The Godfather

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Speaker 3 I loved the man,

Speaker 4 but I loathed the life.

Speaker 6 The Gottis, we know what they're all about.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors say my father was the biggest crime boss in the nation.

Speaker 5 An empire of dirty money and power built on racketeering and murders.

Speaker 3 If you really want to know what John Gotti was like,

Speaker 3 you need to talk to my family.

Speaker 3 We lived this life.

Speaker 3 I think I realized early on that my family wasn't like other families. Growing up, my parents tried to hide a lot of things from me, from all of us.

Speaker 3 I think you grow up scared, anxious all the time.

Speaker 7 I used to get up as a young boy and I used to get excited when I would go and see that my father was alive. And I would hear him snore.
I know he made it home.

Speaker 8 We didn't talk back to my father. We didn't ask him, oh, did you kill anyone?

Speaker 7 I didn't know his life.

Speaker 7 I didn't know his lifestyle.

Speaker 10 You know, they're going to try and keep you in jail.

Speaker 7 Honestly, I was just a kid that wanted to love his father.

Speaker 3 The public saw my father right out of Central Casting. He looked the part,

Speaker 3 acted the part.

Speaker 5 He's a rat. He tells lies.

Speaker 3 He was the part.

Speaker 3 The real-life Godfather.

Speaker 3 People treat him like he was the second coming of Christ.

Speaker 3 It was very, very difficult for me to look into these crimes that he was accused of committing.

Speaker 3 I was angry at everybody for lying to me.

Speaker 8 Do I believe now that my father was this big boss? Yes, I do now.

Speaker 3 Should I lie and say I don't love him?

Speaker 3 We loved him.

Speaker 11 Give me a kiss.

Speaker 8 Say thank you, Grandpa.

Speaker 3 And that's really all we should have been held accountable for. We just want to move on.

Speaker 5 John Jr. Gotti is again on trial.

Speaker 5 If convicted, he could face life behind bars.

Speaker 13 Come on, go home and enjoy your families.

Speaker 3 Like my father,

Speaker 7 that's his kid.

Speaker 3 John was a player in that world.

Speaker 14 Guns drawn, New York City police moved in on John Gotti Jr.

Speaker 3 But John is not in that courtroom.

Speaker 3 I believe that it's the last name Gotti.

Speaker 3 It's definitely dad.

Speaker 15 You could be next.

Speaker 3 You could be next. Your father, your mother.

Speaker 3 We shouldn't have to pay. What he did was what he did.

Speaker 11 It does not mean that a child has to answer for a father's sins.

Speaker 3 Now it's time to set the record straight.

Speaker 3 No one knows John Gotti better than his family does. Nobody.

Speaker 3 And we're ready to talk about it. We're ready to talk about him.

Speaker 3 Finally.

Speaker 16 Their father, the godfather, 48 Hours Mystery.

Speaker 18 They are images the public had never seen before.

Speaker 20 The private treasured photographs and home videos belonging to the children of mob boss Jangadi, a man who once ran the largest organized crime syndicate in the country.

Speaker 25 A man convicted of multiple counts of murder.

Speaker 3 You don't want to believe it. And when you love that person, it makes it so much more hard.

Speaker 27 The mafia chieftains' daughters, Victoria and Angel and son Peter, talked openly about the life they had always kept secret.

Speaker 22 And no question was off limits.

Speaker 28 How difficult is it to accept that your own father, either directly or indirectly, killed people?

Speaker 3 When you choose that life, I think you know what you're signing on for. I think he knew going in what was expected of him, what he would have to do, what it would cost him, and I don't think he cared.

Speaker 3 I think that all goes along with that life.

Speaker 32 And why do you call it the life?

Speaker 3 Because mostly it is called the life.

Speaker 31 No one ever says I'm in the mob.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 So is the life.

Speaker 33 John Gotti's youngest daughter Victoria had never spoken about the life publicly.

Speaker 34 But in her recent book, This Family of Mine, which is coming out in paperback this month, she finally talked about what it was really like

Speaker 26 growing up Gotti.

Speaker 31 Why have you decided now to write a tell-on?

