A VERY BAD DON

10/27/1940 - In the Bronx, day laborer John Joseph and his wife Philomena (known to friends and family as Fannie), have the fifth of their thirteen children (the family traces its roots back to the province of Naples and the San Guiseppe Vesuviano region of Italy) ... a boy that will grow up to be the murderous "Teflon Don," John Joseph Gotti, Jr. (four other brothers will also become members of the Mafia).

Satan's Spawn aka Toddler John Gotti, Jr. (L) and Friend

Poverty the goad that spurs Gotti into becoming a career criminal, by 12-years-old the youngster is running with a New York street gang, attempting to steal a cement mixer from an unprotected construction site at the age of 14 (falling over, the mixer will crush Gotti's toes and force the mobster to walk with a limp for the rest of his life), and by 16, out of public school for good.  Path picked, Gotti is soon running errands for Carmine Fatico, a capo in the Anastasia Crime Family (soon renamed the Gambino Family after Anastasia is assassinated while getting a shave for getting in the way of Carlo Gambino's rise to command), and carrying out truck hijackings at Idlewild Airport (now JFK International) with his brother Gene, and neighborhood pal, Angelo Ruggiero, and becoming a friend of future Bonanno Family boss Joseph Massino, and Gambino underboss, Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce.  Soon murder is added to his lawless resume ... Irish-American gangster James McBratney is killed for being involved in the kidnapping of the nephew of mob boss Carlo Gambino, and Vito Borelli is done away with for insulting future Gambino Family leader, Paul Castellano.

Fatico

Ruggiero

Massino

Dellacroce

Gambino

McBratney

Top Dog ambition fueling his criminal adventures, on his rise to running the felonious activities of the Gambino Family, Gotti will compile an odious record that includes running his own loan shark operation, holding down a phony job as a plumbing supply salesman, financing a variety of drug deals, assisting in the infamous Lufthansa Heist at Kennedy Airport in 1978 (the largest cash robbery on American soil at the time ... a robbery that results in a cover-up that produces at least ten murders), the murder of neighbor John Favara for the accidental death of the mobster's 12-year-old son, Frankie (recklessly riding a friend's mini-bike into the street from between parked cars without looking first), beating up and robbing a refrigerator mechanic named Romuel Piecyk (after thugs visit his family several times and Piecyk finds the brakes of his car cut he refuses to press charges against Giotti), and unhappy with his cut of the family's criminal funds, without the approval of the other crime families of New York, authorizing the hit of his own boss, Gambino Family head, Paul "Big Paulie" Castellano, outside the Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan (Giotti observes the hit from a car parked across the street).

Castellano

Outside Sparks

Castellano

Top of the criminal food chain, as chief, Giotti's organization brings in somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000,000.00 a year, of which anywhere from $5 to $12 million goes into the mobster's pocket ... good times, but good times that now bring the killer to the attention of local and Federal authorities.  In the six years that follow his ascension to the throne of organized crime there will be trial after trial attempting to put Giotti behind bars; with all that goes with mob cases ... witnesses are intimidated or bribed, high powered lawyers play countless stalling games, perjuries are bought, and murders are contracted to cover-up other murders ... while dressed for success in Brioni silk suits and cashmere, wearing hand-painted ties, a seemingly always smiling Giotti becomes the face of organized crime as he escapes guilty verdict after guilty verdict.  The escapes and smiles however only harden the determination of authorities to incarcerate the mobster, and as often happens in these stories, Giotti is finally got with the help of a rat named Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano (at the time the highest ranking member of one of New York City's Five Families to ever turn informant).

The Teflon Don

From stealing cupcakes from a neighborhood store at the age of 7, to multiple murders, by the time Gravano is 42-years-old he has forged a criminal resume that qualifies him to be consigliere to Giotti, a position that also means he knows where all the organizations' skeletons are buried because most of them, he buried himself.

