What's it like to sit across the table from a mob hit man?

A Q&A with mob author George Anastasia.

Photo courtesy of George Anastasia on Instagram

George Anastasia at the Marlton Diner.
Maria Pouchnikova

For eight months, over break­fast or just coffee, author George Anastasia talked with a former mob hit man, John Alite, in a back booth at the Marlton Diner. That's where Alite told his story — an insider's tale of murder and muscle as the right-hand man for mob boss John "Junior" Gotti. Junior became the head of the Gambino family in New York in 1992 after his father, "The Dapper Don," was sent to prison for life.

After years of benefiting from the mob's dirty work, Alite (A-LITE) went on the run and ended up in a hellhole of a prison in Brazil. He was extradited to the U.S., turned government witness and testified against Junior at trial. Now out of prison, Alite was moving on with his life and asked Anastasia to write his story. Gotti's Rules was published by Dey Street Books, a part of HarperCollins, on Tuesday.

Junior Gotti, who says he left the mob in 1999, was irate over the imminent publication of Alite's story and self-published his own version of events. His e-book, Shadow of My Father, came out Jan. 19.

City Paper sat down with Anastasia at the same diner and asked him about the dueling books, how Gotti's Rules had come about and the state of the Philly mob today. Here is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

Q. John Gotti Jr. rushed his side of the story into publication ahead of your book. Did that surprise you?

A. No, I knew it was coming. In fact, the reporter who did the foreword to Gotti’s book, a fellow named Peter Lance, tried to sandbag my book by writing emails to HarperCollins basically telling them they ought to re-vet it, hold it back. So I think they were trying to, through a back door, delay publication of this book so they could get out ahead of us. They came out Monday [Jan. 19], I’ll be out Tuesday [Jan. 27], so it’s a matter of a week. I think it’s another example of Junior trying to control the narrative; that’s what he does. He spins. He doesn’t like the version of the story that Alite is going to tell.

In a piece I read about Junior’s book, he calls Alite a ‘dog’ and a ‘nobody’ and says he was never around.

That’s rather disingenuous. Alite made an awful lot of money with Junior, that’s been established. The federal government described Alite as Junior’s enforcer and right-hand man. Junior was best man at Alite’s wedding; Alite was a member of [Junior’s sister] Vicky Gotti’s wedding party. … If he was a fringe player, what’s he doing in all these places? I think it’s rewriting history to say he wasn’t a major player.

In your book, Alite makes it pretty clear that Junior, who took over the family from his father at age 28, is a chump. Other mobsters called him Urkel for his high-waisted pants, or Pee-Wee Herman for wanting to drive by and peep at crime scenes.

Again, this is what irks Junior and that’s why I think he put his book out. He knows that’s Alite’s description of him. Alite said it from the witness stand. Alite’s saying it again in the book. I’ve never met the guy. … There is other testimony that more or less supports that Junior Gotti was not very well liked.

Has John Gotti Jr. ever tried to reach out to you?

No, and I don’t suppose he will. One of the things I wanted to lay out in the prologue of the book is that I made no attempt to talk to him or to anybody in his camp. I didn’t want it to be he-said-they-said. [Gotti Jr.] had his say. His sister has had her say. He’s having his say again in his own book. This is John Alite’s story.

How did you come to meet John Alite, and what was in it for him to talk to you?

I knew of him because he spent some time down here in the ’90s; he was living in Cherry Hill and Voorhees and doing stuff in the Philadelphia underworld. He knew of me from being down here, ‘cause he followed the media. About a year and a half ago, I got a phone call from him, and he said, “I’m looking for somebody to tell my story, would you be interested?” So, we met right here in this diner for the first time, and I was already very interested.

The backstory was after he got out of jail, he had a deal to do a first-person book with St. Martins, the publisher. He had a writer who was going to ghostwrite it for him, but it fell apart because St. Martins started looking at the “Son of Sam” law [which stipulates that criminals can’t profit from the publicity around their crimes] and said, “You can’t do this.” So that deal fell apart. And at one point, his agent had reached out to my agent to see if I would be interested, but it never went anywhere.

