. He went to Brooklyn, he showed up in Brooklyn, he showed up in Queens, he showed up in Staten Island, he showed up in Manhattan, all the time.

• 1:39:00Speaker 04

  I bought my father a house in the Poconos and I bought him that house for a reason. I said, Dad, I've got this house now. He bought it from a friend of ours named Louis Studo. Bought the house. Dad, go stay there. And if anybody needs to see you, we'll bring them to see you, okay? He said, Look and say, that's not who I am, John. That's not who I am. He was out five days a week and even when he wasn't out, he was out. Because he was out in the city, five days a week and hitting the burrows five days a week, being seen and touched. Shouldn't have. Shouldn't have. Nobody else did that. But he had everybody see him and touch him and know he was real. He did that, five days a week, and then on the sixth day and even the seventh day, Sunday, which belongs to us,

• 1:39:42Speaker 04

  okay, should belong to his family, after dinner, what did he do? He drove to the Bergen Hunting Fish Club and played poker. And everybody knew to find him there. Another twenty guys would come in on Sunday night and mill around the table and hang out and watch him play cards and go in the back and eat a veal cutlet sandwich. He was always available. The only time he wasn't available was Saturday night. He was with my mother, dinner in a restaurant or home, and Sunday afternoon dinner at home. Other than that, he was available, in essence, seven days a week.

• 1:40:15Speaker 03

  Was he a good poker player?

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  He was a good card player. He wasn't, he wasn't, his preference wasn't poker. His preference was continental. He loved continental.

• 1:40:25Speaker 03

  You were saying that.

• 1:40:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I adopted that from my father. That was his preference. And they used to play a high-stake game, him and a lot of the old timers.

• 1:40:32Speaker 03

  Was it risky beating him or no?

• 1:40:34Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:40:34Speaker 03

  Like if you, if you beat him, he'd pay you in. He wouldn't be upset in.

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  My father paid all his debts and his, I used to see him, I used to watch him gamble and play cards. And they used to play a high-stake game. Petey Castellano and Jimmy Brown Fiala, these guys had money. These are money guys. And he put up a couple of guys in the game, like Jackie. Jackie the actor didn't have much money. You know, he was a, he was a hard-working grinder. Uh, my father told him, Jackie, get in the game. And he put him up. And at the end, like, my father won. He would tell Jackie, say, how'd you do? And Jackie would always overestimate his loss. Instead of say, I lost ten thousand, he'd say, I lost fifteen thousand. He says, you cocksucker, you ain't fucking paying attention. You lost twelve thousand. And he'd give it right back to him. And he'd throw it right back to him. He'd give it back to him. He just wanted the thrill. Because maybe when he was younger, you know, it was that, he had to be in that hunt. He had to be in that hunt.

• 1:41:23Speaker 04

  And sure, winning that money was something special. But as he got older, let's go post eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven. He had plenty of money. He wasn't gambling for the money anymore. He was just for the thrill. He needed to be in it. And when he won, he just, you, you, how'd you do, Jack? Okay, but, or he'd bet numbers. Give you an interesting story, a gambling story. Joe Messina, guy named Joe Messina. He was accused of being the shot caller for the banana, banana group. They were, they, they were partners in a crap game. They had a crap game together, okay? And they went and they, my father's job was, you know, he used to go there. They were partners and my father used to like to get into the game. Joe really didn't gamble. Joe was a money guy. And my father gets in the game and he winds up winning ninety thousand in their own game.

• 1:42:08Speaker 04

  He wins ninety thousand dollars, okay? And then what he does is afterwards, cause you know, Joe was pretty tight. So Joe, my father takes ten thousand off of it. Joe gets forty, he gets forty, and he gets ten thousand, and he gives us all the numbers. Calls all the numbers guys and the tips. He gives out tips and gives the number guys action, okay? Gives them all action. And Joe's looking at him like, it's our money. And he put ten thousand back in the game, okay? Back in the room. They hit the number, the next day, my brother Frankie boy's birthday, oh fifteen. They hit it for three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. Yeah, true story. This is in nineteen eighty-three.

• 1:42:42Speaker 03

  It's a lot of money.

• 1:42:43Speaker 04

  It's a lot of money, okay? This is before he became John Gotti. It's a lot of money. Now, Joe's a smart guy. Joe took his end and he bought some modular homes in the old side of Howard Beach. John Gotti got down on the Jets and every, anybody else. He threw it right back into the action, right back into the game. That's the kind of guy he was. That's the kind of guy he was. He was a guy, you had to look at him because it, it, money meant very little to him. It should have meant a lot more. Cause it gives more stability to your family when you know you're not gonna be there. But to him, it didn't mean, it didn't matter much.

• 1:43:13Speaker 03

  Three fifty in eighty-three is one point one million today. That's a lot of money.

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  Think about that.

• 1:43:16Speaker 03

  It's a lot of money.

• 1:43:17Speaker 04

  Think about that.

• 1:43:18Speaker 03

  So, so go, go, going back to New York City. You've been there since sixty-four. Yeah, that's that's all. The only place you've ever lived is New York, minus being out, right?

• 1:43:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was I was born in Brooklyn, born in Brooklyn, from South Brooklyn, moved to Canarsie at five years old, ten years old, Howard Beach, Howard Beach, out to Long Island I moved.

• 1:43:37Speaker 03

  How much has New York changed and is it, in your opinion,

• 1:43:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:41Speaker 03

  safer today, or is it safer back in the days?

• 1:43:44Speaker 04

  Much safer. Well, wait, wait. From what perspective are we talking about? Meaning, was it safer to be a street guy back then? No, no. Is it safer to be a street guy today? Yeah, I think so. You have to understand in both aspects of that, okay? It's a tricky question, but both aspects of it because then if you just ran afoul or you did something wrong, or someone thought you did something wrong, you ended up with two in your hat and in a dumpster. Today, that doesn't happen anymore. It just doesn't happen. It's a it's a kind of gentler street, okay? In that respect. And also now on the other side of that as well, back then, there were four hundred FBI agents that were employed

• 1:44:25Speaker 04

  against the streetlight. In the tri-state area, there were four hundred FBI agents. Today, there's less than forty.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Why?

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't I don't give them the budget. I don't approve the budget. There's less than forty, I guess because the technological the technological advances, that they can track you through computers. I guess they have maybe they have a higher count of of informants in that life, maybe. Maybe the information moves differently. Look, I could tell you, it was far more difficult back in John's time to be a street guy than it is today. Today, it ain't quite the same. It's just not, it's not, you know, you're not living the life the way John lived it. To be perfectly frank.

• 1:45:06Speaker 03

  Is it even, is it nonexistent, or is it still out there? People are talking, you know, they're doing their thing?

• 1:45:13Speaker 04

  And again, I'm twenty-six years removed, so I, you know, there's there's still somewhat of a fascination, even for me.

• 1:45:22Speaker 04

  There's a lot of endearing individuals that I knew that called uncle, still call him today. I did time with a lot of these gentlemen as well. They're special people, they're special guys, that they could have been successful in a whole host of things in their lives that they really chose to be. Especially John, especially my father. Again, that wasn't an exaggeration, that was an accurate, that was an accurate statement that he had a 140 IQ.

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  That's wild.

• 1:45:44Speaker 04

  He could have done anything he wanted in his life. He'll tell you, he says it, he says it on wiretap. He says it, he says it in Marion, Illinois, a visit between he and I. He says, "John, there weren't many doors open to me. The only door was open was the one I went through, which brought me to where I am today." And I would look at him and, you know, because he's my father, and I would always be respectful and say, "I know, Dad, I understand." But that's not what I thought in my mind. I would say, "That's not true, that's not true." Yes, it was, and yes, I guess back then, and the glamour and everything else that goes with it, and again, maybe most kids growing up, their idol was Mickey Mantle, my father's idol was Albert Anastasia, okay? But the point is that you possessed the intelligence. Now, you didn't possess the opportunity like I did.

• 1:46:28Speaker 04

  You know, my father struggled, you know, and he moved the money, but he made sure that he put me in military school. He gave me a, he gave me the same education Donald Trump's father gave him. So, there's no excuse, I have no excuse.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  He wanted you to get out, he didn't want you to pursue the life that he had.

• 1:46:43Speaker 04

  My father wanted me to go to military school and do something spectacular with my life, and I wanted, not quite what my father wanted, I wanted to go on to an ROTC oriented college and pursue a career in the military. That's what I wanted. And it took a wrong turn at some point, and I ended up where I was. Now, if you're gonna, if he asked me, "Well, John, if your next question is, do you have any regrets?" We all do at some point, if we live long enough. If we're old enough, we have regrets.

• 1:47:13Speaker 04

  But I don't regret being around my father. I don't. I cherish those moments. Look, I'm sorry. But do I miss that life? No. Nope. Do I miss John Gotti? You bet. He was something special to be around. That was it. I can't even, it's unfair to me to describe it to you because everybody's gonna watch and say, well, that's your father, that's your father, your father. It's not right because I'm doing a show, I'm working on a show right now, and I'm interviewing people that were labeled by the government as shot callers in Marion, Illinois, and other institutions that did time with John Gotti. And I'll let them tell you what kind of a man he was, okay?

• 1:47:53Speaker 04

  He was the complete package. Listen, I have two idols in my life, two, only two. John Gotti, Nelson Mandela. That's it. That's where it ends. Nobody else impressed me. I'm not impressed. You can't impress me too easily. They impressed me. They impressed me. And for me to have my father, not only because he's my father, but to be my idol, tells you what's, what a special man he was, but for that life, and, and my view should be the best view, and I'm gonna tell you why. I'm not hardcore. There's hardcore guys that don't know any be, they don't, they don't know any better. They say, this is what we know, okay?

• 1:48:36Speaker 04

  My political view is I'm a true blue independent. That's what I am. I was a Bill Clinton Democrat, and I can jump right over. I, I can like Donald Trump. I'm a true blue independent that stays in the middle, and I evaluate a situation, not the politics. I evaluate the situation, I evaluate the person, and I can make a choice where I believe it's out my best interest, my children's best interest, where we should be. I can make that evaluation, okay? Not where maybe like my father being a hardcore guy says, eh, it's cut and dry. This is who we are. Or his statement that he had made to me, and, and when I visited him, that last visit we ever had together was when a man chooses a path, and he walks down that path, to be a man, you have to see that walk to the end. You have to stay on that path all the way to the end.

• 1:49:21Speaker 04

  I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. Circumstances change. Everything changes. So, me being a true blue independent, my perspectives go, I could evaluate. And I'm telling you, from the outside looking in, okay, now, I'm on the outside now, looking in. What kind of a man my father was, I know his flaws, and I know his qualities. His qualities outweigh the flaws, and his qualities regarding to being a hoodlum, they're through the roof.

• 1:49:53Patrick Bet-David?

  You're gonna think I'm crazy when I tell you this, but the last thirteen and a half years, I've been working on my first fiction book to write, ever. Fiction book to write. And while I finished this book a year ago, I got the strangest phone call about one of the characters in the book, where the guy wanted to meet with me, and he read the book, and afterwards was like, wait a minute, am I the villain in the book? This is a story about a character named Asher, who is half Armenian, half Assyrian, whose father was involved in the Iranian revolution, linked to Savak, working with the Shah, that they escape, and he gets recruited to a secret society. Well, when you go to the secret society, it's been around for a couple thousand years, they've developed some of the craziest leaders of all time, and they test you.

• 1:50:37Patrick Bet-David?

  There's unique tests that they have at the society, where they test to see your emotional, mental toughness. One of the tests that they have is very rigorous. It's purely mental. Of course, there's a physical one, but one is mental and emotional. If you're Armenian, if you're Assyrian, if you're Persian, this is a book you're gonna be reading and saying, holy moly, this the kind of stuff you talk about in here? Yes. If you're somebody that's fascinated by history, this is a book for you. Characters. There's a technology that this society, secret society, builds, where you go into a vault, I won't spoil it for you, when you go down, they have a technology where you get to sit down and watch, and have a three, four hour conversation with Tupac. You can set up a debate between Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. Karl Marx is in the book, who wrote Communist Manifesto.

• 1:51:22Patrick Bet-David?

  Ayn Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, is in the book. Marilyn Monroe explains the concept of seduction and sex in the book. When you read the book, it's about development of the next leaders in the world, and how they do it, and how they've been doing it for many years. And it's also about How to prevent the end of civilization? And how this organization goes about doing it. So I've never written a parenting book before, but if I ever wrote a parenting book, this is the closest thing to it because it's all mindset, a lot of crazy stories. Again, thirteen and a half years. Trust me, I told myself I will not publish this book until I sell my insurance company and I'm fully disconnected from it, where it's no longer my responsibility a hundred percent. When you read this, if you're a cra- if

• 1:52:03Patrick Bet-David?

  you're a creative person, if you like fiction books, if you enjoy Atlas Shrugged, or if you enjoy Divergent, if you like books like that, I think you can enjoy reading this book. It's the creative side. Business books is very easy. Here's how you do it. Here's how this how it works. This is very creative. If you haven't placed your order yet, now you can order it on Simon and Schuster, Amazon. I'm gonna put the link up below somewhere here, maybe even in my profile. Go order the book and read it. I sincerely, I've never written a book where I can't wait to read your reviews, to see what you think about this book. So I'm going on this wild journey and we have some plans with this book here. If you support the things that I work on, I would appreciate

• 1:52:46Patrick Bet-David?

  you going to reading the book, order the book on Amazon, and then post a review.

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  When's the last time you hugged him?

• 1:52:53Speaker 04

  February 5th, 1999. I was granted a visit, which wasn't supposed to be a visit, it was supposed to be a phone call, because I refused to take a plea on a case. And I took the plea on the case, well, I wanted to see my father, and I wanted to be declared a civilian. I wanted to be put on a shelf for the rest of my life. And I sent him a message up earlier, and he evaluated that message. And when I walked into that visit, he came right at me. I gave him a hug first. Well, it's really interesting to tell you because you'll enjoy this story. Because again, it goes to the persona of John Gotti, okay? Not me, I wouldn't have done it this way, but he did.