Speaker 3 It got personal. I woke up one day and said, enough's enough.
There were so many things that had to be addressed as far as rumors, lies, gossip.

Speaker 26 Victoria talked to her father about the possibility of the book before he died.

Speaker 3 If you ever write that book, he said you write it as your life. And one thing I ask that you do, don't you ever look to make me out to be an altar boy because I wasn't.

Speaker 22 But when Victoria and her siblings were children, it's clear that John Gotti never wanted them to know that side of him.

Speaker 7 He just took everything to another extreme. I remember getting excited about going to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

Speaker 7 He would talk for a half an hour, 45 minutes, about how he just wanted to get them chestnuts. You can't even find roasted chestnuts anymore.
But he was so excited, he would talk like a little kid.

Speaker 8 He was very funny. People don't know that.
He was very funny.

Speaker 24 But mixed in with the fun were the lies.

Speaker 31 What were you told that your father did for a living?

Speaker 3 He told me that he worked with a construction crew. I would ask him where he was going.
He was going off to some building, some school, some office building, something.

Speaker 35 They believed him, but the truth was that all John Gotti had ever wanted to be was a mobster.

Speaker 27 He grew up one of 11 children, raised in Brooklyn by an abusive father and an overwhelmed mother.

Speaker 27 He quickly embraced a life of crime and violence, working for local gangsters and building a rap sheet.

Speaker 3 This is where he came from. These men were the men that were respected.
This was something he saw early on and made up his mind that this was what he was going to do.

Speaker 28 In 1958, the future Don was in a local bar where he met Victoria DiGiorgio.

Speaker 24 He was instantly smitten.

Speaker 19 Their affair produced a daughter, Angel, and in 1962, they were married.

Speaker 37 Gotti didn't earn much as a low-level mobster, and they they struggled.

Speaker 3 They were faced with eviction month after month after month.

Speaker 38 Later that year, Victoria was born.

Speaker 3 Mom went into labor. Unexpectedly, I was early.
Mom, she said, they basically said to your father, you can come back and pick up mother and child when you pay the bill.

Speaker 3 And at this point, they had no monies.

Speaker 3 He comes back late, late that night. literally broke into the hospital.
He scoops me up. He helped my mother down the stairs.
They hobbled out. They had about a good 13-block walk.
It was freezing.

Speaker 3 I mean, they didn't have money for a cab. Nothing, not a bus ride.
And he walked me home, and he, years and years later, you know, claimed that we bonded, you know, during that walk.

Speaker 22 Two years later, the Gotti son John was born, followed by Frankie.

Speaker 33 Despite the needs of his growing family, Gotti spent most of his time out of the house, getting into trouble.

Speaker 36 There was often no money.

Speaker 3 I do remember them fighting a lot when I was growing up, when I was younger. She always was fearful of the uncertainty.

Speaker 10 In 1968, Victoria was just in grade school when her father was convicted for hijacking cargo from Kennedy Airport and then sent to a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania for nearly three years.

Speaker 35 As strange as it sounds, his children had no idea their father was in prison, even when they went to visit him.

Speaker 8 We used to go to prisons to see him, and my uncle would be in the same prison, and we really did did not know that he was in prison.

Speaker 31 Well, how does your mother explain to you where he was?

Speaker 8 She used to tell us he was working. I remember driving to Pennsylvania and there would be the big giant wall and we'd say, you know, why is that wall? Oh, he built that wall.

Speaker 12 I said, wow, he built that big wall.

Speaker 8 Uncle Angelo, too? Yeah, Uncle Angelo, too. We believed it.

Speaker 27 When they were home in Brooklyn, Victoria tried to be just like all the other kids, but at the age of seven, it became painfully clear to her that she just wasn't.

Speaker 3 I went to school and we had an essay, you know, who our heroes were. Most kids chose their fathers.
I chose my father too. And I wrote, my dad is a construction worker and he builds tall buildings.

Speaker 3 And so I took my place in the front of the room and I started to read this report. And there was a young girl in the back and she yelled out, Her father's not, you know, a construction worker.

Speaker 3 Her father's a jailbird. He's in jail.

Speaker 3 I remember just standing there in the front of that room and it was like, wow, you know, what is she talking about?

