The New York Daily News
Dec. 1, 1996



GOTTI PAL AN FBI MOLE

By Jerry Capeci

joewatts.jpg (9084 bytes)A one-time top lieutenant for John Gotti lived a dangerous double life as mob mole for the FBI, the Daily News has learned.

Joseph Watts served as an informer for about 13 months until early last year, sources said.

Watts, 55, had hoped to avoid jail time with his balancing act, but ultimately he and his FBI handlers became disenchanted with the arrangement.

The deal collapsed and Watts is serving six years in prison after pleading guilty to disposing of the body of a Gambino mobster. He is also awaiting trial for a Gotti-ordered murder in 1987 and could be sentenced to 25 years to life if convicted.

Watts's lawyer, James LaRossa, said:"Joe Watts absolutely denies being an informer for anybody." LaRossa cited the feds numerous cases against Watts, and said, "and now he's facing 25 years to life."

But his work as a Mafia mole was pieced together from interviews with law enforcement officials, underworld sources, defense lawyers and other investigative sources. Most of the court records are sealed.

In 1993, Watts was charged with taking part in killing Thomas (Tommy Sparrow) Spinelli. Also indicted were five Gambino mobsters.

In the same indictment, Watts was also charged with three other mob slayings, including that of godfather Paul Castellano.

Federal prosecutor Geoffrey Mearns suggested to defense lawyers that the government would consider relatively lenient jail terms of seven years if the defendants would plead guilty.

After numerous meetings, all the defendants except Watts agreed.

Having secretly cut his own deal, Watts publicly vowed to fight the case for himself, and for Gotti, by exposing the chief witness, mob turncoat Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, as a liar.

When another defendant said he'd fight, too, Watts reportedly said, "No good … The feds won't go for the deal … They don't really care about me. I'm not Italian."

In April 1994, the mobsters pleaded guilty and were sentenced to seven years. Watts was scheduled for trial in August.

The setting of a trial date was a charade in which Watts, his lawyer F. Lee Bailey, federal prosecutors Mearns and Laura Ward played roles, sources said.

In secret meetings, Bailey, Watts, prosecutors and FBI agents, including Gambino squad supervisor Bruce Mouw, agreed to a deal in which Watts would work as an FBI informer in return for no jail time.

Bailey, Watts, Mearns, Ward and Mouw would not discuss the case.

Valerie Caproni, chief of the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's Criminal Division, said, "We do not confirm or deny whether individuals are or are not informants."

But, sources said, Watts provided key information to the FBI. He detailed how Gotti sent instructions to his acting boss son, John A. (Junior) Gotti, from the federal prison in Marion, Ill., through visits and phone calls.

Once, Watts told the FBI, he spoke to the elder Gotti for about 15 minutes when the crime boss called a lawyer, according to sources.

Watts identified three capos — Peter Gotti, John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico and Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo — who assisted Junior and also met regularly with the Genovese family to iron out problems over joint rackets, sources said.

The information was used to keep Gotti in virtual isolation at Marion for longer than the usual three years.

Last week, The News revealed that Gotti's rule is all but over: Corozzo has been tapped to lead the Gambino crime family once the don's current appeal is exhausted.

But Watts has neither freedom nor power.

After a prolonged dispute over the nature of his deal, he went to trial in February on the 1993 indictment. He interrupted the trial to plead guilty to disposing of the body and was sentenced to six years in prison last June.




This is from 2006 Junior and others do believe he was an informer...,despite what others have literally made up on this website


August 24, 2006
By Jerry Capeci
Junior & His Broken Vow Of Omerta
A Gang Land ExclusiveJunior Gotti, Photo By James Messerschmidt
Mob prince John (Junior) Gotti broke his Mafia vow of omerta last year and used a pre-trial sitdown with federal prosecutors as an opportunity to settle some old scores with two of his dad’s former top lieutenants, Gang Land has learned.

Gotti has acknowledged the January 2005 secret session with the feds, but has maintained it was merely an effort to convince the feds of his innocence of the charges in the racketeering indictment.

He said he indignantly stomped out once he realized that prosecutors were seeking his cooperation. In a June 27 interview with the Daily News, he insisted he would never tell on his former crime cohorts, underscoring his own attitude about informing by quoting his late father’s extreme views on the subject.

“I could have robbed a church but I wouldn’t admit to it if I had a steeple sticking out of my ass,” Gotti said the Dapper Don had told him.

But several sources confirmed to Gang Land that in a failed bid to persuade prosecutors to drop their case against him, Gotti spilled old secrets about two

Daniel Marino
“made men” and a Gambino crime family associate – all underlings of the elder John Gotti.

