John Gleeson was lead counsel in the successful racketeering-murder trials of John Gotti and Vic Orena, which he talks about with Trey Elling, as detailed in the new book, THE GOTTI WARS: TAKING DOWN AMERICA’S MOST NOTORIOUS MOBSTER. Topics include:
- The allure of working for the Eastern District of New York in the mid-1980s (1:28)
- How he became involved in the first Gotti case (3:15)
- Why his office didn’t get along with the FBI’s Gambino squad (6:42)
- Gotti’s ‘allure’ in person (10:15)
- The special treatment Gotti received, despite being a defendant (13:17)
- Losing that first trial (15:24)
- The massive evidence obtained by bugging an apartment about the Ravenite club in Little Italy (18:57)
- How Gleeson took the lead on the second case (22:08)
- Nearly losing the case to the Southern District of NY (23:40)
- What they charged Gotti with (24:51)
- Using the bugged recordings to keep the defendants in detention (26:00)
- Getting two attorneys removed from Gotti’s legal team (27:38)
- His initial response when learning Sammy “The Bull” Gravano wanted to flip on Gotti (30:10)
- Meeting with Sammy The Bull about flipping for the first time (31:44)
- Having to keep this a secret from his bosses (33:24)
- Learning from Sammy why they lost that first Gotti case (34:49)
- What worried Gleeson, leading into the second Gotti trial (35:45)
- Whether Gotti putting a contract out on his head during the trial worried Gleeson (37:44)
- Earning ‘guilty’ verdicts the second time around (39:06)
- His emotional response when finding out Gotti had died in the early 2000s (40:50)