Speaker 3 But it made sense to me. And I remember the class laughing at me and I got so upset, so nervous, that I just peed on the floor.
And I'll never forget the teacher.

Speaker 3 She made me, in front of the kids, get on my hands and knees and clean up the mess.

Speaker 40 Victoria asked her mother for the truth.

Speaker 3 I said to her something like, is daddy really in jail?

Speaker 31 What did she say?

Speaker 3 She had said to me, Sometimes people do bad things,

Speaker 3 sometimes they need to pay for these things that they do. And I remember looking at her and saying, Where is my father? Is he in jail or is he working?

Speaker 3 And she looked at me and she said, He is in jail.

Speaker 3 Those words, I remember, they just haunted me for days, nights, weeks, months. All I kept hearing was my mother's words: He is in jail.

Speaker 4 And the charade was finally over.

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Speaker 35 Learning that her father was in jail was Victoria Gotti's first indication that he lived a secret life.

Speaker 3 I would lay awake nights and cry a lot thinking, you know, is my dad going to come home? Is he going to go to jail jail again? Is he gonna get killed?

Speaker 39 She was right to be afraid.

Speaker 43 Outside their home, John Gotti lived in a violent world.

Speaker 44 In 1973, he was convicted of attempted murder and went to prison.

Speaker 31 By the time you reached your early teens, your father had been incarcerated for nearly half your life.

Speaker 3 Yes, I loved the man, but I loathed the life.

Speaker 23 When he was released from prison in 1977, John Gotti was officially inducted into the life, becoming a made man in the mafia.

Speaker 3 He had earned his way. He had earned his keep, and that really started his rise in that life.

Speaker 26 Living that life meant more time spent out of the house, either in his headquarters called a social club, or out on the town.

Speaker 6 Gotti's wife, Victoria, didn't like it one bit.

Speaker 8 She would do crazy things, my mother, you know. She, you know, one time she sent his omoi to his club.

Speaker 37 To say not come home?

Speaker 8 Yeah, here's your clothes, take them.

Speaker 22 When they weren't fighting, the Gottis were enjoying the fruits of his newfound status.

Speaker 33 They were now living at this house in Howard Beach, Queens.

Speaker 22 Angel was 18 when she first got an inkling of how others really saw her father.

Speaker 8 And I was dating someone and he was from Ozone Park and he said to me,

Speaker 8 you know, your father is really, he's feared.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 8 I didn't understand it. And, you know, I didn't, we didn't see that.

Speaker 27 All the Gotti children, even Peter the youngest, would have a moment when they discovered their father had a reputation.

Speaker 7 Because I was 12 years old at the time. I remember I had a crush, school crush, on a young girl.

Speaker 7 And so I I go and I ask her out and she said, I would love to go with you, but my dad said I'm not allowed. Your family are very bad people.
And when I had gotten home,

Speaker 7 I started to cry.

Speaker 7 My mother told me, Peter, I'm telling you right now, your father loves you more than life.

Speaker 7 You forget all the nonsense and things they're saying. You remember that man would give his life for you.

Speaker 7 Okay?

Speaker 7 And don't ever forget that.

Speaker 22 But John Gotti couldn't protect his family from tragedy.

Speaker 46 In March 1980, 12-year-old Frankie, who Gotti affectionately called Frankie Boy,

Speaker 38 was struck by a car while riding a minibike.

Speaker 8 My sister called me and said, Frankie Boy got hit by a car.

Speaker 8 So I just have to go and check on Frankie Boy.

Speaker 8 And then we went there and he was, you know, laying in the street in front of my friend's house.

Speaker 26 Frankie died later that night.

Speaker 3 Dad walked in a couple hours later, and then he sat down, and I remember he cradled his head in his hands.

Speaker 3 Are you lost?

Speaker 35 The driver of the car was the Gotti's backyard neighbor, John Favara.

Speaker 30 Victoria claims Farvara hit Frankie because he was driving erratically.

Speaker 3 He didn't stop. He had gone to the end of the block and the neighbors were screaming.
And he got out of the car and he was very upset and he started to scream.

