Dave Hannigan: Gotti family still making headlines for all the wrong reasons

In the fifth season of The Sopranos, Tony’s sister Janice gets arrested for attacking another parent at her stepdaughter’s soccer game.

The kids involved are nine- and 10-year-old girls, and the story makes the New Jersey evening news, replete with footage and a reporter hamming up the mob connection, describing the incident as “a mafia-related hit”.

On Long Island last Thursday night, a high school basketball game between Locust Valley and Oyster Bay went viral after the daughter-in-law and granddaughter of the notorious godfather John Gotti (the so-called Teflon Don) were arrested for allegedly tag-teaming a mother from the opposing side in the stands. Life imitates art.

That Joe Gotti put up a team-high 20 points for Oyster Bay in their 72-47 loss to their neighbours is one of the few aspects of the fractious evening not under dispute.

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A video clip shows him making a free throw then walking off the court towards a disturbance in the bleachers and, while everything after that is a nervy camera mess of pulling and dragging, the fracas culminated in his mother Kimberly (55) and sister Gianna (23) being taken away by police.

Aside from being accused of calling Locust Valley players “f**gots and p**sies”, the ladies spent a night behind bars and face charges of third-degree assault with intent to cause physical injury at a March 6th court appearance.

“I felt my hair being pulled and felt my wig come off, which was held on by three clips and Velcro,” said the 47-year-old victim in her statement to police about her suffering at the hands of the Gottis.

“I allowed my head to go back and I felt as if my scalp was going to be ripped off and I observed the lady in the gray jacket pulling my hair…The female punched me and then an unknown female began to punch me too.”

The Gottis offer a different version of events. Denying any homophobic or misogynistic slurs were uttered, they claim the victim threw the first punch and had been abusing Joe throughout the game.

In a sentence that captures so much of what is wrong with youth sport in this country, the family lawyer downplayed what happened.

“They were making fun as he was playing, and then there was a little bit of a verbal thing that went back and forth between the fans – both sets of parents.”

As if that is normal and acceptable behaviour while watching teenage boys from two affluent towns trying to make baskets. Which, unfortunately, around here, it is.

Brawls at high school games are so commonplace in America now that they rarely cause any significant ripple beyond their own locality.

A trawl of the police blotter reveals similar incidents occurred on basketball courts in Georgia, Rochester, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Louisiana over the past month alone.

This one garnered headlines because of the enduring national obsession with the mob. More than two decades after John Gotti died in prison while serving a life sentence for racketeering and murder, the family name still resonates in the media. Of course, the coverage gets amplified when those involved play up the stereotype.

“They refused to press charges against the lady who assaulted my wife first,” said John Gotti junior, who succeeded his father as reputed head of the Gambino family between 1991 and 1999. “That’s the only reason why we’re here: Because they’re stand up.”

Speaking outside the arraignment court, Gotti seemed quite proud to assert his wife and daughter were in legal peril merely because they adhered to long-standing family protocol when it came to involving police in their business. As in, they didn’t.

Supposedly the youngest capo in organised crime history, he claims to have retired from the mafia after serving six years in jail for racketeering and associated crimes. Yet the judge in the case has issued a stay-away order, banning the Gottis from any contact with the victim in this case.

To be fair, this branch of the Gotti tree has lately been more known for its sporting pedigree than its hard-earned place in mobster lore. Before her arrest, Gianna played basketball at Brooklyn College, doing well enough to earn a pro contract with Clube Dos Galitos in Portugal.

Aside from excelling at hoops, Joseph is apparently also a standout defensive end on the high school gridiron field, and John Gotti III, his older brother, amassed a 5 & 1 record as a mixed martial artist before switching to pro boxing and fighting an exhibition against Floyd Mayweather Jr in Florida last June.

That encounter didn’t go as planned. Outclassed for most of the contest, Gotti III refused to accept the referee’s decision to stop the bout in the sixth due to, and this may sound familiar, excessive trash-talking.

He continued to chase Mayweather around the ring, prompting supporters and trainers from both corners to brawl inside and outside the ropes. His part in the debacle led to the temporary loss of his licence, and the fallout included Nicolette, another of John Jr’s children, threatening one of Mayweather’s daughters on social media. Charming.

When a nephew of his was facing jail time for arson and bank robbery back in 2018, John Gotti Jnr petitioned the court on his behalf, arguing the young man deserved clemency because he “grew up bearing the name ‘Gotti’, with all the connotations and condemnations that the name bears”.

Connotations and condemnations continue.