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Mobster in a Box: Hard Time For The Don

Peg Tyre | Staff Correspondent

November 24, 1992

JOHN GOTTI, the former Boss of Bosses, wakes up each morning at 7 a.m. on the east corridor of the Marion federal penitentiary, where "Days of Our Lives" is the television show of choice and homosexual rape is a way of life.

The lights in his cramped, low-ceilinged cell go out at 9 p.m. and Gotti, who in times past would just be heading out for dinner in the city, goes to sleep. He reclines on a thin mattress covering a concrete slab bed. He closes his eyes to the constant glare of the lights on the tier, a two-story row of cells connected by a narrow walkway like a kennel. Despite his prison-purchased earplugs, Gotti is often awakened in the night by long, gutteral screams as other prisoners struggle with their private nightmares.

The life of the once flamboyant crime boss is now clouded with ritual humiliation, mindless monotony and the ever-present threat of physical violence. He lives in a world of total isolation, unable to step from his cell without handcuffs and shackles, where every iota of self-determination, down to the number of socks an inmate can have in his cell, has been eliminated.

Gotti's home is the highest security prison in the country. Set in a pastoral section of southern Illinois, it is called the House of Horrors, the House of Pain or the Monster Box by those who have spent time within its barbed-wire fences.

But Gotti is unwilling to concede that the draconian conditions of the prison have taken their toll on him.

"I'm fine," said Gotti, speaking through his lawyer. "I feel good. I got no complaints at all."

And prison guards concede that thus far Gotti as fared better than most, in part because he has hired two well-built inmates to protect him against physical and sexual attacks.

But longtime inmates say Gotti's macho bravado will soon fade. Without physical contact with another friendly human, every prisoner, they say, is pushed to the brink of mental illness - and often beyond.

And Gotti's fight to hold onto his sanity will last for the rest of his life. Because, barring a successful appeal or radical changes in the slumbering federal Bureau of Prisons, Inmate Gotti, No. 18261-053, will only leave the United States Penitentiary at Marion when he is dead.

The following is recreation of Gotti's prison life based on information supplied largely by inmates in Marion, correction officers, federal prison officials and part-time workers inside the facility. Also consulted were defense lawyers working with other prisoners at Marion, Gotti's adoptive son, Lewis Kasman, prisoner's rights experts, and Bruce Cutler, Gotti's lawyer and friend.

Shortly before dawn on June 24, 1992, Gotti was rousted from his cell at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center - less than 24 hours after he had been sentenced to life in prison without parole - and driven by federal marshals to the Teterboro, N.J., airport.

Flanked by 40 heavily armed guards, Gotti, who is mortally afraid of flying, stepped into a small propeller plane, pausing for a second to look at the sky, which was almost obscured by the glare of floodlights.

Once in Illinois, he was driven by armored bus into the Marion prison, gliding past three 25-foot fences coiled with razor wire at 7:35 a.m. His approach was monitored by guards in eight concrete and bullet-proof glass towers stocked with an arsenal that includes 12-gauge shotguns, .38-cal. service revolvers, M14 rifles, M16 rifles and anti-helicopter rifles that shoot a hard plastic projectile attached to a rope.

Within minutes, he was strip-searched by guards who probed his mouth and nose, penetrated his anus with their fingers and peered beneath his scrotum looking for drugs or weapons.

He was then issued a 22-page rulebook and khaki prison clothes. In the next week, he was given a complete physical, where doctors noted that the second toe of Gotti's left foot was missing, severed in a childhood run-in with a cement mixer.

MANY PRISONERS END up at Marion because they commit violent crimes against other prisoners or guards while being housed in less secure federal and state prisons. Others are assigned to Marion directly from court because they are believed to run criminal enterprises or political organizations that threaten the government.

The director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, J. Michael Quinlan, assigned Gotti to Marion. But once inside the gate, the warden, C. Allan Turner, decided not to assign Gotti to the K unit, where notorious prisoners such as convicted spy Christopher Boyce, the subject of the movie "The Falcon and the Snowman," and former CIA agent and gun runner Edwin Wilson live in comparative luxury. Instead Gotti was moved three times until he was finally settled in the E section of the East Corridor, a general population unit, in a 7by 8-foot cell.

His cell is equipped with a thin mattress and a worn white sheet, a scratched plastic orb set in the wall that serves as a mirror and a lidless stainless steel toilet which Gotti cleans regularly with toothpaste powder and a washcloth.

He can pass the day listening to the radio or watching soap operas and movies on television, which is called "the Babysitter" and is installed in every cell. Gotti watches sports and is especially enthusiastic about University of Tennessee football games. An inveterate gambler, he can no longer put $1,000 on a game, as was his practice before his conviction. If he gambles at all, Gotti will bet with candy bars that he can buy at the prison commissary.

High school equivalency classes, which Gotti was required to take for the first 90 days of his term, are broadcast on the in-house prison channel and Jane Fonda's exercise tapes are played each morning.