Speaker 3 What the F was he doing in the street to begin with? Whose F N kid is this?

Speaker 35 Police called it an accident.

Speaker 17 But Victoria was furious with what she says.

Speaker 4 She heard about Favara's callous behavior, behavior, and she spoke to her father about it.

Speaker 3 I looked at him and I said, you're supposed to be a tough guy.

Speaker 3 How can you let somebody kill my brother?

Speaker 3 And he just looked at me and he said, you know,

Speaker 3 honey, he said it was an accident. And I said, no, it wasn't.

Speaker 3 And dad didn't want to believe that. He looked at me and he said,

Speaker 3 you're wrong.

Speaker 4 You're angry?

Speaker 6 You're wrong.

Speaker 3 For the first time, I was so angry at my father that if ever I could have him be this man that they said he was,

Speaker 9 it would have been that moment because

Speaker 31 you wanted revenge.

Speaker 3 I wanted revenge. I was so

Speaker 3 upset.

Speaker 23 The tragedy sent their mother into a suicidal depression.

Speaker 8 It destroyed us.

Speaker 31 You said your mother was practically in her bed for a year.

Speaker 39 A year.

Speaker 23 That July, John Gotti tried to brighten her spirits by taking the family to Florida.

Speaker 17 Just three days later, John Favara was abducted as he left his job at a furniture store.

Speaker 23 Witnesses say several men hit him over the head, forced him into a van, and drove off.

Speaker 33 Favara was never heard from again.

Speaker 31 Four months after your brother was killed, John Favara disappeared.

Speaker 32 Right.

Speaker 29 Is your father responsible?

Speaker 44 No.

Speaker 31 How can you be so sure? Did you ask him?

Speaker 3 I'm positive he wasn't responsible for you.

Speaker 31 I just can't imagine that this incident, this horrible, tragic accident.

Speaker 3 Do I think his, do I think his...

Speaker 31 Devastated your family and your father did not want to exact revenge.

Speaker 13 You did, and you were a teenager.

Speaker 6 Your mother attempted suicide three times.

Speaker 31 I'm with you.

Speaker 3 I'm with you. I couldn't understand why either.
And it angered me.

Speaker 31 Did it ever enter your mind that perhaps your father was behind that disappearance? Did you ever think?

Speaker 8 Sometimes, I'm being honest, sometimes.

Speaker 33 Victoria believes her father's mob associates took it upon themselves to exact revenge.

Speaker 3 Do I believe that someone in my father's circle did this? I do. Somebody did it.
Somebody did it. And they thought they'd be celebrated.

Speaker 19 Favara's body has never been found, and police never made an arrest in the case.

Speaker 21 In the years after Frankie's death, the Gottis struggled to get back to a normal life.

Speaker 38 Victoria got married.

Speaker 3 I think I was just a kid in a hurry to get out of my dad's house quickly.

Speaker 31 You had 1,500 guests? Yes.

Speaker 40 1,500. Yeah.

Speaker 31 There's a lot of thank you notes.

Speaker 3 A lot of people degreed. A lot of people degree.
I didn't know half of the people at my wedding, more than half. I didn't know them.
They weren't there for me. they were there for dad.

Speaker 3 And I remember thinking then,

Speaker 3 something's up. Something's up.

Speaker 21 Little did Victoria know, but the groundwork for her father's ascension to boss of bosses was being laid.

Speaker 22 She danced that night not just with her father,

Speaker 17 but with the future godfather.

Speaker 3 That's what he wanted for himself. He was going to become a leader.
He wasn't going to be a follower. He was going to rise to the top.
He was going to make it.

Speaker 37 On December 16th, 1985, at 5.25 p.m.

Speaker 33 In a hail of bullets, his fortunes and the fortunes of his unsuspecting family changed forever.

Speaker 15 Big Paul Castellano, reputed godfather of the Gambino family, was on his way to a Manhattan steakhouse.

Speaker 39 It was widely reported that Gotti orchestrated one of the most famous mob murders in New York City history.

Speaker 26 The hit on his boss Paul Castellano and Gambino number two man, Thomas Balatti.