• 1:53:36Speaker 04

  I'm there and a marshal escorts me, okay, to visit my father now. And at first, the prosecution, Southern District in White Plains, they refused to have me and my father in the same room. Prosecutor gets up and says that we communicate in a code that the CIA would have a hard time cracking. They can't be in the same room. She's telling Barrington Parker, Judge Barrington Parker this, and he says nonsense. Under the same provisions that he seen him in Marion, Illinois, he could see his father. Now, the problem was USP Springfield wasn't qualified to create those provisions, to create that booth, the glass, everything else. So they had to put us in a conference room. And we had to sit across the table, a wide table, and there was a tripod set up. It videotaped the whole thing, okay, the whole thing.

• 1:54:21Speaker 04

  And I get there, the marshal walks me in and excuses himself. And lieutenant and captain of the prison come in and greet me, and I shake their hand. How are you? Father's being brought down right now, and he's dying of cancer. This is February 5th, 99, as I had said. He had the surgeries, his jaw's missing, half his tongue is missing, half his pec is gone. He's down to maybe 160 pounds, 165 pounds. He comes down, he's belly chained and all shackled, and I hear the chains moving in the hall. He's coming down, he's doing the stutter step dance, because still no we can walk with the ankle chains on. And there's about eight or nine guards around him. They're bringing, they're transporting him. But right before he comes into the room, two FBI agents dip into the room.

• 1:55:05Speaker 04

  And I'm looking at them in their dressed suits, comes over and they identify themselves. They're from the Springfield, Mass. office. And they hold their hand out, I shake their hands, I shake their hands. And he says, "Mr. Gotti, we're going to be sitting in on the visit between you and your father." And I says, "I don't think so." And they says, "Well," I said, "look, I don't have a problem with you sitting in and listening. My father won't sit in a room with you people, I'm just telling you ahead of time. I'm a gentleman in this respect, but he's not going to be in this respect, I'm just telling you right now." He says, "Well, we're gonna have to." And all of a sudden, they're on cue, now I hear the chains coming, and he comes in. And he sees me and he smiles, he's all shackled up, and I'm heartbroken, I'm crushed. I see him now, it's the first time I saw him. Half his face is missing, and, you know, I'm crushed.

• 1:55:49Speaker 04

  And I'm looking at him, I'm just staring at him, and his belly chained, taking the chains off his feet. And he looks over and he goes... He gives me a smile and he goes, "Who are these two gentlemen?" And a fellow walks over, "How are you doing?" "I'm special agent such and such." My father says, "No, pull your hand back." He said, "What do you want?" He says, "We're gonna sit in." "Take me out of here, take me out of here." He's backing out. He says, "John, it's great seeing you." "These men can never sit in a room with me." He backs out. And then the captain jumps up and says, "No, no, no, no, no." "We have an order, we have a court order." "Courts, federal judge Barrington Parker." "No one in this order is to say you're to be in this room." "You have to leave." Oh, wow. "This visit has to proceed." "It's a ninety-minute visit."

• 1:56:34Speaker 04

  "It's allowed, authorized by a federal judge." "You have to leave." And they left. And he wouldn't even sit in the room. He wouldn't even, he wouldn't even sit in the room with these individuals. He wouldn't sit in the room. And at that visit, that's when I had the opportunity to hug him. So I, at that moment, they left the room. They unchained my father. A lieutenant stood in the room with the tripod for the camera because he had to operate the camera. And I was allowed to walk around the table and I was allowed to give him one hug, which I didn't want to let go. And then I, I went to my side of the table and I had to sit and we had our visit, we had our ninety-minute visit, which was memorialized by that tape, which the government refused to acknowledge that it even existed until I was about to have a hear, be granted a hearing.

• 1:57:19Speaker 04

  And then they started turning over evidence that I knew they had, stuff that they had. Which, what made that visit so important was the fact that he opens the conversation, some niceties, and I'm telling him, you know, but he's talking about a surgery and then, "You look great, John." And I'm saying, "That, but why this, why that?" And you could see I'm very, I'm a bit emotional. And then he goes on to tell me about how he feels a man should comport himself and so on. Then he goes and says, "Well, Joseph says John wants closure." Now, Joseph was an attorney who came to see my father and basically gave my father my message. Now, if I tell you I want closure, Pat, what would you take that to mean?

• 1:58:03Speaker 04

  Would you take it to mean that I want closure, I want to move on with my life? I want to do something different with my life?

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  Different with your life?

• 1:58:09Speaker 04

  What you thought I was, what you thought it was, that reality is no more a reality. So I wanted to move on. And it was my way of telling my father. If I win my case, I'm going home, I want to be a civilian. If I lose my case, I'll do my twenty some odd years and I'm going home to be a civilian. That's it. You're my cause. You're my cause. Maybe that was your cause, but you are my cause, okay? You're dying. I hope and pray you live. I hope you pray and live you twenty, thirty more years. And if that's the case, you know what? I would have been in that world still today. I'd be in that life today.

• 1:58:45Speaker 03

  You told him this? Or you're thinking this?

• 1:58:47Speaker 04

  I'm thinking and the message that was brought to him was of such.

• 1:58:50Speaker 03

  How did you give it to him, though?

• 1:58:52Speaker 04

  It was sent. It was sent to him. He, he-

• 1:58:54Speaker 03

  So before he's had that ninety minute visit with you, that the federal- So before, he knew you're coming in to have that conversation with him?

• 1:59:00Speaker 04

  He knew I was having that conversation.

• 1:59:01Speaker 03

  Was he disappointed, was he, was-

• 1:59:03Speaker 04

  A bit. But he opens the conversation by saying, Joseph said John wants closure. And he said, that word is not in my son's vocabulary. He goes on to talk about it. And then he's telling me, and then we're having our conversation. And we communicate in a way we know how to communicate, my father and I. We can feed off each other, okay? And, you know, at that point,

• 1:59:25Speaker 04

  he's letting me know his feelings. And I'm sort of letting him know my feelings. I tell him about my son, John Gotti. And I'm telling him about his other grandson, John Gotti. And I'm saying, what's your hope and expectations for them? This is me now. And I'm expend, you know, I'm expendable. But are they expendable? Are your grandkids expendable? So when do we stop this? At what point do you think? You're, you're my cause. If you're going to be here forever, then I'm here with you. I'm with you. I said I'd follow you off a cliff and I'm going to die with you, okay? But if, you're dying. I see it.

• 2:00:01Speaker 03

  You're telling him this?

• 2:00:02Speaker 04

  I'm not, he understands where I'm going with this and my body language is telling him. And he's like, you know, he's opening up his jumpsuit and he's going like this. And I'm looking. And I remember when they said, it first gave him a hundred and twenty days to live. He had stage four of squamous, head and neck cancer, very aggressively moving. And they gave him a hundred and twenty days to live. He ultimately lived almost four years. But we knew what they were gonna do. We knew how the cancer materialized. We knew how it matured. We know how it got there. The government did it. They did it. He had infections in his mouth from his implants. They took away his commissary where he was able to drink bottled water. Took it away from him. And they made him drink and brush his teeth in water from Marion, Illinois,

• 2:00:46Speaker 04

  which you can pull up. There's a, Amnesty International had done a report on Crab Orchard Lake. The prison was built on this Crab Orchard Lake, on this old abandoned coal mines. The waters are highly carcinogenic. And they used to tell us when we come in, drink from the filtered fountains, and the inmates was recommended to drink bottled water. Well, because John owed, he owed a fine of $250,000 and refused to pay not one nickel to them. Not even $25 a month would he give them, okay? They took his commissary. So he could no longer use the bottled water. So now he's forced with loose implants. Because remember, you develop gum disease from lack of vitamin D. You're in solitary confinement at that point, six years.

• 2:01:29Speaker 04

  Six years in solitary confinement, no sun, no sun. So his implants became weakened. He had gum disease, infections, open wounds. Now you're making him drink that, that water from the sink in his cell, highly carcinogenic, okay? Within a year, one bump appears, then the second bump appears, then the third bump appears. Now, the physician's assistant, they didn't even have a doctor to see you. A doctor doesn't even see you. They send the physician's assistant to see you in Marion, and you gotta check you through the bars. Can't leave your cell, they're taking you through the bars. Physician's assistant's name was Zuko. He's out of Indiana. I have his reports. He issued his reports that these are suspicious. They ignored it.

• 2:02:13Speaker 04

  A month goes by. He issues another report. New tumor growing, very suspicious. They ignore it. Finally, he makes a formal complaint. He was a really good guy, a solid guy, this physician's assistant in Marion, Zuko. And they fired him.

• 2:02:30Speaker 04

  He said, "Something's wrong with this guy. He doesn't have a throat infection. He's got tumors growing all over his neck, all growing out of his neck." They told him, "You know what? You're taking too much of a personal interest with John Gotti", and they fired him. And ultimately, in the end, we got an attorney to force them to bring him out, and then that's when they diagnosed him, stage four head and neck squamous, aggressive squamous cell cancer. And they said it was too late. He had 120 days to live. They did a radical surgery, 36 radiations, which is the maximum allotted, took part of his jaw, took part of his tongue, everything out. And basically, and this is the beauty part, after doing all of that, I had that visit with my father, and a short time later, they took him right back to Marion, Illinois, and dumped him right back in solitary confinement to die.

• 2:03:15Speaker 03

  Why?

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  Because he's John Gotti, and they could.

• 2:03:18Speaker 03

  For no reason?

• 2:03:19Speaker 04

  No reason. Listen, John's, my father never committed one infraction. You go to Marion, Illinois for one reason and one reason only. You committed an infraction in the Bureau of Prisons, meaning. There's a step program here. The lowest, there's camps in the federal system, then there's ones, twos, threes. I was in most of my bid in disciplinary fours. Five is a penitentiary, okay? And then after penitentiary, that's the maximum security in America. There's only one level six in the country that was Marion at that time, okay? John was a court committal, straight from the courts, right to Marion, Illinois, right to a level six, without committing one single infraction, only because of his popularity with other inmates. They felt he'd be a threat to security, okay?

• 2:04:04Speaker 04

  And I guess, you know, they tried to break him. They brought him to Marion, locked him in solitary confinement for years, left him like that, just like that, okay? So, that in itself should tell you, that in itself, that this was a direct court committal. You only go to Marion, Illinois. If you stab somebody when you're in a penitentiary, take hostages, you escape, there's levels, you have to graduate to those levels. So four, if I was to hurt somebody in the four, I'm going to the penitentiary to five. If the five is the maximum, that's the end of the road. How do we discipline you now? If you're in a five, they have their own solitary confinement, because I did time, I was in Lewisburg and the whole there, and in Atlanta, but that's there, that's the buck stops there.

• 2:04:47Speaker 04

  Next thing is this, oh, that's not going to faze you? Well, now we're taking you to Marion now. That's keeps you in check, okay? That's where all the hardest of the hardcore end up in Marion, Illinois. All the shot callers, all the major organizations, the jailhouse, prison gangs, whatever, that's where they end up. Marion, Illinois is the end of the road. That's where it is, the most violent of the violent, okay? Or the escape risks.

• 2:05:10Speaker 03

  Did anybody try to go after your father just for his street cred or no?

• 2:05:14Speaker 04

  Someone sucker punched him in chains. And that's, I don't know how much time we have, believe me, we can talk.

• 2:05:19Speaker 03

  I'm good.

• 2:05:19Speaker 04

  We could talk about this forever.

• 2:05:20Speaker 03

  Some sucker punched him?

• 2:05:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22Speaker 03

  And what happened to the guy that did?

• 2:05:24Speaker 04

  He got what he wanted, here's what he wanted, okay? He was a sick individual, this guy's name is Walter, not Walter Johnson was his name, Walter Johnson, and he was from the Philadelphia area. He was a, like, one, a black gang banger. And he was on the same floor, the tier with the DC blacks. The DC blacks are known throughout the federal system, a lot of them are Muslims.

• 2:05:50Speaker 03

  DC blacks?

• 2:05:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, known as the DC blacks. A lot of them are known throughout the federal system, very popular, very large prison organization. A lot of them are Muslims. What they did was, he was in with the DC blacks, and they began to pull his card. He was, he was basically making statements that he was with the DC group, he was affiliated throughout the federal system, and they were now in the process of checking him out. And they were about to pull his card, so he wanted to get off that floor before they kill him. So who's the highest popular, the most notorious guy in the prison at that time is John Gotti. So for you to be moved to get a little bit of rec, okay? The only move, you get chained up and you move to a rec area, and then you get unchained. In that rec area and you're allowed to be with certain amount of inmates at one time.

• 2:06:36Speaker 04

  This is at, you know, later on. When my father first got there, he was in K dorm, which is deadlocked by yourself for several years and you have to evolve to be able to even go into the yard. But you're not leaving Marion unless you sign that paper. So he wasn't never leaving Marion, but now he's evolved to D unit, D block, then C block. Little bit more room you have there, little bit more social, other, other shot calls could be with you. While they were uncuffing him, Walter's already in the yard. He uncuffing and he nails my father, steals the punch and they come right down, they drop them immediately. And he got boated out of the prison immediately what he wanted. So he got his life saved.

• 2:07:12Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:07:12Speaker 04

  He got boated out because he knew the DC blacks were gonna, they were gonna pull his card and they were gonna kill him. And they boated him right out.

• 2:07:17Speaker 03

  Did they ever kill him somewhere else or no?

• 2:07:19Speaker 04

  No, he ended, he ended up in the hole. Never came out, never hit population, got released from prison. This is a great story. Can't make this up. Got released from prison a couple of years later. As soon as he gets out, he goes and gets himself a shotgun. Wouldn't be right. Gets a shotgun, he's going to kill a girl that he believed testified against him. He jumps over a turnstile on the subway. A transit authority cop stops him, he pulls out the gun, kills the cop.

