John Gotti Sr.'s Rise to Power | Narco Wars: The Mob
[music playing] - It's snowing out, a little snowing, white Christmas. - I know it's going to happen any day now.
So the plan that they came up with was rather ingenious. They decided to take Paul Castellano out by luring him to one of his favorite restaurants with captains that he absolutely trusted. Their scheme was all the shooters-- and they had many of them because they wanted to be able to pull this off-- were going to be in trench coats, Russian hats. You see that a lot in New York and it's just so nothing, no one's really going to pay attention to anything. If anything, they'll focus on, well, it was a guy with a trench coat and a Russian hat, I can't tell you anything else about him. One of the busiest sections of midtown Manhattan, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, around the holidays.
So John Gotti who was in the car up the corner with Sammy the Bull. He hated Paul so much that he wanted to see him laying in the street.
I happened to be with another guy. I was at dinner at his house sitting at the kitchen table, and he had a little television on the table. And while I was sitting eating, we get some 911 texts on our beepers. Back in those days it was beepers. And I kept getting them, 911, 911. And behind the 911, I'm getting 98. That means come to the club on 98 Street, the Bergin. So I know something happened. It's all over the news. It's flashed everywhere that Paul Castellano was hit in front of Sparks Steak House.
Big Paul Castellano, reputed godfather of the Gambino family, was on his way to a Manhattan steak house. As he stepped from his black Lincoln, three men wearing fur hats and trench coats suddenly appeared, pulled guns, pumped six bullets into Castellano, and six into his top capo, Thomas Belotti, and then calmly walked away.
I was upstairs in my room, and all of a sudden on the news I'm hearing Paul Castellano, mob boss, is killed outside Sparks Steak House. And I'm thinking wow, who could have done this?
After the hit, Sammy Gravano and John Gotti drove the car down the street, and they slowed up and looked at the bodies and kept on going. [police chatter]
Because he was a gangster. And he wanted to be there and see it for his own eyes. And then John was the boss.
The old time mob bosses, you see, you know, they ruled with an iron fist covered with a velvet glove. Well, Gotti saw no need for the glove, that's what it came down to. This was a hostile takeover in every sense of the word.
- After he was killed and John became the boss, all the heroin dealers that were around John all got straightened out.
Gotti was a boss who reflected the times. He was always grabbing and reaching for more and more.
- So by the time we reach about 1986, 1987, we expand the heroin business into the cocaine business. I have Colombian connections. So we're coming in from Colombia, there's loads coming in from Miami, coming in from Detroit.
The allure was money, and very easy money. If you've got the connections, it's about the logistics. It was money.
So we go out to the Hamptons, Fire Island, party, drink, broads. Champagne flowing from the morning till night. Listen, when you have keys to the city like John Gotti did. He was arrogant, he didn't care that he broke every rule.
You know this is supposed to be Cosa Nostra, our thing. When John Gotti took over, it was no longer our thing, it was my thing.
His transformation was like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. All the sudden he's wearing $3,000 ties, and the cocoon opens, and out comes the Dapper Don.
He's out and about. He's good with a quip and a sound bite.
Why don't you just behave yourself?
I'm behaving myself.
You're not behaving yourself.
John Gotti changes the whole dynamic of organized crime. No longer the old Sicilian style, make money not headlines, stay in the shadows. The idea was what's the point of being a gangster if nobody knows where you are?
Every 4th of July, he throws a free fireworks bash for the neighborhood. When police have tried to stop it, the crowds have driven them back. Gotti is somewhat of a local hero here.
Ironically, the neighborhood thinks John Gotti is keeping the drug dealers out of here. Yet John Gotti is a drug dealer. But he's not the guy peddling it on the street, right? So it's the perception, he's saving us from drug dealers. No, he's not.
Gotti was every day in your face, look at me, I'm a gangster doing this. And that drives law enforcement. [music playing]