Now, he calls me. I said, “I’ll only do it if I do the book. Third-person narrative. You tell me the story.” He said, “Fine,” because at that point he wanted his story in full. I mean he testified at two trials, he got media coverage. But you know how that is — when you cover a trial, maybe you get 20 inches. He wanted his full story told.

And you met right here?

We used that very back booth. He would sit looking out and I would sit facing him. We met at least once a week for probably eight months. We’d have breakfast or coffee and talk. Then we would email and text back and forth. As I’m writing the chapters, I would bring them in and let him take a look. He was very much involved in the process. I must have read 6,000 pages of testimony. Not just his testimony, but the testimony from both trials. So I knew all the backstory; I would just ask him to expand on it and take notes.

The first sentence in your book is “John Alite was a murder, a drug dealer, a thug.” Why do you think you could believe his story? How much of it did you try to corroborate?

Look, I’ve talked to a lot of these guys who have come to Jesus or whatever and become cooperators. You question all their motivations as to why. The more I talked to John, the more I realized this guy is not trying to sugarcoat anything that he was or anything that he did. And he’s trying to change his life.

Now, I couldn’t corroborate everything. Stuff in Brazil — it’s impossible. But the things he talked about in New York were backed up by the federal prosecutors. And the things he told me about Philadelphia — that, I knew intuitively. I mean, I know Philadelphia. Those things all lined up correctly. So, it gave me a comfort level.

… A lot of it is a judgment call. Whenever you write about somebody or develop a source, do you trust them? And the things I could corroborate … especially the Philadelphia stuff, I was comfortable with that stuff.

Why did you start the book with a very graphic scene in Brazil? [Alite wraps a covering around a knife and sticks it up his butt because he knows he is about to taken by guards to an isolated room and attacked.]

I thought it was very important for people to know the situation he was in, And I think the incident that’s described in that opening chapter basically says, “This guy is going to do anything he needed to do to survive.” At the end of the day, he’s a fighter and a survivor. I think it said a lot about his nature. I wanted do that early on: Here’s who this guy is. And I think it worked.

What is it like to sit across the table from a mob hit man? What did you see in his eyes? How does he compare to other gangsters you’ve met over the years?

Well, I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of guys. Sitting down with a guy who’s a murderer or an alleged murderer, it might be unique for some other people, but it’s not particularly unique for me.

I think people lose sight of the fact that these guys are multi-dimensional the same way anybody else is. … John, the more I got to know him, talked about his family, talked about his kids, talked about what he hoped to do with his life. That doesn’t negate what he did, I didn’t want to lose sight of that. But he would not try to hide who he was and what he did, and not try to explain it away. He wouldn’t even try to justify it. He told me, “I’m going to a therapist once a week because violence was like an addiction to me. I have to control it."

Are you still in touch with him?

I had dinner with him last night.

How’s he doing?

He’s doing well. It’s funny, he kind of came full circle on all of this. Right before the book came out, he called me and said, “I don’t want to do it anymore.” I said, “John, it’s too late. It’s coming out. I don’t have any control anymore.” Because apparently his kids had been getting harassment. Then finally he said, “All right, look — anybody asks me, basically I’m going to say, “Yeah, I talked to ya, that’s the story, but I’m past that now. I’m going on with my life. I don’t want anything to do with that anymore.” Now Gotti starts sniping at him, now he’s all in again. He’s come full circle.

In your book, you kind of say the Philly mob was not as cutthroat and ruthless as the mob in New York.

John says as much. There was a Philadelphia wiseguy, Johnny Casasanto, who said to Alite, “John Gotti Jr. wants me to go up to New York. He wants to make me in New York.” And Alite said, “Casasanto, you’ll never survive New York. It’s not like Philadelphia.”

What’s the difference?

In New York, you’ve got five different families. You’ve got all these guys operating. The stakes are so much higher. Violence is so much more prevalent. In Philadelphia, it’s only one family. So while there has been violence and it’s been chaotic and crazy, it’s all one group.

