New York's Favorite Criminal

NEW YORK—At the end of Martin Scorsese’s epic film GoodFellas, Ray Liotta’s character remarks that he and his gangster pals had been treated like “movie stars with muscle” during their heyday. On Monday, June 10, New York City’s real-life “movie star” mobster died of head and neck cancer at the U.S. Medical Center for Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. John Gotti, age 61, was the Big Apple’s most identifiable gangster during the late 1980s. After being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992, the so-called “Dapper Don” had achieved an almost mythical status in American popular culture.

His funeral reflected this past and present notoriety as Gotham’s celebrity outlaw. Thousands turned out for the memorial service in Middle Village, New York, while the procession route was filled with signs declaring “John Gotti Lives Forever.” Dozens of black limousines, including 19 flower cars, moved through the Queens neighborhoods where Gotti remains a local hero to many.

To be sure, such a lavish tribute seems wholly inappropriate for a ruthless killer who made his living through hijacking, racketeering, extortion and drugs. Yet the virtual lionization of underworld figures is nothing new. During the 1920s, America’s mass media helped transform certain groups of brutal outlaws—namely, ethnic Irish and Italian hoods that operated within highly structured criminal syndicates—into pop culture icons. For many impoverished European immigrants, the rags-to-riches, Horatio Alger-like tales of powerful mobsters such as Big Jim Colosimo and the infamous Al Capone seemed to epitomize the American Dream. As historian David Ruth has written: “The central theme of the Capone narrative was an individual’s escape from obscurity to wealth, power, and fame.”

In many ways, Gotti’s story was quite similar to Capone’s. Born the fifth of 13 children to poor parents in the South Bronx, he was, in the words of author Luc Sante, “a pure product of the slums.” His father was an unskilled worker who was constantly unemployed, and the family remained mired in poverty throughout his childhood.

Gotti quit school at age 16 and joined a violent teenage gang known as the Fulton-Rockaway Boys. By the time he was 25, Gotti had joined a mob crew headed by Carmine Fatico, a captain in the Gambino crime family, and was now a full-time gangster.

He gradually worked his way up through the ranks doing contract killings and hijacking trucks before blasting his way onto the big stage in the early 1980s. After ordering a very public hit on boss Paul Castellano in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 16, 1985, Gotti assumed control of the Gambino family. He reigned as boss from 1986-1992, and during those years he became the city’s most notorious media-darling, mainly because federal prosecutors just couldn’t seem to convict him. As he won acquittal after acquittal—either by intimidating key witnesses or, in a 1986-87 case, by paying off a juror—Gotti gained a reputation as the city’s “Teflon Don,” for it was said that no charges would stick to him. He was, as Sante points out, “New York’s bandit king,” strolling arrogantly into court in his $2,000 Brioni suits while throngs of cheering fans maneuvered to catch a glimpse. Gotti was even featured on the cover of Time magazine before longtime friend and Gambino family underboss Sammy “The Bull” Gravano made a deal in 1991 to help law enforcement finally put the Don away.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise, therefore, that many of the city’s tabloids and journalists, in their coverage of his death, chose not to portray the real John Gotti. Few were willing to acknowledge that, yes, the man had been a murderous criminal. A New York Post columnist argued that while “Gotti sure as hell may have whacked some goodfellas-badfellas in the pursuit of business…his crew didn’t come near mine or your wallets, like the Enron sissies did.” This same writer also opined, with regard to the Don’s incarceration in 1992, that “Gotti had to do time because the bureaucrats, who hide behind [the American] flag, said so.” Another journalist described Gotti as “[a]n elegant rebel who came from nothing” and was “kind to children and generous to friends.”

Similarly, some of Gotti’s former legal allies sought to glorify the Don’s memory. His lawyer and longtime confidant Bruce Cutler described the late boss to New York Newsday as “[a] most remarkable human being who was a champion in my book.” Defense attorney Ronald Kuby, who handled some of Gotti’s post-conviction legal matters, stressed to Newsday that “John Gotti had the same skills as the CEO of any large, successful corporation. He had that sort of touch where he remembered names and faces. He was gracious. Had his life gone differently, he would probably be running a large corporation and doing it well, better than Enron.”

Residents of various working-class Queens neighborhoods also sang Gotti’s praises. They widely eulogized the former Gambino overlord as a philanthropic captain of industry—someone who kept the neighborhood safe, helped out the poor and paid for a fireworks display every Fourth of July in Ozone Park.

“I love him. He’s Italian,” said 21-year old Vanessa Lanza in the New York Post. “He helped poor people, he gave money to charities and the church. He was just a legend in my home.” Retired hospital administrator Peter Amato told the Daily News of his “respect for a fellow Italian-American and the last don,” contending that there was “no doubt he was a hero. He kept the community safe.”

The canonization of John Gotti is truly unfortunate, particularly at a time when Americans, and especially New Yorkers, have been forced to regain a sense of moral clarity about the world in which they live. The much-maligned concept of “good and evil” returned in full force after Sept. 11, we are repeatedly told; but differentiating between good and evil requires us to recognize even subtle, craftily-disguised forms of evil. The bottom line is this: John Gotti was a vicious thug who either murdered or ordered the murders of many, many people, including the man who accidentally killed his son Frank in a tragic car crash. While we may not have sympathy for all of his victims—they were, of course, mostly amoral wiseguys just like him—we should pause to consider the wives and children of those men, who were made to suffer because of Gotti’s brutality.

Some people have openly voiced their displeasure at the Gambino leader’s glorification. Lourdes Lopez, an administrative sales assistant for M&T Mortgage, was appalled by the excessive media coverage of his passing. “He was a murderer, for God’s sake,” she said in the New York Post. Retired New York City Transit Authority worker Bill Gobler had similar feelings. “I don’t consider him a hero. People liked him because of his image, but when you’re killing people, you can’t be a good guy,” he said in the Daily News.

In a certain sense, it was understandable that John Gotti’s death would receive lots of media coverage; after all, the Don had been an immense public figure in New York City. What was baffling, though, was how the recently deceased Gotti suddenly emerged as a paragon of virtue, character and righteous perseverance. He may have been a good father to his children and a loving husband to his wife—none of us are entitled to dispute those claims from his family. To that end, our prayers should be with his relatives, as they struggle through this trying time.

That being said, we must never forget exactly who John Gotti was. His Alger-esque rise to fame and fortune shouldn’t blind us to the reality that the Dapper Don was a really just a depraved gangster. He may have been New York’s favorite criminal, but he is definitely not a New York hero.

Duncan M. Currie ’04, a Crimson editor, is a history concentrator in Leverett House. He is interning at the Manhattan Institute for the summer and celebrating the U.S. soccer team’s success at World Cup 2002.