• 2:07:46Speaker 04

  And he ended up someplace else to dig in, in his system, I don't know where and he, I'm not sure if he's even alive today.

• 2:07:52Speaker 03

  What a story.

• 2:07:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:54Speaker 03

  Walter Johnson.

• 2:07:55Speaker 04

  Walter Johnson and we had, there were, there were players in the Aryan Brotherhood, there were players in Lamay that wanted to hit him. They couldn't get, they couldn't get to him.

• 2:08:04Speaker 03

  It's kind of like one of those things where it's like, hey. But I thought it would be more from the standpoint of, I'm the new tough guy, let me tell you what I did. It wasn't for that, it was for a different reason.

• 2:08:13Speaker 04

  He checked himself, that, that's, that's the honorable way of checking yourself into the hole. You know when someone calls, they call you a rat or they pull your card and they tell you, listen. You can go up there right now and knock on that door and check yourself into the hole because they want you removed from the compound or we're gonna kill you.

• 2:08:27Speaker 03

  Or they let you do that?

• 2:08:29Speaker 04

  Well, we were in Raybrook, if a guy was no good, had bad paperwork, we would tell the guy, look, come here. Here's what you're gonna do. Go get your stuff, go up and knock on the CEO's door and tell him to take you off the compound now. Otherwise, you're gonna, you're gonna get taken.

• 2:08:43Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 2:08:43Speaker 04

  So he removed himself from the compound. So what he did was, this is Marion. Marion is just where the buck stops, this is where the most dangerous, the dangerous.

• 2:08:50Speaker 03

  Is this the guy?

• 2:08:51Speaker 04

  That's him.

• 2:08:53Speaker 04

  That's him, right there. He's about 6'4", 6'5", 26 years old. Hitting a guy with cancer, 57 years old. He sucker punched him with cuffs on. And I got the actual report. Okay, we're doing a show on this. And we're gonna publish all the reports and the eyewitness statements that were taken and whatnot.

• 2:09:09Speaker 03

  Wow. You don't know if he's alive or not. You don't know where he's at.

• 2:09:11Speaker 04

  No, I don't know where he is today. I don't know where he is today. But it's an interesting story. So by doing that, he saved his own life. The DC blacks couldn't get to him. And he got moved off the compound. He got moved someplace else, and that's it.

• 2:09:23Speaker 03

  Wow. So, a question. That last meeting, February 5th, 99. Okay, he passes, your father passes away. Three years later, which is what, June 10th of 02? 02, I think, right?

• 2:09:35Speaker 04

  02.

• 2:09:35Speaker 03

  02, right.

• 2:09:36Speaker 04

  61 years old, June 10th of 02.

• 2:09:38Speaker 03

  Right, June 10th of 02.

• 2:09:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:09:40Speaker 03

  Have you ever seen that recording? Because I know it was being recorded.

• 2:09:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have it. I have it, and we use it as evidence in our trial in my last case.

• 2:09:47Speaker 03

  So you ever sit there and watch a conversation between you and your dad?

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  It's emotional to watch it now. On my own time, on my own time. Look, when I'm missing him,

• 2:10:01Speaker 04

  I'll have a couple of Scotches by myself. I'll pop that DVD in. And I love seeing John Gotti be John Gotti. I love seeing him be John Gotti. That's it. I love him. And from here up, from here up, he's the old John Gotti. You can see it in his eyes. He came to life on that visit. Like, he's lecturing me a bit. And then all of a sudden, he looks at me, and he says, "You know something, John?" He says, "What I wouldn't do, one more time, one more time." And all of a sudden, his eyes get wide like a lion about to pounce on prey. "One more time, to go in that courtroom and teach these fucking punks what a man is all about. To show them what a man is all about. What I wouldn't do, John, one more time, one more time," he says. "And show these fucking guys what this means," he says.

• 2:10:46Speaker 04

  "You show them, John, you gotta show them." I didn't agree with him. I didn't want to become the Teflon Don. I didn't want to. I wanted to take the plea. I forfeited many millions of dollars. They destroyed every business I had. And I figured, and I trusted, and I thought... And again, this conversation is gonna almost make us roll into another conversation. So, just so you know. Just so you know. Because there's so much, you need 10 hours.

• 2:11:14Speaker 04

  To complete this story, I'm just explaining something to you. So that, his words were, "You beat them, you send them packing, they'll never come back. They'll never come back." And I said, "Dad, I don't agree with you." He says, "Nonsense, they'll never come back, John. Tighten their asses up, they'll never come back. These mutts will never come back," he said. And maybe he was right, but I believe this. He was right in the respect that I said, "If I take the plea, I'm not you, Dad. They don't want me. I'm not you. I'll forfeit whatever they need. I'll be home in seven years. I can raise my children and we can move on." He says, "John," these are his words and they're prophetic. In this

• 2:11:57Speaker 04

  respect, he was right. He says, "John, once they get you in, they're not letting you go." I says, "No, Dad, they don't want me. I'm not a threat to them. You're John Gotti." I'm not. I'm just John Gotti. That's it. I'm the guy who opened the door, who held the door open for John Gotti. And no, he said, "Once they get you in, John, they're never letting you go." And he was right. They got me in. I took that plea. And I said, "I fought a couple of subpoenas while I was in prison. I fought a couple of subpoenas." Because remember, what led us to that point, I had two indictments. I beat one from the bench, and I'm pleading on this one. I'm using this one to take all the guns away from my head. And I had both US attorneys. When did you ever see that? The representative

• 2:12:38Speaker 04

  shot caller for the Eastern District, representative shot caller for the Southern District, in the same courtroom, and both stood up. Now, here's my legal team. Jerry Shargel, one of the greatest trial attorneys in New York history, Bruce Cutler, he's my third seat. My second seat is Charlie Ogletree, Nelson Mandela's attorney here in the States, who helped rewrite the Constitution of South Africa. Now, I have a dream team. I've got power. I've got personality. Okay, I'm ready to go to war. Okay? That being said, he recently passed away, bless his heart. But I'm ready, and my father knew it. I just beat them. We just beat one case. They got caught in wrongdoing. They got caught.

• 2:13:23Speaker 04

  A special prosecutor got fired for creating leaks on my cases. A special agent got fired and rezoned, maybe to Juneau, Alaska, for destroying evidence because his witness was a pedophile, destroying evidence, shredding notes and destroying evidence. And a special state prosecutor got fired for leaking and destroying evidence. Now, when did you ever see that in one case? Three different elements, all got fired for misconduct in my first case. So I beat the first case, this is spilling into the second case. So my father believed that I had them. He said, John, you got them. This is it. You caught them in misconduct. You did everything you were supposed to do. I'm proud of you. Now finish it.

• 2:14:07Speaker 04

  Take them to trial and break their holes and send them packing. And I didn't see it that way. I said, I'm gonna be, and I, I, I knew I could beat the case. I knew I could beat that case. And I said to myself, I says, but to what end? If I win, I can't move on with my life. I have to remain who I am. And I become, in their words, their eyes, the Teflon Don. I become it. I just beat them two, two, and I beat them in eighty-seven. So I'm on a roll. I beat them in eighty-seven. I beat them in eighty-nine. I just beat them a case now in ninety-eight. Now, if I beat this fourth case in a row, I said, I'm the Teflon Don. I can't get out anymore. I'm trapped. And I didn't agree with my father. And I left that prison misrepresenting to him. I said, I'm gonna fight. You're right, Dad. You're right. You're right. That's right.

• 2:14:52Speaker 04

  That's right. And then when I went home and I saw my daughter, and I got a little emotional talking to my daughter. And she says, you know, she was at that time, she was about eight or nine years old. And I looked at her and I says, these kids are lost. I had spoke to my oldest boy and I says, if I fall and get life. They're done, they're done. If I give them seven more years, my wife can hold it down for seven more years. She'll hold it down for me. And I'll, my brother, my media family, hold it down for me. I'll get home and I'll, I'll get things on track here. Not just for my family, because remember, my father put his whole family on my shoulders.

• 2:15:35Speaker 04

  My mother, in essence, who's my mother, I adore her, but she's, in essence, she became my wife. I've got to hear her complaints. I've got to, you know, make sure everything's okay for my mother. My sisters became my daughters. Okay, my, my brother became my son. My father's grandkids became mine. I mean, just, everything fell on, I had to deal with all these different problems. So I think, I thought we had it under control. I thought it was gonna be a great thing, and I said, you know what? He's got this wrong. I'm gonna take this plea. I had to forfeit two and a half million dollars. You know what two and a half million dollars, you're gonna put that number up, two and a half million dollars in 1999? What is that in today's US dollars today?

• 2:16:14Speaker 03

  Seven million.

• 2:16:15Speaker 04

  Okay, I forfeited two and a half million dollars, plus property, 50 acres upstate, 90 acres in Pennsylvania, a building, they destroyed my business.

• 2:16:25Speaker 03

  Five million today.

• 2:16:26Speaker 04

  Okay, five million, it's like you're writing, you're writing a check for five million today. I forfeited all of that, they destroyed my phone business, I had Penn Station on lockdown. They took my whole business, destroyed all my companies, my brokerage company took everything apart, they dismantled it. I gave it all up, and I said, you know what? Fortune's a winner lost every day, I'll come home, I'll rebuild. I still got enough, I could be okay. I'll give him another seven, seven years, and I'll be home and I'll rebuild, no problem at all. But I'll rebuild completely and totally as a civilian. That's what I thought. And I was only several weeks from being released from prison, and John Gotti's prophetic words came to fruition. Because, remember, we had both US attorneys saying that it's no longer in the interest of us,

• 2:17:09Speaker 04

  that with this plea, the resolution of the case, we're done with him, basically, in essence. They promised me. And then James Comey. Donald Trump's tormentor indicted me. He indicted me.

• 2:17:20Speaker 03

  James Comey.

• 2:17:21Speaker 04

  James Comey indicted me. James Comey's office indicted me. Right before I was about to be released. They charged me with the Curtis Lee with kidnapping and attempted murder. And now I was facing one hundred and ten years. So only weeks, think about the psychological impact of this, okay? I'm weeks from being released. I gave away my stuff. My fan, all my, you know, I'm a guy with a few dollars. So I had, I had some nice things in prison that I've accumulated. So I gave it all away. I gave nice things away, my sweatsuits, things that I've accumulated over time. That's my life day. Prison becomes your life. I've given it all away. I'm about to go home. And I have a name, list of all the names of my dear brothers in there don't have anything. So when I get home, I'm gonna start sending their money on their commissary. I'm ready to go home. But, but I, I was guarded.

• 2:18:06Speaker 04

  I would talk to my wife, my wife would tell me, when you come home, I said, don't speak like that, don't speak like that in front of the kids. When I'm home, I'm home. If I make, when I walk in that door, that's when I know I'm home. But until then, these low life, these bastards can come at any time, any moment. And sure enough, they did. So every week before my release, they came in, they indicted me in that case. And that started from the end of that case. To the last case in thirty seven months, I got indicted five times.

• 2:18:33Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:18:33Speaker 04

  And the last one, I was facing the death penalty. I was housed on the death unit in Pinellas County. For six months until I won the motion, I was moved over. I spent seventeen months in solitary confinement.

• 2:18:44Speaker 03

  What for? What was it for?

• 2:18:45Speaker 04

  For nothing, to torture me. They, they put me in there to break me, try to break me. Okay, listen, the things they did, the tactic they employed against me is so unethical. But then again, knowing the adversary and knowing how the adversary presents itself. It certainly is ethical for them because they're hypocrites. They'll look, tell you, look at the mob guy and look at how bad the mob guy is and so on and so forth. But I gotta tell you. I've never seen treachery in any street guy or any mob element that I saw the United States government. I've never seen that kind of treachery. I've never seen it. You see a guy showing up for trial every single day. You see a guy hocking and selling his diamond watches off his wrist. Selling homes and businesses, getting hard money loans on his home.

• 2:19:29Speaker 04

  My home had no mortgage when I went to prison. My building that I owned had no mortgage on that. Those are assets left to my wife and my kids. By the second trial, I had a one point three million dollar mortgage on my home. And the building was already sold off to pay for the third and fourth trials, okay? My assets were gone. I came home busted and broke after the fifth case. Fifteen years ago, last week I came home, broke, broke. I got myself right.

• 2:19:53Speaker 03

  How did you make money, John? What'd you do?

• 2:19:56Speaker 04

  Wrote a book. I wrote a six hundred page book on my own. Nobody wrote it for me. No ghostwriter. Had written the book myself. I had a lawyer friend of mine who did the editing and typing for me. I don't know how to type. Uh, I did everything by longhand. I gave him all the pads and he typed and edited for me and I wrote the book by myself. That was a start. Sold those rights to create the Gotti movie. Which I made some money on that. And used those monies and invested and moved it along the right way. Helped out on some projects. I'm doing several projects of my own right now. But I got myself right. But to watch the government. Sit there and take a position. You see what I'm going through. You went to banks, had them throw me out. Have my wife ostracized from lending institutions. Nobody would give me a loan.

• 2:20:41Speaker 04

  Even after the hard money guys, they were calling the subpoenaing the hard money guys. They started subpoenaing all my banks, all the lending institutions. So everybody threw us out. We were homeless. Basically, we had no banks to go to. The agent, special agent on my case. Would follow my wife into the supermarket and tell her, tell your husband to flip. Because if he doesn't flip. What's gonna happen is your kids are gonna be homeless. And she would tell him, you know, fuck off and whatever have you, and that would be that, okay? But this is the tactic they employed against me. Subpoened my sister. Subpoened, subpoenaed my brother. Subpoened all my witnesses, harassed them. Sent the rat with a wire on. To my mother who's lying in a hospital bed after brain surgery. Wired up on my mother. Tried to get incriminating information against me. This is the tactic that they employed.

