Mob turncoat 'cheated on wife every day'

Former Gambino associate John Alite may have been a member of a mob family -- but he was no family man.

The star witness in the John "Junior" Gotti trial said today he repeatedly cheated on his wife and "wasn't a good guy" as he helped the Gambinos sell drugs and kill people.

The mob turncoat said in Manhattan federal court that he has two kids -- one with his wife and a second with a girlfriend -- and that he only pays them $137.50 each a week in child support payments.

Alite, 46, said his marriage to a woman identified only as Carol fell apart because he "cheated on her every day." That was it," he added.

He said he keeps both families in different houses in New Jersey and that his ex-wife and girlfriend, a woman he later married named Claudia DiPippa, are aware of -- and hate -- each other.

DiPippa is the sister of a Gambino associate.

With Gotti staring straight at him, Alite said he made $1million a year from 1984 to 1994 trafficking drugs for the mob. He said he made another $1 million a year over roughly the same period as a result of 30 home invasions he had committed.

A cool and composed Alite, who avoided eye-contact with Gotti and mostly faced the jury, also said he gave money to his family -- but not always.

Alite said he "very rarely" gave his father any of the illicit cash.

"He was a degenerate gambler," said Alite.

'Junior' Gotti ordered hit on dealer, says mobster

Mob turncoat John Alite testified Wednesday that he shot a Queens cocaine dealer in the head in 1988 on orders from John "Junior" Gotti because the man was bragging about his Gotti family connections, and he was told to make no effort to hide the body because the Gottis wanted to "send a message."
Alite, appearing at Gotti's murder-racketeering trial in federal court in Manhattan, said Gotti was particularly incensed at coke dealer George Grosso not only because the drug business is supposed to be off-limits for the mob, but because Grosso touted a link to "John Gotti" - making people think that Gotti's father, Gambino capo and future boss John J. Gotti, was involved.
"John Gotti Jr. threatened him, told him to stop using his father's name," Alite, a top Gotti lieutenant and friend of his family during the 1980s, said of a meeting he attended with Gotti and Grosso. "He told him if he does it again, he's not going to warn him again."
Gotti, 45, of Oyster Bay, was tried three times in 2005 and 2006 on racketeering charges, with each case ending in a hung jury after Gotti's lawyers claimed that he withdrew from the mob in the 1990s, before the five-year statute of limitations on racketeering.
Alite's testimony could mark a critical departure from the earlier cases, because the former confidante did not begin cooperating with the government until last year, and the slaying to which he tied Gotti is not subject to a statute of limitations or the withdrawal defense. Gotti has been separately charged with the murders of Grosso and a second man, Bruce Gotterup, in 1991.
Testifying for nearly six hours on his 47th birthday as Gotti and Gotti's mother, sisters and two nephews watched, Alite said that while he administered plenty of beatings as part of Gotti's crew and for his own drug business, he never killed anyone before Grosso. But Gotti, he testified, ratcheted up the pressure in the fall of 1988.
"He pushed the issue. John Gotti Jr. kept saying, 'You didn't kill this kid yet,' trying to say I didn't have enough -- to do it," said Alite, who pleaded guilty to racketeering last year in Florida and is hoping for leniency on his sentence.
"He's telling me it's got to get done. 'I'm telling you to do it now, if you're going to be around.' " he said. "Otherwise, I go if I don't execute his orders."
Alite said he recruited a four-man team to help with the hit, lured Grosso to a bar in late December 1988 and then into a car by feigning friendship - a trick he said he learned from the Gotti family. He pumped "two or three bullets" into Grosso's head, he said, and dumped the body beside the Grand Central Parkway.
The means of disposal was specified by Gotti, Alite testified: "Don't bury him, don't hide him. Put him out on the street so people know what you did. Send a message: Don't use our names."
Alite said the team that helped him included Nicholas Tobia, who became a Suffolk County police officer in 1995. He said Tobia was not in the car where Grosso was shot, but in a trailing car. Tobia, of Wantagh, whose name first surfaced when Alite testified at the trial of mobster Charles Carneglia earlier this year, is on leave from the Suffolk force. Yesterday his lawyer, William Petrillo of Rockville Centre, again denied wrongdoing.
In other testimony Wednesday, Alite gave more details about two deaths that he linked to Gotti. He said Gotti frequently took credit for fatally stabbing a Queens man named Danny Silva in a 1983 bar fight, and said that his father had gotten bodyguard Mark Caputo to take the fall for him. Caputo was charged by police, but the case was dismissed.
He said that Gotti also told him that John Cennamo, a Queens man who fingered Gotti for the Silva stabbing and was found hanged behind a Laundromat in 1984, had been killed by a Gambino family team on the elder Gotti's orders. The death was ruled a suicide at the time, and family and friends said Cennamo had been depressed about losing a job and a girlfriend.