Speaker 48 After Castellano's murder, Gotti showed up at one of the most important mafia hangouts in New York and people were kissing his hand and people were going over and fawning over him.

Speaker 21 Selwyn Robb has been a reporter covering the mob for more than 40 years and is a CBS News consultant.

Speaker 27 Within days of the murder, says Rob, it was no secret John Gotti was the new godfather.

Speaker 38 But back in Howard Beach, Queens, the family had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 8 And my mother said, you're not going to believe this. And she was laughing.
And she said, they have your father now as the boss

Speaker 8 and I said the boss and she said the boss of the Gambino crime family and we all started laughing we really thought it was funny when did you learn Peter that your father ran the Gambino crime family in 1985 I had gone to school one morning Peter was in the fifth grade And we're sitting in class and current events came around.

Speaker 7 And there are my friends, kids I grew up with. They would parade up to the class, in front of the class, and talk about my dad as if I wasn't even sitting in the room.

Speaker 26 The kids were all talking about this newspaper story.

Speaker 7 John Gotti's the new boss of the Gambino.

Speaker 46 That's what the article said.

Speaker 7 Needless to say, I went on home and I cut that article out of the newspaper without my mother knowing, without my dad knowing, without anybody knowing. And I still,

Speaker 7 to this very day, have that article.

Speaker 43 Even before John Gotti became the boss of the Gambino crime family, he had brought his oldest son, John Jr., into the family business.

Speaker 17 It was a family secret not even his mother knew about.

Speaker 3 John saw, you know, dad driving the fancy car, you know, and having these guys look up to him like he was God.

Speaker 19 And on Christmas Eve, 1988, in a secret ceremony, John Jr.

Speaker 23 became a made man.

Speaker 3 I have to wonder if John saw this as a way to just get our father's approval or to

Speaker 3 somehow make him proud.

Speaker 35 The family business was doing pretty well.

Speaker 22 According to investigators, during the 80s, the Gambino crime family grossed about $500 million a year, and Gotti himself was getting a pretty big cut.

Speaker 17 The family says they didn't see it.

Speaker 3 He didn't move. He didn't go out and buy a huge house somewhere.
I'm not saying he didn't have it, but he didn't spend it.

Speaker 23 Investigators say

Speaker 10 between $10 to $12 million a year in cash.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And investigators also say that my family, he left us $200 million buried somewhere in the backyard.
I'm still trying to find that money.

Speaker 20 But one look at John Gotti told another story.

Speaker 48 He was now wearing custom-made silk suits, monogram socks, only cashmere coats. He was now going to the chic restaurants in New York, nightclubs.

Speaker 7 He loved to gamble.

Speaker 7 His way of bonding with me was to watch a ball game with me. Here I was, seven, eight years old.
He's asking my opinion on who I liked to win off college football game.

Speaker 40 Did you help him win?

Speaker 7 Obviously not, because he didn't win much.

Speaker 17 John Gotti made sure his family life was always separate from his work life.

Speaker 8 It sounds odd to people. They don't understand it, but we were not like the sopranos.
We didn't sit at the dinner table and, you know, curse or say things, you know, what do you do?

Speaker 8 Did you kill this one? We didn't do that. We didn't ask him those questions.

Speaker 22 But if the family didn't want to ask him any questions, the government certainly did.

Speaker 18 In the first five years of his reign, John Ghatti was put on trial three times for assault, for racketeering, and for ordering the shooting of a union boss.

Speaker 15 John Gon set this up.

Speaker 6 Three trials to find him not guilty.

Speaker 6 Gotti beat the rap each time.

Speaker 44 Law enforcement says he bribed a juror,

Speaker 20 intimidated a witness, and had a crooked cop on the inside.

Speaker 39 Gotti's celebrity grew with each victory.

Speaker 3 John Gotti, John Gotti, this, John Gotti, that, John Gotti. They just couldn't seem to get enough of him.

Speaker 6 John Gotti became a celebrity, attracting celebrity.

Speaker 24 In an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, the Gambino godfather met the Hollywood godfather.

Speaker 16 I'm going to make him an offer again with you.

Speaker 34 And invited him over to his social club across the street.

