The Godfather Walks

At times, the courtroom at John Gotti's trial was a hit like a high school classroom with the bad boys lounging in the back. As Jimmy Breslin said, all they wanted to be was absent. But here they were, bad boys in their 40s--the men of the Gambino crime family, trapped in detention once again and hating it.

From the start, nobody doubted that the trial had great potential as theater. In the starring role, of course, was the "new godfather" himself, John Gotti, the man whom law-enforcement officials called the boss of the nation's largest crime family. He was a barrel-chested man of 45, with distinguished gray hair swept back at the temples, a fashion plate in his $1800 double-breasted custom-made suit, hand-painted tie and silk pocket handkerchief.

At his trial, however, Gotti would have to share the spotlight. The Government prosecutor, Diane Giacalone, was a master stroke of casting. Not only was she Italian American, she had grown up in Gotti's neighborhood--Ozone Park, Queens. A former tax lawyer specializing in criminal cases, she, too, had built a reputation--for tenacity.

Add to the mix six attorneys and six codefendants; a gray-haired, patrician judge, Eugene Nickerson, whose response to tedious argument was to roll his head back and pretend to take a nap; and a jury that was anonymous and numbered, because the Government claimed that it had obtained evidence of possible juror intimidation.

After nearly five months of rehearsals, the curtain went up on this tableau on September 25, 1986, at the U.S. Federal courthouse in Brooklyn. The six-man, six-woman jury filed into the courtroom to hear opening statements. It included two former Marines, one of whom was a train operator, a chauffeur, a housewife and a postal employee. Most claimed they knew little or nothing about Gotti, leading one defense lawyer to call them a jury "of the totally uninformed." If there was a clue as to how they might respond, it came during jury selection, when one of the ex-Marines admitted that he would have trouble with the testimony of witnesses who were criminal accomplices. But he was seated anyway after the judge told him to get rid of the murder mystery he was reading.

•

On September 25, Giacalone, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, rose to deliver her opening statement. Poised and calm, wearing a red suit and a white blouse, her hands behind her back, this slim woman of 36 addressed the jury in a level, modulated voice. The seven men on trial, she said, were all part of an enterprise whose affairs had been conducted through a pattern of racketeering that included robbery, extortion, illegal gambling and murder. The prosecution, which was using the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to get around the Mafia vows of silence, would prove that these men were in the business of crime. "Horrible people" would be presented as witnesses, she warned. "Does the Gambino family exist?" Giacalone asked. "By your guilty verdict, you will say the Gambino family exists." She then went to the green chalkboard and illustrated the crime family's chain of command.

When she was done, Gotti's counsel, Bruce Cutler, stood. He was about 45, stocky and balding, and spoke in a voice that sounded like water running in an iron bathtub. "The Government's case is lies and half-truths," he declared. "The entire case is a fantasy." To emphasize his outrage at the Government's indictment of his client, Cutler then charged around the courtroom, slamming chairs. He brought his fist down hard on the podium. Inexplicably, he grabbed his backside and fondled the microphone. He wet his thumb each time he turned a page of his pad.

"The indictment is a stew with rotten meat that makes you retch and vomit!" he exclaimed. He tore the document up and threw it into a garbage can.

The Gotti supporters among the spectators applauded. Over the next six months, the audience would come to love Cutler. Even at his most tendentious, he was never boring.

•

For the first few days of the trial, there was confusion among the press and spectators as to who was who. Fourteen men sat in the well of this courtroom, and since the defendants wore smart suits, several of the lawyers were mistaken for the accused. People shrank from them in the courthouse corridors. Eventually, one of the courtroom artists drew a diagram of the seating arrangement and photocopied it for the benefit of newcomers. That was a big help.

The defendants sat in a row behind Giacalone and her second, John Gleeson--"the G and G show," as the defense counsel referred to them. At the far left sat Nicky Corozzo, a short, bulky man. The Government charged him with running gambling and Shylock operations. Next to him sat his colleague Lenny DiMaria, already serving seven years for trafficking in contraband and stolen cigarettes. Lenny was a big favorite of the press. Whenever Giacalone asked a detective to identify him, Lenny would make it easy on the guy by raising his hand and waving. When a detective left the stand, Lenny always growled, "Take care, pal."

Next to DiMaria was John Gotti's brother, Gene, a gambling man whose weakness for a good football point spread had been recorded on Government tapes. ("I don't know, Ange. So far, I'm leaning toward San Diego. I'm betting Dallas seven and a half points; I'm bein' very honest wid you.") To his right were John Carneglia, charged with murder, and Anthony "Tony Roach" Rampino, whose cadaverous face was a valuable asset; he could contort it into all sorts of frightening expressions and then would check regularly with the courtroom artist.

To his right was Wilfred "Willie Boy" Johnson. He had a craggy face and hands like bear paws, with the letters L-O-V-E tattooed on the knuckles. Willie Boy, who was part Italian, part American Indian, had been meeting secretly with an FBI agent for years, but he wound up as a defendant. When his meetings with the FBI were made known at a pretrial hearing, John Gotti said to him, "Youse the reason we're here, huh?" From then on, Willie Boy was snubbed by the other defendants and spent his trial in virtual isolation.

