Photographs

The notorious Gotti family is the stuff of mob legend. The "Dapper Don," John Gotti Sr., and his son John A. "Junior" Gotti ran New York's powerful Gambino crime family and were well known for their flamboyant style and brutal ways. John Alite, a mob hit man, associate, and close friend of the Gottis, has a very different story to tell. An Albanian-American from Queens, Alite was an unlikely ally to the Italian mob, but with his street smarts he was eventually recruited to be Junior Gotti's muscle. Although he reaped the benefits of working under the powerful mob figure, Alite discovered firsthand that the legendary American Mafia--an organization that claimed to be built on honor and loyalty--was nothing more than a façade for hypocritical, manipulative, and greedy criminals. Following a harrowing sentence in a Brazilian prison, Alite was extradited to the United States in 2006 and agreed to help the feds put the crime family behind bars. In this book, veteran true-crime writer and prize-winning reporter George Anastasia gains unprecedented access to the Gotti family's stories and secrets, demystifying the larger-than-life legend.--From publisher description.