NEWSPAPER SALES SPIKE WHEN THERE’S A GOTTI ON THE FRONT PAGE

John Gotti Jr. slams cops over Frank Cali accusations, demands apology

By Dean Balsamini and Larry Celona

New York Post
March 16, 2019

John Gotti Jr. took a whack at law enforcement Saturday after law enforcement sources revealed that Gambino mob boss Francesco “Frankie Boy” Cali was slain over a “personal dispute” with a 24-year-old Staten Islander — and not by his recently-sprung uncle Gene Gotti.

“I wonder if these tremendously insightful law enforcement individuals are going to issue an apology to Gene Gotti,” Junior, 55, told The Post.

“He has grandchildren and to have to endure the last several days of that propaganda nonsense. I’m sure it was hurtful to the kids and this is the problem we have today,” he said.

Gotti took aim at some law enforcement officials “who are quick to speculate and their government cooperators are all too eager to contribute to these wrong theories and therefore you put individuals into a position where they are guilty until proven innocent. It goes to show you how broken the system is….Thank god there are cameras to help law enforcement to do their jobs,” he added sarcastically.

One law enforcement source involved in the Cali investigation offered this response to Gotti’s apology demand:

“Tell Junior we will apologize once his family apologizes to the Castellano, Lino and Johnson families, and all the other families whose relatives they killed and got away with. He should stick to the movie business, or whatever else he’s doing to pay the bills.”

Cops were previously probing whether the Staten Island rub-out was part of a brewing American-vs.-Sicilian power struggle with Gene Gotti looking to wrest control, sources said.

Gene Gotti, 72, was released from federal prison in September 2018 after 29 years behind bars for heroin dealing.

Junior Gotti called the theories that his uncle had anything to do with the killing as “governmental fiction and the papers are all too eager to adopt this type of story.”

Said Junior: “Today, an arrest was made. A 24-year-old individual who did it for personal reasons, not street reasons. Is somebody going to apologize to Gene and his family?”

He added: “What troubles me to the core is the simple fact that for two days the Gotti name has been put into the press for these negative reasons and it’s been done because it could be done. It’s easy…

“It bothers me because (Gene’s) family was so excited to come home … And to come home and deal with this nonsense … Geno never complained. He’s cut from his brother’s (John Gotti) cloth.”

Junior, who between 2004 and 2009 was a defendant in four racketeering trials which all ended in mistrials, said newspaper sales spike “8 to 12 percent when there’s a Gotti on the front page.”

Junior said that if it wasn’t for surveillance cameras, “law enforcement would have gotten a government cooperator or cooperators to corroborate their theory and Gene Gotti and others would have been charged for that murder (Cali) within a year.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Apparently this was not a mob hit. Anthony Comello, 24, of Staten Island was taken into police custody for shooting Frankie Boy. The shooting likely happened when the two got into an argument after Comello ran into the back of Cali’s parked vehicle..