Shooting at Sparks
Paul Castellano was in hot water. In the early 1980s the government was aggressively going after the heads of the five New York families, including Genovese boss Fat Tony Salerno, Lucchese boss Tony “Ducks” Corallo, Colombo boss Carmine “the Snake” Persico, and Bonanno boss Phil Ras-telli. They were being prosecuted under RICO charges.
Family Troubles
Castellano was also losing respect in his own family. His insistence on white-collar crimes was not going over well with the blue-collar crews, who were aligning behind Gotti. The street tough seized upon the old don's vulnerability and began planning his demise.
It was December 1985, and Christmas shoppers crowded the busy city sidewalks, dressed in holiday style. Paul Castellano and his driver Thomas Bilotti pulled up in front of Sparks Steak House in midtown Manhattan. The venerated restaurant was a favorite dining place of Castellano's. No sooner did he exit his car then he was ambushed by assassins-in-waiting. Four gunmen administered six bullets to Castellano's head. John Gotti cruised by in a passing car and surveyed the carnage. Another Mafia transfer of power had been successfully staged. Gotti was the Big Boy now.
The New York media covered John Gotti's death and funeral for days, focusing on everything from the dapper suit he donned in death to man-and-woman-on-the-street interviews where naive New Yorkers came to praise the murderer, not to bury him. The extensive news coverage drew some criticism, but it sold papers.
Castellano had not been respected as a don, and Mafia experts believe that the fact that he did not see this hit coming and take precautions was an indication of his lack of competence.
Paul Castellano is assassinated
Courtesy of AP Images/Mario Suriani
The body of mafia crime boss Paul Castellano lies on a stretcher outside the Sparks Steak House in New York after he and his bodyguards were gunned down, Dec. 16, 1985. At the mob's peak, when dozens of top-echelon mobsters from around the country assembled in 1957 for the infamous Apalachin meeting, more than two dozen families operated nationwide. Disputes were settled by the Commission, a sort of gangland Supreme Court. Corporate change came in a spray of gunfire. Mob executions are a blast from the past; the last boss executed was Castellano.
Little Boy Lost
The tragic story of the death of Gotti's son, Frank, epitomizes Mafia justice. John Gotti's twelve-year-old son, Frank, was puttering around their Howard Beach, Queens, neighborhood when he was struck and killed by a car. The driver, John Favara, was a neighbor of the Gottis. Favara's son and little Frank Gotti were friends. They even had overnights in each other's homes. Favara had been blinded by the setting sun and had not seen Frank pull in front of his car.
Shortly thereafter, Favara began receiving death threats. The local police suggested that he move. He did not take these threats seriously at first. After all, it had been an accident.
John Gotti was a rebel and a hero to many a misguided citizen. He thumbed his nose at the New York City ban on fireworks with a lavish pyrotechnic display every Fourth of July. He was greeted on the street like a movie star, kissing women and babies on their cheeks and shaking the hands of star-struck gawkers.
The word Murderer was spray-painted on Favara's car, and one of his friends, the son of an old mobster, urged him “to take a powder,” slang for hastily leaving the scene. After Gotti's wife, Victoria, attacked Favara with a baseball bat, he changed his mind. He put his house up for sale and decided to get out of town.
He did not get very far. He simply disappeared one morning, never to be heard from again. Veteran crime reporter Jerry Capeci pieced the story together years after the fact. Witnesses saw Favara get clubbed and thrown into a van. The witnesses were intimidated and remained silent. It is believed that his body was dumped in a barrel that was filled with cement and ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic. The offending automobile was turned into scrap metal.
In January 2009 another wrinkle was added to the saga when an informant related that he was told by Favara's killer that Favara's body was put in an oil drum that was filled with acid, dissolving it.
Mr. and Mrs. Gotti were in Florida when these events transpired. They were questioned upon their return, but as usual, there was no evidence to link them to Favara's disappearance.
The Favara murder truly shows the depravity to which gangsters could sink. It wasn't all honor and criminal ethics. They do what they please, usually in the shadows, and to get on their bad side, intentionally or inadvertently, is invariably bad news.
