Last Godfather dies in jail ward

He liked to be called the "Dapper Don" because of his fondness for exquisite Italian suits. Or "Teflon Don" when the Feds again failed to make racketeering charges stick.

But at the end, Mafia boss John Gotti was a sick, old man dying of cancer on the hospital ward of a grim prison in middle America.

Gotti's death yesterday has sealed the end of an era. He was the last Godfather, the capo di tutti capi of the once-feared Five Families that held a vice-like grip on organised crime in New York City.

And while he lost his battle against cancer, the age of the Godfather was long past. Even the old goodfellas HQ, the Ravenite social club on

Little Italy's Mulberry Street, is now a boutique.

Gotti, 61, was old-style Mafioso. He took over the helm of the Gambino crime family in 1985, securing promotion with a burst of gunfire that sent the old boss Paul Castellano into early retirement. It was a classic hit, the sort where they joked afterwards: "He ordered clams but he got slugs."

Dapper Don always looked good, even when the FBI led him away 10 years ago to face charges of racketeering, murder and conspiracy. He had been cleared on similar charges twice before. In those days, he strutted like a little emperor. When it rained, aides rushed forward with umbrellas.

Gotti got a life sentence in solitary at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. When cancer took hold in 1998 he was moved to the hospital of another maximum security jail in Springfield, Missouri. There is no one to fill his shoes. Son John "Junior" Gotti tried but was such a weak leader that one newspaper dubbed him "Dumbfella". In 1999, he followed his old man, with a sixyear sentence for mob crimes.

In the last decade, it has been another Italian-American who took control of New York's streets. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose father was once a petty thug, headed the assault on the Mob. One by one they were broken.

Gotti's wake will underline the new order. His brothers Peter and Richard are also busy behind bars on racketeering charges. The task of mourning will fall to the women, his wife and daughter both called Victoria. Bleached blonde, the younger Victoria is a columnist for the New York Post and a novelist.

She calls her father "the last of the Mohicans". "They don't make men like him any more. They never will."