Castellano or Gotti - who was the better boss?

It's been said a million times that Paul wasn't from the streets, but things went downhill quickly for the Gambino family after Gotti wrestled the leadership from Paul.

Paul wanted to legitimize family-run businesses into 'clean money' enterprises, which many OC people do. He just had to get a little dirt on his hands on the way to becoming rich. (Everybody does, mobster or not.)

Gotti couldn't fly beneath the radar - he craved public adoration and exuded a 'try and get me' attitude towards law enforcement. That's the one thing about Gotti I have never understood. Paul was much more low-key. So was Carlo Gambino. They stayed out of the spotlight.

Castellano had no rebellious 'bad boy' sex appeal, and the guys hated him, but I see him as a better operator than Gotti and the blue collar faction. Who was the better money-maker of these two?

Castellano was way better imo, yes he had faults but Gotti literally destroyed that family. During Castellano's reign the family were making tons of money in white collar stuff. Gotti was no way near the businessman Castellano was.

Jesus christ...Gotti lasted for only five years on the street. Even Al Capone had a longer run than him. That should answer your question.

Lmao. Why is this question even asked?

Sorry to say but this is a terrible thread lol. Horrible question.

Terrible thread, you've been watching to many pro gotti documentaries, Paulie was from the streets, born into an oc family, did a few prison bids robberies and stuff. Kept his mouth shut, Carlo was white collar, does that not make him a gangster?? FFS get real.

castellano made more mistakes than most as a mob boss , he was disrespecting his wife he was far to aloof and he thought he was better than the blue collar faction , he let the genovese family whack a gambino soldier in Connecticut and he let his house be bugged ( just like gotti) . He made a big mistake letting Neil dellacroce basically run the blue collar wing splitting the family into two factions , people like gotti thought castellano was handed the position as boss without earning it which was bang on the money . Castellano was a businessman not a mobster and no doubt he would have been a success in the legitimate world , to say that he didn't make mistakes and lay the blame for everything that's wrong with the American mob at gottis door is deluded , yeah he made mistakes but so does every mob boss , castellano included FACT

i cant hear this bullshit "paul was a businessman not a mobster" no more. Dont repeat everything because it was on a mobster series or somewhat else documentary. A guy who has killed lots of guys, through orders or bare hand, doestn matter, is a real mobster. Period.

1. Castellano dropped out of school in the eighth grade and started collecting numbers game receipts.

2.He was first arrested for robbery and served a 3mnth sentence. He was also arrested post the Appalachian conference and served a year for contempt.

Both times he refused to talk to the police.

In 85 he was indited in the commission case and would most likely have been convicted and sent to jail for life. He never gave any indication of rolling over. He was fighting the case up until his murder.

Im tired of people saying PC was a 'businessman' not a mobster.
Im tired of people saying he was 'white collar'.
Im tired of people saying he hadnt 'paid his dues'.
PC had more in common with Gigante than almost any other modern boss, yet one is revered by mob watchers, the other mistakenly, incorrectly derided.

'FACT'.

I don't think that castellano would have ratted at all , I do think he made mistakes though , if anything castellano seemed ahead of his time and the blue collar guys like gotti didn't get it . He did make mistakes though and he paid dearly for them

Fact remains you said he was a businessman not a mobster, which is complete bs. You've watched too many gotti documentaries.

Spot on.

We've had this same fuckin thread a million times

John Gotti was a mans man, a true tough guy, they just dont make guys like him no more, while we have castellano who had a penis implant....end of discussion!

@dellacroce


so paul casetellano's dick wasn't big enough for him to be your boss?

sometimes you leave the "tough guy" a fucking captain because that's all he's capable of

both seem like assholes with different personalities

@ cookcounty

Exactly. Imagine Paulie Walnuts as a Boss in The Sopranos.

What are you on? He's being sarcastic you idiot

casetellano had a dick implant??? really??? why? he wanted bigger? I still think those Gotti/Agnello kids John, Carmine and Frank are very cute.

Whacking frank piccolo for the genovese family didn't do castellano any favours either

Wot I've said I believe , he was allof he was not in touch with the blue collar wing of the family and he was more comfortable in the company of businessman than the rank and file mobster , wot the fuck has that got to do with watching gotti docs I don't know ,

No, it didn't. That move set the table for the captains on the fence about him to look the other way.

Forget all that shit about Gene and Angelo. If not for Piccolo getting popped, I doubt Gotti would have gotten the support that he did.

Well considering Gotti was the worst mob boss of all time(by both mobster and FBI accounts) i'll go with Castellano. castellano had his flaws clearly BUT he still operated much better than gotti. He was a white collar criminal but lets face it blue collar rackets became to risky by the 80's. The only reason Castellano finally got caught near teh end was because Angelo Ruggiero's big mouth.