According to the sources, Junior fingered capo Daniel Marino, (left) soldier John (Johnny G) Gammarano and longtime associate Joseph Watts for crimes that took place before 1999, when Junior Gotti has insisted he walked away from the Mafia life.

Gotti also allegedly gave the feds information about a crooked Queens cop who enabled him to beat one case during the 1980s, and a corrupt politician who was part of a land-grab scheme during the same time frame, sources said. Both men are deceased.

Despite Gotti’s claims of retirement, and his ultimate decision not to cooperate, any informant activity by the mob scion would be viewed as an abomination within his former realm, and equate him with the defectors who have testified against him and his late father.

“If it’s true, he’s a rat, just like Sammy and Scars,” said one underworld source, referring to the two major Gambino family defectors, former underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and onetime capo Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo.

The disclosure about Gotti’s discussions comes as his third trial stemming from the kidnap-shooting of Curtis Sliwa is underway in Manhattan Federal Court. Trial judge Shira Scheindlin has issued a gag order in the case and prosecutors
Johnny G Gammaranoand defense lawyers are prohibited from discussing it.

Gang Land’s sources declined to discuss specifics that Junior gave the feds, but said that he focused primarily on Marino, 65, a powerful family capo and longtime thorn in the side of the Dapper Don, and Watts, 64, once viewed as a possible FBI informer by the Junior Don and his cohorts.

While informing about Marino, Gotti, almost as an afterthought, sources said, also related alleged criminal activity by Gammarano, 65, (right) a soldier in Marino’s crew.

Marino, who served six years behind bars for a murder conspiracy ordered by the elder Gotti, was released in 2000. Watts, who spent 10 years in prison for his involvement in the same plot, and a separate tax case, got out of prison in May. Johnny G, who served three years for a labor racketeering scam in Brooklyn and a Joker Poker gambling machine scheme in New Orleans, has been back in action since 2002.

“Junior has had a real hard on against Danny Marino and Joe Watts for years. He’s talked about killing them both,” said one source.

The Gotti faction has long believed that Marino was poised to take over the crime family in the early 1990s as part of a retaliation plot by the Genovese and

John Gotti At MarionLuchese families for the unsanctioned 1985 killing of Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

Even after Marino was incarcerated during the late 1990s, Junior, Mikey Scars, Peter Gotti and other supporters of the then-jailed Dapper Don debated whether to kill Marino, according to FBI documents. The discussions revolved around suspicions that Marino may have had a role in the murders of Frank DeCicco, Bartholemew (Bobby) Borriello and Edward Lino – all key allies of the elder Gotti – from 1986 to 1991.

In the early 1990s, according to testimony at Junior’s second trial, Gotti had two gunmen waiting in the closet of a Brooklyn apartment ready to kill Marino and Johnny G and dispose of their remains in body bags after Junior suspected they had kept $400,000 in annual construction industry extortion payments that should have been forwarded to him. The plot was thwarted, probably intentionally, by Watts.

Watts, who would become the focus of rubout talk a few years later, had been instructed to bring Marino and Johnny G to a meeting that would end with their execution. But when Watts and the targeted mobsters arrived in a stretch limo along with another mobster and a driver, Junior aborted the plan, according to the testimony.

In 1994 and 1995, according to court documents, Junior discussed killing Watts

Joe Wattswhen “rumors began to spread within the Gambino family that Watts might be cooperating” and Gotti feared that Watts (left) and then-superstar witness Sammy Bull would be a “deadly combination” that would threaten the “survival of the Gottis and the Gambino family.”

The nasty talk about Watts fizzled out after he pleaded guilty and went to prison. But Junior has long suspected that Watts, who referred to Junior as “Boss” whenever they met, had worn a wire against him, according to FBI documents. And, during his session with the feds, said one source, “Junior was quick to point a finger at him.”

Sources said that Gotti did implicate himself, and a few longtime friends, in several crimes, but they took place too long ago to be used in an indictment.

Gotti denied any role in a 23-year-old murder, a crime for which there is no statute of limitations, sources said. He insisted that he did not kill Danny Silva, a 24-year-old Queens man who died from a knife wound during a wild melee in an Ozone Park bar when Junior was a rowdy and arrogant 19-year-old wannabe wiseguy. “He said he was there, but he said he had nothing to do with the stabbing,” said one source.

As Gang Land reported four years ago, a formerly reluctant witness has told authorities that he “personally saw Junior stab Danny Silva” and the police and FBI re-opened the case with an eye toward charging Gotti with Silva’s murder.