Junior Gotti Remembers When He Learned Truth About His Mobster Dad
John A. (Junior) Gotti remembers the precise moment he discovered his dad was a notorious mob boss, a childhood revelation his classmates deemed "pretty cool."
The son of the head of Gambino crime family was a 14-year-old military school cadet in 1979 watching TV with pals.
"We're watching a show - and they're saying, 'This man's a captain in the Gambino family,'" Gotti recalls in an interview to be aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." "And they're talking about him. And I'm mortified," Gotti says. "I'm in the back row, and I'm watching this. I'm not saying nothing."
His fellow cadets at the New York Military Academy turned and looked at him, wanting to know: Was he the son of the legendary Dapper Don?
"They say, 'He's got the same name as you,'" Gotti reminisces.
"I guess...maybe some of them were intimidated. But most of them thought it was pretty cool."
Responding with a mixture of fear and adoration, they quizzed him about his old man's behavior.
"'Does your father...kill people?...Does your father beat people up?'" they inquired.
Gotti responded: "Not around the house."
While the moment of truth about his father may have horrified the teenage Gotti, he describes the moment he was formally "made" a mobster as "the proudest moment of my life."
"I was slowly becoming like [my father]," he said in the interview at his Oyster Bay, L.I., home. "I think he was very happy. I think he was as proud as a father would be if his son just made all-American."
Yet life as a Gambino wasn't always easy, and Gotti, who says he quit the mob in 1999, sheds light on how he lived in constant fear of being whacked.
"There's a possibility that something could happen to you every day of your life," said Gotti, whose fourth federal racketeering trial ended in a mistrial in November - just like the previous three.
While Gotti says he doesn't think you can justify murder, he tries to explain why his father was involved in the ultimate of crimes.
"[My father] swore, 'I'm going to live and die by the rules of the street, the code of the streets' and everybody that John is accused of killing or may have killed or wanted to kill or tried to kill was a part of that same street," he says. "And my father...always said in his mind, 'You break the rules, you end up in a Dumpster.'"
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