At the far end of the row, closest to the judge, sat the man the newspapers called The Dapper Don--John Gotti. In an expansive mood, stroking his lapels, chatting with reporters about baseball, he was the very picture of a successful C.E.O.--except for the diamond pinkie ring. The BBC reporter considered him "fabulous, just fabulous." John Gotti, after all, did not shrink from the limelight. Until Judge Nickerson revoked his bail, he had been making the social rounds. Chauffeured about town in a black Mercedes 500 SEL, he dropped in at sports bars and the Club A disco and the city's fanciest restaurants.

But as one New York City detective said, "John Gotti was a caterpillar metamorphosed into a beautiful butterfly." In his youth, he had belonged to a street gang in East New York. During the Sixties, he had served three years in prison for stealing goods from Kennedy Airport. In the Seventies, he did a two-year stretch for attempted manslaughter. In 1980, one of his five children was killed, run over accidentally by a neighbor. A few months later, the neighbor disappeared from a parking lot and was never seen again. No charges were brought against Gotti, who had been in Florida at the time.

By 1981, the Government charged, Gotti was running his own enterprise. He oversaw a profitable gambling operation in Queens and reported to Gambino-family underboss Aniello Dellacroce.

On December 2, 1985, Dellacroce died of natural causes; exactly two weeks later, Paul Castellano, the Gambino-family boss, and his lieutenant, Tommy Bilotti, were shot to death outside Sparks Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Federal officials maintain that it was Gotti who plotted the murders. With all the publicity the killings received, his notoriety began to build. On Christmas Eve, eight days later, he was observed at the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan's Little Italy, receiving the respects and embraces of other capos and soldiers.

John Gotti had arrived. He had come up through the ranks, the hard way. His only problem was the matter of this indictment. Its charges dated back as far as 19 years and the Government's aim was to prove that he and his colleagues were engaged in a criminal business.

To win her case against them, Giacalone had to prove that they had conducted, or conspired to conduct, the affairs of a criminal enterprise through a "pattern" of racketeering. She also had to prove that at least two individual crimes by a defendant had been committed within a ten-year period, prison time excluded. If convicted, the defendants faced stiff sentences, up to 20 years on each charge.

In a RICO case, the prosecutors throw in everything. They try to assemble a jigsaw puzzle that they admit will never be complete but that they hope will give a jury the full picture. The defense, in turn, disputes everything and everyone, not leaving to chance the possibility that some minor piece of the puzzle may turn out to be significant.

Giacalone had amassed volumes of evidence--photos, records, audio and video tapes, police and FBI surveillance reports and, of course, witnesses. The first of her "horrible people" was Sal Polisi, her "foundation" witness. He was a soft-spoken man in a green polo shirt who took the stand October second after several days of police and FBI testimony.

Through Polisi, Giacalone wanted to establish that Gotti and his codefendants had been in their current line of work for many years. After eliciting Polisi's criminal past, Giacalone began asking him about a Brooklyn gambling house he had owned in 1971 called the Sinatra Club.

"Do you see anybody in this courtroom (continued on page 155)The Godfather Walks(continued from page 66) who frequented the Sinatra Club?"

"Yes, I do."

"Who?"

"John Gotti, Gene Gotti, Willie Boy Johnson."

"Were the conversations conducted at the Sinatra Club criminal conversations?"

"Yes."

"What kind of crimes?"

"Hijacking, stick-ups, numbers, gambling."

Barry Slotnick, a tall man with a trim beard, stood up. He was John Carneglia's attorney.

"Your Honor, most respectfully," he said, "may we have a brief voir dire?"

"Please don't keep saying 'most respectfully,'" Nickerson said. "I know you do it in good faith, but please don't. It makes me uneasy."

Polisi testified that the defendants were associated with the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club, a storefront in Ozone Park.

"Did you come to an understanding of whether these frequenters of the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club were members of a criminal organization?" Giacalone asked.

"Absolutely."

"What was this understanding?"

"They were members of the Gambino crime family."

For Giacalone, it seemed like a solid start. The defense lawyers then took turns cross-examining. If Polisi had been a police detective testifying for the prosecution, defense strategy would have had to show he was a liar. Since Polisi was a criminal--arrested on drug charges in 1984--the effort went into showing he was both a liar and a low-life.

To assist in their undermining of Polisi, the defense had obtained several hours of tapes he had recorded with an author. In these, he talked about his dislike of blacks and his habit of paying for oral intercourse with prostitutes. Judge Nickerson carefully considered the admissibility of those issues.

"I'll admit his dislike of blacks," he decided finally. "Not the prostitutes."

The lawyers were glad to have Polisi's racial attitudes admitted: There were two blacks on the jury. The defendants, however, were disappointed; they appeared to be enjoying the parts about Polisi's sexual proclivities immensely. The main business at hand had been forgotten temporarily. They rocked in their seats, hands clasped over their mouths.

Cutler rose to cross-examine.

"Mr. Polisi," he began, "haven't you spent your adult life taking advantage of the weak, the infirmed, the diseased and women?"

"No, sir."

"These neighborhoods where you supplied your heroin and cocaine," Cutler continued, "are these the same neighborhoods where John Gotti is loved and revered? Just yes or no."

"Yes."

Giacalone redirect:

"Mr. Polisi, are you proud of the way you played your life in the past 20 years?"

"No," said Polisi. "I think it's completely un-American, and I'm ashamed of the way I lived my life."