Gravano

In 1990, the Federals go after Giotti again, also rounding up Gravano, Thomas Gambino, and Frank LoCascio on RICO charges (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970) ... this time with hours and hours of taped evidence of the men discussing an assortment of Gambino Family crimes at the Ravenite Social Club in New York City's Little Italy (a site that Gravano has warned Giotti about using for regular meetings of the Family).  Sensing there will be no escaping justice this time at his coming trial, and upset that Giotti and his lawyers are setting him up to take the fall for the Family's crimes (a veteran of the United States Army, he is also not pleased that Giotti roots for Iraq during the Persian Gulf War), Gravano makes a deal with the government to provide testimony against his boss for a reduced sentence and a place in the government's witness protection program (he is sentenced by a Federal judge to five years behind bars ... four of which he'd already served while in jail awaiting his trial ... thug in his blood, by 1995 he is out of the witness protection program and living in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he traffics in the drug Ecstasy, until being sent to the state prison for 20 years, with the help of testimony from members of his drug ring).  And so, finally in 1992, Giotti gets the hard sentence he so richly had deserved for years (after the jury deliberates for only 14 hours) ... sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for being found guilty of five murders, conspiracy to murder, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, bribery, and income tax evasion (and he also receives a $250,000 fine).

LoCasio

Thomas Gambino

At the Ravenite

Gravano & Giotti Before The Fall!

Sent to the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois in 1992 (the Supreme Court rejects his final appeal against his conviction in 1994), Giotti spends his final years being himself ... beat up in a fight with a convict named Walter Johnson, the mobster offers the Aryan Brotherhood $40,000 to murder his adversary, along with even more cash if they will also eliminate his former criminal associate, LoCasio, and asserts his prerogative to remain in command of the Gambino Family (with his brother and son relaying orders back to the troops ... until the son is arrested and also sent to prison).  Mercifully for the world, in 1998, Giotti is found to be suffering from throat cancer (too many "victory" cigars?), and though the tumor is removed, the cancer comes back fatally and the criminal kingpin goes to his reward on June 10, 2002 at the age of 61.

Convict Assaulted

Last Photo - 10/17/2001

Refused a Requiem Mass by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, Giotti does get a neighborhood funeral that passes before his former stomping grounds at Brooklyn's Bergin Hunt and Fish Club and is attended by about 300 onlookers ... but not a single representative of any of the other New York crime families, a repudiation of leadership of the Gambino Clan that sees half of its soldiers in jail by the year 2000.  Soul in Hell, Giotti's physical remains are interred in a crypt next to his son, Frankie.

Goodbye Giotti

To The Crypt

Crypt

10/27/1940 ... the criminal journey of John Joseph Giotti, Jr. begins in the Bronx.

NOW THAT WAS A PRESIDENT!!!

10/14/1912 - Refreshed after his 1909-1910 hunting expedition to east and central Africa (sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and the American Museum of Natural History in New York), 53-year-old former president Theodore Roosevelt decides to seek a third term in the White House.  Beaten for the Republican nomination by his former protege, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt creates the Progressive Party (for Roosevelt, it is nicknamed the Bull Moose Party) so he can still run for president.  After an autumn that has seen him shake hands, give speeches, and kiss babies from New Orleans up to the northern border of the United States, October finds the dynamo politician in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, making his final push for victory before the country votes in November.

Roosevelt

Elephant Trophy

Taft

Also in Milwaukee is a 36-year-old madman named John Flammang Schrank ... a madman who is intent on seeing that Roosevelt never leaves the city!

Schrank

Born in Erding, Bavaria, Schrank emigrates to America with his parents at the age of nine.  The land of opportunity however soon turns dark when Schrank's parents die and he goes to live with an aunt and uncle in New York, helping the couple run their tavern ... a tavern which becomes Schrank's when the aunt and uncle die. Good life beckoning, but not to be, instead, Schrank goes quietly off the deep end when his first and only girlfriend, Emily Ziegler, perishes in the General Slocum fire disaster of 1904 (over 1,000 people are burnt to death or drown when the vessel catches fire in the East River of New York City).  Properties sold, Schrank spends the majority of his time reading the Bible, debating politics in various saloons, writing poetry, and taking long walks at night. Sleeping off a bender, sometime in 1912, the ghost of assassinated President William McKinley comes to Schrank in a dream and tells the maniac that Roosevelt must be killed to prevent him from becoming the first three-time president ... and not playing with a full deck, the loon agrees to do as the shade says!