You say he was just a businessman and not respected..why? where did you hear this? Documentaries...

Ofcourse he displayed himself as a businessman, that's what mobsters do. what do you want him to do. have an interview on TV declaring himself boss of a family?

If he wasn't respected the captains wouldn't have voted him boss, it's that simple.

Wen somone disagrees with someone else they automatically say you don't know wot your talking about u have watched to many docs and read to many books . Were do u think people gather info from ? I agree they r not always the most reliable source but it's common knowledge about castellano and I stand by wot I said . He made tons of mistakes but so does most mob bosses castellano more than most

Once the deed was done the captains fell inline mainly through fear of retribution not out of some 'moral' justification.
And what was there to do, you cant dig Paul up again.



Yes Piccolo getting hit was a bad decision. But in respect to this thread Gotti made 100 more bad decisions a day than Big Paul did in his life. And lets all remember the REAL reason Paul got hit.
Gotti and his crew were about to be fucked by the Ruggerio tapes (convicting the crew of Heroin traffiking) and half his crew hit, the other half taken down or shelved.
Being Boss on top was just a nice cherry.

So lets all stop the 'Paul was a businessman', 'white collar vs blue' crap.
It was an opportunist move forced upon Gotti by his crews Heroin trafficking.

Following, the captains fell in line through fear, though some attempted retribution (Marino, Failla).

Thats the story kids. Thats it.

I agree he made a lot of mistakes. That's not the issue here, you say he wasn't respected. Why would he get voted in as boss by the captains then??

I disagree. Although Gotti was bad I don't think u can do worse than Amuso Casso. They tried to kill the whole borgata.

Understand Castellano was hit NOT because of 'his mistakes' (Piccolo, white vs Blue collar, was Paul a business man or mobster, he wasnt 'from the streets' crap etc etc) but because Gotti was FORCED to.

Any justification beyond this is bullshit. Gotti hit Castellano because his hand was forced (ambition being an added bonus) NOT out of any retrospective pseudo-bullshit justification.

Because carlo wanted it that way? Why was Gotti voted in by all the captains? Not trying to be cute, just saying

I agree 100% , all the mistakes castellano made had nothing to do with why he was killed . It was kill or be killed on gotti and his crews part . My point is castellano made mistakes, that where used against him in justification with the other families if he ever had to explain himself for whacking castellano. Castellano was voted in as boss but who was gonna oppose Carlo gambinos final death bed wishes ??? Nobody , even wen castellano was getting sworn in as boss they expected resistance from the dellacroce wing of the family hence montiglio stationed with a gun ready to whack everyone i

Doesn't matter if Carlo wanted it that way, if Castellano wasn't respected a war would have broke out as soon as Carlo died. You think Neil would take orders from a pussy? Apparently Neil plotted to kill Carlo when he took over as boss, what makes you think he'd hesitate with Castellano?

Gotti got voted in because he had a lot of hitters on his side, people didn't want to be the next Castellano.

Yes, topic is getting old and with hundreds of opinions. Mine is that Gotti, by his ego was the biggest reason for the demise of the NYC mob. He just had to rub it in the FBI's face- no wonder they went after him. He ruined it fore a lot of other guys. By the way, I don't think a penis implant of the kind Castillano got
enlarges the penis, just enables him to get an erection (????)

I would find it hard to be 'pro Gotti' - he did a better job than the Feds at bringing the family down, along with his ever-present sidekick Sammy the Bull, possibly the biggest mob snitch of all time. Gotti fell apart quickly, taking everyone with him.

John gotti was a legend , yes he made mistakes by making his captains meet at the ravenite once a week and he was brash and in your face , but he was exactly what the mob needed at that time after the drab mob bosses of the past , I loved his fuck you attitude . The Feds know who we are why should I hide under a stone . Ok he got caught on a bug and courted the limelight . He won't be the first or the last . People forget that the reason he. Was in the limelight was because at the time castellano was killed he was on trial for the romuel pichek thing , people wanted to get a look at the new godfather . The media sought hi out and turned him into a public icon , and as for the drugs thing , that was wen Angelo ruggiero's brother Salvatore died in a plane crash , he was a drug dealer and Angelo and the crew got into it cleaning up Salvatore's affairs . Every boss as profited from drug money directly or indirectly FACT , it's a case of don't get caught . John gotti was a mans man and stood by the oath he took , a lot can be said for that these days

One criticism I've heard about Castellano was that he was too easy on satellite OC that dropped his name, I'm thinking specifically of the Westies. Anyone care to weigh in on it? is it a fair assessment?

dom does have a point about Gotti - the media sought him out, made him an icon. That said, he certainly didn't do anything to discourage it, which he most certainly could have. In the end, Gotti was a stand up guy. Certainly, he was not a good boss by any measure, but Gotti was a true gangster until the end. For whatever that is worth.