Junior Gotti's ex-best friend John Alite says Gotti helped in three slays, spoke of four others

John A. (Junior) Gotti once stood up as best man for John Alite, but Tuesday Alite stood against him, tearing down the ex-mob boss as a merciless killer behind seven murders. "John Gotti Jr. was my boss," the turncoat mobster said flatly to open his damning Manhattan Federal Court testimony.

The veteran Gambino family associate, the feds' star witness, testified Gotti collaborated with him on three killings and told him about four others.

The second-generation gangster was one of the drivers when the Gambino family whacked informant Wilfred (Willie Boy) Johnson in August 1988 for ratting on his dad, "Teflon Don" John, Alite testified.

Gotti and ex-brother-in-law Carmine Agnello killed another man and crushed him in a car chopper at Agnello's Queens junkyard, he testified.

And as Gotti stared him down, Alite also told jurors that Junior admitted to him that he killed Daniel Silva in a 1983 barroom brawl and an eyewitness later found hanging from a tree. A pair of drug dealers and another mob murder brought Gotti's total to seven bodies, he said

.
The gruesome testimony was greeted angrily by the Gotti contingent in the courtroom. Alite was once Junior's best friend and asked Gotti to serve as best man at his wedding.

Prosecutors showed photos of the pair at the wedding of Junior's sister Victoria, along with a shot of Gotti holding Alite's 18-month-old son.

Since flipping in 2007, Alite has implicated his buddy and claimed that he had an affair with Victoria Gotti. She, along with sister Angel and mother Victoria, glared at Alite as he recounted a decade of running with Junior - pricey cars, $500 shoes, Rolex watches.

Alite recalled a wild trip in the 1980s to Las Vegas, where he and Junior Gotti lost $30,000 at the craps and blackjack tables and had to play the "nickel slot machines."

"All lies," said a subdued Gotti's mother, her eyes red from crying, outside the courtroom. "Mom, don't even bother," said daughter Victoria, who last year passed a lie-detector test after denying Alite's claim.

Alite, in a gray sweatshirt that bared a neck tattoo, said he had shot about 35 men - mostly on orders from Junior.

Before Alite testified, another prosecution witness took the stand to describe Alite as a heartless hit man who once cursed and spit on the still-warm corpse of one victim.

"Motherf-----," a remorseless Alite snapped after the December 1988 slaying of George Grosso. Corrupt ex-NYPD Detective Philip Baroni, 57, recounted Alite's point-blank execution of the Queens drug dealer. Gotti became a made man four days later.

Grosso was hit for running his mouth about Gotti's drug dealing, the feds charge.Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/09/30/2009-09-30_junior_exbest_friend_says_gotti_helped_in_3_slays.html#ixzz0Sf6L6pPC

John (Junior) Gotti painted as mob killer by prosecution

A young John A. (Junior) Gotti with mob turncoat John Alite (on Gotti's right) in the 1980s.


John A. (Junior) Gotti is a vicious thug who once taunted a man he had stabbed - doing Porky Pig's "th-th-that's all folks!" as the man bled to death, prosecutors charged yesterday. Moments before the Gambino heir's fourth racketeering trial got underway in Manhattan Federal Court, the judge said seven of the 18 jurors and alternates had made a last-minute appeal to be dismissed
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