Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [100]
“I don’t think this attorney realized that the worse he made me look, the worse he was making his client look as well. Like the old saying says, birds of a feather flock together. If I was that bad, what did it make Mike?
“But I think the defense team was desperate and felt their only chance was to make me the villain. So the lawyer kept up his verbal assault, trying to trip me up at every turn. I’d implicated Mike in four Mob-related shootings, three of which ended in homicide. And as questions came my way about each act, I truly believe Mike’s lawyer was hurting him, not helping him. He seemed to constantly get the names of the victims wrong. And I think to confuse me, he sometimes put a name to a different crime. But in my opinion, that only made him seem unprepared. I think the deeper he got into those subjects, the more credibility he gave me.
“And then the defense turned their attention to Junior Gotti. What if any business dealings had I had with him? I made it clear to the court and jury that I’d met him at Gambino social events on several occasions over the years, but I’d never had any personal dealings with him. When asked what status Gotti held in the family, I explained that after his father went to prison, he sat on the panel of family leaders with Nicky Corozzo and Jackie D’Amico.
“When they challenged my statement, I explained that I knew about the leadership panel from conversations with Nicky Corozzo and from being part of Nicky’s crew. Crew members have to know who their leaders are; it’s a part of their survival. It’s like working for a major corporation. The average employees may not speak with board members directly, but they know who they are.
“Junior’s story was that he’d walked away from the Mob years earlier. I disputed that. So they came at me hard, wanting me to explain how I could say that it’s impossible for a made member, boss or soldier, to walk away from the life. I answered that for many years, I was schooled in the rules of the life by Nicky Corozzo. I also told about the time I tried to get released from the Gambino family to join the Colombos. Nicky read me the riot act by saying in no uncertain terms that I was born under the Gambino flag and that’s where I would die.
“When asked what knowledge I had of any business dealings between Junior and Nicky, I stated they were involved in a long-distance phone-card business. Of course, the lawyer asked if it was an illegal business and that I had to answer yes or no. Because of that I answered no, it wasn’t illegal. What I wasn’t allowed to say was that while the business itself was legal, their business practices weren’t. Not when guys like me went to the merchants and told them they could only sell that particular card or else. So the defense got away with one.
“But I was able to get in Nicky’s plot to kill Junior because he felt he was being cheated on his end of the phone-card business. Because me and Mike were supposed to do the work, I can imagine the co-defendant meetings between Junior and Mike got a little tense after that came out.
“Moments like that reveal the level of treachery behind the scenes. On the surface, it looked like those two guys were allies against the justice system. But in reality, either one of them would have killed the other if ordered.
“For the two days I was under cross-examination, I was called a murderer, a liar, and a cheat. But they really showed how much they felt they needed to neutralize me when they accused me of beating Dina when she was nine months pregnant. How was that for a desperate effort to get jurors to look at me with disgust? But they failed to do their homework, because during Dina’s ninth month of pregnancy, I was on the run and had no contact with her.
“It’s things like that guys like me who turn government witness can expect from defense lawyers. If the government takes you on as a witness, it’s because they believe you can help drive a nail into somebody’s coffin. One way to overcome