Speaker 3 Brando was telling jokes all night and doing magic tricks. Dad was doing what he does best, telling his stories, and they just enjoyed each other's company.

Speaker 10 John Gotti's growing fame was a double-edged sword.

Speaker 21 He had become the most notorious mobster since Al Capone

Speaker 35 and put himself squarely in the sights of the FBI.

Speaker 3 This is going to be really bad. I was always terrified.

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Speaker 11 John Gotti is still very much a part of the universe of organized.

Speaker 14 John Gotti has achieved folk heroes. John Gotti will undoubtedly continue to be a man under close scrutiny by police and federal prosecutors.

Speaker 3 I think he saw there was no happy ending. I think he knew that one day he was either going to spend the rest of his life in jail or he was going to end up dead.

Speaker 46 John Gotti knew the FBI was never going to let up. He suspected they had bugged his headquarters in Little Italy, the Raven Knight Social Club.

Speaker 3 So he would get up and walk outside. He didn't want to sit in a place that he thought maybe someone was listening.

Speaker 31 Someone was listening, obviously.

Speaker 52 You tell this punk.

Speaker 43 The FBI had place bugs everywhere, in the club, in the apartment Gotti occasionally used upstairs, and even on the street.

Speaker 37 They gathered hundreds of hours of recordings of mob business.

Speaker 35 Those tapes led to Gotti's arrest in December of 1990.

Speaker 27 He faced a litany of charges, including the murder of Paul Castellano.

Speaker 48 There's no question the government had a strong case. It was his own words.
He talks about five murders, about Castellano, Bilatti.

Speaker 48 He talks about three other people and the reasons why they were killed.

Speaker 37 But the government didn't just have tapes, they had a star witness, Gotti's right-hand man, his underboss in the Gambino crime family, Sammy the Bull Gravano.

Speaker 24 Sammy Gravano, a self-confessed mafia hitman who admitted to taking part in 19 murders, turned on his former boss and made a deal with the government.

Speaker 9 He took the stand and told the court that John Gotti planned and organized the hit on Paul Castellano, and that he and John Gotti were actually there when it went down.

Speaker 3 Sammy's told a lot of lies.

Speaker 13 Did your father orchestrate the assassination of Paul Castellano?

Speaker 3 Did he orchestrate it? Absolutely not. No one man is that powerful in this organization.
Not one man.

Speaker 17 In her book, Victoria claims the assassination was a plan agreed upon by mafia bosses.

Speaker 3 I'm not arguing that he had no partner, and I'm not arguing and saying that he wasn't the boss after that. He was.

Speaker 37 But you can't, nobody can stand there and tell me that he did it alone but that's not what the jury found on april 2nd 1992 john gotti was found guilty on all counts and he was the only person ever tried and convicted for the murder of paul castellana

Speaker 28 in 1992 as a local reporter in new york i talked to victoria just hours after her father was convicted

Speaker 14 my father is the last of the maheans They don't make men like him anymore.

Speaker 3 They never will.

Speaker 3 I knew that I'd lost my father. I knew that that was it.
It was as if somebody had told me my father had died, and that's how I felt that day.

Speaker 17 John Gotti was sent to Marion Federal Prison in southern Illinois for life.

Speaker 7 The man was never coming home. I believed the day would never come where I would be able to hug my father again.

Speaker 7 You know, I had trained myself to believe that that's it. I'm going to visit my father behind glass for the rest of my life.

Speaker 22 Peter Gotti was 18 years old when his father was put in solitary confinement.

Speaker 7 My dad had 6,000 meals alone.

Speaker 7 He never ate with another, never

Speaker 7 meals in his cell.

Speaker 7 And again, I'm not justifying anything. They're saying is he paid.
He paid. He paid the piper.

Speaker 40 I'm curious to know why you did not follow in your father's footsteps.

Speaker 40 You're the only Gotti man.

Speaker 7 to not do so. Did it ever dawn on you that my dad shielded me from it? And my brother enforced it even more.

Speaker 23 He did everything he can.

Speaker 7 He did everything he can to prevent me. Everything he can.

Speaker 7 He tried to screen every person I'm socializing with.

