Gotti Basks in Celebrity Role as Trial Nears End : Mafia: His lawyers say he is a salesman. Prosecutors say he heads the Gambino crime family. And now a jury ponders the fate of the man dubbed the ‘Dapper Don.’

His lawyers argue that all those detectives and FBI agents who follow John Joseph Gotti when he emerges from his modest split-level home in Queens are hounding a roving salesman for a plumbing contracting company. Prosecutors claim Gotti is far more: head of the nation’s biggest organized crime family.

For the moment, putting occupational arguments aside, one thing could be said with certainty as a jury of seven men and five women began to ponder his fate Tuesday: Gotti is a certifiable celebrity.

As his trial on assault and conspiracy charges in the shooting of a union officer was under way, New York’s tabloids dubbed him the “Dapper Don.”

He regularly appeared in $1,000-plus dark suits, carefully tailored to set off his military-square shoulders, monogrammed Gucci socks and large diamond pinky ring. A bodyguard held an umbrella over his head when it rained and helped him on and off with his blue cashmere overcoat.

Spectators clamored to catch a glimpse of him, and, through it all, Gotti, 49, seemed to enjoy it.

When he first was arrested on charges of ordering the May 7, 1986, shooting of a carpenters’ union officer after a labor dispute at a restaurant owned by members of the Gambino organized crime family, Gotti boasted: “I’ll beat this case. I give you 3-to-1 odds.”

When prosecutors finally ended their presentation to the jury Monday, he quipped: “I was waiting for them to put on a case.”

Prosecutors contend that Gotti heads the Gambino family, with 300 members and 2,000 associates, and that he ordered the shooting of John F. O’Connor, former vice president of Carpenters Union Local 608. Anthony Guerrieri, 60, a Gotti associate, also is charged in the indictment.

Prosecutors said the shooting was in retaliation for the trashing of the Bankers & Brokers restaurant in 1986 after it was partly built by non-union carpenters. O’Connor was wounded in the buttocks and legs.

The government built its case around poor-quality tape recordings of conversations in 1986 at the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club in Queens, where Gotti regularly meets with associates.

In the crucial conversation, prosecutors alleged that Gotti said: “We’re gonna, gonna bust him up,” referring to O’Connor.

Defense lawyers argued that the key sentence was inaccurate and that the transcripts differed from transcripts of the same recordings provided in a 1987 trial in which Gotti and six others were acquitted of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

At Gotti’s latest trial, Edward Wright, a government wiretap expert, testified that, after he listened to the muffled tapes for almost four years, “the inaudibles became audible.”

The chief witness tying Gotti to O’Connor’s shooting was James (Studs) McElroy, a former member of the Westies, a violent gang from the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, who is serving a 60-year federal sentence for crimes including murder.

McElroy testified that he met Gotti in April, 1986, at the wake for Frank DeCicco, who police charged was the underboss of the Gambino crime family. DeCicco was killed by a car bomb.

After the wake, McElroy said, he went to dinner with another gang member, who said: “They wanted someone whacked.”

“Who’s they?” Asst. Dist Atty. Michael G. Cherkasky asked.

“John Gotti,” McElroy answered.

At a later dinner with a Gotti associate, McElroy testified, he was told: “We want to break this carpenter guy’s legs, John O’Connor, because he messed up some guy’s restaurant.”

“Did he tell you who you were going to do it for?” Cherkasky asked.

“Yes, John Gotti,” McElroy told the jury.

The witness said that on May 6, 1986, he met with two other Westie gang members, Kevin Kelly and Kenneth Shannon, and James Schlereth, who wanted to join the gang. He said that while he and his two companions stood at the entrance of the building where the carpenters’ union had its headquarters, Schlereth shot O’Connor.

“When the smoke clears, when you look at what was put before you, there was no proof that John Gotti or Anthony Guerrieri had anything to do with the assault on John O’Connor,” defense attorney Gerald L. Shargel charged.

“All of a sudden, the inaudible becomes audible, when they are interested in John Gotti,” he added, referring to the tapes.

Defense lawyer Bruce Cutler attacked the credibility of McElroy, accusing him of being a “psychotic killer” and likening him to “swill and snake rats.”

Cherkasky urged the jurors to listen to the tape recordings--”use your own ears.”

“John O’Connor was shot because John Gotti ordered it to teach him a lesson,” he said.

Gotti, who was born in the South Bronx and whose father was a construction worker, has been tried twice recently.

The year before his 1987 acquittal in federal court in Brooklyn, Gotti was charged with assaulting a refrigerator repairman and robbing him of $325 during a fight over a parking space. When the repairman learned whom he had gotten into an argument with, he entered a hospital and said he couldn’t recall who struck him.