The defense counsel groaned. The Gotti supporters in the spectator seats whistled.

Cutler recross:

"Mr. Polisi," he said, pointing to the American flag, "didn't you sully that like you sullied everything in life you touch?"

"Objection."

"When did you get this new religion?" Cutler demanded. "Tell us so we can free the jails of low-lifes like you."

"Objection!"

"Sustained."

"I have no further questions," Cutler said, strolling back to his seat.

There was much satisfied stirring in the spectator seats. Neighbors of Gotti's who were present thought highly of the man on trial; indeed, their Howard Beach neighborhood in Queens was comparatively free of drugs and street crime. (In December, Howard Beach would also be the scene of a celebrated incident in which three black men were beaten and chased out of the area by whites, after which one of the black men was struck and killed by a car.) Gotti drummed his fingers on the table and smiled. He was among friends.

Throughout Polisi's testimony, the other attorneys asked Polisi about his past lying, his drug dealing and his discharge from the Marines. They got him to admit that he had collected full disability by pretending to be mentally unstable. Gotti smiled again. Two former Marines on the jury.

When Polisi was excused, the defendants clapped their attorneys on the backs. The judge called a recess. Giacalone packed her files on a trolley and left the courtroom. No, she told reporters, she had no comment to make about the case.

The press did. "3-Day Defense Barrage Hits Witness' Past Crimes," one headline read.

•

Outside the courtroom one afternoon, a spectator asked Giacalone if she felt anything personal about the case. "No," she replied shortly, "it just crossed my desk"; and, as was her habit, she left quickly.

But by then, nobody believed that Giacalone did not feel strongly about her case. Her attitude in the courtroom suggested a moral indignation toward the defendants. The defense lawyers felt that she viewed the trial not as a case but as a cause. Was it because of her Catholic upbringing? they speculated. Was she determined to prove that not all Italian Americans were like the defendants?

Whatever Giacalone's motivation, the case had not simply crossed her desk. She had built it. She had begun assembling it in the early Eighties, after she had successfully prosecuted two cases known as the IBI armored-car robberies. In trying to determine how the IBI money had been spent, she had learned that some of it allegedly had gone, as a token of respect, to members of the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club--John Gotti's club.

It was a building block in her case against the defendants, but it was also a personal reference point. As a young girl making her way to Our Lady of Wisdom girls' school in Ozone Park, Diane Giacalone had wandered by the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club, had taken note of the men who hung out there and wondered what they did. Twenty years later, when it came time to learn about the club, she discovered that there was plenty to read about it, reams of files, 18 years of accumulated surveillance. Yet for all this, only a few arrests had been made, as the result of gambling raids.

And so, on weekends for the next two years, while Gotti was being chauffeured around town in his Mercedes, Giacalone had put on her jeans and sneakers, taken the subway to her office and read "thousands of pieces of paper." Finally, in late 1984, her case was presented to the Justice Department. It was approved, and on March 28, 1985, a grand jury handed up indictments against Aniello Dellacroce (who died within the year), John Gotti and eight other men.

"They're in the business of being gangsters," she said to explain the indictment.

Nineteen months later, she was shifting into high gear in order to prove it.

•

In the second week of October, Giacalone called as a witness one Edward Maloney, a remarkably resilient man. In 1982, he testified, he had been having a drink at the Cozy Corner, a social club run by Gotti, when he was shot ten times. He survived, became a Government informer and wore a wire. Giacalone was using his tapes and testimony to establish that Gotti ran the gambling operation at the Cozy Corner. She was also hoping to introduce into evidence a tape recording in which Maloney alleged that Gotti "got his wings" by "whacking out" one James McBratney.

At 10:30, with the jury waiting outside the courtroom, the judge was still listening to defense motions to strike part of the tape transcript. The press and the spectators stirred restlessly.

"Where does it begin?" Judge Nickerson asked one of the defense attorneys. "From which line?"

The lawyer rummaged through his files. While the court waited, Daniel Hays, reporter for the Daily News, puzzled over his crossword. He needed a few more clues. "Thirty-three across," he asked Len Buder of the Times. "German author, four letters?"

Buder scratched his head.

In the well of the courtroom, the defendants reached into their table drawers for their favorite candy, Nestlé's white chocolate. They munched slowly as the lawyer turned his pages.

"Line 14, judge," he said. "From 'McBratney would have fucked him in the ass.' "

The defendants chuckled. Buder still scratched his head.

"And where does it end?" the judge asked.

"Your Honor, I object," Giacalone's associate, Gleeson, said, getting up.

"You'd better come up here," the judge said wearily.

The lawyers went up to the bench. Mumble, mumble, mumble. With all the motions, the jury was regularly kept waiting more than an hour.

"Kant!" Buder exclaimed, and a sigh of relief swept the press seats.

Judge Nickerson looked up over his glasses, clearly mystified about the role the founder of German idealism might purport to play in this trial. Then, as he returned to his transcript, the courtroom doors flew open and a big, menacing figure in mirrored Ray-Bans strode in.

"Oh, shit," the wire reporter said. "Not him again."

Ray-Bans was one of several wise-guy (a New York term for gangster) hangers-on who attended the trial from time to time. But unlike the others, he took no notice of the sign on the row clearly marked Press. He was about 25, wearing a windbreaker over a T-shirt; and this morning, as usual, he set himself down squarely among the reporters. The press inched away from him.

