John "Junior" Gotti's former pal John Alite took the stand yesterday at the racketeering trial against reputed Gambino hitman Charles Carneglia, and implicated the mob scion in four murders:
Alite fingered Gotti and Carneglia in the rubout of gangster Louis DiBono in an underground garage at the World Trade Center. * * * In 1990, Gotti was a newly minted captain when he was told to put together a hit team to kill DiBono because he didn't obey an order to go see Junior Gotti's father, the late mob boss John Gotti, Alite said. "This was [Junior's] first job as a captain to kill somebody and he wanted to do it right," Alite told Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Burlingame. Alite couldn't locate DiBono at gambling haunts in Atlantic City. Prosecutors say Carneglia finally killed DiBono in the garage at the World Trade Center. After Junior Gotti learned the murder had been successfully carried out, he was "elated," Alite said. The mob rat also fingered Junior as ordering the gangland killings of coke dealer George Grasso, shakedown artist Bruce Godderup and Frank (Geekie) Boccia.
Alite testified that notwithstanding four previous murders Carneglia only became a made man after killing DiBono, and Carneglia bragged about killing police officer Albert Gelb: "He said, 'All of us guys should kill a cop.'"
Although Alite, of Albanian descent, never could become a made guy in the Gambino family he nevertheless had his own crew of 150 men and made a pile of money for Gotti through drug trafficking and the sex trade:
He also claimed Gotti - son of the notorious Gambino crime boss John Gotti - collected monthly cash payments from a drug-dealing operation across the city. "If you get caught, you're dead!" Alite said Gotti's father warned him once. Alite, who controlled drug-trafficking and prostitution in dozens of Queens neighborhoods for nearly a decade until 1993, said that although Gotti Sr. had warned Gambino associates not to officially sell cocaine, he frequently looked the other way.
In January 2008 Alite made a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in which he admitted his role in six murders, and three of those six -- involving the murders of George Grosso, Louis DiBono and Bruce John Gotterup -- are directly charged in an August 2008 indictment against Gotti who is expected to go to trial later this year at which Alite will be the star witness.
In 2006 "Alite figured prominently in the trial of Ronald 'Ronnie One Arm' Trucchio and three co-defendants found guilty of conspiracy and racketeering by a federal jury in Tampa":
Alite and Trucchio, a captain in the Gambino crime family, were alleged business partners. At the time, federal prosecutors accused Alite of controlling illegal businesses, illegal gambling, extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and murder as a top lieutenant in the Gambino crime family. Authorities said Alite used Prestige Valet, a Tampa company, to infiltrate the local valet business.
Although Alite was indicted as a co-defendant with Trucchio and the others he fled to Brazil and was not extradited in time for the 2006 trial. At the trial Kevin Bonner "described Alite as Gotti's right-hand man in the late 1980s and early 1990s."
On a more salacious note, Alite further testified yesterday that he had a fling with Junior Gotti's older sister Victoria during the time she was married to then-husband Carmine Agnello which prompted a strident denial from the Mafia princess:
Reached for comment, Victoria Gotti ridiculed the heavily-tattooed thug's claim of a tryst with her. "He's an out-and-out liar - he's vermin," she said. "This animal [Alite] had a crush on me from the first time I met him. He was in our bridal party and he tried to kiss me at my wedding. He missed the cheek by a lot. "Carmine knew he had a crush on me. That's why he despised him. "In Mr. Alite's dreams would someone like me even give him a second glance let alone 'fool around' with him. I was raised a good Catholic girl and always played by the rules. "I met and married my first and only boyfriend. I never slept with Alite or anyone else. "Dare him to take a lie detector test. I will take a lie detector test anytime, anywhere."
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