• 2:21:25Speaker 04

  And then, you know, you can space it all out. And for us to sit here and walk it through process by process, date by date, would be, you won't make it home tonight for dinner. I can promise you you won't, but I could tell you this much. That was the beginning where I told you, which culminated in the end, the fifth trial, which the result was the same, okay, on that trial. But to watch what these guys did along that way. They played, they played very fair, the first trial. Held me without bail. Held me in 10th South, the terrorist unit that was built for Ramsey Youssef and Sheikh Khalid, the guy who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. Okay, it was built for them, only six cells in 10th South.

• 2:22:10Speaker 04

  That's where they housed me for that first trial. Then when the judge got the opportunity to see the evidence, see all the particulars, we won her over. She released me on bail. She then released me on bail. And then she began to turn on the government and she started seeing the case for the reality of what it was. And we started winning motions, tapes, wiretaps that they didn't want in, that they made of me in prison and legal visits. They violated out my rights and wiretapped my legal visits. These recordings were now all coming into play. All this stuff is now being allowed in. And I knew after that, they would never be able to beat me again. Because these tapes exonerated me. They made them, spent millions to make them, and then yet went to suppress them by changing

• 2:22:53Speaker 04

  the indictment, dropping the indictment, superseding it and indicting me two years earlier, so not to use tapes that they made in 2004. Okay, this is the tactic they employed against me.

• 2:23:03Speaker 03

  They're brilliant. The way, brilliant, manipulative, deceptive.

• 2:23:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:07Speaker 03

  They're the ultimate gangsters, if you think about it, like what they do. I got two last things I want to talk to you about before we wrap up. One is, story comes out this last week, it could have been two weeks ago, about a story of OJ Simpson, a guy named John Denton, I don't know if he saw this or not, police witness. He says, "A key witness claims OJ hired Gambino family to kill his wife." Do you know anything about the story or not?

• 2:23:33Speaker 04

  That's absurd.

• 2:23:35Speaker 03

  Okay, so this one you don't know about?

• 2:23:36Speaker 04

  Any, but, any, any real legitimate guy would have been amused by that.

• 2:23:40Speaker 03

  Okay. And the other story, John Alit, John Alit, what's your relationship with him?

• 2:23:47Speaker 04

  I haven't seen John A. Light since nineteen ninety-one. I haven't seen that guy since nineteen ninety-one. I haven't seen him, okay? He professed to be my right-hand man. I don't want to tell you the reality of who he is and what he is. I don't want to do that because he lost a daughter recently. And to me, I know even he, I knew his wife. I knew his wife's got to be someplace mourning right now. I know she has to be. I know that. She was a pretty good person. And I know even he has to be mourning someplace right now. So I'm not going to tell you the reality. Maybe at some other point, maybe at some other date. But to me, to sit here now, one thing I will never do. I never kick somebody when they're hurting. I won't do that. I won't do that. And I know, I saw what happened to my mother.

• 2:24:32Speaker 04

  I saw what happened to my father. When they lost Frankie Boy, my brother, I saw. And I know they have to be feeling the same way. So I will not kick them. I won't do that. I will never kick her. I won't kick him. I won't address it. And I won't, I won't elaborate. I won't go any further on that. But, you know, just now, to get off that subject, onto a different subject. Again, the tactic employed by United States government and the things they've done to me. Okay? Look, I'm bitter. I hate them. I don't hate any of the cooperators that went against me. I don't hate any of them. I won. I won. They got to look in the mirror. They know what they did. And it was a futile attempt.

• 2:25:10Speaker 03

  You hate them, you hate the US government?

• 2:25:12Speaker 04

  I'm going to get there. It was a futile attempt on their part. I won. I'm home. Christmas, I'll be home tomorrow, putting up my tree with my wife, okay? I'll be home, okay? They got to look in the mirror and know what they did. I survived them. I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at the United States government for the absolution and the deals that they've made with these lowlifes, knowing exactly what they were, exactly what they were going to do. They knew it. They knew the ramifications of their actions, what were going to happen. And still brought these people against me, freed these individuals to go on and commit a whole host of more crimes thereafter. And the whole time doing what they did to my family. Tormenting my mother, tormenting my wife, my siblings, subpoenaing my best friends.

• 2:25:58Speaker 04

  Economically destroyed me, destroyed me completely and totally. They had the balls, the balls because of a meeting that we had had with the United States Government in 2005, a forty minute meeting. They knew the tact I employed there, they knew exactly. I'm gonna ask you a question, you interviewed Gravano, right? Okay, when you interviewed Gravano, did Gravano tell you how he became a rat?

• 2:26:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:26:26Speaker 04

  Well, one thing I know he definitely didn't tell you. He didn't say that when he decided to become a rat, that next day, he met with John Gotti, he met with Frank Licazio and some other powerful figures in organized crime. And he told them that, uh, look guys, I'm gonna go in tomorrow and do a proffer and I wanna become a government cooperator. Wish me luck. And they all hit him on the back and told him, "Good luck, good luck, I hope it works out for you." I don't think that happened, right? You don't think that happened, right?

• 2:26:58Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:26:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:26:59Speaker 03

  But I also don't think he thinks he was a rat, in his eyes.

• 2:27:02Speaker 04

  Oh, God, well.

• 2:27:03Speaker 03

  In his eyes, he doesn't because...

• 2:27:05Speaker 04

  I guess the seventy families he destroyed, fifty-seven people he put in jail, seventy people he destroyed, I guess the children that, the women that were widowed, basically in essence, for life at empty beds and their children on Christmas and holidays with no father and so on, he didn't do any of that stuff. But here's my point that I'm getting at, it's interesting for you, Pat, because the government called me a rat. The government called me a rat. The most tried man in the history of America. No man, no accused organized crime member was ever tried more than me. Look it up, find those statistics. Got a great techno, uh, technology guy right here, technologist right here. Look it up, see. I've been indicted in my life nine times. I went to trial eight times. Never lost a trial.

• 2:27:50Speaker 04

  I went to prison one time because I pled guilty. But in thirty-seven months, from stop to start, I was indicted five times, five federal proceedings. From the beginning to the end culminating with me facing the debt penalty which the government when I won the motion and we moved from Pinellas County Florida to New York they opted not to charge me and I dared them to pursue the debt charge because they had to give me a free defense they would have had to give me a two million dollar budget to defend myself I dared them to charge me the debt penalty they dropped it and I was broke at that point so my lawyers had to work on oil and gas I had to keep things moving and I had to pay those bills eventually but still we remedied the case but yet they had the audacity because

• 2:28:32Speaker 04

  of a forty minute meeting that I had with them that according to their cooperators now think about this for a second I told you Sammy Gravano never went to all these different personalities and told these personalities that I'm thinking about going and becoming a cooperator and tomorrow morning I'm gonna be debriefed tomorrow wish me luck guys right well according I did I did I did that meeting I did a meeting for forty minutes took two attorneys with me two attorneys

• 2:28:57Speaker 03

  You met with the fed?

• 2:28:58Speaker 04

  Fed

• 2:28:59Speaker 03

  And that's where?

• 2:29:00Speaker 04

  An agent

• 2:29:01Speaker 03

  Right

• 2:29:01Speaker 04

  An agent and a prosecutor and an assistant prosecutor at the courthouse I went to that meeting I called for that meeting I did it I orchestrated it not my lawyers not them I did it I said I want to meet with them my lawyer said to me what do you want to do you just make the meeting you just make the meeting they says no no John please you just make I pay you you don't pay me make the meeting I know what I'm doing here I got this don't worry about it said John if you're gonna become a rat you know please let me know I can get out of here just make the meeting I got this okay now according to three different cooperators two mainly testified against me and a third cooperator that never testified against me but he was the most powerful of all the cooperators

• 2:29:42Speaker 04

  okay they all said that this is what happened before I went in they said I had a meeting clandestine meeting in prison with Vinnie Gorgeous Basciano they accused him of being the acting boss of the Bonanno family really good man solid guy never knew him on the streets never met him on the streets but I met him in prison and they said while we were in the bullpen together he and I that I he followed my lead I hatched a plan that I was gonna go in and do what's called an innocence proffer an innocence proffer And go in to establish an alibi, and I was gonna testify on my own behalf of my trials. And I was, and he suggested that he would do it as well. He said to me, "I'm gonna follow your lead."

• 2:30:25Speaker 04

  This is not according to me, this is according to the government cooperators. He referred to me, says, "John, I'm gonna follow your lead. What you do, I'm gonna do, okay? Now, they also went out to say that before I went in, this was cleared with Vinnie Basciano, they said it, not me. Steve Vitabelli, Steve Vitabelli is accused of being for thirty years, the number three guy in the DeCavalcanti family in New Jersey. Joe Arcuri, elder statesman, wonderful man, who they claim was on the panel ruling the Gambino crime family.

• 2:30:57Speaker 04

  Alphonse Siska, who they accused him of being a high-ranking captain in the Gambino family.

• 2:31:04Speaker 04

  Arnold Squiteri, who the government accused of being the acting boss of the Gambino family. And Joe Messina. Now, Joe Messina verified it. Joe Messina, again, they, he was, he was confessed boss of the Gambino, of the Bonanno family. Ultimately flipped. I loved Joe like an uncle. He made my cake when I went away to military school when I was fourteen years old. For me, he owned a bakery. His family, I knew his family very well, his wife, wonderful person, I knew his daughters, they were a beautiful family. But yet, this is the, this is the government cooperators saying, "I sent these messages." And they all had different input. Vitabelli supported it, Arcuri supported it. Basciano was on board and doing it with me, according to government cooperators.

• 2:31:49Speaker 04

  Arnold Squiteri did not support it. Alphonse Siska did not support it. Joe Messina at first had reservations, sent a message back to me, which he did. He sent a lawyer to see me. And the lawyer would verify it. The lawyer was, "Tell him, I love him, he's gonna be perceived as a rat." My response back was, "Go back and tell Joe." I love him right back. I'm a civilian. I had my father put me on the shelf, okay? I'm a civilian. I don't, I can, I march to the beat of my own drum. I'm showing respect for my father's life. I'm showing respect for people that I adore, that I love. I'm giving them that respect, but I don't have to. I could fight as a civilian. Long as nobody gets hurt.

• 2:32:31Speaker 04

  Long as not one person gets a subpoena as a result of anything I do. Long as not one person, if a person got indicted for something I said in my life, I would kill myself. I would rather do a hundred years in prison if, if I destroyed a family like these rats destroyed my family, or tried to destroy my family, okay? I would do a hundred years in prison for that would happen. So I told him, my answer to Joe Messina was this. "Joe," he was like an uncle to me. "Joe, I'm a civilian. I'm not sure if Pete, my Uncle Pete, clued you in or anybody else, but the chief put me on the shelf for life as per my request in 1999. As per my request, my chief put me on the shelf for life. I could defend myself any way I see fit.

• 2:33:13Speaker 04

  Long as nobody gets hurt by anything I say or do inside or outside of the courtroom, okay? But there's more to this, I said. But, understand this. I will never, ever embarrass my father. I know I'll beat these people. I know how to beat these people. I just, I'm gonna fight this my way and only my way." So, as a result of that meeting, here's what happens. They crafted a 302. And I'm sure Gravano told you, he has 302s, right? Any other cooperative, you craft 302s. In Gravano's case, there's hundreds and hundreds of them, okay? In any of these cooperatives, there's hundreds and hundreds of them, okay? In mine, I think there's four pages. I memorialize it for you. You guys have an Elmo?

• 2:33:55Speaker 03

  Oh, no, we don't.

• 2:33:56Speaker 04

  I'm dating myself.

• 2:33:57Speaker 03

  We'll take a picture and show, I know what an Elmo is.

• 2:33:58Speaker 04

  An Elmo is something-

• 2:33:59Speaker 03

  We like Elmos.

• 2:34:00Speaker 04

  An Elmo is something that you have in court, you give an exhibit, okay? This is the lead page of that 302. So this should dictate, you, you read a book. The start better be very good, or you're not gonna read the rest of it. And the ending better finish really well. Or you're not, you're gonna reflect back and say, "I didn't really enjoy that book at all." Okay, right? Okay. So let's just go with the start of the book. And any other questions you could ask me in between, I can answer them right now and prepared to answer them on the spot. Because I did tell David Galard to make sure. Tell Pa- uh, tell Patrick, please, I know he's a very thorough interviewer. Research me carefully, ask me any question. I've got nothing to hide.

• 2:34:42Speaker 04

  As long as it's a question he's gonna ask me, doesn't affect anybody else but me. Doesn't hurt anybody else but me. Ask me anything you wanna ask me, I will answer it and I will answer it to the best of my ability. Okay? And this is something that to me is nearest and dearest into my heart. Because what the government did to me. You mentioned Sonny Francis earlier, right?

• 2:35:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:35:01Speaker 04

  They had a wiretap of Sonny Francis conspiring to kill me. Why? Because he just said on this wiretap, his driver's wired up and the driver says, he's talking to the driver and said, "I just left a meeting with this violent crew from Queens." Okay? And they wanna make a move on the kid. Because you're not supposed to leave the life. They don't like the way he's fighting the case and you ain't supposed to leave the life. Not that I'm a rat, that he's, they don't like the way I'm fighting the case, they ain't supposed to leave the life, so they wanna make a move on him and I'm giving them my support.

• 2:35:32Speaker 03

  Michael's father is...

• 2:35:34Speaker 04

  Michael's father, Sonny, who's a man's man, I have the utmost respect for him. But, and this is on a wiretap. The government had this wiretap.

• 2:35:42Speaker 03

  What year is this, John?

• 2:35:43Speaker 04

  This is in, this took place in two thousand six. Two thousand six. I have the actual dates.

• 2:35:51Speaker 03

  A man in his eighties is getting, is, is...