Up on the bench, the judge was saying, "I won't admit the stuff about how he got his wings. That's incredibly prejudicial."

Gleeson gave up.

"Get the witness and bring the jury in," the judge said.

The court officer thumped on the door to announce the jury's entrance. The press and spectators rose. Ray-Bans remained seated. Gleeson started to question Maloney, and the press took notes. After a few minutes, two of the women jurors began whispering. One woman exchanged a smile with the other.

"Derr. Whad she t'ink's so damn funny?"

Ray-Bans' voice, which had cut through the courtroom buzz, startled everyone. The attorneys glanced around. Ray-Bans' metallic stare was fixed on the juror who had smiled.

"She t'inks it's funny. You'd t'ink she'd be payin' attenshun."

Ray-Bans took off his windbreaker and flexed his biceps. A court officer got up, thought better of it and sat down. The press was going to have to suffer Ray-Bans all morning.

By 12:30, the defendants' candy supply was running low. They were glancing at the clock. Food. It was a big issue throughout the trial. According to one news report, John Gotti had obtained veal sandwiches in the Metropolitan Correction Center. The story implied that he was receiving favored treatment, and Cutler insisted that Giacalone had leaked it and was making an issue of it. He complained bitterly to the judge. "My client doesn't even like veal!" he howled.

Each lunchtime, heaping plates of Italian food were delivered to the courtroom, where Federal marshals checked them. After the big lunches and the candy, digestive disturbances were audible throughout the afternoon, much to the distress of the attorneys.

One day, the defendants offered to treat the attorneys to lunch and, as a concession to the fact that several of the lawyers were Jewish, a vast spread of lox, bagels and cream cheese was brought in. The defendants nibbled sparingly and grimaced politely. Then, as the hour went by, they whispered orders to the marshals for more food. They waited eagerly. When a delivery boy finally showed up, they rushed out to the anteroom to meet him. Seven hero sandwiches were quickly unwrapped and devoured out of sight of the lawyers, so as not to offend.

•

The best days for the reporters were always those when the Government played tapes recorded from bugs or taps at social clubs and various homes. There was, for example, the exchange between John Gotti and Willie Boy Johnson about the problems of sharing profits and apportioning work.

Gotti [talking to someone in the background]: You know, Joey, you try to do the right thing, you know, you try to do the right thing with everybody. But you can't do it, looks like. That's my, my, my shortcoming. I try to do the right thing with everybody. I wind up with nothing. Everyone else winds up with the buttercup.

Willie Boy: Hello.

Gotti: Yeah, er, youse guys don't want to come around no more or what?

Willie Boy: I was up all morning! I tried to sleep in the afternoon. I just got up now.

Gotti: Oh, minga, it's a new game now. Whoever goes to the fucking crap game can sleep all fucking day.

By November, things were going better for the Government. A former gambler, among other witnesses, had tied Corozzo and DiMaria to loan-shark operations. Giacalone had played a series of tapes that seemed especially damaging to Gene Gotti, as well as to other defendants. Then she called a witness who testified that he had been having a drink in a Staten Island bar one night in 1973 when John Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero arm-locked James McBratney, suspected of having kidnaped and murdered Carlo Gambino's nephew. Gotti and Ruggiero had allegedly tried to drag McBratney out of the bar before a third man shot and killed him.

Gotti had been arrested after that killing and had pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of attempted manslaughter and served two years of a four-year term in prison. But Giacalone was now charging that he had participated in the murder to gain favor with Gambino; and, indeed, her witness testified it was "not likely" that the killing was the result of a barroom brawl.

Then came a series of detectives who gave accounts of their surveillances of the Bergen and Ravenite social clubs. The defendants perked up for that. One detective, Mike Falciano, said he had followed Ruggiero around, taking notes of overheard conversations on matchbooks, even on his hands.

"Describe Ruggiero," Gleeson said.

"Oh, heavy," Falciano replied. "Bull face. You know, he wasn't a handsome guy. How would I describe him? Animal or human? He looked like a fire pump." The defendants loved this assessment of their colleague. They all agreed Ruggiero wasn't pretty.

Another detective, John Gurnee, said he had used police lock pickers one night to try to place a bug in the Ravenite. But a guard dog had attacked him, and before long, they were face to face on the floor. The next night, Gurnee returned with a plan. His wife had made meatballs, and he put a tranquilizer pill in each one. The dog ate six.

Despite the tranquilizers, the dog kept jumping at the door, and Gurnee returned the next night with more meatballs.

"How did the dog react?" Gleeson asked.

"Oh, by then he was happy to see me," Gurnee said.

But that night, the mission had to be aborted when Gurnee was discovered by club members, some wielding baseball bats. Two days later, a detective overheard John Gotti saying to someone, "Next time, shoot them. Say you thought they were burglars."

On Monday, December first, Giacalone called James Cardinali to the stand. She described him as "a critical witness." He was 37, good-looking, wearing a gray sweat shirt over a muscular body. For a man with a 20-year drug habit, Cardinali looked in good shape despite a periodic rasping cough.

