Feeling his oates after taking out his own boss in the Gambino family, the late John Gotti also plotted to take out the head of the Bonanno family.
Ex-Bonanno boss Joseph Massino testified Monday that he learned of the plot against him - involving Gotti and Massino's treacherous brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale - years later from a wiseguy in another mob family.
The scheme was apparently hatched in the late 1980s while Massino was still in prison and Vitale was serving as his hand-picked underboss on the street. The coup was never carried out because Gotti was arrested by the feds in 1990 on racketeering and murder charges.
"If he [Gotti] wasn't arrested, I probably wouldn't be here today," Massino said in Brooklyn Federal Court at the trial of former Bonanno acting boss Vincent Basciano.
Massino was secretly recording Basciano when he related the never-before-disclosed plot.
Shortly after Massino was sprung from prison in 1993,
one of his captains received a vague message from Genovese gangster Barney Bellomo that his crime family was not going to tolerate "another Paul situation," according to the tape. Gotti had ascended to Gambino boss after engineering the infamous murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steak House in midtown in December 1985.
He made the brazen move without the approval of the Mafia's Commission - the heads of New York City's five crime families.
"The other families weren't going to go for it if I got killed. There would be war," Massino testified.
Gotti and Massino were neighbors in Howard Beach, Queens, and committed several gangland murders together.
Massino said he did not fully understand the ominous message to his captain until he spoke to Bellomo in jail in 2004 when they were both awaiting trial and he "put the pieces together."
"He [Vitale] would have killed me in a f---ing heartbeat," Massino told Basciano.
Vitale, whose sister Josephine is married to Massino, has testified at several mob trials since he became a government witness and never stated that he was planning a coup d'état.
One of Vitale's most memorable lines was that Massino, whom he had known more than 40 years, had "taught me how to swim and how to kill." Vitale previously testified that Massino disapproved of how Gotti seized control of the Gambinos and complained Gotti "set us back 100 years" with his flamboyant style and reckless blabbing.
Defense lawyer Richard Jasper appeared pleased when he got Massino to acknowledge that gangsters lie to each other all the time.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ ... e-1.113191Feeling his oates after taking out his own boss in the Gambino family, the late John Gotti also plotted to take out the head of the Bonanno family.
Ex-Bonanno boss Joseph Massino testified Monday that he learned of the plot against him - involving Gotti and Massino's treacherous brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale - years later from a wiseguy in another mob family.
The scheme was apparently hatched in the late 1980s while Massino was still in prison and Vitale was serving as his hand-picked underboss on the street. The coup was never carried out because Gotti was arrested by the feds in 1990 on racketeering and murder charges.
[b]"If he [Gotti] wasn't arrested, I probably wouldn't be here today,"[/b] Massino said in Brooklyn Federal Court at the trial of former Bonanno acting boss Vincent Basciano.
Massino was secretly recording Basciano when he related the never-before-disclosed plot.
Shortly after Massino was sprung from prison in 1993, [b]one of his captains received a vague message from Genovese gangster Barney Bellomo[/b] that his crime family was not going to tolerate "another Paul situation," according to the tape. Gotti had ascended to Gambino boss after engineering the infamous murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steak House in midtown in December 1985.
He made the brazen move without the approval of the Mafia's Commission - the heads of New York City's five crime families.
[b]"The other families weren't going to go for it if I got killed. There would be war,"[/b] Massino testified.
Gotti and Massino were neighbors in Howard Beach, Queens, and committed several gangland murders together.
[b]Massino said he did not fully understand the ominous message to his captain until he spoke to Bellomo in jail in 2004 when they were both awaiting trial and he "put the pieces together."
"He [Vitale] would have killed me in a f---ing heartbeat," Massino told Basciano.[/b]
Vitale, whose sister Josephine is married to Massino, has testified at several mob trials since he became a government witness and never stated that he was planning a coup d'état.
One of Vitale's most memorable lines was that Massino, whom he had known more than 40 years, had "taught me how to swim and how to kill." Vitale previously testified that Massino disapproved of how Gotti seized control of the Gambinos and complained Gotti "set us back 100 years" with his flamboyant style and reckless blabbing.
Defense lawyer Richard Jasper appeared pleased when he got Massino to acknowledge that gangsters lie to each other all the time.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ex-bonanno-mob-boss-joseph-massino-vincent-basciano-trial-john-gotti-plotted-article-1.113191