• 2:35:54Speaker 04

  Well, watch, it gets better. I'm gonna tell you the whole story and then please, come, double back to that and come back at me. I'm gonna show you something, okay? So they have this wiretap. They call my lawyer and say, "We have a credible death threat against your client, John Gotti." Charlie says, "Well, he happens to be in your office right now, hold on." He puts it on speakerphone. June Kim is the prosecutor. He says, "You wanna repeat that, John's in the room." He says, "Well, we have a credible death threat. Uh, do you wanna come in and cooperate?" I says, "Uh, I'm gonna have Charlie tell you to go fuck your mother, how does that sound?" And Charlie said, "You heard him, right?" And he hung up the phone and that was the end of it. That was the end of the conversation, right? Now, I think it's them already just pulling on and pulling on it.

• 2:36:36Speaker 04

  Short time later, they know there's a credible death threat. Because Sonny Bean, the gangster that he is, he was a true blue hoodlum. Good guy, hoodlum. Giving support because you can't leave the life. But the truth of the matter is, okay, and Michael Francis was gonna answer a subpoena. See, Michael, to his credit, Michael Francis, we subpoenaed him. He was gonna come to our trial and testify that you can leave the life. Okay, if John wants to leave the life, he could leave the life. But he leaves the life, fully known what the ramifications of his actions are. It's his choice. He could leave, and they could act if they wanna act as upon him leaving.

• 2:37:12Speaker 03

  Makes sense.

• 2:37:13Speaker 04

  And Michael was clear to do this. The FBI went to Michael Francis. They told him, "We're gonna do a case against you, we're gonna investigate you. Don't go help that kid out. He's our public enemy number one." Michael still sent word, to his credit, sent word to Charlie Canisi. "If you just need me, I'm coming." And that's why I respected him. He took that position. He's a stand-up guy in that respect. He took that position, and I admire that, okay? They didn't intimidate him, okay? That being said, they knew all these particulars. They knew Sonny Francis was caught on wiretap. "They're looking to kill me." And his response back is basically that, "This can get messy because there's a lot of guys loyal to me. A lot of guys loyal to the god he's...

• 2:37:56Speaker 04

  This can trigger a war." Did the FBI give a shit? No, they didn't care. So this is what they did. This is what they did. They made it worse, they one-upped it. They asked me to become a rat, and I refused, so they one-upped it. They put, a short time later, after giving me this death threat, they put on the front page of the New York Post that I'm a rat, that I wanted to be a rat. So they tried to get me killed. So you couldn't convict me. And this all happened after I beat them the first case. They played fair in the first trial. The second trial, now the gloves came off, and they got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. And this is what they did. They couldn't convict me. They couldn't flip me, so they tried to get me killed. But most of the people that mattered never believed it, and still today don't believe it.

• 2:38:40Speaker 04

  The ones who are insignificant do believe it. So, that being said, they tried so hard. This was the report that they said was a rat report, okay? Okay, not a, not a human being got hurt, not one ever got a subpoena, not one ever got a case, ever, ever. In fact, so much so, to double back and not to be all over the place, because we have a limited amount of time to talk.

• 2:39:02Speaker 03

  No one went to jail because of your forty minute meeting.

• 2:39:04Speaker 04

  Never.

• 2:39:04Speaker 03

  With the feds.

• 2:39:05Speaker 04

  Never, never. I would have taken a hundred years, I would have taken life. I would have taken life. I was a civilian, and I would have taken life before that ever happens, before I ever embarrassed my fa, my dead father or my sons. Never would have happened. Here's what happened. Th, this is the reality, this is the reality, okay? This was the report, right here. And you, you gotta read this report. Uh, uh, I, I wanna, I'm gonna read it to you, okay? This was part of a four-page report that the government, uh, leaked out. Again, this report, this interview happened in oh-five. Thirteen months later, I talked to you right now for forty minutes. I asked for a recorder to be in that room. They refused. I came with my own notes. Who does that?

• 2:39:48Speaker 04

  I came with notes to the meeting. My lawyers verified it. They came, I came with my own notes. So I talked about what I wanted to talk about, and so they wouldn't put their own spin on what I wanted to talk about. I asked for a recorder. They denied the recorder, because it's not part of policy. In fact, the only US attorney to ever institute a policy where you're allowed to have a recorder when a three oh-two is being created, was a guy named, I think, Paul K. Stern out of Arizona, mid-district of Arizona. And the Justice Department fired him for doing that. Because they don't want recorders in there. They wanna be able to basically script, uh, a story that they could have a witness follow along to, okay? So they, they didn't wanna have it made solid memorialization through recording.

• 2:40:32Speaker 04

  So Paul K. Stern did that. That's what happened. So they, they wouldn't record it. This is the report. Here's where we go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with it. The date it was made, it was made in, the interview took place. If I tell you, if you wanna have a conversation today for forty minutes, right? And I ask you 13 months later, verbatim, tell me what I said. Could you?

• 2:40:54Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:40:55Speaker 04

  I don't think you could, right?

• 2:40:56Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:40:56Speaker 04

  Okay. So, we had the meeting. 13 months later, this is the product. 13 months later, they made this report as that one 40-minute meeting, okay? A notes that I came in with. I came in with those notes. A recording that I asked for, they did not provide the recorder, okay? And here's what comes out of it. It's first page. So, let's go with the first page. It says that, uh, John Gotti Jr. and my attorneys, just attorneys' names, Jeff Littman, Mark Furnish, came into a meeting. And it says, "The murder of Danny Silver." So, that's where it starts. The whole report starts, "The murder of Danny Silver." "In the early morning hours of either March 11th or 12th, 1983, Gotti Jr. alone with his friends..."

• 2:41:41Speaker 04

  "...were present." I, I, I wanna, I'd rather leave their names out of it, situation, because these are civilian people. And remember, every name that's in here, there was at least 12 witnesses with DD5s, including several people here that were government cooperatives at the time, they were confidential informants, that gave exactly who the players were there in that bar that night. So, they knew exactly who the players were in that bar that night. So, there was no secret. It was this different DD5s. I have them all. That DD5 is a state police report. I have them. It's 12 different ones. Eyewitness accounts, and they wrote down everybody that was in that bar, okay? So, this says who's in the bar, okay? "...were present at the Silver Fox Bar located on 101st Street and Liberty Avenue in Queens, New York.

• 2:42:24Speaker 04

  At some point, Tommy, last name unknown, okay, A.K. Elfie, approached Gotti Jr., who was seated. Elfie repeatedly bumped into him, words were exchanged. One thing led to another, and Gotti Jr. ultimately hit Elfie with a glass, a broken glass bottle. Gotti Jr. then stabbed Elfie with a knife that Gotti Jr. had." Okay? Now, remember, in this whole report, multiple people were stabbed. I was stabbed twice that night, okay? And my hand in my elbow through my jacket, I was stabbed. Multiple people were stabbed. One guy died. In this whole report, I only put one knife in one person's hand. My own, okay? Nobody else's. Okay? Nobody else's. I go on to say...

• 2:43:09Speaker 04

  Okay, oh, and Elfi that I said was stabbed? The FBI grabbed him, interviewed him, took his clothes off and everything. He was never stabbed. He was never stabbed. So they knew he was never stabbed, so even my information wasn't even accurate, because it was all over the place. So they tried to piece together my notes, and they made a mess of my notes. They didn't know what the hell they were doing, what I was telling them. I was doubling back and going all over the place, they didn't even know how to formulate this the right way. Okay, they were all over the place. He was never stabbed, okay?

• 2:43:39Speaker 04

  According to Gotti Jr., a melee ensued involving approximately thirty to forty of the bar's patrons. Gotti Jr. recalled that among those involved in the fight, and in fighting with Danny Silva, were Angelo Costelli, Joe Curio. Now here's where you're gonna start having some problems now, right? Here's where the problem is. At the bar, in the beginning, in the first paragraph, it says I was at the bar with a girl named Donna. She doesn't exist. I said also at the bar was a guy named John Riley. He was involved in the fight. John Riley was the investigative detective that was investigating me for different crimes, and all of us for crimes. I took the investigator and put him into the melee, I put him into the fight, okay? Angelo Costelli, who was dead at the time of the fight.

• 2:44:25Speaker 04

  Joe Curio, who died three years before the fight. How could they be at the fight if they were dead? Joe Curio died three years before the fight, how could he be at the fight? How could he be there?

• 2:44:35Speaker 03

  Who's writing this?

• 2:44:37Speaker 04

  I'm dictating a story. They're shorthand writing a story. Thirteen months later, you memorialize a report. You have dead people involved in a fight that would die. Joe Curio died in nineteen eighty, he was stabbed to death in a fight someplace else. This fight took place in eighty-three. You have the investigating detective I have him at the bar in the fight.

• 2:45:02Speaker 04

  People who don't exist were there. I mean, you see where I'm going with this? It was absurd. It was completely and totally absurd. They knew this. Later on, more memorializations on different pages. I talked about my arrest. My case, we had a case called the Oak Point Dump Case. And there was a cooperator in the case, his name was John Joe Zagari, right? They put it down that I'm talking about a guy named Joe Zagari.

• 2:45:36Speaker 04

  I never met Joe Zagari in my life. I don't even know who the guy is. If I met him, I couldn't tell him from a can of paint. So it was a complete nonsense mess. Saying something about an individual that someone allowed something to happen. They changed the words that ordered something to happen. They conveniently, most of the people, the players that you see here in this report, were either government cooperators or dead. So they knew exactly what I did. They knew exactly. They knew it. And again, it starts with that foundation from the very beginning, Pat. You're meeting with people. Before you go into this meeting, I was not obligated to tell one individual. Ravanagh told nobody. Any rat that goes to become a rat doesn't tell anybody.

• 2:46:19Speaker 04

  They sneak in the middle of the night like the rats that they are. They crawl out of their cell. They leave a note. Marshals come and get them and bring them over. I told seventy, nine people. My co-defendants knew. Everybody knew I was going in. They knew exactly the tactic that I was going to employ. They knew ultimately I was going to go on the stand in my own defense. They knew it.

• 2:46:40Speaker 03

  What happened afterwards?

• 2:46:42Speaker 04

  I won the cases, thank God. That's what happened. But still, to this day, you do have imbeciles, you have lowlifes, you have has-been, co-ket jockeys, people like that, that want to blow these reports and think these are real reports. Name one individual, one. Here it is, today, open. Openly challenge anyone. Show me a person that went to jail because of anything I've ever done in my life or said in my life. Show me, show me. The guy who spent well over ten million dollars fighting the United States government. The guy who destroyed all their cooperators. Over a dozen men are home right now because of me. Because I destroyed these cooperators and they never use these cooperators ever again. Ever. Including the one you mentioned, John A. Light. I was the last case.

• 2:47:25Speaker 04

  He gave a death penalty charge to a guy named Johnny Burke. Guess what? They used him to indict John Burke on a death penalty case, but never used John A. Light to testify. I've never heard of that before in my life. That is unusual. Why? I retired him. I retired him. I caught them in more wrongdoing. I caught the case agent in more wrongdoing, more misconduct. I pleaded over and over and over again for hearings on this issue. I can give you dates that I've asked for these hearings. Okay? Wrote letters, Attorney General Ashcroft. We can go on and on and on.

• 2:48:03Speaker 04

  I mean, you're talking about multiple letters to multiple different players and individuals.

• 2:48:18Speaker 04

  And here, they even had an article leaked to the paper that this was a scheme that I created.

• 2:48:24Speaker 04

  It called the Junior's Mob Exists Scheme. They even talked about it, so you fully knew.

• 2:48:29Speaker 03

  Would your father have supported you going and having a meeting with those guys?

• 2:48:32Speaker 04

  No. Absolutely not, absolutely not.

• 2:48:34Speaker 03

  What would he have said?

• 2:48:36Speaker 04

  He would have, he would have, my father would have probably disowned me for hollering at them. For sitting in a room with them, absolutely not. But I was a civilian, again. I wasn't a hypocrite. I wasn't a hypocrite.

• 2:48:46Speaker 03

  How long had you left before you had that meeting with them?

• 2:48:49Speaker 04

  Ninety-nine. The tape you and I discussed, the meeting that you and I discussed.

• 2:48:53Speaker 03

  Twenty-six years ago.

• 2:48:54Speaker 04

  The last time I ever saw my father. First time I've touched him in years, last time I've ever seen my father.

• 2:48:59Speaker 03

  February 5th.

• 2:48:59Speaker 04

  You saw him say, when I walked in the door. He walks in and says, Joseph said John wants closure.

• 2:49:06Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:49:06Speaker 04

  What do you think that meant?

• 2:49:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:49:07Speaker 04

  We used it at trial. The jurors knew what it meant. I asked my father to be put on a shelf for life. I wanted to be a civilian.

• 2:49:14Speaker 03

  So because for you...

• 2:49:15Speaker 04

  And being a civilian entitled me to fight like a civilian.

• 2:49:17Speaker 03

  This, this world you guys are in... Words matter. Technicalities, right?

• 2:49:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:49:24Speaker 03

  So for you, John, is it the fact that you went and met with the feds? Because you were civilian and had left the life, you didn't feel guilty for meeting with them? Is that how you process it?

• 2:49:36Speaker 04

  No, I didn't. And my plan was to go to trial. My plan was to help myself and help my co-defendants and beat the case. Okay, it was an unorthodox tactic that I employed. But remember, I've involved a lot of people. There was a lot of communication, not according to me, according to their cooperators. There was a lot of communication, a lot of knowledge of what was going on here. Okay, different perspectives here. But one thing's for sure. One thing's for sure. Joe Messina, at that time, did not flip. He was probably one of the most powerful guys in New York at that moment. And I still showed respect and felt obligated. Okay? I showed respect and felt obligated. I sent word in to Joe. Joe flipped a short time later.