He had met John Gotti, he said, while serving time in state prison. Following his release, Gotti got him a no-show job with a trucking company. He told the jury that he and another man had once robbed a cemetery-workers' payroll and that he had offered Gotti part of the money. Gotti told him, "All I want is your love and respect. Put that in your pocket." One day, Cardinali said, they had gone to meet a man who was seeking to be released from Gotti's influence. Gotti pointed to Cardinali and told the man, "He's in charge of the release department," then added, "You live with John Gotti, you die with John Gotti."

Cardinali said that Gotti received a cut from a gambling operation, as did DiMaria and Corozzo. He named Gene Gotti as head of a loan-sharking operation and tied John to another. Cardinali also said that when John Gotti found out that he was hanging around with men whom Gotti suspected of kidnaping, Gotti told him, "I already killed a kidnaper."

Throughout this testimony, Gotti's eyes grew dark. At times, he directed a hard glare at the jury, at the witness, at Giacalone's back.

During the afternoon recess, the defense lawyers gathered gloomily in the corridor outside the courtroom.

"Is there anything this guy doesn't know?" defense attorney Jeffrey Hoffman asked.

The testimony resumed. In 1981, Cardinali claimed, John Gotti heard that he had been selling drugs. "If I find out it's true, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to make an example of you," Gotti allegedly said. Cardinali then said he had learned that a man named Michael Costagliola had told Gotti about his drug dealings.

"Did you do something the next day?" Giacalone asked.

"Yes," Cardinali replied, serenely immune. "I killed Michael Costagliola."

By the third day of Cardinali's testimony, it was tough to get a seat in the press row. He had more to tell. He calmly told of five murders he had committed or participated in during planned rip-offs of drug dealers. He told of his aborted plan to kill an FBI agent. He described how, as a favor to John Gotti, he had given a near-fatal beating to a Staten Island numbers operator who was running an illegal gambling business in competition with the Gambino family.

"Did you hurt him very badly?" Giacalone asked.

"Yes," said the witness.

"Did you think he died?" Giacalone asked.

"I felt he was dead," said the witness.

"Your witness," Giacalone said, turning to the defense.

"Mr. Cardinali," DiMaria's attorney, Michael Santangelo, asked, "do you think you made a good deal with the Government?"

"In my opinion," Cardinali replied, "I think I made a fantastic deal."

"Understatement of the year," Hoffman said during the next recess.

In exchange for his cooperation and a plea of guilty to one murder, Cardinali had received a five-to-ten-year sentence, immunity from prosecution for other crimes, the promise of a new identity, eventual relocation and $10,000.

The attorneys took him through his résumé of killings, trying to demonstrate that the man testifying was far worse than any of the defendants and that he would do just about anything to save his own skin.

"Did you have any qualms about taking a human life in order to get $10,000 and cocaine?" Hoffman asked him.

"At the time, I had no qualms," Cardinali said.

"Do you have any qualms about telling a lie for $10,000?" Hoffman asked.

"Repeat the question."

"I have no further questions," Hoffman said.

David DePetris, Rampino's attorney, wanted to know all the details of two murders in Florida for which Cardinali could have received the death penalty.

"I arrived [at the motel]," Cardinali said. "When they came in, I looked at my partner, he nodded and I shot the guy in the face."

After another vivid description by Cardinali, the judge balked at admitting the grislier details. "Please, no more," he said.

The courtroom was silent. Even the defendants were paying total attention.

DePetris began questioning Cardinali about his immunity: "As to your additional crimes--"

"My additional crimes?"

DePetris' voice fell an octave. "I'm talking about your murders, Mr. Cardinali," he said.

Cutler took over. He demanded to know if Cardinali was testifying to save himself. Cardinali said he was, then added that he was telling the truth. But wasn't it also true, Cutler asked him, that in a fit of pique last spring, he had called Cutler's office and complained about Diane Giacalone?

"Yes, that's true," Cardinali again admitted.

"Do you recall saying you weren't sure you'd even testify in this case [because] the Government wants to bury John Gotti?" Cutler asked.

"Yes," Cardinali said.

"Did you also say that 'from the day I met John Gotti, he did nothing but good for me. He only put money in my pocket ... he's the finest man I've ever known'?"

"That's true," Cardinali said.

After cross-examination, the defense lawyers were still despondent. Despite Cardinali's catalog of crimes, several of them felt that he had been a convincing witness. Gotti did not. He dismissed Cardinali as the errand boy to the errand boy. But the lawyers thought Cardinali's testimony and the tapes were the Government's most damaging evidence.

After Cardinali, Gotti got serious. There were huddles throughout the day during recesses. With a quick hand gesture, Gotti would summon attorneys and codefendants to form an attentive group around him. From then on, he wanted the witnesses pummeled, "motherfucked."

The defense also launched a new offensive, an all-out campaign to rattle Giacalone. The defendants participated with sneers and mutterings. Gotti told reporters that Giacalone's smile was "as phony as a three-dollar bill."

Giacalone struck back, charging Gotti with a number of offenses not in the indictment--such as the claim that he had muttered an obscenity at a Government witness. Two days later, she complained to the judge that he had made another disparaging remark the jury could hear. This time, Gotti did not leave the objection to his lawyer. He leaped to his feet, waving his arms.

"Your Honor, it's not true!" he shouted. "If anyone's made comments, it's her!"

The eruptions continued daily. A few days later, Giacalone asked the judge to excuse the jury and told him, "Your Honor, I just heard Mr. Cutler say--and I'm sure the jury heard it--'Ask this tramp if she'll give us an offer of proof.'"

