Best Friend Turns Informer

John Gotti Jr trial: best friend of accused mafia boss turns informer

America is gripped by a real-life Sopranos tale of brutal murders and high living

Paul Harris The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009

If it were an episode of The Sopranos, it would probably be dismissed as too outlandishly plotted and overly dramatic. But the trial of accused mafioso John "Junior" Gotti in New York is full of betrayals, brutality, dark humour and unexpected revelations.

It is the mafia trial to end all mafia trials, providing a rare glimpse into a mob world that still dominates America's cultural landscape, even while it fades as a criminal organisation. Gotti is probably the most famous alleged mafioso in America, son of the "Teflon Don", John Gotti Sr, who led the Gambino crime family. Gotti Jr stands accused of a series of brutal killings in a massive case assembled by the FBI in its fourth bid in five years to bring him down.

The star witness for the prosecution is John Alite, an Albanian mobster and self-confessed killer who was Gotti's best friend. The pair grew up together and were said to be as close as brothers. In the tight-knit world of the mafia, bound by its secret oath of omertà (loosely translated as "code of silence"), that should have been enough to ensure Alite would never testify.

Yet omertà is clearly not what it used to be. In a stunning betrayal of the mafia code, Alite has taken the stand in the trial and sung like a canary. For hours, Alite has recounted endless details of mafia hits and the partying lifestyle he and Gotti enjoyed in between murders. All the while Gotti has stared at him balefully, backed up by a courtroom packed with his family and friends.

If that was intended to intimidate Alite, it has not worked. "John Gotti Jr was my boss" were the first words to come out of Alite's mouth as he opened his testimony. He went on to detail how Gotti had collaborated with him on three killings and had told him about four others. The descriptions are blood-curdling, including how he had put one man's body in a car crusher at a junkyard and another victim had been hanged from a tree.

After killing drug dealer George Grosso in 1988, Alite and Gotti had their nails done and then returned to the scene of the crime to check Grosso was indeed dead, Alite testified. "He doesn't look that good," Alite said Gotti had joked after seeing Grosso's corpse. That callousness in Gotti had also been witnessed by Kevin Bonner, who testified that he had seen him fatally stab a man in a bar brawl in 1983. Daniel Silva was just a local drinker at the Silver Fox bar in New York who had got into a row with Gotti. Gotti stabbed Silva and left him slumped and bleeding on a bar stool, Bonner testified. A second witness added that Gotti had taunted the dying man with a Porky Pig impression, saying: "Th-th-that's all, folks!"

The brutality detailed in the case so far has generated huge media interest, but some say that reflects the fact that the American public, inspired by films and TV shows such as The Godfather and The Sopranos, is obsessed with all things mafia. In fact, Italian-American gangs are far less of a problem than Mexican, Russian, Albanian, Chinese or Colombian criminal organisations. "With the Godfather movies we greatly overstated their criminal power in the first place. Then they got all of this attention, which decreased it even further. Unlucky for them," said Dennis Kenney, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

It may have been unfortunate, but it did not appear to stop Gotti, Alite or others living like the mobsters they saw on screen. Alite has described a celebrity-style existence of fast cars, fancy restaurants and glamorous women that seems straight out of the classic mob film Goodfellas. He told of wearing $500 shoes and Rolex watches, and watching Gotti blow $30,000 at the gambling tables during a trip to Las Vegas.

He has described how hundreds of thousands of dollars were generated from crime, funding his and Gotti's lavish lifestyles. "When I went to restaurants, I didn't wait. When I went to shows, I got the best seats… We got treated like celebrities," Alite said.

Like every good soap opera, the case has had its family drama. Alite claimed while under oath that he and Gotti's sister, Victoria, had become romantically close after she had been beaten by her then husband, Carmine Agnello.

"I had feelings for her, she had feelings for me. We talked to each other," Alite claimed. That prompted Victoria to break her own silence. "The only feelings I had for John Alite were that I despised him," she told reporters, denying any relationship. The comments were immediate headline news in New York's mafia-hungry tabloids.

But while Victoria's feelings for Alite and his breaking of the mafia's once-sacred code were clear, she is also guilty of her own version of telling tales. Perhaps no one typifies the bizarre mix of crime, pop culture and the media that the mafia in America has become than Victoria Gotti. Not only has she been the star of her own reality TV show, Growing Up Gotti, she also chose last week to publish her memoir, This Family of Mine. In it she describes the ceremony in which her brother, John Jr, became a "made man" in the mob.

"This was one of the happiest days in his life," she wrote. Victoria even described the secret oath-taking ceremony that involved burning a picture of a saint stained with blood and she also listed those present. It seems that when it comes to breaking omertà, Gotti's problems have not ended with his ex-best friend on the witness stand.