• 2:50:21Speaker 04

  But Joe knew the tactic that I was going to employ at some point in the case. He knew it. I think Joe, if I'm not mistaken, I think he flipped somewhere right around that time. But he knew my plan eight, nine months earlier. He knew exactly what I wanted to do. It was told to Joe. He knew what I wanted to do. He had reservations about it, okay? And a man of his authority. I showed that respect to, I believe, to be my elders that, in respect to my father's way of life, that even as a civilian, even from my civilian standpoint, my position in life, that I still gave them the respect to let them know what I'm doing. And I didn't want it to be misconceived.

• 2:51:05Speaker 03

  Is this, is the outcome of this conviction that I'm listening to you, the last thirty, forty minutes? Is this because it's important to you to clear your rep that maybe some are calling you?

• 2:51:20Speaker 04

  It absolutely is. It's probably one of the most important things to me.

• 2:51:23Speaker 03

  Why is that?

• 2:51:24Speaker 04

  Because. When you went through what I went through, I spent easily, we showed the judge, we turned all, we brought him, the fourth trial was a tax and parole violation case, okay? And I brought in and put a shoebox, when they were asking me about turning over records, and I says, "Your Honor, they're gonna use my records against me, why should I turn them over?" And then I brought a shoebox, a boot box, actually, like this. I dumped it over on the table. It was neatly stacked checks totaling over ten million dollars. It would've cost me to defend myself. Does a rat spend ten million dollars fighting fucking multiple trials? Does a rat put his house in foreclosure? My house, I came home to my house in foreclosure. I lost every business I had, my businesses were gone.

• 2:52:07Speaker 04

  My house that I live in right now was in foreclosure. I wrote the books, sold the rights to the movie to get that house out of foreclosure. Is that what a rat does? Show me one. Show me one rat. Show me one rat that went for the monies I went defending the government. Millions of dollars in legal defenses, subpoenaing their cooperators out of the program in hiding, hiring private investigators to do what I did. Show me one. And it's important to show you, to share something with you, because here we have, I mean, forget about the misconduct, things that had taken place with us, I mean, it was off the charts, completely off the charts.

• 2:52:52Speaker 04

  And let me show you how easy it is also to confuse and doctor up documents, especially these 302s. It's been done multiple times. And you can see how wrong they got it, right? You're sitting here, you're a civilian, correct? Very educated, I believe. Very articulate individual. I'm impressed by you, I'm impressed by what you built. So I know, appealing to someone like you, you'd be the perfect guy to analyze every single thing that I'm saying right now. You're the perfect guy. I couldn't find a better forum. I tried to do it with Sixty Minutes, they didn't know how to do it, that was when I first came home from prison in 2010, but this was really, like, nobody even believed any of this garbage. But you, as we said earlier, seven years you've been trying to get me here. You tried to get me here for seven years?

• 2:53:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:53:34Speaker 04

  I said, "I want to have a conversation with Pat. I want to have a conversation with him. I do want to have this conversation." Took seven years to get us here, and here we are. And I knew you would do your homework, so, because I want to talk about all of these things. And I want you to tell me, be the devil's advocate and say, "This is where I think it's wrong or right," or whatever have you. And I always would culminate by saying this. Show me an individual. You get, you answered, you, eh, you asked me a great question. "Would your father approve?" "No." He wouldn't even shake their hand that day on the visit.

• 2:54:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, eh, um, obviously, I'm not in this world, but I got a call from Phil Leonetti one time. You know Phil Leonetti?

• 2:54:14Speaker 04

  I've never met him. I don't know the guy.

• 2:54:16Speaker 03

  But you know the name?

• 2:54:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've heard the name.

• 2:54:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:54:18Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't know the guy.

• 2:54:20Speaker 03

  He calls me and we, we go to a nice Italian restaurant. And the next day, we do an interview. He asked me to cover his face, so it's not shown, and we talk about-

• 2:54:28Speaker 04

  Why? What is he covering his face for? What is he ashamed of?

• 2:54:30Speaker 03

  Because he, he, you know, he did some maybe surgeries that he didn't want his face to be seen, or whatever made men.

• 2:54:37Speaker 04

  Like Revan did?

• 2:54:37Speaker 03

  He had stories that he said about Nikki Scarfall, right? And then we had Ralph Natali Dell there, and then he told his stories.

• 2:54:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:54:45Speaker 03

  Then we had Frank Colado, no longer with us, the late Frank Colado. And he was part of the Spelletto crew, I believe. Oscar Goodman, great conversation.

• 2:54:54Speaker 04

  Great lawyer.

• 2:54:55Speaker 03

  Great lawyer.

• 2:54:55Speaker 04

  Oscar Goodman's a great lawyer.

• 2:54:56Speaker 03

  Michael Francis, multiple sit downs. Sammy the Bull, multiple.

• 2:55:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:55:01Speaker 03

  And then eventually, we did, um, Mafia States of America. And you know what is common, like, eh, threat amongst everybody? And, and, and I think this, this goes credit to the life, you know, which, whatever the orientation is, when you're being indoctrinated in this world-

• 2:55:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:55:26Speaker 03

  Whatever that is.

• 2:55:29Speaker 03

  Whoever explained the pain of omerta, they did such a great job selling it.

• 2:55:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:55:40Speaker 03

  Because it's like at this age, look, man, let me say face. Here's why I did, here's why I did it. To the average person.

• 2:55:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:55:48Speaker 03

  To the person that's not in this world. We're not in it, we're just watching and it's interesting.

• 2:55:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:55:53Speaker 03

  Stories. But there is this pride to say, this is why I had the meeting with Feds. And what is consistent amongst everybody across the board?

• 2:56:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:01Speaker 03

  None of them like him. They all are not fans of the government. And they all feel like the story has been told in a different way.

• 2:56:10Speaker 04

  But they liked him when they were in the life, right? And they didn't feel the pain of the life when they were in the life. They felt the pain when they went to prison, I guess. I guess that nip, that pain hit them when they got to prison, right? Well, what pain should have I felt when they rolled me onto the death row unit? Should I have felt some pain? What do you think if I would have turned around and said, hey, guys, you got me, that's it, this is it, uncle? Government says organized crime exists, right? They say there's entities in New York that control New York, right? Do you think that would have existed if the son of John Gotti became a rat? What damage you think I could have done? If I was a rat? What damage? Government said from 1990, my father went to prison till I went to prison in 1998. They said I was the acting boss. What damage in that?

• 2:56:55Speaker 04

  Gravano was a driftwood in and out. They said I was the acting boss. What damage could I have done if that was all true? And so it is true. I was never any acting boss. I was the guy who held the door open for the boss. Okay, John Gotti was the boss, always. I'm nobody.

• 2:57:10Speaker 03

  Sammy said, once a mafioso, you're a mafioso for life.

• 2:57:14Speaker 04

  Where, is he still a mafioso, he thinks?

• 2:57:16Speaker 03

  Well, he says it's a lifestyle.

• 2:57:19Speaker 04

  Selling drugs to little kids in Arizona, he's a mafioso? That's the mafia? He'll blame it on his son. Nice, how convenient. Well, guess what, I heard a lot of the wiretaps. Let's see. His son was coming to him and taking money off of him and they're talking about a drug deal. That's how you encourage your kid? If you remember correctly, when Sammy Gravano first said he flipped, this is his very first time he said he flipped, did an interview. He said that.

• 2:57:45Speaker 04

  He was in prison, he got to ponder the situation, he wanted to change his life, and he wanted to save his kid, he wanted to save his son, he wanted to save him from that lifestyle. That's what he said, right? I didn't say, he said this. And yet, you come home after you're at, you got absolution for nineteen murders, you got the deal of the century, you did less than four years, nineteen bodies are in the street, two innocent people. Of that nineteen, two were stone cold innocent, one was a little boy, sixteen years old, okay? You came home and you go into the narcotics business and sell drugs to little kids? And you bring your kid along and your wife and your daughter? That was your way of saving your son?

• 2:58:28Speaker 04

  Interesting. That's like me saying, "Dad, put me on the shelf for life, I don't want to be in the life anymore. The moment I get home, I tell my son, drive the car, I gotta go kill somebody." I just told you, my son's grandkids were named John Gotti. What do you want to do, Dad? What do we do at the end here? When do we stop this? Does everybody have to go to jail? Everybody, all of us have to go to jail? Could we save them at least? So, me giving that speech to a dying man, a man I adored, me giving him that speech, and then I go home after all of this, and I take my son, John Gotti, and his other grandson, John Gotti, and I go commit crimes with them. I lied right to a dying man's face, did I not?

• 2:59:11Speaker 03

  Let me ask you.

• 2:59:12Speaker 04

  That's what's akin to what he did, Gravano.

• 2:59:14Speaker 03

  Because I think the only thing, and, and would you ever sit across with Sammy?

• 2:59:19Speaker 04

  Never.

• 2:59:19Speaker 03

  Tell me why.

• 2:59:20Speaker 04

  I received a message from a lawyer from New Jersey. I think the message came from you, and please correct me if it wasn't, years back.

• 2:59:26Speaker 03

  Was lawyer's first name James?

• 2:59:28Speaker 04

  It was. And he said, "I can get you a million dollars, John, if you sit across the table, from Gravano," and they're gonna give him a half a million dollars. And I said, "Not for ten million dollars, okay? Not for ten million will I do, will I sit with that low life in the room." And again, I never knew him.

• 2:59:46Speaker 04

  He could have went home from prison and lived his life and done his thing. But when you try to take down someone like John, who did everything by the rulebook. Even I, as his son, okay, don't have the right to be angry at any aspect of my father. And believe me, there are some aspects. I don't have that right because the life that he chose.

• 3:00:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:00:04Speaker 04

  And the life that I chose, that I walked away from, and the life that Gravano chose. The only one of those three in the equation that actually lived it in its totality was John Gotti. So how dare we even say anything negative about John Gotti? Me, I walked away. You, you ratted. You buried people and buried families. You don't have the right to take any of that, any of John's glory. That's called stolen honor, stolen glory, stolen valor, they call it in the military. It's called stolen valor. You don't have the right to steal John's valor. I don't agree with John Gotti. I don't think John had it all right. I look at it from this perspective, okay?

• 3:00:44Speaker 04

  I think the streets, they destroy families, and I think most of the guys, many of the guys, not most, many of the guys in the streets, I think are cowards. You wonder why I think they're cowards? I'm gonna tell you why. Because when you go to prison, you have to hang on the fact that you're in a group. I think most gang bangers are cowards. They gotta belong to something, okay? Go to prison by yourself. Be a stand-up guy and go to jail by yourself and belong to nobody. Go to a penitentiary, or go to a disciplinary force, some of those joints, and be on your own. Get my respect, then be a man. I fought the United States government without the entity the government calls the Gambino crime family behind me. Or without belonging to the government. I fought them alone.

• 3:01:28Speaker 04

  My wife, my children, and my dear brothers that loved me. With no money at the end, no money, I hawked diamond watches to fight the government. And I fought them, and I beat them, and I'm home, and I retired a lot of their cooperators, and a lot of men are coming home now because of me. Okay, because of me. And to answer your question, does that bother me? It certainly does. You have no right. But it doesn't bother me nearly as much because the people that matter know who I am is nearly as much as Gravano taking my father's valor. Like I said, that life to me, I'm 26 years removed. I'm not impressed anymore. I'm not impressed by them. You want to impress me, stand on your own two goddamn feet.

• 3:02:11Speaker 04

  John Gotti fought the government, but he had an army behind him. He certainly had a loyal son in his corner, an army behind him. And he was a folk hero throughout. I fought the United States government with limited reserves, no army behind me. I went to prison by myself. I did my time. I didn't walk around and say, hey, you know, I'm John Gotti. I got the whole Gambino family behind me. I did it my own time. I did my bid. I did my bid. Okay? I did my time. So to answer your question, that angers me that to have someone like a Gravano, that you went, took the punk way out, went to a punk prison, went to a punk unit in ADX Colorado. ADX Colorado is a serious place.

• 3:02:56Speaker 04

  It took over for Marion. Serious place, but he didn't do serious time. He went into a rat unit and did time with rats. That's what he did. Fellow rats. He wasn't with any men there because he wouldn't have made the bid. They would have ate him up.

• 3:03:10Speaker 03

  John, you know, first of all, James, if you're watching this, I never said a million and a half. Why are you over negotiating?

• 3:03:17Speaker 04

  No, he said one million for me and 500,000 for Gravano.

• 3:03:20Speaker 03

  Don't count my money, James. I'm gonna call James. We're gonna have a conversation.

• 3:03:24Speaker 04

  But if I may.

• 3:03:25Speaker 03

  But this is what I was gonna say to you. Here's what I was gonna say to you. You know,

• 3:03:33Speaker 03

  you said something about, you know, you're, you're blue, independent. I've been a registered independent for 17 years. I like Clinton. I voted for him. I like Trump. I voted for him. I fought for him. I defended him. I think he's the right guy right now for America where we are. Love him or hate him, I don't care where you are. It's my position. I'm not saying you love him or hate him. I'm talking to the audience. You know, but that's, that's a part of it. Why we have something in America, which is fantastic, which is called debate. And the reason why I bring this up is if I'm watching, like the way I watch interviews, John.

• 3:04:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:04:08Speaker 03

  Is when a conversation is taking place, I'm saying, ask this, ask this.

• 3:04:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:04:14Speaker 03

  This is my question. I'm the audience. Ask me the question I want to ask. The question I would ask is the following. I think the question Feds would want to ask. If you're willing to meet with the Feds for forty minutes, why don't you meet with Sammy? By the way, Sammy also doesn't want to do it. I can't, I must be the worst negotiator in the world.

• 3:04:31Speaker 04

  But here's the thing.

• 3:04:32Speaker 03

  Because I can't get neither side to anything. I should retire from sales and go sell, make some Starbucks or something.

• 3:04:37Speaker 04

  Here's the answer to that question.

• 3:04:38Speaker 03

  This is stuff I still can't figure out.

• 3:04:40Speaker 04

  I was about to go to trial.