Cutler was on his feet, furious, yelling, "Your Honor! Witnesses, reporters, people call us all the time saying they're threatened by this woman ... !"

"Stop!" Judge Nickerson ordered.

"I'm going to finish, Judge!" Cutler roared. "This is a very treacherous and dangerous woman! She's trying to intimidate me--I'm not ashamed to say it--she's trying to prejudice this jury against our clients!"

"You are going to wait for me to finish!" Nickerson shouted. He was as angry as anyone in court had ever seen him, but within seconds, he regained control. "I'm astonished at my moderation in dealing with you in this case, sir."

By January, the Government had called nearly 80 witnesses and filled more than 13,000 pages of transcripts, and the animosity between the lawyers for the two sides was headed for new highs. The morning of January 13 was a particularly galling one for Giacalone. Defense counsel was demanding several items from the Chimento Trucking Company's employment records, and Giacalone was going to have to rummage through approximately 16 cardboard boxes to locate them.

The judge called a recess and left the bench. Giacalone marched over to attorney George Santangelo, Michael's brother, and wagged her finger at him.

"You are lying!" she accused him.

"Get your finger out of my face and stick it up your ass!" Santangelo yelled at her. (Giacalone was not easily cowed. According to one story making the rounds, an FBI man had once told her that if she were a man, he would slug her. Giacalone had squared off at the agent, all 110 pounds of her, and said, "Take your best shot.") The exchange continued, and the reporters scribbled away. In the corridor outside the courtroom, the press swapped notes on what had been said, arriving at a consensus. Giacalone marched by. She was conferring with Gleeson when a reporter broke the news.

At the "Commission Trial" in Manhattan, a Federal judge had just handed out 100-year prison terms to Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, Carmine "Junior" Persico and Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo, the respective bosses of the Genovese, Colombo and Lucchese crime families.

"A hundred years! A century!" Hoffman exclaimed and darted back into court to report the news to Gotti. At the defense table, Gotti absorbed this information without a visible show of emotion. He glanced across the court at Giacalone. She had returned to her desk and was sorting through her files. A half smile played on her lips.

Gotti stepped up to the courtroom railing and addressed the reporters.

"Those cases got nothing to do with us," he said. "We're walking out of here."

•

The next day, the courtroom was full of men from the state's Organized Crime Task Force. They were not happy with Giacalone. She had called one of their informants, Dominick Lofaro, to testify, cutting short his informant role. They glared at her throughout the day, to little effect, as she played the tapes Lofaro had recorded while wearing a wire.

On one of those tapes, an associate of John Gotti's described him as a "hoodlum's hoodlum." All eyes focused on the Dapper Don, who shrugged. On the second tape, recorded while he drove through Queens, one Carmine Fiore was heard saying of Gotti, "Minga, does he have this place locked up." On the third tape, Fiore volunteered that "the Naps"--the Neapolitan faction--were making their moves. At this juncture, a Newsday reporter had to step outside, because he was laughing so hard.

On cross-examination, Cutler got Lofaro to admit he'd lied to the state's Organized Crime Task Force about being "on the in" with the Gambino family.

"These big-shot Federal prosecutors!" Cutler shouted, making an inexplicable grab at his rear end. "When they found out you were lying, did they take your agreement and rip it up?"

Cutler tore his yellow pad and waited. Lofaro said no, the Government had not torn up his agreement. Given what else was on his tapes, it seemed a minor point.

•

A few days later, the Government rested its case. The final evidence had been tapes secretly recorded in Dellacroce's home, in which John Gotti's name figured prominently. On tape, Dellacroce was heard lambasting a man named Michael Caiazza, who was about to be drummed out of the Gambino family. It was an elegiac ending.

"If this was like 20 years ago, youse would have found yourself in some fuckin' hole someplace," Dellacroce said. "You know what I mean? People don't train their people no more. There's no more respect. There's no more nothing."

Now it was the defense's turn.

"How long will your defense be?" Judge Nickerson inquired, adding pointedly, "I gather from reading the papers it's not going to be very long. That's where I get most of my information."

"Not very long," Cutler assured the judge. But it took a little longer than expected.

The defense called, in turn, Andrew Curro and Peter Zuccaro. These were the two men Giacalone had prosecuted for the IBI armored-car robberies.

On direct examination and on cross, both Curro and Zuccaro denied that they had ever given any money to anyone at the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club.

"I don't give money to nobody," Zuccaro said. "What am I, Santa Claus?"

Their testimony seemed to some to lack credibility. Curro, who had also been convicted of a girlfriend's murder, was serving 41 to life. Zuccaro had received 12 for the IBI robberies. Neither man gave straight answers to Giacalone, and they lashed out at her with sarcasm. The defense lawyers decided someone else would be needed and, after consultations, announced that they were going to call Matthew Traynor. In a trial teeming with bizarre and menacing figures, this was the witness Giacalone described as "some strange uncle you can't keep in the closet." Traynor was originally to have been a witness for the Government, but he had fallen out with Giacalone and since then, he had been feeding the defense a steady stream of stories and incidents involving her.

