That's all well and good, Eddie, but remember that John Gotti is a thug and stone-killer at heart while you sympathize with his family. John Gotti ordered John Favara to be sawn to pieces with a chainsaw, then dumped with his car so no evidence could be linked to it. Conveniently, he and his wife were on holiday in Florida at the time, and he received confirmation of the murder through a coded telephone conversation. Favara had been advised by a priest to avoid the Frank Gotti funeral, and to avoid the Gottis' completely. He and his family often received nuisance calls and threats from anonymous mobsters, and Gotti's wife actually senselessly assaulted him with a steel bat as he was heading to work. Favara did no press charges.

In his prime, Gotti also ordered the deaths of countless other individuals, and also murdered a family man and small time hood named James McBratney to earn his Cosa Nostra stripes. He had absolutely no qualms about seeing his freshest victim, Paul Castellano, lie dead on the sidewalk of a busy New York street. He also badmouthed his underboss on a somewhat frequent basis, thus when came the time for trial, he wanted Gravano to take the fall along with Locascio.
Sent away from life, he got in a fight with a black inmate, got his head smacked in pretty bad, then got cancer and enjoyed a steady flow of pity mail. As if all the men he had eliminated in a life of crime were not sufficient, he also put a contract on the life of his former consigliere, Frank "Frankie Loc" Locascio. 68-year-old Frank was moved to solitary confinement as a result of Gotti's threats and has since been in lock down, despite appeals from his lawyers. Perhaps Gotti's last victim.
I dont feel sorry for John nor his family. They're all animals, from his drug trafficking brother and his acting boss brother, to his mafia boss son and violent wife. The only person who perhaps deserves merit is his daughter Victoria, who despite her closeness to the elder Gotti has managed to stray away from that life and is a reasonably decent article writer for the NY Post.

For more information on Gotti's irresponsibly vicious actions on John Favara and his family in 1980, follow these two links:

http://www.ganglandnews.com/column249.htm

http://www.ganglandnews.com/column218.htm

[ October 25, 2001: Message edited by: Joey Montana ]