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You Don't Want Junior Gotti Mad at You
By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 6, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 6, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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If you have ever thought that the language in The Sopranos or The Godfather or any mob movie was made up, we urge you to read about the secret prison tape of John Gotti Jr. ranting and raving about, oh, wanting to kill his uncles. While Gangland News had these tapes where Gotti complains about uncles Peter and Ricahrd exclusive back in 2004, the NY Times had a short and sweet excerpt:
“I’ve made a pact,” Mr. Gotti told John Ruggiero, a member of the Gambino family, during a September 2003 conversation secretly recorded by the F.B.I. at the federal prison in Ray Brook, N.Y. “I made a pact with myself one night in my bed, on my father’s and brother’s grave. I will beat them down like a two-dollar French hooker.
“I never want to go back to those people again,” Mr. Gotti said on the recording. “If I go back there, I got to hurt some of them, you understand me?” He added that he would “crack their skulls” with “two padlocks in my hands.”
There's nothing like swearing on your loved ones' graves that you'll beat down other relatives "like a two dollar French hooker." Also in the tapes: Junior says he wants to go to Montreal, because living in the NYC area would mean too much violence: “If my family wants to come with me, I, I’d love to have them, but if they don’t, then it’s see ya’s later, I’m gone. ’Cause if I stay here now, it’s over for me. I stay here, I got to start killing people." You cannot make this stuff up.
These tapes are being played as the government continues to try to prosecute Gotti for racketeering. The government is attempting to prove that Gotti never left the mob, as he claims he did in 1999, so the five-year statute of limitations never expired. Previous trials ended in mistrials, such as in 2005 and earlier this year.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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