Traynor, a cherub-faced Irishman with a propensity for robbing banks, had been brought in from the Nassau County jail, where he was awaiting trial. In the course of one bank robbery, he had been shot, and the peculiar twitches he exhibited on the stand were apparently a result of lead particles still embedded in him. His testimony was a lot rougher than even Giacalone had expected. He began by describing her as "the lady with the stringy hair," and he claimed that Giacalone had told him she had it in for the defendants because, as a girl, they had ridiculed her for being skinny.

"She had a hard-on for Mr. Gotti," Traynor said with an impish grin, after which he sincerely apologized to the jury for his use of the expression.

Traynor went on. He claimed that Giacalone had tried to get him to give false testimony in order to frame John Gotti. He claimed she had supplied him with the drugs he needed--specifically, Valium and codeine--to induce him to testify. He said he had taken several the day he was taken to her office in Brooklyn. During that meeting, he claimed, he had consumed a large supply of beer and pizza, which had combined with the drugs to make him sick. He had vomited on Giacalone's desk, he said, after which she had screamed, "Get him out of here!" He said he had been hustled out of the office and driven up and down Manhattan's F.D.R. Drive, his head hanging out of a car window, as efforts were made to straighten him out.

Traynor told the story of the panties.

He said that as a part of the prosecution's care and feeding of its witness, he had demanded that Giacalone get him laid. "I told her, 'What about a policewoman?' Instead, she gave me her panties out of her bottom drawer--for me to facilitate myself. She said, 'Make do with these.'"

Traynor leaned back and leered. The jury averted their eyes. At the prosecutor's table, Giacalone coolly continued to take notes. Her face registered not the slightest movement of a muscle.

Gleeson--rather than Giacalone--rose to cross-examine Traynor. Under tough questioning, he stuck to his story. Despite the farfetched claims, the over-all impact of his testimony was exactly what the defense had hoped for: It distracted the jury from the racketeering case and raised a flurry of questions that needed answering. In a sense, Traynor had managed to put Diane Giacalone on trial.

Giacalone first tried to get his testimony stricken, but Nickerson would not strike it. The charges that the Government had, in effect, tried to suborn perjury were too serious, he said.

"Then the Government will be making a rebuttal case," Giacalone announced. On February ninth, Nickerson asked how many witnesses she intended to call to rebut Traynor's allegations.

"Seventeen," she said.

"Seventeen!" the judge exclaimed.

For Giacalone, it was a tough decision. She was taking a big chance. The jury looked fed up. It had expected the trial to be over by Christmas, and here it was February and it would be running into March. But Giacalone could not let Traynor's charges go unanswered.

And so she wheeled in her witnesses, one by one: FBI agents, a prison psychologist, the doctor who had given Traynor drugs. The pills had been legitimately prescribed; an agent testified that Traynor had never thrown up in Giacalone's office; witnesses denied that there had ever been any scene with panties. Finally, painfully, on February 26, Giacalone's rebuttal case ended. The court was ready for summations.

•

On Monday, March second, the day of the Government's summation, Giacalone was losing her voice. Between sips of water, she told the jury that the Gambino family was a "frightening reality," not a "fantasy," as Cutler said. "When you listen to those tapes again," she said, "what you will hear are the administrators of a business discussing their management problems."

She took the jury once more through the strongest points of evidence--how and why McBratney was killed; the Dellacroce tapes; Cardinali's testimony.

"Some of the Government witnesses led reprehensible lives," she admitted. "But what you hear is the truth of their testimony. Consider the evidence as a whole."

The defense summation began with George Santangelo's setting up a board with a huge chart headed Criminal Activity of Government Informants. Sixty-nine separate crimes were posted, ranging from pistol-whipping a priest to murder.

Santangelo's presentation got off to a shaky start when the board collapsed on him. He and the other lawyers took turns invoking the same issue: that the only crime family in this court was the Government's--"a group of men who all came from the same sewer," as attorney Slotnick put it. "Were the defense witnesses getting money and immunity?" Santangelo asked. "Did they have a motive to lie?"

Cutler went last. He managed to perform a few deep knee bends, but his earlier rambunctiousness was gone. He was subdued, almost soft-spoken.

"I never said my client was a saint," he said. "I told you he grew up dirt-poor and that when he was younger, he got in trouble and went to jail. But that does not mean he is guilty of the crimes for which he is on trial here.

"You can convict John Gotti because he curses a lot on the telephone," Cutler continued. "You can convict John Gotti because he gambles a lot. You can convict him because his lifestyle is different from yours. Because that's what these prosecutors want you to do. You want to get John Gotti? Get some evidence on him. Find a witness. Do it the right way!"

Moments later, the defendants gathered at the courtroom railing to talk with friends and reporters.

"Hey, we did all right, huh?" DiMaria was saying. "You think we did OK? Yeah? Give him an envelope."

The reporters laughed. DiMaria was referring to a fake exploding envelope--triggered by a rubber band--that John Gotti had sent to Michael Santangelo during the prosecution's summation. It had succeeded in causing a diversion. But to the Government team, this was a last-ditch show of bravado. In their opinion, John Gotti and company were going to jail for a long time. Most reporters agreed.

The judge took nearly a day to charge the jury. He said the testimony of cooperating criminal witnesses "should be examined by you with greater care than the testimony of ordinary witnesses," but he added that it was not the jury's concern whether or not the Government had showed good judgment in using such witnesses. He then excused the alternates and told the jury to pick its own foreperson. The defendants all bet that the jury would pick one of the ex-Marines, number ten. They were right. The jury was then sequestered.

