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In the first of a series, John A. (Junior) Gotti gives his first ever in-depth interview to Daily News staff writer Thomas Zambito He has tried to renounce the life, walk away from the Gotti legacy of greed, intimidation and murder. Yet even as John A. (Junior) Gotti says these things, he still cannot separate his newfound perspective on the Mafia from his love and respect for his father. "To this day, my father is a god to me," he said. Gotti has kept his relationship with the press to a few stray quotes and the occasional news story. But...

NEW YORK -- Prosecutors are accusing John "Junior" Gotti and his family of living lavishly on Long Island with a swimming pool, a horse barn and a staff of gardeners, drivers and housekeepers, while Gotti claims he is going broke. Prosecutors wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin that the lifestyle is especially surprising since Gotti has been in jail or on home detention for the last eight years and his wife does not appear to have a full-time job outside the home.

Thugs chanting "John Gotti rules" have leveled death threats at Curtis Sliwa and his young son, the radio host says, prompting him to beg help from his mob scion enemy to stop the goons, the Daily News has learned. The worst incident occurred Sunday when a gang of young men approached the Guardian Angels founder on Third Ave. while he was playing with his only child, 2-1/2-year-old Anthony Chester, Sliwa said. "They said that both my son and I deserved to have bullets put into our heads and they walked on," Sliwa wrote in a letter to Gotti obtained by...

Radio host Curtis Sliwa thinks it's time for a federal judge to fold her cards. The Guardian Angels founder told the Daily News he saw Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin playing a computer card game while he testified at the trial of John A. (Junior) Gotti. Sliwa said Scheindlin should recuse herself from the case, in which the 42-year-old mob scion is accused of orchestrating the 1992 shooting that nearly killed Sliwa. He drew a parallel to Mayor Bloomberg's firing of a city worker caught playing computer solitaire at his desk. "Should a federal judge be playing video solitaire...

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- A former member of a white supremacist prison gang testified Friday that he was slipped two bullets and ordered by an alleged gang kingpin to hide them until they could be used to kill a black inmate who had assaulted the late mob leader John Gotti. Kevin Roach took the stand for a second day to testify in one of the largest capital punishment cases in U.S. history, aimed at the leadership of the Aryan Brotherhood gang. Roach said another inmate slipped him one bullet by pushing it under the door of a prison library....

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Alongside allegations such as secret messages written in urine, the opening of the Aryan Brotherhood trial includes a charge that late Mafia boss John Gotti asked the prison gang to carry out a hit. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Emmick told jurors in one of the largest death penalty cases in the United States that Gotti sought out the Aryan Brotherhood, also known as the Brand, in July 1996 after he was beaten by a black inmate, Walter Johnson, at the U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Illinois,

Curtis Sliwa watched the man he claims ordered a hit on him walk away from court for the second time yesterday - and said it hurt more than the ambush that almost killed him. "I would say this has been even more painful than being shot with three hollow point bullets," he told the Daily News. "It's like taking yet another slug. "I feel I have been robbed. It's like John [Junior] Gotti has been exonerated for all his sins, all his vicious crimes, simply because he announced his retirement. "I see him pictured in the Daily News, in church...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gambino crime family scion John A. "Junior" Gotti dodged a legal bullet for the second time in eight months Friday when a federal jury deadlocked on racketeering charges against him, leading to a mistrial. U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin excused the jury after they said they were at an impasse despite less than two full days of deliberations. Prosecutors quickly said they intended to try Gotti, 42, for a third time.

A juror in John A. (Junior) Gotti's federal conspiracy trial bailed out just as deliberations began yesterday, after telling fellow jurors she feared for her safety, the Daily News has learned. Judge Shira Scheindlin granted the woman's request to be excused, which came moments after a jury foreman was picked and the panel was about to begin deliberations. "There's a verdict, Charlie," Gotti joked to attorney Charles Carnesi, when the foreman sent a second note.

Junior Gotti was 'sick of this life,' radio show host Kuby saysNEW YORK -- John "Junior" Gotti said in 1998 that he was "sick of this life" and would plead guilty to criminal charges, a lawyer who co-hosts a radio show with Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa testified Monday at Gotti's mob trial. The testimony by Ron Kuby, a veteran civil rights attorney, was intended by defense lawyers to boost Gotti's argument that he had rejected life in the Gambino crime family when he pleaded guilty in 1999 to racketeering charges.... "He told me he was sick of this life,"...

