Word: gambino
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Across the East River in another federal courthouse in Brooklyn, a jury was being selected for the racketeering trial of the most powerful of all U.S. Mafia families: the Gambinos. Here a younger, more flamboyant crime boss strutted through the courtroom, snapping out orders to subservient henchmen, reveling in his new and lethally acquired notoriety. John Gotti, 45, romanticized in New York City's tabloids as the "Dapper Don" for his tailored $1,800 suits and carefully coiffed hair, has been locked in prison without bail since May, only a few months after he allegedly took control of the Gambino...
Federal Judge Eugene Nickerson disclosed that a trusted member of Gotti's Gambino crime family had secretly taped conversations between the capo and his confederates over a 30-month period. The informant, a self-styled former hit man named Dominick Lofaro, was brazen enough to carry a concealed wire right into Gotti's lair, the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, N.Y. His cooperation with authorities marked the first time that a Mafia "soldier" had ever worked as an informant while on active duty. The intelligence coup, said one New York City police officer, was "like penetrating...
Police and FBI sources say the Lofaro tapes were a consequence of Gotti's ambition to broaden the Gambino family business. Over the objections of former Gambino Boss Paul Castellano, who was gunned down on a crowded Manhattan street last December, authorities say, Gotti urged cronies like Lofaro to get more involved in drug trafficking. Then in 1984 Lofaro was arrested in upstate New York while attempting to sell a kilogram of heroin to an undercover detective...
...being searched for the hidden wire. From 1984 until last March, Lofaro made more than 50 tapes that include conversations between Gotti and his lieutenants. The tapes, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Giacalone, provide "direct evidence of John Gotti's role as manager of the gambling enterprise" of the Gambino crime family...
...appeared last week in Brooklyn Federal Court, the "Dapper Don" of the tabloids showed signs of fashion fatigue. No tie. No tan. His graying hair no longer meticulously styled. Only a starched white pocket handkerchief, practically a Gotti trademark, hinted of better days as the alleged head of the Gambino crime family. While attorneys painstakingly questioned prospective jurors, whose names were kept secret for their protection, Gotti suffered another setback: U.S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson ruled that during the trial, the boss could not eat lunch in the courtroom with his attorneys but would have to return to the basement...