Star witness dishes dirt on mob, corrupt cops

John 'Junior' Gotti (left) and Charles Carneglia in New York together in 1991 caught by a police surveillance camera. Photo / AP

NEW YORK - The murder trial of a reputed Mafia assassin has become an embarrassment for both the family of late mob boss John Gotti and police, thanks to sensational testimony from the Government's star witness.

John Alite has linked his former best friend John "Junior" Gotti to a series of gangland slayings, boasted that he slept with reality television graduate Victoria Gotti and claimed two police officers were in on another hit. The defendant, Charges Carneglia, has dismissed the testimony against him as a betrayal by "rats" and "canaries".

Most of the singing at Carneglia's ongoing trial in Brooklyn has been done by Alite, a Gambino organised crime family associate who grew up wanting to be a made member but wasn't allowed to because he's Albanian, not Italian.

New York's Gambino family has been the subject of a steady stream of government indictments and prosecutions since John Gotti, the so-called "Dapper Don", was sentenced to life in prison in 1992. He died behind bars in 2002.

In several hours on the witness stand, Alite, 46, explained he was breaking a sacred rule by testifying: "Don't do what I'm doing - ratting."

He told jurors that he grew up in the Queens borough wanting to be a mobster, and won the younger Gotti's admiration in the 1980s - Gotti was best man at his wedding - by dealing cocaine and giving a cut of the profits to Gotti, even though drugs were considered taboo in the family.

He also described how he and Gotti's married sister were "seeing each other on the sneak" - an allegation that prompted an angry denial from Victoria Gotti.

"He's an insect," the one-time star of Growing up Gotti told the Daily News. "He would hump a cockroach."

Alite also claimed that two lawmen - a current Suffolk County officer and a retired New York Police Department detective - gave him backup in the drive-by shooting of a rival drug dealer in 1988. He testified the former NYPD officer was "involved in crimes for 20 years" and made millions of dollars.

Suffolk County officials declined comment. The NYPD said it had no record of the officer named by Alite.

Alite's testimony at the Carneglia trial also offered a preview of the murder case against Gotti, who has pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he was involved in three slayings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and possessed and trafficked more than 5kg of cocaine.