 How would you describe the Philly mob today?

It’s always going to exist, but it’s a shadow of what it used to be. I think there’s an attempt now to go back to the old way of staying in the shadows — make money, not headlines. Don’t call attention to yourself. … Ironically, if they do that, they’ll continue to exist and maybe flourish, because priorities in law enforcement are different now. Priorities are now terrorism and different drug gangs. If the mob stays low-key, and they don’t start shooting one another, they’ll probably have another run. Although it’ll never be like it was in the ’60s or the Angelo Bruno days, those days are gone.

Where is the mob in Philly making its money today?

I think it’s primarily sports betting and loan sharking.

You talk in the book about tensions between law enforcement in New York and Tampa fighting over who was going to prosecute Alite — disorganized law enforcement vs. organized crime. Is this just an isolated case, or have you seen this before?

It used to be very prevalent in Philadelphia. And then during the Scarfo era, everybody kind of coalesced and said, “Let’s stop the bickering and get the job done.” I think there are still occasions where everybody is very territorial and they don’t share information. I think that’s the nature of law enforcement. Alite saw it up close and personal. He said he was in rooms where they actually started screaming at one another. And his position is they were all going for the glory. And at the end of the day, they didn’t win the case.

You write that the Mafia was a way of life under Angelo Bruno and Carlo Gambino, but it later gave way to a "simple greed and money-making machine.” Do you think the mafia was ever about loyalty and honor?

There might have been a time when it was about honor and loyalty. I think it would have to go back to the Italian-American experience, living in a ghetto, being subjected to a lot of things that bar you from advancing. So you seek protection or unity. The Mafia in Sicily came out of that kind of mindset, but it quickly deteriorated into a powerful organization that became all about consolidating its power, expanding itself, getting more wealth. It’s the human condition. I’m not sure — the Mafia, they like to present it that way, I’m not sure it ever was an honorable society. But if it was, it would have been two or three generations ago.

Junior claims he left the mob in 1999. Does anyone leave the mob alive?

He claims to have left. A lot of people in New York say it’s nonsense. I don’t think he’s active anymore. There’s a couple of different stories Alite tells. When this Johnny Casasanto came home from prison in 2001, he said, “Junior said for me to go to New York, Junior’s going to make me.” Well, if Junior quit in 1999, how could he be making him in 2001?

There’s another tape from prison where Junior is heard complaining that the administration back in New York has demoted him to capo. Well, if you quit, what do you care? There’s those kinds of things. Again, I think it’s Junior being disingenuous. 

Did he quit? Probably, as best as you can quit, and with the $4 million or $5 million he took with him to the Gold Coast of Long Island, where he lives. He’s not an active player any more.

John Alite did not seek the Witness Protection Program. Did that surprise you?

No, I’ve seen more and more guys turn it down. I think the restrictions are too great. They get relocated to a place they can’t survive in. I remember Nick Caramandi calling me from Alabama. Nick Caramandi with his gravelly voice. He can’t survive in Alabama. He left the program.

Do you think Alite is in peril as a result?

I think he always is going to be. But I think he is very conscious of where is, who’s around him, what he’s doing. But I think he wants to live his life on his terms; that’s his way of saying, “I’m not afraid of you.”

So Alite’s going legit. What kind of business is he in now?

I know he was working with a company that tries to rehab houses, supervising some construction with them. He had a fellow who had a business, an auto body shop. He was trying to do some stuff. He’s not really connected with anything. He’s still struggling.

There's been talk that Hollywood might make the film, In the Shadow of My Father, about the Gotti family. If so, who would play Junior, sister Vicky, and John Senior?

They were talking about Travolta for John Senior. I think that would have been good. Do you know who would be good for Vicky? Maria Bello. She’s a Philly girl. She’s a really good actress. Junior? I don’t know, Mark Ruffalo.

 Look, I don’t want them to make this movie, but if I were casting, that’s what I would go for. 

 And who would play mob reporter George Anastasia?

The late Peter Falk, I guess. He’is late, isn't he?

Columbo as a reporter.