I was referring to the sentiment about Castellano BEFORE he allowed Piccolo to be hit. Prior to Piccolo getting whacked, guys like Armone, Gravano and the DeCiccos probably wouldn't have been in favor of hitting him. Piccolo getting hit was just the mistake that Gotti needed to exploit to gain favor with those guys.


Yes, but again, I wasn't commenting on that silly debate about who was a better mob boss. It's old and tired and we've discussed it here a million fucking times. I was merely pointing out that the Piccolo hit took guys like Gravano and Armone and DiBernardo and the DeCicco brothers off the fence about Paul. And without their support, Gotti never could have pulled it off. Or maybe he does pull it off and gets hit himself a week later. By guys like Gravano and Armone and DiBernardo and the DeCicco brothers.


Nonsense. There are STILL Westside guys you've never heard of.


Bull-SHIT. Just because you never heard of John Gotti before 1985 in the friendly confines of the British countryside, doesn't mean he was low key by any stretch of the imagination. He was well known to the Feds even before he got his button, which is really saying something. And he was already making plenty of trips to the Bronx and the other outer boroughs to place bets with bookmakers long before becoming boss. By the summer of '84 he owed phone numbers to Bronx bookmakers in Morris Park. In short, too many people knew who he was even prior to his beef with that Polack Piecyk.

I wasn't saying he wasn't known to the Feds pre 85 , wot I was saying was the castellano hit catapulted him into the public eye

I know he was being watched in the late 70s and early 80s , I think the main guy who followed him was john gurnee . He certainly was one of the first .

Then why didn't he make a move against carlo? God knows he had the power to do so. Paul wasn't respected by the blue collar guys and the white collar guys respected him because of the money they made with him. At least that's what i think. My point is none of them where good bosses and in the long run castellano would've embarassed the family to that point that someone else probably would've taken him out. At the end of the day paul wasn't even half the man john was

The feds themselves said that they stumbled on gotti by a coincidence in the late 70s i think. They had a rat (willie boy) that happend to be a part of the bergen crew

thats not how they "stumbled" across him

How was it then?

The feds had their eyes on Gotti already in the 1960s. Read his FBI files in the Vault.

I totally agree with PB what he says in his post above. But the question in this thread is who the better boss was, Castellano or Gotti. In my opinion, Gotti was a disaster for the Gambinos. He lasted for five years only before being sent to prison for life. That´s an extremely short tenure as boss on the street. And he only had himself to blame.

That i know, what im saying is that they started to hear his name in connection to organized crime, the mob or whatever you call it when willie boy started to inform on them

They had their eye on gotti before Willie Boy. Joe Coffey of teh FBI said they had their eye on him when he was hijacking trucks in the late 60's and he ended up going to jail for it. Also there are plenty of surveillence videos in 1979 of Gotti. The FBI didnt become really strong until the 80's especially after the Giuliani did the RICO charges

Willie boy started informing on them in the late 60s so when joe coffey says they had an eye on john in the 60s its probably because willie boy gave them the information on him

Pizzaboy, I agree with your post but British countryside? Domwoods is from manchester, clearly you've never been there lol

stop it, yore wrong...move on

I'd argue if I could, Tommy. But when you're right, you're right .

But it kinda proves my point: We can all be ignorant about each other's cultures now and then .

Re Manchester: Only thing I know about Manchester is that's where Daphne Moon (the "Frasier" character) was supposedly from. And Jane Leeves is still hot as hell, so they're all right with me .

I don't see where I'm from has anything to do with my knowledge on the mafia ,??? Elaborate . Tommy just because u have walked down mulberry st a couple of times doesn't make u an authority on the mob . It certainly doesn't make u an authority on me so have some fuckin respect

Are you talking to me, Dom?

No I'm talking to tommy , there is no need to patronise me , I come on this board because I'm interested in the mob . I've been fascinated in the subject for 25 years and I think I know a little bit about the subject , I love learning from others aswel , wot I don't come on here for is to be ridiculed by keyboard warriors who hide behind fake profiles

You're both good guys who contribute a lot and I've never seen either of you make trouble here. And lately, that's really saying something. So let's just take a breath and get the topic back on track.

And to tell you the truth, I feel like I instigated the whole thing with my Manchester countryside remark. I was kidding, of course, so that wasn't my intention. But if it provoked an argument, put it on me and let it go .

Yeah it is your fault pizzaboy u cocksucker ha ha just joking . Have u never heard of the band oasis ?? There from Manchester

I sent you a pm, Dom.