• 3:04:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:42Speaker 04

  I had co-defendants, we were going to trial, going to war against the government. Okay? That was part of the tactic that I employed to meet with them to set, establish a foundation.

• 3:04:51Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:04:52Speaker 04

  With me going on the stand and testifying. Me, they accused me being the shot caller. I was the head of the indictment. I was the head of the indictment. I was the father. According to them, I was the father. This was the family and I was the father of that family.

• 3:05:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:05:04Speaker 04

  I didn't send a sacrificial lamb to go along there. I didn't tell some, I was going to go on that stand myself. And believe me, I was, it was going to be, it would have been a war. I'd have been sparring with the best, the US attorneys would have been coming out with everything. And look, it would have gotten to a point, Charlie, can you see, ask that question? You're going to be asked some sensitive questions about sensitive people. And I'm going to say, I don't have a rat deal here. I don't have one of those five K one letters. See, all these rats have what's called the most magic get out of jail free tickets. It's called a five K one letter. A five K one letter means you're a rat. Means you helped the government out. They go in front of the judge and they get you released from prison. Me, I fought the United States government over and over and over again. I even was willing on the last case, I offered to take twenty years.

• 3:05:49Speaker 04

  So they stopped subpoenaing my sister. They subpoenaed my sister, Victoria. They subpoenaed my, all my witnesses, including my brother Peter. Harassed my family. I told my lawyer, go in, tell him I'll take twenty right now. Just let this go, we're done. You know what the FBI agent in charge of the case said? Tell John that's not gonna happen. We got him. That's what he said. You know what I did? When the final, when the verdict came down and finally the final letter came down, after multiple Allen charges, you've never heard of more than one Allen charge in any case. It's an explosion charge to get a verdict. This judge unethically did one unannounced and two announced. Which already, those are all reversible issues right there alone. Twenty-three days of deliberations, twenty-three days, those people went to war.

• 3:06:35Speaker 04

  And got me released on December one, fifteen years ago last week I was released, December one, okay? Was released from solitary confinement, released home to my family. And when they came over and told me and the judge says, you have no other choice, give me bail. It was the fifth case in thirty-seven months. What I did was, I got up.

• 3:06:54Speaker 04

  First I had some emotions, I had some tears running down my face. Let's not forget that, it was very emotional. I was going home. Is this really over? This is finally really over, the wars are over? As Bruce Cutler called them, the Gotti wars, are they finally over? Okay? Got my composure, got up. The FBI agent was sitting over there. I looked at him, I walked past him, I stopped, I walked back. I says, how's that twenty years look now, motherfucker? And I walked out.

• 3:07:23Speaker 04

  Couldn't help myself. Should've taken the twenty, you had me. You had me, I threw the towel in. That was my way of being a punk. My way of being a punk was taking the twenty years and quitting. That's what I, and I was taking twenty years. Not a rat deal. Not one of those magic five K one, get out of jail free cards like they all got. No, no, no. I was taking twenty years. Think about it, that case, I'm sixty years old, I'd be getting out in two more years, I'd be getting out. So I, right now you and I wouldn't be talking, I'd be getting released in two years from now.

• 3:07:53Speaker 04

  Think about that for a second, okay? And I was willing to do that. That's what I was willing to do to make this all end. To make this pain stop. To make my mother's pain stop. Make my wife's pain stop. Make my siblings' pain stop. Make my father's grandkids, once and for all, let's end this madness. This is crazy. I mean, the Gotti's are the most tried family in history, and I'm the most tried Gotti. No Gotti tried more than me. None. You could look it up. Please, while we're here, did we get that stat yet? Because thirty-seven months, stop to start, five federal proceedings. Never been done before, ever. Donald Trump. You voted for Donald, right? Okay, how many cases did he get? Some were civil, I think one civil, two criminal, then one state case on top of that, right? Four in total?

• 3:08:37Speaker 03

  It seems like he got a ton of them. I don't know what the number is.

• 3:08:40Speaker 04

  Guess who got more than Donald Trump? Me. Guess who has a billion dollars? Him. Guess who now has absolution? Him. Guess who had to fight his way out? Me.

• 3:08:50Speaker 03

  Thirty-four charges?

• 3:08:52Speaker 04

  I eclipsed those thirty-four charges. If you take my indictments and stack them all up, thirty-four charges.

• 3:08:57Speaker 03

  John, you may wanna run it to twenty-eight.

• 3:08:59Speaker 04

  You gotta go into a hundred and fifty, two hundred charges for crying out loud.

• 3:09:01Speaker 03

  You're running for office twenty-eight, then that's the case.

• 3:09:03Speaker 04

  Listen, I got charged, Pat, I got charged with a murder. I got charged in Pinellas County, Florida. A federal judge sent me back home to New York to be tried because he didn't want nothing to do with the case. He knew I didn't belong there. He said, "This man beat you four times, and you're gonna dump him on me? Oh, hell no." He could have dismissed it, he didn't. He sent it back to New York. I got charged with a murder in Tampa, Flori... I'd never been to Tampa in my life. I couldn't find Tampa with a goddamn map. The first time I ever arrived in Tampa, Florida, was in handcuffs. They had a massive press conference. I believe the US Attorney's name was O'Neill. Twenty agents up there.

• 3:09:40Speaker 03

  You've never been there?

• 3:09:41Speaker 04

  Never been to Tampa, excuse me, in my life. Never been to Tampa in my life. That was the first time in handcuffs, in shackles, with a helicopter over me, twenty guards around me, bringing me into the prison. And I'm saying, basically, when my lawyer, famed Henry Gonzalez, speaking of Rico, he's one of the first lawyers to spar with Robert Blakey, who created the Rico law. Henry Gonzalez, the late, great Henry Gonzalez, dear friend of mine, and I love the guy, I miss him. He came to see me. Friend of my dad's, friend of Neil Delacroce. And he says, "How are you, John?" I says, "Henry." What am I doing here? He says, "Well, you about the Fadriko case." I says, "I've never been to Tampa in my life." He says, "Well, they say otherwise." And I was there.

• 3:10:25Speaker 04

  But before we forget, Patton, I know where you want to close with. I want to just read something. I got two things I want to read to you very quickly, okay? And you give me, again, I'm going to ask you for an opinion. And I admire honesty, I truly do. I truly do. Oh, and I didn't, you see, with the Gravano, I would never meet with Gravano with the government because that was a tactic we were employing to fight a case. I was employing the tactic to fight a case. Everybody knew I was going in, okay? I was a civilian, so I was able to fight the case different than the next guy. But I want to read something to you. These are the letters that I had sent, me personally, endorsed by my counsel, but I personally had typed them up, had them type them up, I don't have to type, but I had written myself

• 3:11:07Speaker 04

  personally to the following individuals, asking for an open hearing on misconduct against me, as well as this rat charge against me. Now, does this sound like somebody has something to hide? Here I am.

• 3:11:22Speaker 04

  Attorney generals of the US Attorney, okay. I had written Attorney General Michael Mukasey on 3/10/08. Got no response back. I had written Attorney General Eric Holder on 7/13/09. Got no response back. I had written to US Attorney Preet Bharara twice, one in January 2015 and the other in 2014. No response. And I had written to US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on 4/17/2017, okay? And I got a letter back saying, "Thank you, friend, for your letter, and we're going to consider this." Well, here we are, seven years later, I still haven't heard back from anybody. So, is this a guy who gives you any impression that he's got something to hide? Now, remind you, also, letters asking for hearings.

• 3:12:07Speaker 04

  Then I asked my trial judge, Shira Shinlan, for a hearing on April 2006. I asked for this in open court about this issue and the leaks to the press and everything else, and what they were trying to create this aura around me. And basically, I asked for it, we asked for the hearing in April 2006, as well as in August, again, in 2006. And both times it was turned down. I asked for the hearing from my trial judge, Kevin Costello, on 11/11/09. And again, in the summer of 2009. Eli, we asked Eli Honig, the prosecutor. We asked him for the demand, for the file on the latest FBI agent there. Again, nobody's ever complied. Now, I've got a tremendous amount of respect for Eli Honig.

• 3:12:52Speaker 04

  He was an amazing prosecutor, and I gotta tell you, of all the prosecutors that I faced in my life, I think between state and federal, I know in federal, I faced seventeen prosecutors or US attorneys. Uh, and I think we've a couple of the state, I think we go into about twenty-two or twenty-three. Eli Honig was a very professional prosecutor. He was good at what he did. I don't believe he ever even wanted the case. When we won the motion in Tampa, Florida, that case was dumped on his lap. The team in Tampa, Florida, came over to New York. So now I had to fight two different agencies. I had to fight the Middle District of Tampa, and I had a, the Middle District of Florida, which is Tampa, I think it's the Eleventh Circuit. And I had, had to fight the Southern District of New York, which was Eli Honig was the AUSA in that case.

• 3:13:37Speaker 04

  I had to fight both of them. Eli Honig had written a book. Okay, and again, I'm trying to be expeditious here. He had written a book. And in the book that he had written, he talks about the case agent on my case. And again, I guess this may be a case of, of how you guys are gonna edit, edit this, but again, I'm just trying to get all this content in, because it's essential to make my case. Okay? Just goes to show you about the three oh two, how it works out, how it's, it's dictated, how in my particular case, thirteen months later, a report was, garnished a report thirteen months later, how ridiculous it is, there's dead people in a bar fight that could not have been there.

• 3:14:20Speaker 04

  The investigative detective was in the bar fight? You're the greatest crime fighting agency in the world. So you say, right, the FBI? They did say that at one time, and I, and I believe, you know, there are some bad apples, but I do believe the technology that they probably are the greatest crime fighting agency in the world. You're telling me a select few decided to overlook some of these things, or not even to bother to research this? Who's Riley? Who's Joe Curio? Dead man at a bar fight? Nobody chose to look at that? Okay. I'll go along with that. But let me show you why I end up at that point. Here's Eli Honig, and again, a respected AUSA.

• 3:15:03Speaker 04

  And I have respect for him as a AUSA because he fought the case, I believe, as fair as he possibly could with his hands tied to a point. Okay? He talks about the agent on my case, and when he talks about him, he says, "He was obsessed with a certain particular murder." He was brilliant. He's brilliant. Incorrigible, relentless, FBI special agent with the Queens-based Gambino Squad. He had investigated and solved plenty of mob cases over his career, often deploying unorthodox techniques. Now, pay attention to this one. "He once typed up pages of phony transcripts

• 3:15:44Speaker 04

  of a wiretap that didn't exist, put them into a binder, and showed them to a Gambino soldier to try to convince him that we had him dead on wiretapping to try to make him into a rat, to flip him." Now, is that ethical?

• 3:16:00Speaker 04

  Put false documents out to try to flip somebody to tell them they're gonna get killed if they don't? Well, this is the tech... He's... With humor, he's openly talking about this. I mean, I couldn't help by reading this. I kept... I read it over and over again, and I read it again, and I read it again, and I said to myself, "Did he say this?" Because this ain't funny. This is misconduct. It's everything I've been saying that this particular agent did. It's misconduct. You're doctoring up documents. It's misconduct. That's not by the rulebook. You're the FBI. You are holier-than-thou. The rules that pertain to you are supposed to be a higher standard. I guess not. I guess not.

• 3:16:48Speaker 03

  You would have made a great lawyer, John.

• 3:16:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would have tried. I should have.

• 3:16:51Speaker 03

  And I mean, I'm actually being serious. You made it. You would have made a great lawyer. We had... Some of that IQ passed over to you. I mean, you gotta take some credit because...

• 3:16:58Speaker 04

  I thank you. I'm gonna pimple on my father's ass, I promise you.

• 3:17:00Speaker 03

  No, I'm just telling you. Just listening to you, make the case. It's very impressive how you communicate. I think there's a few things that's been uh uh uh my takeaway from this. I go home tonight, my wife's gonna say, babe, how was the conversation with John Gotti, Jr.? I'm gonna say, babe.

• 3:17:18Speaker 04

  Actually, I'm John A.

• 3:17:19Speaker 03

  John A, right.

• 3:17:20Speaker 04

  My father's junior, people don't know that, but he's junior. My father's father is John Gotti, my father's.

• 3:17:25Speaker 03

  I didn't know that.

• 3:17:26Speaker 04

  My father's siblings all called him junior, nobody called him Johnny. They all called him junior. I'm the third technically, and my son John's the fourth, and somehow it got confused.

• 3:17:34Speaker 03

  I thought he was the third.

• 3:17:35Speaker 04

  It got confused.

• 3:17:36Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 3:17:37Speaker 04

  So I'm John A, the third, and my son John Gotti is the fourth, but for his boxing promotion, they made him the third.

• 3:17:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:17:43Speaker 04

  And they made me junior, and I don't even, the media made me junior as well. It's had a better ring to it.

• 3:17:47Speaker 03

  My, my, my wife always asks me, she says, babe, you know, we were doing election night podcast, and I went eight hours straight, sitting down with 2,000 people in front of me, not once I went to the bathroom. John, I have so much respect for you.

• 3:18:03Speaker 04

  I appreciate it.

• 3:18:04Speaker 03

  You've not gone to the restroom one time yet. We've been going through this entire conversation for.

• 3:18:09Speaker 04

  I could go another two, three hours if you want.

• 3:18:10Speaker 03

  Your fire is incredible, just listening to these stories.

• 3:18:13Speaker 04

  Not bad for sixty, sixty year old men.

• 3:18:15Speaker 03

  But that's why I said, when you, first thing I said, when I looked at you, when you walked in, I'm like, Johnny, look at.

• 3:18:19Speaker 04

  I, I appreciate it, thank you.

• 3:18:20Speaker 03

  I appreciate you coming out, this conversation. I hope we'll do a couple more in the future as well. On your flight back, just consider on if we were to do a sit down together with uh uh pray about it, because Sammy's from God, when you, when you hear Sammy.