A former bartender at John A. Gotti's social club testified yesterday that the club had hot-pink walls and an elaborate buzzer system and that a crucial prosecution witness — a turncoat mobster who claims that he made plans in the club to carry out a kidnapping Mr. Gotti had ordered — was never there. The bartender, George DiBello, suggested that the witness, Joseph D'Angelo, would surely have noticed the unusual décor of Our Friends Social Club, in Ozone Park, Queens, if he had been there, as he claimed in his testimony. Was there anything unusual about the décor of the...

NEW YORK -- A radio talk show host swung his arms from side to side on the witness stand Monday as he relived his 1992 shooting in the back of a taxi during a kidnapping prosecutors blame on John A. "Junior" Gotti. The eyes of most jurors at Gotti's racketeering trial seemed fixed on the witness, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, as he recounted how a routine cab ride to work changed abruptly in June 1992 when a masked gunman popped up from the front passenger seat and aimed a handgun at him. "Take this," Sliwa recalled the man saying...

Maybe they should have called him the Dapper Don Juan. A mob snitch stunned a Manhattan courtroom yesterday with the charge that Gambino family man John Gotti fathered a love child with a mystery mistress. Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo testified that the late mob boss' son - who is on trial - told him about the philandering. "His father had a secret second family and a daughter he fathered out of wedlock," DiLeonardo said on the stand in Manhattan Federal Court.

John "Junior" Gotti, who insists he quit the mob family run by his late father, the "Dapper Don," watched jury selection start yesterday at his racketeering retrial in Manhattan. One prospective juror was quickly disqualified: a former supervisor of the FBI's organized crime squad. The most serious charge facing Gotti is the 1992 kidnapping of radio host Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels crime-fighting group, who allegedly was targeted by "Junior" Gotti because of his on-air rants against the late John Gotti.

The apple of John Gotti's eye is rotten to the core, said a Brooklyn judge .......Richard Martino, 46, duped (victims) into doling out millions of dollars to smutty Internet and phone scams. The Gambino soldier pleaded guilty to racketeering and mail and wire fraud for bilking $650 million from porn perusers....admitted to luring visitors onto porn Web sites by promising the steamed-up surfers "free tours." Internet users would then be billed up to $90 when they gave their credit-card number. Countless other victims responded to raunchy magazine ads offering free phone sex, but their numbers would be billed $30 a...

Dapper Don's Don Juan pal is new boss of the family   Troubled mafia clan has put smooth talker in charge, says former G-man      By JOHN MARZULLI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER  John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico (l.) had been a constant companion and confidant of John Gotti. Meet the new John Gotti. John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico, the Dapper Don's longtime sidekick and confidant, has emerged as the new acting boss of the Gambino crime family, law enforcement officials told the Daily News. D'Amico, known as a dapper dresser himself with a gift for gab...

The jailed son of late mob boss John Gotti neared freedom on Monday after a judge agreed to release him on $7 million bond, less than a week after declaring a mistrial on the bulk of his racketeering case. Under bail conditions approved by U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, John A. ``Junior'' Gotti would be released from a federal lockup in lower Manhattan, but remain under house arrest in his home on Long Island until a possible retrial early next year. Gotti, 41, was still in custody Monday as paperwork was finalized. His lawyers said he could be home with...

Guardian angels founder Curtis Sliwa couldn't believe his eyes: The Mafia boss who - according to a key witness - ordered him killed 13 years ago managed to escape conviction. Here, the outspoken radio host tells Daily News reporter Adam Nichols that he now fears John A. (Junior) Gotti wants the botched job finished: Now he wants me dead. I am a dead man walking. John Gotti Jr. will rejoin his family, and I know there are Gotti cohorts who have taken a solemn vow to do what they failed to do before: end my life. They're going to celebrate...

Testifying against John A. Gotti today, Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels crime patrol group, described in vivid detail being shot at point-blank range while sitting in the back seat of a taxicab 13 years ago. Mr. Sliwa relived the shooting before a jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where Mr. Gotti, 41, the scion of the Gambino crime family, is being tried on racketeering charges. Mr. Gotti is facing a 42-page indictment including securities fraud, loansharking, construction industry extortion, and charges of conspiracy to kidnap Mr. Sliwa. He was indicted in July on charges of ordering...

He's stood up to tough guys all his life - and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa's parents expect him to deliver a knockout blow against John A. (Junior) Gotti when he faces off with the reputed mob boss in federal court today. It's a confrontation the elderly couple says the crimefighter-turned-radio-celebrity has been longing for. "He's looking forward to the chance to stand up in court and help put this guy away," Chester Sliwa, 84, said in an exclusive interview with the Daily News. The younger Sliwa, 51, who's usually running his mouth in morning drive time as co-host of...