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.

Three previous trials in 2005 and 2006 ended in hung juries and mistrials after Gotti used the defence that he had quit the mob for good in the 1990s. His lawyers say the new allegations are based on co-operators who are lying to protect themselves.

Alite testified that a newly promoted Gotti drafted him for a hit on an associate who had ignored one of his father's orders. The younger Gotti rose through the ranks while his father ruled the New York mob in the 1980s and 90s.

"It was his first job as a captain, and he wanted to get it right," the witness said.

Prosecutors say Carneglia gunned down the victim in the World Trade Centre Parking lot in 1990. The result left Gotti "elated", Alite said.

Alite also implicated Gotti in the other two killings prosecutors have charged he was involved in - the slayings of two men in Queens amid drug turf disputes in 1988 and 1991. Alite said they were carried out on Gotti's say-so.

Carneglia was one of 62 people arrested last year in what authorities described as one of the largest roundups ever of suspected members and associates of a New York crime family. Since then, 60 have pleaded guilty to lesser charges and one case was dropped.

Prosecutors allege Carneglia gunned down a court officer to prevent the officer's testimony against him in a 1976 weapon possession case.

They say the trail of bodies also included that of a rival mobster stabbed to death in 1977 during a fight outside a diner, a Gambino associate killed in 1983 during an argument over money and an armoured car security guard shot in the back during a heist in 1990.

The case has produced one of the gorier allegations to emerge recently in mob lore: that the body of John Favara - a neighbour killed for accidentally running over the elder Gotti's 12-year-old son - was dissolved in a vat of acid.

Yesterday, a former NYPD detective who helped arrest Carneglia testified that the suspect ranted against co-operators, saying: "I can't believe these rats and canaries", and fretted over being put behind bars for life.

Attorneys for Carneglia, 62, say the case against him hinges on flimsy, outdated evidence.

- AP