Speaker 35 At the same time he was protecting Peter, John Jr. was rising in the ranks of the Gambino crime family, becoming the acting boss when his father went to prison.

Speaker 31 You did not know your own brother was in the mafia.

Speaker 8 No, I did not. No.

Speaker 31 When did you learn that your brother was in the mafia?

Speaker 8 When he got arrested.

Speaker 21 John Jr.

Speaker 37 was arrested in 1998 for extortion, loan sharking, and gambling.

Speaker 43 His mother was caught completely by surprise.

Speaker 24 For 10 years, her oldest son had been a mobster and then acting boss of the Gambino crime family, and she never knew it.

Speaker 3 You know, John is her life, and she was not standing for it. She had such a distaste for the fact that dad was involved and now her son.

Speaker 21 Mrs.

Speaker 35 Gotti believed her husband had lied to her, betrayed her trust, and put John Jr.

Speaker 27 in grave danger.

Speaker 8 She wasn't speaking to my father when he was in prison for a while, and it caused a lot of problems for all of us.

Speaker 49 John Jr.

Speaker 27 was in grave danger.

Speaker 39 He was facing 20 years in prison.

Speaker 22 He was thinking of making a deal.

Speaker 22 In this prison tape, recorded in February of 1999, obtained by 48 Hours, John Jr.

Speaker 35 is asking his father's permission to take a plea.

Speaker 27 After some discussion, the godfather reluctantly consented.

Speaker 49 But John Jr.

Speaker 22 wanted more from his father. According to Victoria, he also asked for permission to quit the mob.

Speaker 27 And Victoria says her mother decided to get involved.

Speaker 3 Mom goes to see dad and mom threatens dad.

Speaker 3 And she says,

Speaker 3 either you release him, or I'll never speak to you again. I won't be here anymore.
You'll never see me in your life again.

Speaker 22 When John Jr.

Speaker 35 went to prison, Victoria claims he left the mafia with his father's permission.

Speaker 18 Prosecutors don't believe it.

Speaker 27 But her brother wasn't the only one, Victoria says, had secretly joined the mob.

Speaker 13 Your husband was a Cambino member.

Speaker 3 Certainly was.

Speaker 30 It was yet another secret, she says, her father had kept from her.

Speaker 31 Were you angry with your father?

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was angry at my ex-husband. I was angry at my father.
I was angry at everybody. This isn't what I wanted for my life.
This isn't what I wanted for my kids.

Speaker 27 But her anger would fade with time as her father grew gravely ill.

Speaker 3 He just looked at me and said, I'm never going to be around forever. I said to me, I know, dad, you know, whatever.
But then he looked at me again and he said,

Speaker 3 I think it's time.

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Speaker 3 When the funeral began, the mourners were all up and down the streets, holding signs, crying, kids, old men, young women, young men, everywhere.

Speaker 3 The funeral cars, the flower cars, the ceremony, the cemetery.

Speaker 25 Ten years into his life sentence, John Joseph Gotti, the godfather of the Gambino crime family, father of five and grandfather of 15, died of cancer.

Speaker 21 The last days of his life were spent in a prison hospital with his son Peter at his side.

Speaker 7 He never admitted or denied anything. That's what was funny about his personality.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 7 his was a

Speaker 7 you mind your business type of personality.

Speaker 7 Let me pay with God.

Speaker 7 And he did. He did.
In the end, he did.

Speaker 10 To his family, John Gadi was a fallen hero.

Speaker 24 To the public, he was the last Don.

Speaker 39 But for the mob, he was a disaster.

Speaker 10 At the end of his reign, the Gambino crime family was decimated.

Speaker 4 More than half of the leadership was either dead or behind bars.

Speaker 31 I think about the devastation that this life has had on your family, on the Gotti men.

Speaker 49 Yes.

Speaker 31 Your father, your brother, three uncles

Speaker 13 are all incarcerated. Yep.

Speaker 3 And a husband.

Speaker 10 And the life continued to take its toll on the Gotti family. The federal government put John Gotti Jr.
on trial four times in less than five years without getting a conviction.

Speaker 10 The last time, in December 2009, he was accused of participating in or authorizing three murders.

