Wiretaps Will Prove That Gotti Is Not Guilty, His Lawyer Says

Charging the government’s indictment is “built on sand,” John Gotti’s defense lawyer said Thursday that his client never orchestrated the murder of the leader of the Gambino crime family, and that federal wiretaps will prove his innocence.

In an opening statement at Gotti’s trial, lawyer Albert J. Krieger charged that a taped conversation shows that Gotti told his companions he does not know who killed Paul Castellano, who was shot to death outside a Manhattan steakhouse before Christmas in 1985.

The conversation was taped in an apartment over the Manhattan social club that Gotti, the current reputed head of the Gambino family, often visited.

Prosecutors allege that Gotti masterminded Castellano’s slaying to gain control of the Gambino family, the nation’s most powerful Mafia organization. Castellano allegedly was about to break up Gotti’s crew because it was dealing in narcotics.

“It’s Humpty Dumpty,” Krieger told the jury of six men and six women in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. “That Mr. Gotti had complicity in the Castellano homicide totally defies rationality.”

Gotti, 51, and co-defendant Frank Locascio, 59, are accused of a series of crimes including murder, murder-conspiracy, loan sharking and tax fraud. Juries have exonerated Gotti at three previous trials.

The defense lawyer attacked the government’s key witness, Salvatore Gravano, a top Gotti associate and former co-defendant, who turned informant.

Krieger called Gravano, who prosecutors will put on the stand in an effort to corroborate hours of tape-recorded conversations, “a little man full of evil, connivance, manipulation, vanity who has tried to clear the slate by admitting to 19 murders.”

“There are only 18 of you here,” Krieger told the 12-member jury and six alternates seated in the jury box. “We don’t have enough chairs to put the victims in.

“We will prove to you the government is engaged in the equivalent of a body-snatching trade. They are trading dead people for testimony,” the defense lawyer added.

Prosecutors believe they strengthened their case dramatically after Gravano offered to become a witness in November. In his opening argument, U.S. Atty. Andrew Maloney assured the jury that the government has no brief for Gravano.

That contention was vigorously challenged by Krieger, who launched what is expected to be a sustained attack on the witness’ credibility.

Pointing to the prosecution table, the Miami-based lawyer declared: “This table has the power of absolution. . . . He (Gravano) has confessed to get an amnesty, a pardon.

“What we have is a contingent fee, pure and simple. Deliver, you get. Don’t deliver, you spend your life in jail for the crimes you committed. Welcome to the world,” Krieger told the jurors. “It is not all ice cream and frill and lace and candy . . . There is a real world out there.”