• 3:18:37Speaker 04

  I, I, I couldn't, out of respect for my father, I would never even be in the room with the guy. I couldn't do it, I, I, look, I don't know, but, well, I do know, Sammy Gravano can't go back to the old neighborhood, he can't. He could pretend to, he can sneak in like the rest of these rats do. I eat in the restaurants I've always eaten in my whole life. Could I eat in those restaurants and go to those places if I would sit in a room with someone like a Sam Gravano? No, no. And I still have, again, I'm, I'm 26 years removed from that life. I'm a civilian, proud of my position where I am right now, I'm proud of, I'm proud of my accomplishments. However, when I watch the movies, I still root for a certain kind of a bad guy, I always do. It's in my heart, it is in my heart, and.

• 3:19:23Speaker 04

  There's individuals that I left behind in that life and there's individuals I left in prison that every holiday I get very sentimental about, especially the fellows in prison, believe me, I always have a drink alone before I start to do anything on any holiday, I have it alone for them, and then I always have one again at the end of the night for them. Respect for my brothers that I left in prison, my cellmate who was doing Life Plus, and other individuals, I always do, I always, that's who I am, I could never be in a room with a guy like that who put so many people in prison, destroyed so many families. Look, I wrote, in my book, I talk about the necessity of certain things in life, and

• 3:20:02Speaker 04

  in a civilized society, we need strong law enforcement, we need them, we need a non-corrupt FBI, we need that, we need it, it's essential to survive, we need it. We need great investigative tools to give us the freedoms that we enjoy in this society, we need all of that. And you want to know something? To make certain cases, I guess you need cooperators, you do. Donald Trump saying flipping should be illegal, I don't agree. What I disagree, what he should have said, and again, same what you were saying, that certain things, certain questions should be asked, when I watch Donald Trump talk at times, I'm like this, oh, he's going to answer this just like, and he frustrates me, he frustrates me.

• 3:20:45Speaker 04

  And he's a likable guy, but he frustrates me in some respects. But I say to myself all the time, I said, you know, cooperators, I guess they are somewhat a necessity to a point, here's the problem, most federal judges do not know that when they go in front of them with that magic letter, that 5K letter, that's magic, they go with that letter, and they say what great assistancy he gave to us, and so on and so forth, and they reduce the sentence and release them immediately, they believe that they're releasing this person to the Witness Protection Program under the strict supervision of both

• 3:21:28Speaker 04

  the FBI and the US Marshal Service. They believe that's happening, they do. They don't know that at any time, if life gets a little tricky, and the Marshal Service, they are stringent, when you're in their program, they want you to work, you're supposed to be gainfully employed, they get you a car, they give you a budget to live, but they want you to get a job, and they want to make sure you're paying your taxes and yada, yada, yada. Most of these witnesses aren't going to adhere to those rules. So what do they do? They just sign themselves out and they're in the wind. Now, if a judge knew that you have the ability at any time, you were dangerous yesterday. You did nineteen murders, twenty murders, you held without bail. The US Attorney's Office felt you were so dangerous, you should never be released because this guy, he did a murder, he did this, he did this. Then all of a sudden, now he cooperated.

• 3:22:14Speaker 04

  He's less dangerous? With a new identity? That nobody knows who he is or where he's at? I leave here right now, people know, I'm John Gotti, that's who I am. If I go take a rock and break your window, you're gonna see me, John Gotti broke that window, there it is. These guys have new identities. New driver's license, new everything. So that's why nobody could police these individuals. You, you think it's okay to release them into, into somebody else's community, okay? Unwatched, unpoliced, and judges don't know this. Most federal judges aren't aware of this. They think that I'm releasing them and the individual's gonna go into the program and if he does one thing wrong, he comes right back here. No.

• 3:22:58Speaker 04

  If he does anything wrong, that's it, there's no more time, he's done. Gravano said on the stand, he said, if I lie, if I tell a lie, I'll do the rest of my life in jail, I'll tear up my agreement. Okay, that's what he said, he said it over and over again. Well, he got caught selling narcotics to kids. Right? And the only reason why the federal government gave him a twenty year sentence is because Arizona already gave him that sentence. And that's like you turning around and saying that, uh, we're gonna do it too. He's not gonna do any more time. He's gonna do the time. Only the difference is, he's gonna do it in a federal protected unit, not in some state unit in Arizona where maybe he'd be more vulnerable. It'll be a little tougher that time for him. Instead, he went to a federal protected unit. Okay?

• 3:23:42Speaker 04

  And the judge, the federal government mirrored the sentence. He got no additional time. None at all. Now, what happened to the life without parole? What happened to you being made accountable for nineteen murders? What happened to all of that? What happened to it?

• 3:24:00Speaker 04

  You just now violated people riding in jail.

• 3:24:05Speaker 04

  People died in prison. Most of those guys he testified against already died in prison. They died in prison already, including my father. My father died a horrible death, handcuffed to a bed alone in solitary confinement, alone. Read his death certificate, you know what it says? His death certificate says, "He choked on his own vomit and blood." That's how my father died. Everything was rotted in his throat, he had nothing left. The pain that this man was going through, handcuffed to a fucking bed, was unbearable. And he choked on his own vomit and blood. Never said uncle, never. Walked it all the way to the gate. Vow, whether you respect the choices he made in his life or not. Whether you respect what he was in his life, criminal, whatever he was. He still believed in what he was, and he walked it all the way to the gate.

• 3:24:48Speaker 04

  Gravano did not do that. He does not have that right. He does not have that right. And getting back to what I said, if a federal judge knew these particulars, I believe, make them accountable. Yeah. Let them become a rat, let them go into the program, do whatever they're gonna do. And once your time, if you commit any violations, you have to go back in front of that judge. And that judge can now bring it all home. He can give you all that time, he can send it right up your backside.

• 3:25:13Speaker 03

  John, I'm gonna get a lot of weird phone calls when this thing goes live. And they're gonna be interesting phone calls. But regardless of it, I really enjoyed speaking with you. I appreciate you for coming out. And I wish you had five more hours to sit down and talk to me.

• 3:25:27Speaker 04

  As do I.

• 3:25:28Speaker 03

  You really enjoy this thing, you know?

• 3:25:29Speaker 04

  I'm just getting started.

• 3:25:30Speaker 03

  But I appreciate you for coming up, man. This was fantastic. Thank you so much for this. Absolutely.

• 3:25:35Speaker 04

  I appreciate your hospitality.

• 3:25:36Speaker 03

  Anytime, anytime. And at the end of the day, you know who wins with these types of conversations? The audience wins.

• 3:25:43Speaker 04

  Well.

• 3:25:43Speaker 03

  The audience hears it. And for you, you get to tell your, because you don't do a lot of this stuff. I don't see a lot of stuff with you.

• 3:25:50Speaker 04

  I'm not into it. Look, not to interrupt you again, I thought the opportunity was here, and I know how you. I know you're pretty astute at what you do. That being said, I figured, you know what? I would like him to police me. I want someone to police me. If I'm saying, if I'm misrepresenting anything, police me and say, show me I'm wrong. Got fact checkers right here. Show me I'm wrong. Put me to, take me to task and let me explain it. If I'm not expressing it properly. Take me to task. Let me express myself properly. If I'm not, take me to task and let me explain that situation. And you know, one more thing. Again, gracious host. You offered to fly me out here, right? First class. Food, purdean, hotel rooms, the whole nine yards, right?

• 3:26:33Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:26:34Speaker 04

  I refused it. I refused it. I told you, donate it to cancer. Donate it to Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I'll get here on my own. I'm sure Gravano didn't make the same expression to you. I'm sure he didn't do that. I'm sure Gravano didn't do that. I'm sure, sure. Because everything's about money to people like him. Everything's about money to him, okay? Let's see. How many of his victims he's gonna return some of that money back to? Let's see. Let's just see. Take a shot. He's working on a lot of stuff going on right now, right? I'm sure. Maybe they could infiltrate his bank account in England. That bank account he has in England.

• 3:27:08Speaker 03

  Your birthday is your Valentine's Day?

• 3:27:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, two fourteen sixty-four is my birthday.

• 3:27:13Speaker 03

  Very interesting. Very interesting. And you had no aspirations or wanted to be a lawyer? Like that never crossed?

• 3:27:20Speaker 04

  I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to go to, I wanted to, I graduated military academy.

• 3:27:24Speaker 03

  You wanted to be a soldier?

• 3:27:26Speaker 04

  I was captain of the boxing team. I played football.

• 3:27:29Speaker 03

  Did you always communicate this well?

• 3:27:31Speaker 04

  No, no. One of the guards on his truth. I'm very shy, number one. Number two, my father was a tremendous orator. In a room with individuals, he could hold court. Me, I'd love to defer. I just never really had that ability, number one. Number two, for the most part, especially around women, I'm very shy. I'm a very shy guy. So, my comfort level is my wife. My comfort level is people that I'm comfortable with. It's my comfort level. But if I have something, if I have a point that I believe that I need to articulate, okay, you could overcome certain things, certain anxieties you could overcome in the process of articulating those views, when you feel a necessity that they have to come

• 3:28:14Speaker 04

  out, and especially, screw me, I'm here. Tonight, I'm gonna eat in a wonderful restaurant down here, 388, dear friend of mine, I raised the kids, a wonderful guy. I'm gonna have an amazing meal, and I'm just me, I'm a regular guy, that's my father's son, I'm not special, my father was special. You don't have to agree, nobody has to agree, but if they knew my father, they'd understand, because everybody cements that portion of history. Donald Trump, for what he's accomplished, the cases, and what was going on back and forth there, and then to become the President of the United States. I mean, look, I'm not a doubting Thomas, I'm really not. But if you would've told me a year ago, he's gonna win, I told

• 3:28:57Speaker 04

  you, you done lost your mind. They've made it where he cannot win. And I was expecting him at some point, and I underestimated his character. I thought he was gonna throw the towel in at some point. I thought there were gonna be back-channel conversations going on with the Biden regime, and what they were gonna do, is my belief, I thought that what they were gonna do is this. Look, if I do win, I'm gonna pardon your kid, and anybody else in your family. If I don't, you know, you win, pardon me, let's have a back-channel negotiation here. I believed that was gonna be put in place, and I believed it right up until six weeks ago. I believed it, I truly did. But I still didn't believe

• 3:29:38Speaker 04

  he had any shot of winning. And I seen the enormous amount of money that Team Harris had put out there, I think over, well over a billion dollars, I know that. I says, wow, the way they're saturating the media, and the way the mainstream media, 93% of them are basically against Trump, I said, I don't think he has any possibility, because, and not to be insulting to anyone, I'm not trying to be insulting, or demeaning in any way, shape, or form, but the vast majority of people are sheep. They really need to be led, they really do. They look for someone as a father figure, or they look for a voice to tell them, to advise them, to guide them. They do. And I believe that all the stuff, you're incorporating the Oprah Winfrees, and the Beyoncés, and all that stuff, and I'm saying,

• 3:30:22Speaker 04

  they're gonna win over people. In a nice way, a sheep are gonna be a vobel and they're gonna be won over and just let along. Donald Trump's the boogeyman and all these other things that's gonna go on. And I believed he had no shot of winning this election. So, that being said, I look at it and say, he cemented his place in history. Like him or not, doesn't even really matter, okay? Whether I like him or not, doesn't even matter. It means that he cemented his place in history because he overcame insurmountable odds and even the assassination attempt. The turn at that perfect moment. I mean, look, call it God's guiding hand, whatever you want. He cemented his place in history. I believe Nelson Mandela, he cemented his place in history forever and ever.

• 3:31:07Speaker 04

  And again, every, what I'm explaining to you, take it in different ways. Don't take it, because I'm about to say the name John Gotti. Don't say, hey, how dare you put the name John Gotti with Nelson Mandela. Look. Nelson Mandela had a curiosity about John Gotti as well. Nelson Mandela asked Charles Ogletree, when he went to go see my father multiple times in Marion, Illinois, what's he like? How is his mannerisms? How is it over there in Marion, Illinois? So he had a curiosity about John Gotti. Nelson Mandela, the most recognizable face and name in the world at his time, had curiosities about John Gotti as well. So John Gotti cemented his self in history. Al Capone today, well, John Gotti a hundred years from now is gonna surpass it all. He's never gonna drop. He's always gonna be synonymous.

• 3:31:53Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, maybe, with organized crime. It's always gonna be. So, it's one of those situations.

• 3:32:00Speaker 03

  Well, you know, every father prays and hopes their son admired them and loved them as much as you love your father. And that's great to watch. Sincerely, that's great to watch.

• 3:32:14Speaker 04

  I do, I do. And you know what, Pat, in closing? I said this to my son, my son who was the fighter, my son John. And before he was gonna fight, he was fighting Floyd Mayweather in August in Mexico. And I says, John, look, this is your time. You can do amazing things, even though it was an exhibition. Even though it was an exhibition, I said, you could do amazing things, John. I said, you could do amazing things here. I says, nobody's saying go out there and be reckless and try to hurt him. It's an exhibition, but you could do amazing things. And just think about this, when this is all said and done. You get to sit here and share this moment with me, and I get to share this moment with you. I hope you cherish it, because I cherish it. Because you know something, John?

• 3:32:57Speaker 04

  If someone right now gave me a scissor and told me to cut off my pinky finger right now, so I could have one hour of unguarded, unguarded, no wiretaps, nobody listening, nobody watching, and have a conversation with my father, one hour. Have a cigar and a martini, one hour. The old John, the healthy John Gotti, free, one hour, just leave us be, leave us be. Let us say what a father and son would want to say. Let us get emotional. Let me cry. He won't, he's too tough, I'm not. Let us embrace. And then go back to the way it was. I would take my finger off tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, I would do it.

• 3:33:38Speaker 03

  And let me tell you, that love is felt, it's like so amazing watching your loyalty and love for your pops.

• 3:33:44Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 3:33:45Speaker 03

  That's great to see, John.

• 3:33:47Speaker 04

  I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for your audience.

• 3:33:50Speaker 03

  Anytime, thank you.