In
early 1992, after some high-level discussions, the DeCavalcante family sent out
a hit team to whack acting boss John (Johnny Boy) D'Amato (left) for committing
an unconscionable and most dishonorable crime: Being gay.
The family had learned from his girlfriend that D'Amato was a "swinger" who was cheating on her and attending "wild parties" where he engaged in homosexual activity with other men, sources said.
Consigliere Stefano Vitabile, former acting boss Vincent (Vinny Ocean) Palermo, soldiers Anthony Capo and Anthony Rotondo, and associate Victor DiChiara took part in a plot to dispatch D'Amato and dispose of his body so it would never be found, according to court records.
D'Amato's
homophobic murder has become a heated issue at the upcoming loansharking/money
laundering trail of Joseph Watts, (right) a Gambino gangster and longtime pal of the
family's jailed-for-life boss, John Gotti.
Prosecutors don't want defense lawyers to question Capo, a key government witness, about the underlying reason for the murder for fear it may be so offensive to some jurors that they would ignore or discount Capo's testimony about Watts's loansharking.
Assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Genser said the motive was irrelevant and "so potentially inflammatory to a jury that they would reject all of the government's case because of anger about that particular incident."
Andrew Weinstein, one of three lawyers representing Watts in the legal fight of his life, argued strenuously that the motive was essential to his defense but tripped himself up by saying that "nothing was worse than murder."
If nothing is
worse than murder -- and Capo (right) will testify he was involved in several
mob hits and many failed rubout attempts -- argued Genser, then there was no
reason to bring up the homosexuality issue.
Brooklyn Federal Judge David Trager agreed with the prosecutor and ruled that defense lawyers could not bring it up during the trial.
After D'Amato's girlfriend lodged her complaints, Capo, 42, reported them to his mob superiors who satisfied themselves they were true and "that he had to go," said one source. "The order came down. It was open and shut. If a New York crime family ever found out, they would have lost all respect."
While Genser won his main battle, he lost a skirmish with
the media when 
he
tried to retroactively seal the record of the proceeding that was attended by
Daily News reporter Mike Claffey, who broke the story last week.
D'Amato, a cohort of Gotti's who often visited his Little Italy headquarters in the late 1980's and 1990, was overheard on an FBI bug plotting to kill a DeCavalcante soldier who Gotti thought was a potential informer.
When FBI agents assigned to the Gambino family first spotted D'Amato at the Ravenite Social Club, they thought he was then-U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato, to whom he bears a striking resemblance.
Agents quickly discovered that Gotti's visitor was John D'Amato, and that he
had no familial connections to the former Senator. They also learned that John
D'Amato had occasionally passed himself off as Alfonse D'Amato's cousin,
including one time when he was stopped for a traffic violation in Scarsdale.
As Gang Land revealed last month, Capo -- a fellow Staten Islander and onetime loanshark customer of Watts -- was tapped for Watts's trial to bolster the testimony of the prosecution's main witness, Gambino turncoat Dominic Borghese, whose first trial appearance against Watts ended in an acquittal.
Watts, 60, faces 20 years in prison if convicted. He also stands to lose $3.4 million he allegedly made from a huge loansharking business and invested in a luxurious beach hideaway on the Gulf of Mexico.