In a recently released Bureau of Prisons photograph, John Gotti, the now deceased head of New York's Gambino crime family, looks nothing like the robust “Dapper Don” who at the height of his fame and notoriety strutted down Little Italy's Mulberry Street in his three-thousand dollar Brioni suits and who appeared on the cover of Time magazine in a famed Andy Warhol portrait.
Dressed in a ratty gray sweatshirt, his gray hair badly receded and cut short, Gotti appears grim and devoid of the fighting spirit and smirking smile that defined much of his life. The photo was taken on October 17th, 2001, approximately eight months prior to Gotti's June 10th, 2002, death at age 61 from head and neck cancer.
The photo was originally obtained by the Smoking Gun website via the Freedom of Information Act.
A popular New York City figure, Gotti was famous for his ongoing battles against the government and local prosecutors, who failed, in three separate cases, to convict Gotti, and which earned him the “Teflon Don” moniker for his ability to escape prosecution unscathed. In one high-profile Gotti case, a not guilty verdict was rendered after the star witness - a man allegedly assaulted by Gotti in a parking dispute - developed a sudden case of amnesia while on the witness stand and could not identify his assailant. Gotti walked. And the next day's New York Post headline summarized the trial succinctly: “ I Forgotti”!
But Gotti's winning streak against the government came to an end in 1992 when he was convicted on an assortment of racketeering and murder charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Faced with damaging evidence and taped conversations in which he was recorded discussing multiple murders and other mob mayhem, and with Sammy “the bull” Gravano, Gotti's trusted underboss and second-in-command of the Gambino family, defecting to the government's side and spilling his guts to prosecutors, Gotti's fate was sealed!
On June 23rd, 1992, John Gotti was transferred to the maximum-security federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was to begin serving his life sentence. It was during Gotti's incarceration there where he became ill and was diagnosed with head and neck cancer.
After battling the disease, and after undergoing cancer surgery in which large chunks of his cheek and mouth were removed, Gotti's condition worsened and he was transferred to the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri, where he would remain until his death.
