Gotti's Final Resting Place Uncertain

By Sean Gardiner | STAFF WRITER

June 11, 2002

The families of several of John Gotti's victims may have an idea of where they'd like the former Dapper Don to spend the afterlife. But everyone was mum yesterday on where he should be launched from.

Officials of the Catholic Church, for example, wouldn't say whether they would even consider allowing Gotti, who died of cancer yesterday, to have a public funeral Mass.

"To our knowledge there has been no contact between his family and any of our parishes about a funeral," said Frank DeRosa, spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens. "We're not going to say anything about it until that occurs."

If the history of mobsters holds, chances are slim that the Gotti family would be allowed a Mass.

Cardinal John O'Connor, for example, rejected a request for a funeral Mass from the family of Paul Castellano, who was gunned down outside Spark's Steak House in a 1985 power grab by Gotti. Castellano was quietly buried in the nonsectarian Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island.

Frank DeCicco, one of the men who took part in that hit, was also denied a church funeral after he was killed in a car-bombing outside a Brooklyn social club.

And former Bonanno crime family boss Carmine Galante was denied a Mass after he was killed in a Brooklyn restaurant in 1979.

A worker at Romanelli's Funeral Home in Ozone Park, which is close to Gotti's old Howard Beach digs and is therefore seen as a likely place for his wake, said that "as of now" no one from Gotti's family has contacted them. But he advised to "call back later."

It's also unknown if Gotti's incarcerated relatives - brothers Gene and Peter, and son John - will be allowed to attend a wake for the so-called "Teflon Don."

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said such a request would be evaluated by the individual federal prisons where the Gottis are currently being held.

John Gotti expressed a desire in the past to be buried in St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village next to his son Frank, who died after being hit by a car about six blocks from the Gotti home in 1980. The driver of the car, John Favara, disappeared four months later and since has been declared dead.

A single, upholstered seat overlooks the boy's tombstone, music is piped in and a mosaic of Jesus Christ hangs from a nearby wall.

The sprawling cemetery is the final resting place to a host of former organized crime bigs, including Joseph Profaci, Charles Luciano, Vito Genovese and Gotti's former boss, Aniello Dellacroce.

But St. John's Cemetery is owned by the church and church officials have the final say over who is buried there.