The Don Is Done

By Jeffrey Goldberg
John J. Gotti, the bloody-minded truck hijacker who led the Gambino crime family to ruination, has a friend in Joseph Castellano, whose father Gotti murdered. The murder took place in midtown Manhattan on a December evening in 1985, in front of Sparks Steak House, which, owing to the death of Paul Castellano at its threshold, is now a popular tourist destination. John Gotti did not actually shoot Joseph Castellano's father, but he arranged the killing and handpicked the assassins--"button men" is the archaic term for their profession--who did the job. A jury found Gotti guilty in Castellano's murder, and other murders, in 1992. Read more

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/1999/01/the-don-is-done/8235/