Reputed Mafia Chief Pleads Not Guilty in Assault

After spending a night in jail, John Gotti, the reputed leader of the nation’s most powerful organized crime family, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he ordered the shooting of a union leader and was released on $100,000 bail.

“John Gotti is followed night and day by the police. . . . He gets to court before the building opens,” Gotti’s lawyer Bruce Cutler told a judge, who then rejected a prosecution request for incarceration before trial.

Gotti was arrested by about 50 law enforcement officers Monday night while walking on a Lower Manhattan street with his bodyguards. He was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court and sent to jail overnight without bail. The barrel-chested reputed Mafia leader joked with detectives in the courtroom, and after his arraignment about 50 defendants in a holding pen near the court cheered and clapped when he arrived.

Retaliation for Vandalism

Gotti and two reputed associates of the Gambino organized crime family are accused of assault and conspiracy in ordering the unsuccessful murder of John F. O’Connor, business agent of Local 608 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, in retaliation after vandalism at a restaurant construction site owned by friends of Gotti. The restaurant’s owner was conducting renovations using non-union carpenters.

According to the indictment unsealed Tuesday, Gotti in 1986 allegedly recruited two members of a violent Irish gang known as the Westies to shoot O’Connor on May 7, 1986. Prosecutors charged that Gotti, 48, Angelo Ruggiero, 48, and Anthony Guerrieri, 60, conspired with other persons to punish O’Connor for wrecking the construction site of the Bankers and Brokers restaurant in Lower Manhattan’s financial district.

The indictment, based largely on wiretap evidence, charged that the goal of the conspiracy was to punish O’Connor, and “reaffirm the authority of the Gambino crime family over all others who might challenge it.”

On Tuesday, Gotti and Guerrieri formally pleaded innocent to all charges. Ruggiero, who is hospitalized, will plead to the indictment later.