No problem bro

What the hell are you on about? PB said something about you living in the countryside, I merely pointed out that you don't because your from Manchester.

I've never been to America, stop talking out your arse.

I'm a keyboard warrior now domwoods? Because I disagree with what you say? terrific logic.

I sincerely hope your a Man United fan, that must be why your miserable.

Ha ha , your wrong tommy all my family r scoucers , I'm a Liverpool fan . I don't mind u disagreeing with me but is there any need to patronise me ?? I don't insult anyone on here

Good lad, I'm Liverpool fan too, half my family from there. Scouser living in manchester, ouch haha

Ha , I'm actually from darwen . In between Bolton and Blackburn . All my lot r from mossley hill in Liverpool , great win last night pal , I was shitting my pants

I've sent u a pm tommy

If you're that sure that im wrong then prove it? I know that he started to tell on people in the late 60s

Dom I fuckin love Oasis. They're one of my main influences. You gotta love the Gallagher brothers haha

Great band joe , I've seen them about 20 times and have met Noel on a couple of ocassions

Apples and oranges. They had completely personalities and were from very different eras. Obviously, Big Paulie was better at handling money than John was. I don't know who made more money overall but its safe to say Paulie was more prosperous, long term. John may very well have brought more in a short period of time with the dope and all the people he was taxing, but remember he blew a lot of money gambling and other dumb stuff. Plus, he wasn't on top as long as PC.

Paul was schooled in a different style of LCN. Carlo was like that too. The bosses aren't supposed to get their hands dirty. The way they saw it, the higher up in the family you are, the more legit your business. These guys were supposed to be semi-retired and act more as the supreme court on major family issues and to resolve disputes no one else could. They didn't like to be bothered with small time stuff going on in the streets. This is the way they ran things for a long time. You have to realize guys like Big Paul, Carlo, Bruno from Philly and others, were pretty hands off bosses, compared to guys like Gotti, Gaspipe, and Scafo (who would tax the hell out and kill them if they refused). Guys could get away with doing pretty much whatever they wanted as long as they didn't make too many waves. Earners were taxed very little, if at all for some.

Paul was a recluse who liked to stay in his mansion. He didn't even let guys come and see him. He mostly liked to deal with guys with the same mindset (except Bilotti). Didn't guys in the family call the meetings he had at his house the "Jew Club?" This is way different than how Gotti did business. He liked to be out partying and hanging out on the street corner. He actually made guys see him and "show respect" to him on the street . That being said, Paul was definitely a tough old bird. He was a gangsters through and through. He might not have been the toughest street fighter or shooter, but he knew how to run the streets. I don't think he would have flipped had been convicted. Had he not been not been killed, I think he would be more respected and romanticized like Carlo is today.

Gotti, on the hand, was a bum who was more brawn than brains (not to say PC was that smart of a guy, but at least he made some rational decisions). That being said, I think he was one of the toughest guys that ever came out of the New York LCN. People don't like to admit it, but the only reason he took out Castellano was because he could. It was an irrational, impulsive and extreme ignorant move, but it gave him tons of respect on the street even from other gangs. He became a legend. People don't like to admit, but he ran the hardest Italian crew at the time. The only other group that could come close was Gaspipe and his boys, but they still didn't get him. Gaspipe almost lost his life over it, too. But this whole notion that Big Paul was somehow a threat to the Gotti crew is just laughable. He was sitting duck. The Gotti's ran the Gambinoss. They were the power at the time, PC was just a the figurehead. By '85, he had no real power on the streets. The only thing he dealt was his own stuff with the bosses. Yeah, the old cigar chomper bosses were pissed because they had big business with him, but its not like the were gonna take care of it themselves. I think that is why they gave the job to Casso, he was the only other real muscle on the street that could handle it.

As much as people like to say Gotti ruined the mob, I disagree. I would actually argue he breathed new life into LCN for better of for worse. He gave the Mob a new, tougher face that appealed to new generation. When the most of the old guard went away in '86, a new breed of mobsters were taking over. Not to say it was all because of the Commission case, but it did create a power vacuum for younger and more violent member to move up. John personified this image and the media (and the streets) ate it up. He very respected in his old neighborhood. They even wrote rap songs and rioted in the street when he was sentenced.

Dude no way! Fuck yeah is Noel cool?

Could Nino Gaggi have become underboss or consigliere if he hadn't ran into legal trouble in the late 70's/early 80's?

He he is just a normal guy , pal but still very cool , I had a beer with him and a chat , a friend of mine is a really good friend of his

I'm jealous dude Noel's one of my idols. His solo stuff is awesome too. You ever met Liam? haha

im also curious if gaggi would have had a shot at underboss or consigliere?