In America, the Gottis are to the Mafia what the Kennedys are to politics. No other mob boss has emerged with his charisma, or name recognition. He threw spectacular neighbourhood parties in the Queens district of New York, and gave handouts to needy kids, but was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 for crimes including racketeering, murder and extortion his brother, Peter, and his son, John Junior, are both in prison today, convicted of mob-related crimes. Known for a while as The Teflon Don, after being acquitted three times in connection with mob-related activities, Gotti was a tabloid star and an FBI target. He became the head of the powerful New York based Gambino crime family by organising the killing of the then Godfather, Paul Castellano, in 1985. From the mid-Eighties until 2002, when he died of cancer in prison at the age of 62, John Gotti was the living embodiment of the Mafia in America. He would never let anything get him down or curl him up into a ball nothing fazed him.”įor those who may recognise the Gotti name, but not know the story, here are the headlines. “He had perseverance, he was always determined, he was strong. “He had some really good qualities in him,” Gotti tells me during our two-hour interview. That she has since gone on to have a successful career is testimony to having inherited some of her father’s grit. While stories about her father’s colourful life and career have filled newspapers, magazines and books for more than 20 years, she has herself experienced tragedies and heartaches which have left her both emotionally and physically scarred.ĭiagnosed with congenital heart disease (she had a heart attack at 16), she has since suffered the stillbirth of her first child, a financially crippling divorce and the deaths of a brother and her father. Is her life as shady as some want to believe, given her bloodline? Is she connected? Has she used the name to her advantage to become a celebrity in her own right, or has she suffered because of it? Can she really be, as she claims, “just an ordinary single mom trying to raise three teenage sons”? The reason for the show’s success is obvious: as a scion of an infamous organised crime family, public interest in Gotti remains huge. You might call it The Osbournes with molls instead of malls. Gotti’s desire to be known as more than just the daughter of the Dapper Don, a nickname John Gotti earned due to his natty suits, has led her to refuse her family’s help when she was broke, start a writing career and to agree, with her three sons, to become the focus of the reality TV show, Growing Up Gotti, screened on America’s A&E network. Instead she has carved out a career as a novelist, TV star and gossip columnist, making certain that her face appears in something other than the FBI’s files. Victoria Gotti may have trouble with her heart, but it is her blood which has caused her the most problems.Ī child of America’s most notorious modern-day Godfather, the flamboyant and feared John Gotti, she has refused to follow the well-trodden path of obedient girls from Italian-American families and become a homemaker. “I have a defibrillator in me and all kinds of crazy wires that go through my shoulder and my chest.” “They put me together like the Bionic Woman.” The shapely 42-year-old with Rapunzel hair laughs from the depths of the couch. Michael Park meets the woman who swapped the mob for reality TV. But as the daughter of America’s most infamous Mafia boss, she has struggled to escape the bloody connotations of her name. As far back as she can remember, Victoria Gotti never wanted to be a gangster.
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