The Day John Gotti Cheated Death

John Gotti, the high-profile boss of New York City's Gambino crime family, nicknamed the "Teflon Don" based on his numerous courtroom acquittals and ability to avoid conviction, came very close to being the "Dead Don" on a spring day in April of 1986 when he narrowly avoided being murdered on a Brooklyn, New York, street at the hands of rival gangsters.

Gotti, who orchestrated the midtown Manhattan assassination of his predecessor and boss, Paul Castellano, and Castellano's driver/bodyguard, Tommy Bilotti, in December of 1985, apparently violated a Mafia tradition and rule that says a boss of a Mafia family cannot be murdered without the full consent and approval of the Mafia Commission, which is a sort of governing, regulating body of the Italian American Mafia made up of the heads of all five organized crime families in New York. John Gotti's ascension to the head of the Gambino crime family was viewed as a renegade act by fellow mafiosi, a cardinal sin in the sordid world of the Mafia punishable by death. John Gotti had to be held accountable!

In the weeks following Gotti's bold takeover of the Gambino family, all appeared to be running smoothly with no hint of dissension or ill-will. Gotti, as the new boss, contacted the key players and senior members within the family and pledged his desire to be a fair and generous boss; a boss that would be good for business and make his fellow gangsters proud to be, well, gangsters! The previous boss, Paul Castellano, was viewed as a sort of aloof and disconnected type of boss who had grown out-of-touch with the overall tone and rhyme of his family. He rarely ventured outside the walls of his Staten Island mansion, and he seemed more concerned with making money than on fostering good will amongst his men. And John Gotti used the ill-will towards Castellano towards his advantage.