Word: castellano
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...remained invincible to prosecution. Assante's glamour works to his advantage as he captures Gotti's magnetic blend of arrogance and affability and thick-necked earnestness. Gotti ruled by gut and fist, and he had little tolerance for the mahogany-paneled sedateness of dons like Carlo Gambino and Paul Castellano, who derides Gotti in the film as "some throwback to our street days...
...Gotti ordered 10 of the killings in which Gravano admitted having a hand. "Sometimes I was the shooter," said Gravano. "Sometimes I was a backup guy. Sometimes I set the guy up. Sometimes I just talked about it." Foremost among these rubouts: the 1985 murder of Gambino boss Paul Castellano and his bodyguard Thomas Bilotti outside a New York City steak house -- an execution that put Gotti in the top job. Gravano says he and Gotti planned the killing because Castellano had got too greedy and "was selling out the family for his own basic businesses." According to Gravano...
...with a leadership vacuum at the top. The trouble will start if the family becomes involved in disputes with other Mob families about dividing the take in shared territory, such as construction or private trash carting. Some organized-crime experts predict that Gotti could meet the same fate as Castellano -- a Mob assassination -- if he ever goes free. The same goes for Gravano. By breaking the sacred code of omerta, or silence, he has committed a capital crime in the eyes of his Mafia brothers. "This is a guy who lived and breathed the Mafia attitude all his life," says...
Last week Gravano described his 1976 induction into the Gambino family, a solemn ceremony over which Castellano presided. The man whose murder Gravano would later help orchestrate pricked the novice's trigger finger and dripped blood onto the picture of a saint, which was then set on fire...
...also disclosed weaknesses that led to the Pope's downfall. Castellano installed a flirty Colombian maid as his mistress -- so flagrantly that his wife left him -- thereby violating the unwritten Mafia law that girlfriends stay discreetly out of sight. He also named his murderous, vile- tempered driver, Tommy Bilotti, as his underboss and heir, a decision that infuriated members of the family. Within the Mob, word got out that Big Paul had lost touch. And so it was that Castellano and Bilotti were shot outside a fancy Manhattan steak house in December 1985. The gunsels were never caught...