John Gotti and his longtime consigliere Frank Locascio were partners in crime for much of their lives and seemed loyal almost to the end.  

But five years ago, when both were doing life for murder and racketeering, the feds say, Gotti asked the Aryan Brotherhood to kill Locascio because he thought Frankie Loc had been disloyal.

Now, with Gotti in his grave, Locascio is striking back – claiming that the Dapper Don threatened to kill Locascio's lawyer if he didn't cut short his cross-examination of mob turncoat Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano (right) when he and Gotti went to trial in 1992.

Locascio’s allegation is contained in court papers filed quietly with Judge I. Leo Glasser that seek a new trial for the 70-year-old Gambino family gangster on the grounds that Gotti’s death threats prevented Locascio’s lawyer Anthony Cardinale from putting on the best defense, sources said.

Among other things, sources said, Locascio claims that Cardinale failed to press Gravano about Locascio’s lack of involvement in a conspiracy to murder soldier Louis DiBono, a 63-year-old 310-pound contractor who was shot to death in an underground parking garage at the World Trade Center on Oct. 4, 1990.

DiBono’s killing was one of five murders for which Gotti was convicted at the 1992 trial, but the only one for which Locascio was found guilty, and the reason why he was sentenced to life. 

Gravano wanted to whack DiBono in a dispute over construction spoils, but Gotti

ultimately ordered it, he explained to Locascio (right) in a memorable FBI tape recording, because DiBono had refused to show up at the Ravenite social club for a meet as instructed.

“He didn’t rob nothing,” Gotti told Locascio. “Know why he’s dying? He’s gonna die because he refused to come in when I called. He didn’t do nothing else wrong. He’s gonna get killed because he disobeyed coming.”

During the same Dec. 12, 1989 discussion, basically a gripe session in which Locascio listened to Gotti rant about Gravano’s greed, Gotti also admitted ordering the murders of two other Gambino mobsters three years earlier.

Sources say the thrust of Locascio’s claim is that Gotti dictated the defense strategy, which was designed to protect Gotti at all costs, and that the death threats rendered Cardinale ineffective as a matter of law.

This would hardly be the first time Gotti has threatened an attorney. During his 1986 racketeering trial, as Gotti recounted later, he threatened Barry Slotnick for suggesting a legal strategy that departed from Gotti’s “all for one” defense approach, with Gotti being the only “one.” In 1989, he was overheard threatening to throw Gerald Shargel down an elevator shaft when he wrongly suspected that the attorney had leaked information to Gang Land about the inner workings of his crime family.

During fiery closing arguments to the jury, Cardinale argued that Locascio’s

mere presence during allegedly criminal conversations should not have been enough to indict him, let alone convict him, of any crimes.

But much of Cardinale’s summation, accompanied by approving nods and smiles from Gotti, was a blistering attack against lead prosecutor John Gleeson whom he charged with putting together a case that was “nothing but a glorified frameup.”

“What colors and shapes this prosecution is this overriding, overpowering desire and effort on Mr. Gleesons’s part to get John Gotti at any cost, to do whatever it takes to win,” he said.

Cardinale, a Boston-based attorney, could not be reached for comment. His co-counsel, John W. Mitchell, said: “I never heard anything like that (a death threat by Gotti).”

Thomas Harvey, one of several attorneys working on the Locascio appeal, refused to confirm or deny that papers have been filed, as did Mark Feldman, the head of the organized crime section of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office.

Several sources confirmed that Harvey has been working for Locascio for more than a year and filed an appeal, which was ordered sealed, about a month ago. 

“For many years,” said one source, “Locascio and his family have felt he got a raw deal, but the old man resisted. He just couldn’t bring himself to take the plunge and accuse Gotti of screwing him. After Gotti died, he caved.”

Watching the murder of capo Ralphie Cifaretto and its gruesome aftermath on "The Sopranos" this week, Gang Land couldn't help but think of “Murder Machine,” the book Gene Mustain and I wrote about Roy DeMeo, boss of a gruesome mob crew that dismembered its victims to make them “disappear.”

Apparently, I wasn't the only one.  

“This was the real deal,” said Allen Rucker, a friend of the creator of the HBO show and author of “The Sopranos: A Family History.”  

“It all happened,” Rucker told The New York Post. “The Murder Machine was a Brooklyn crew that killed hundreds of people in a place called the ‘Horror Hotel.’ They hacked them up, then sent them out in dump trucks.”

Actually, they used garbage trucks. And the Brooklyn crew was known as the DeMeo crew. And the place they dismembered bodies was an apartment next to a bar called the Gemini Lounge. “Murder Machine” was the title we came up with for our book. And it was one of our informants, speaking in “Murder Machine,” who likened the apartment to a “horror hotel – you checked in, but you never checked out."

Well, that's Hollywood.

Anyway, as for the surprise death of Ralphie, it breathed some new life into the show, which had seemed more like a daytime soap than an award winning series about gangsters the last few weeks.

Nothing like a little dismemberment to get everyone’s attention.

And in a case of life imitating art imitating life, the feds say the late Michael (Big Mike) Squicciarini, a hulking enforcer for the fictitious Garden State mob in two episodes of "The Sopranos" in 2000, was a real life wannabe wiseguy who took part in a 1992 mob hit.

The slaying involved New Jersey’s own DeCavalcante family, many of whom feel the hit HBO drama is drawn from their misadventures 

Squicciarini, who spent five years in a New Jersey state prison in the 1980’s, played an undisclosed role in the killing of a drug dealer in a Brooklyn social club, according to court papers in the upcoming racketeering trial of five DeCavalcante mobsters and associates.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Hot off the presses! It's here, the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do! Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June. Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

With a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga – from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall and right on up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

    Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books that was published in December. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.