The next day, the jurors sent out the first of several requests to have testimony reread. First they asked for Lofaro's testimony. Then they asked for Cardinali's. They did not ask to rehear Traynor's testimony, and Giacalone took that as a good sign. Meanwhile, in the courtroom, DePetris and Michael Santangelo played gin rummy as John Gotti, reputed head of the nation's largest crime family, watched General Hospital on TV.

A week dragged by. Then, on Friday the 13th, the jury asked for verdict forms. The end was near. By the time print reporters came back from lunch, the front press row had been "reserved" by newly arrived TV reporters; coats and briefcases covered the bench, with Do Not Remove signs laid on top. "Fuck these guys," muttered one enraged print reporter as he tossed the coats onto the row behind. "A bunch of Johnny-come-latelies." The TV press would have to compete for space among the throngs of Gotti supporters from Queens who began to fill up the seats.

At 1:45, Judge Nickerson's clerk announced that the jury had reached a unanimous verdict. John Gotti greeted this news with a broad, confident smile. He said, "We're all walking out of here." The press sat with its verdict sheets on its laps, pens poised. There were 14 charges--one conspiracy charge and one substantive charge for each of the seven defendants.

The judge entered and summoned the jury. The jurors filed in, eyes cast down. The court deputy read from the charge sheet. "Count one [conspiracy]. John. Gotti. How do you find the defendant?"

The level voice of the foreman replied, "Not guilty."

There is such a thing as a collective gasp; it was heard that afternoon in Brooklyn.

"John Carneglia. Count one. How do you find the defendant?"

"Not guilty."

The tension in the room was overwhelming. The defendants and lawyers braced themselves. The deputy and the foreman went down the list. "Not guilty" five more times. Gotti punched Cutler's shoulder and held his breath. There was still the substantive count, and not one juror was smiling.

"Count two," the clerk read. "John Gotti. How do you find the defendant?"

"Not guilty."

In the press row, disbelief. From the Gotti supporters, a joyous surge, fists in the air, as everyone in the courtroom realized no one on trial was going to jail.

During the remaining six "Not guilties," the sound was like air being let out of a giant balloon. Then, from the spectator rows, came a cry of "Justice!" The prosecutors sat motionless, staring at nothing. The judge's shoulders slumped forward. One FBI man looked as if he wanted to take all the jurors and bang their heads against the wall.

Then the courtroom erupted. Defendants and counsel leaped to their feet and began embracing one another. Michael Santangelo was kissing DiMaria. His brother George held Nicky Corozzo in a bear hug. John Gotti and the other defendants stood and applauded the jury. Gotti pointed at the prosecutors' seats, which had been quickly vacated, and shouted, "Shame on them! I'd like to see the verdict on them!"

The judge struggled to re-establish order. Hoffman made a motion that John Gotti be released. The judge so ordered. In response to shouts from the press for comment, Gotti said he might talk to reporters downstairs, then decided otherwise. He left the court through a rear entrance, made a dash for a gray Cadillac and was driven away.

In the vast lobby of the Federal courthouse, Cutler was standing before a battery of lights and TV cameras. "They didn't like the witnesses," he was saying. "They didn't like some of the things the prosecutor did, and I think they had the courage to say so."

The reporters went from the lobby to the fifth floor, to the offices of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District. There, Giacalone faced an unruly mob of TV press and cameramen, most of whom she had never seen until that day. She said, "The jury has spoken, and that is that." Her chin wobbled ever so slightly.

"A jury verdict is the end of the case," she continued. "We presented the best evidence we could, and the jury did their job. My personal feelings are far less important than the fact that the case was decided by a jury based on the evidence."

"What are your personal feelings?" someone asked.

"My personal feelings are mine," she replied calmly.

•

Out in Ozone Park, the gray Cadillac drew up at a small red-brick building--the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club. John Gotti stepped out to receive the congratulations and respects of his men. Then he was driven to nearby Howard Beach, where his daughter, Angel, had tied a yellow ribbon to a tree in front of his modest blue-and-white frame house. Many neighbors had done the same.

Back at the Brooklyn Federal courthouse, people groped for explanations. Had Traynor been a factor? Had his testimony suggested favored treatment of other witnesses? That evening, a juror told a reporter in a phone interview that a majority of the jurors had favored acquittal from the moment deliberations began. "We didn't believe those witnesses," she said. "There was something in it for them."

"Who needed witnesses?" one of the defense attorneys said later, privately. "Why didn't they believe the tapes? Those tapes were devastating."

In the Brooklyn Federal courthouse later that evening, a group of detectives and FBI men stood waiting for an elevator. These were the men who had worked on this case since 1979, who had sat for thousands of tedious hours conducting surveillance, who had followed dangerous people on dangerous streets, who had risked their lives to plant bugs in alleged Mafia clubs. They had come to court that day to see their labors rewarded, and now they were huddled in silence.

The elevator arrived. They got in. A reporter got in with them.

"Friday the 13th," one detective said.

Another remarked, "I need liquor--intravenously."

They got out at the ground floor and trudged off to their cars. They were men of duty, men who would be back at work Monday, and they certainly deserved a little respect.

"The defendants appeared to be enjoying the parts about Polisi's sexual proclivities immensely."