Mickey Rourke's Mob Mania
Mickey Rourke, Mafia groupie? In a remarkable coincidence, two new books detail the tough-guy star's infatuation with Gambino-family mobsters, including two generations of the Gottis and legendary thug Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo.
While Victoria Gotti reports in "This Family of Mine" how Rourke spent the night of Jan. 19, 1996, drinking brandy with John "Junior" Gotti as the mob scion waited to be arrested by the FBI, Gerald Posner reveals in "Miami Babylon" that Rourke's mob mania began many years earlier.
"Ever since Rourke made 'The Pope of Greenwich Village' [1984], he had been fascinated with the Mafia," Posner writes.
Rourke created his own crew in a "male-bonding ceremony" in Los Angeles with 13 friends who swore allegiance to one another. Each of Rourke's "brothers" got a tattoo of a shamrock on his left wrist, his initials in Gaelic script and the number of his position in Rourke's hierarchy, Posner writes.
Miami club owner Gary James was No. 6. "Mickey had flown James to New York where they had dinner with Gotti mob captains at an Upper East Side restaurant, Da Noi," according to "Miami Babylon."
"When John Gotti went on trial in the spring of 1992, Rourke sat in the front row with the Gotti family to support him. He told reporters that he and Gotti were friends . . . Rourke waved at Gotti, and hugged and kissed his associates."
The book claims that DiLeonardo later went to James' Miami nightclub, The Spot, and told him, "We want to see your books." Otherwise, he would torch the club.
"That incident caused a rupture in the James-Rourke friendship," Posner writes. But Rourke still had friends in low places.
In 1999, when Chris Paciello was indicted in Brooklyn for multiple counts of murder, robbery and racketeering, the judge set bail at $15 million. To help Paciello make bail, Posner reports, "Mickey Rourke's mother put up the deed to her house."
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/mickey_rourke_mob_mania_OmGU4Wk7zAnE7XM9CSJNbL
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