Even Mob Thinks He's Got It Coming

Much of the underworld thinks the government will finally convict John Gotti, but a few diehards are sure the Teflon Don has an ace up his sleeve.

And while a gangster worth his salt always roots for the bad guys--at trial and even in the movies--some mobsters and associates believe Gotti deserves to lose and hope he is convicted.

Some even say that guilty or not, Gotti loses.

"If he gets acquitted, he's still got troubles," one underworld source observed. "The feds won't let up on him, and he's got a lot of guys upset about what he's been saying behind everyone's backs."

The mainly gloomy assessment stems from the spate of bad news for Gotti since he and his top two associates were arrested 13 months ago and jailed without bail.

•The case, it turned out, is based on hundreds of hours of secretly recorded conversations from the Ravenite Social Club, Gotti's Manhattan headquarters.

•His long-time lawyer, Bruce Cutler, was thrown off the case.

•His handpicked underboss, Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, became a government witness.

"My feeling is, how much of a fight can you still put up, when all the news is so bad," said another underworld source. "Losing Cutler hurts him. I don't know whether Cutler is a good lawyer, but I do know he has been a very good good-luck charm."

"John's got no one to blame but himself," said an associate of Gotti's Gambino crime family. "He said a lot of things a boss should never talk about--murders, Cosa Nostra. He should have never talked at the club; he should have got up and walked around the block."

The Gambino source said many family members and associates are pleased with Gotti's predicament while at the same time worried about what else Gotti said on the tapes, "what other good fellows are in trouble that we don't know about yet."

"Maybe it's about time he got his, always badmouthing everybody behind his back, and and whacking 'made' guys for no reason," the source added, pointing to the killing of mobsters Robert (DiB) DiBernardo, Louis Milito and Louis DiBono, a contractor/partner of Gravano's, was killed in a World Trade Center parking lot on Oct. 4, 1990. The bodies of DiBernardo and Milito were never found.

Both complaints--Gotti's bad-mouthing and hair trigger--are documented in a conversation he had with codefendant Frank (Frankie Loc) LoCascio on Dec. 12, 1989. The subject was murder; the reasons not befitting a Mafia boss.

"When DiB got whacked, they told me a story," said Gotti, with "they" a reference to now dead Gambino capo Angelo Ruggiero, who owed DiBernardo $100,000. "I was in jail when I whacked him. I knew why it was being done. I done it anyway. I allowed it to be done anyway."

In discussing Milito, after LoCascio agreed that he had never heard Milito speak badly about Gotti, Gotti explained why he approved his murder: "I took Sammy's word that he talked behind my back. I took Sammy's word."

Gotti told LoCascio that Gravano "wanted permission" to kill DiBono for cheating him in a business deal. "I saw the papers and everything," said Gotti. "He didn't rob nothing. Know why he's dying? He's gonna die because he refused to come when I called."

Mob hotheads like Gravano and Ruggiero have always killed at the slightest provocation, but big-time mob bosses are supposed to have restraint--and not supposed to bad mouth the hotheads after giving them permission to kill.

"Paul (Castellano, the Gambino boss Gotti allegedly killed) never would have killed a guy for not coming in," said the source. "He wasn't screwing somebody's wife, or ratting anybody out for Christ's sake."

The mob is not a monolith, however, and some gangsters think a gambler like Gotti can never be counted out. He might win on pure luck, or because he's holding a secret card--Gravano.

The latter view holds that Gotti is running his best scam yet--to make the government believe Gravano will take the stand and testify against him when in fact in the end Gravano will say that Gotti is just a peace-loving plumbing salesman.

"I feel that Sammy was put up to do it," said an associate of several mob families.

"(Gotti's) gonna beat this one too," said another. "He's coming home. Past performance means a lot in horse races and trials. Sammy's definitely with the government, but I'm counting on him not being too credible. He killed a lot of people. Him turning around may be the best thing to happen to Gotti."