Speaker 35 Victoria said the government's case was about the past, not the present.

Speaker 3 It is my father, always all over again, day in, day out. It's about John Gotti.
That's what it's about.

Speaker 6 You really don't want me to answer that.

Speaker 10 The Gotti family claimed the government was persecuting John Jr. and that he quit the mob years ago.
The government said John Jr. is a killer and that he did not quit.

Speaker 3 They don't want to believe. John's attitude is, I paid for what I did in that life.
I gave them my pounds of flesh.

Speaker 32 Hey, John, how does it feel to be free?

Speaker 4 In the end, the government could not convince a jury.

Speaker 10 It was deadlocked, and John Gotti Jr., no longer facing any charges, was free to go home to his family.

Speaker 12 John, what are you doing tonight?

Speaker 3 Kiss my kids. Kiss my kids.

Speaker 3 How you feel?

Speaker 32 There was a time when he thought the life was all glamour, but not anymore.

Speaker 11 I try to explain to my sons, I say, you have to understand that price that comes with that.

Speaker 11 I mean, most people don't know this, that my father died choking on his own vomit and blood, handcuffed to a bed in solitary confinement.

Speaker 11 I have to explain that to my sons. This is the end result.

Speaker 37 Still, John Jr.

Speaker 10 hopes the next generation of Gottis takes after their grandfather in some ways.

Speaker 11 He's a good man to emulate, just not the lifestyle. If you could take

Speaker 11 all the positive characteristics of my father and you could emulate those,

Speaker 11 his charismatic charm, his intelligence, his mannerisms, why not?

Speaker 49 Sure.

Speaker 32 Happy Father's Day, Mother and Death.

Speaker 10 Like John Jr., Victoria is determined her children will not follow their father and grandfather into the mafia.

Speaker 3 If they want to really utterly break my heart, they can do that. They know that.
But they know better, believe me.

Speaker 23 Give me one, Venta. grandpa.

Speaker 24 John Gotti's grandchildren have decided, it seems, that they don't want to remember the godfather, just their grandfather.

Speaker 53 I love my grandfather to death. He taught me everything I need to know.

Speaker 18 John, Victoria's middle child,

Speaker 29 named after his grandfather, made him a promise just before he died.

Speaker 37 So law school may be in your future.

Speaker 53 Maybe. You know what? I promised my grandfather a long time ago that I would do it.

Speaker 53 You know, even when I wrote a personal letter to him on his funeral, I put it in his pocket that I would do it for him.

Speaker 21 Carmine, Victoria's oldest son, is an aspiring musician who wrote this song about his family.

Speaker 31 So now you're working on realizing your dreams.

Speaker 45 Yes, I mean, I've been recording now in the studio for the past two and a half, almost three years.

Speaker 45 I

Speaker 11 it's been a lot of work.

Speaker 45 Five days a week throughout the year. Everything's coming together.
It's bad enough they love to throw away the key on anyone in my family like they did to JG, JG.

Speaker 43 John Gotti, JG, John Gotti, The Mob Life,

Speaker 26 The Death of a Brother,

Speaker 9 The Hit on Paul Castellano,

Speaker 35 The Disappearance of a Neighbor,

Speaker 31 The Trials, Prison, brothers and husbands in jail.

Speaker 17 At the end, Peter Gotti says, his father was refusing medical care.

Speaker 7 And I believe in my heart that it went around in full circle because I believe in the end

Speaker 7 that he was punishing himself

Speaker 7 for the things he may have done. And I feel, I feel for anyone if there was pain caused by him or not,

Speaker 7 I feel regret and sadness for that.

Speaker 28 For Victoria, the circle closed at her father's funeral.

Speaker 3 I remember sitting there as the last to get up.

Speaker 3 And I remember getting so angry and so angry and so angry. And just saying to him, what was this all for?

Speaker 3 What did you do?

Speaker 3 Look at you. Look at the life that you lived.
Look at us.

Speaker 3 You loved us most in the world. Look at us.

Speaker 3 What was this all for?

Speaker 3 And I walked out of there so angry, and I'm still angry. I don't understand it, and I guess I never will.

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Speaker 1 We don't know what we're looking for.

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