Feds Try New Angle To Get Junior Gotti

Coming soon to a courthouse near you: The John "Junior" Gotti Case — Take Four. Or is it Take Five?

While the feds have dropped their efforts to prosecute the ex-Mafia boss one more time in the kidnap-shooting of Curtis Sliwa, they have a new plan to nail him for some other alleged mob violence, including a 24-year-old murder, Gang Land has learned. Law enforcement sources say the FBI and federal prosecutors have their sights set on the Junior Don in the 1983 slaying of Danny Silva, a 24-year-old Queens man stabbed to death during a barroom brawl at which Gotti has acknowledged being present, but a killing for which he has denied any responsibility.

The feds had developed evidence against Gotti for the Silva murder several years ago, according to the sources, even before they obtained the indictment alleging his role in the Mr. Sliwa's shooting. But a tactical decision was made to use a turncoat capo, Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, to prosecute Junior for the 1992 attack on the Guardian Angels founder instead. There were good reasons to do so: The animosity between the Gottis and Mr. Sliwa was well-documented, the attack was more recent, and Mikey Scars, who became a "made man" in the same induction ceremony as Junior, had fingered his one-time best buddy as the antagonist behind the shooting of the outspoken radio talkshow host.

"The Sliwa case was a much cleaner case, or so it seemed," one source said, somewhat sheepishly. But the prosecutors failed to convince three separate juries that the mob scion, who was imprisoned from 1999 through his first mistrial in 2005, was still part of the Gambino crime family, or that Gotti had been a member during the previous five years, a requirement of the prosecutor-favored racketeering statutes.

A year ago, after four jurors at his third trial accepted the defense argument that Junior had resigned from his late father's crime family, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan dropped the indictment rather than risk further embarrassment at a fourth trial.

Gang Land's sources declined to detail whether prosecutors have uncovered allegations that Gotti was involved in crime family business within the previous five years, or if they had another game plan, such as a murder prosecution under state law, which has no statute of limitations. But the sources say the investigation is continuing. Said one source, speaking in cautious legalese: "If a prosecution is warranted, it will be brought in the proper venue."

A Queens-based FBI squad that focuses on the Gambino family and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are among the agencies involved in the investigation, sources said.

Gotti, who has long been a suspect in the March 12, 1983, murder at the Silver Fox Bar, is also being investigated in connection with a second slaying that the sources say is linked to Gambino family activities, but which they would not discuss.

As Gang Land disclosed a year ago, Gotti told the feds in a 2005 proffer session that, despite his innocence in the Silva stabbing, the Gambino family had bribed a corrupt detective to quash a probe of his involvement in it. He also claimed that, with the detective's help, the crime family had murdered a witness in the case and made it look like a suicide.

A Gotti cohort — who had reputedly been assigned by the elder John Gotti to serve as a bodyguard of sorts for the then 19-year-old Junior — was originally arrested for the murder, but the death of the witness effectively ended the prosecution.

Now, with the help of a bar patron who "got jammed up" with legal problems and has fingered Gotti as the killer, the feds are planning to revive it, sources said.

"He was in the bar and personally saw Junior stab Danny Silva," a source who is familiar with the witness's account said.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn declined to comment on the case.

"There is absolutely nothing to it," Gotti's attorney, Charles Carnesi, said. "It's been investigated and reinvestigated for 24 years. They know what happened and it had nothing to do with John."

Gotti, who has agreed to pay up about $80,000 in back taxes by November 22, is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in White Plains that day to learn whether Judge Stephen Robinson feels he should be sent back to prison for violating the terms of his supervised release from prison, as prosecutor David Massey asserted last month.

THE GAMBINOS' ‘JUNIOR' VARSITY: ANOTHER FAMILY SCION TO COP A PLEA Junior Gotti claims to have given up his father's business while serving time in prison. Angelo "Junior" Ruggiero, the reputed mobster son of the elder John Gotti's longtime right hand man in crime, hasn't done either — at least not yet.

But Junior Ruggiero is primed to follow in Junior Gotti's stated footsteps, if he likes.

Junior Ruggiero's old man, the late Angelo Ruggiero, was so close to the younger Gotti that he was called "Uncle." And one of the good turns Uncle Angelo did for his boss's son was to counsel him in the wake of the Silver Fox murder.

On the eve of his drug trafficking and money laundering trial in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, Long Island, Ruggiero, 35, has copped a plea bargain and agreed to take 63 to 78 months in prison rather than face the possibility of a life sentence if convicted at trial.

Next week, he's also scheduled to plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in an extortion case for which he faces about three more years. That gives him plenty of time to get past the five-year statute of limitations requirements of the racketeering statutes, just in case the feds try to charge him with some old mob-related violence when he gets out.

ACCUSED FBI HIT MAN OPTS FOR ‘DANGEROUS' JUSTICE A former FBI agent, R. Lindley De-Vecchio, is betting the rest of his life that a state Supreme Court justice who was branded a "dangerous" radical by the FBI nearly 40 years ago will give him a fair shake as both judge and jury at his upcoming murder trial.

On Monday, after listening to Justice Gustin Reichbach detail his days as a 1960s anti-war activist at Columbia University and recall with pride how the FBI described him in a 1969 memo as one of the "most dangerous persons" in the Students for a Democratic Society, the ex-agent persisted in his decision to opt for a bench trial.

"I want the case heard in front of an impartial individual who will assess the facts as presented," said Mr. DeVecchio, who is charged with aiding his longtime mob informer, Gregory Scarpa, commit four murders between 1984 and 1992.

Meanwhile, in court papers unsealed this week, Mr. DeVecchio's lawyers argue that Scarpa's son Gregory Jr., who in 1994 told the FBI he knew nothing of his father's dealings with Mr. DeVecchio but who changed his tune in 1996 after details of the FBI's investigation of the ex-agent's dealings with the elder Scarpa became public, should be "precluded from testifying at trial."

In prior court sessions, attorneys Douglas Grover and Mark Bederow noted in the papers, the judge has stated that before Scarpa Jr. appears as a trial witness, he should first be questioned to "determine whether his testimony is tainted."

Testimony in the case is slated to begin October 15. If convicted, Mr. DeVecchio, 67, faces up to 25 years to life in prison.

This column and other news of organized crime will be available today at ganglandnews.com.