Washed Ashore Victims of the General Slocum

Schrank

McKinley

Residing at Milwaukee's Gilpatrick Hotel while in town for his speech (information widely disseminated by the local newspapers), 
on 10/14/1912, Roosevelt eats a hearty dinner with the hotel's owner, and then walks outside, through a crowd of well-wishers to where an open-air touring car is waiting next to the sidewalk to take him to his speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium.  Next to the car, Schrank is waiting.  It is 8:00 in the evening.

Gilpatrick Hotel

Pulling his .38 Colt revolver from a coat pocket, from five feet away Schrank fires a single shot at Roosevelt as the former president stands in the car and waves his hat at the crowd with his right hand. One chance only, before the maniac can get off a second shot, Roosevelt's stenographer puts the would-be assassin in a half-nelson and grabs Schrank's right wrist.  Then, the now very irate crowd gets involved and begins pummeling the captive ... a beating that Roosevelt ends immediately.  "Don't hurt him.  Bring him here. I want to see him."  "What did you do it for," Roosevelt asks his assailant, but when Schrank remains mute, he ends the brief meeting by stating, "Oh, what's the use.  Turn him over to the police." 
Headlines

In Custody

Only after Schrank is hauled away does Roosevelt do an injury assessment on himself, and discovers it is a miracle he is still living ... the bad intention bullet heading for Roosevelt heart is stopped by the candidate's heavy overcoat, a steel glass case, and his fifty page speech, folded in half and pocketed.  Feeling the dime size hole on the right side of his chest, "He pinked me," Roosevelt states to a nearby party official as he coughs three times to establish whether he is bleeding internally from his lungs ... and finding he isn't, he overrules his doctor, and orders his driver to take him to the speech and not the hospital.  "You get me to that speech," Roosevelt demands!

The Gun

Damaged Glass Case

Page From the Speech

And get there for the speech he does!  Stepping to the podium in the Milwaukee Auditorium, Roosevelt shocks the audience by unbuttoning his vest to expose his bloodstained shirt.  "Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.  I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.  It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!"  He then pulls the bullet holed speech out of his coat pocket and waves it at the crowd. "Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet-there is where the bullet went through-and it probably saved me from going into my heart.  The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best."  And being a man of his word, toughened by the hundreds of adventures his life has been filled with, Roosevelt spends the next ninety minutes giving the entire speech!

Assassination Attempt

Only after the speech is over does Roosevelt agree to go to the hospital for some patch work.  Bullet found lodged against Roosevelt's fourth right rib, doctors decide the former president would be in more danger from the piece of lead's removal, than from leaving the round as is ... and so the bullet stays in Roosevelt and is buried with him when he passes away at the age of 60 in 1919 (though Roosevelt is graced by an outpouring of sympathy and support from across the country, with the votes split between the Republican Party and the Progressive Party, Democratic Woodrow Wilson becomes the 28th President of the United States).

Roosevelt X-Ray

Roosevelt's Bloody Shirts

1919

Bed bug crazy, after a thorough examination by several doctors, it is determined that Schrank is suffering from 'insane delusions, grandiose in character' and the former saloon keeper is declared insane.  Rubber room committed to the Central State Mental Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin, he will remain there until his death from bronchial pneumonia in 1943 at the age 67, all the while proclaiming he had no animus towards "Citizen" Roosevelt, he just couldn't allow the man a third term (his body is donated to the Medical School of Marquette University where it is dissected and then disposed of).

Schrank

10/14/1912 ... American almost loses one of its greatest to an assassin's bullet ... almost!

Boxer

Westerner

Rough Rider

Environmentalist

Hunter

Fisherman

Statesman

Husband and Father

President

American Icon