How did John Gotti die?
John Gotti died in a prison hospital in Missouri on June 10, 2002, while serving a life sentence for multiple charges, including murder, racketeering, and other organized crime-related activities. The mob boss’s health had been deteriorating in the years leading up to his death. In 1998, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and while it was treated, it returned and in 2002, he died in a federal prison hospital.
In the news report of his death, the Washington Post observed: “Gotti became the face of organized crime in a way no one had since Al Capone in 1920s Chicago. Like Capone, Gotti loved nightlife, enjoyed dining in expensive restaurants and mingling with sports and entertainment celebrities. He made his nightly rounds in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz,” they wrote in 2002. “Gotti gained fame and a degree of public admiration despite the fact that he did little to hide a vicious and murderous side. After all, fear is good for discipline. Federal wiretaps recorded hours of Gotti’s rantings to associates about the need to kill various people.”
Known for his charismatic persona and his penchant for snappy dressing—including hand-painted ties and coordinating pocket squares from the designer Brioni—Gotti quickly became a tabloid sensation (even though a spokesperson for the brand told the New York Times that Gotti had never been in their store).
“These guys craft an image,” said Fred Martens, former director of the Pennsylvania Organized Crime Commission,” said in the piece, published in 2002. “You have to remember that symbols are especially important to a man who is doing filthy, repulsive stuff on a daily basis but can fool the community with a clean-as-the-driven-snow façade.”
Facilitating the murder of Castellano would be the act that put Gotti on top, but it was also ultimately his demise. Having placed hidden recording devices in Gotti’s Ravenite social club, federal agents captured audio of his discussions and meetings, which they later used against him. On December 11, 1990, the FBI arrested Gotti and fellow Gambino members, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano and Frank Locascio on multiple charges.
Gotti himself was charged with five murders, including the slayings of Castellano and his close associate Thomas Bilotti, as well as with racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal gambling, bribery, tax evasion, obstruction of justice and loan sharking. Gotti had previously earned the nickname “Teflon Don,” because he was acquitted in three different, consecutive criminal trials between 1986 and 1990.
These final charges stuck, however. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury took only a day and a half to decide Gotti’s guilt. In 1992, the mob boss was sentenced life in prison on the racketeering and murder counts, with concurrent maximum 10-year sentences on the other counts. He was also fined $250,000. Several years into his sentence, Gotti developed throat cancer and died a decade into his sentence.
At his funeral, the New York Times reported that “it was a pageant of pomp and excess. Nineteen flower cars, 22 black limousines, hundreds of private cars — and at least four news helicopters—wended through, and above, the Howard Beach and Ozone Park sections of Queens to St. John’s Cemetery in Middle Village. Clusters of admirers in jeans and T-shirts stood along the route holding candles, as scores more waited on the manicured lawns outside the Resurrection Mausoleum as Mr. Gotti’s burnished bronze coffin was carried in through a sea of hefty, bull-necked men.
“We all loved him; he was the greatest,” JoyceAnn Dominico, a former hospital worker told the paper at the time. “He was kind to all of us.” An onlooker questioned: “Why is it that a gangster is so elevated with a funeral like this? It’s like the movement of the kingdom. Does this make any sense?”
Got Gotti is streaming now on Netflix.
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