Former Us Mafia Boss John Gotti Jr Arrested in New York

The long-running game of cat and mouse between John Gotti, or Junior as he is known to friends and victims alike, and the FBI started a new round today when the former head of the notorious Gambino crime family was arrested in connection with three New York murders.

Gotti was taken into custody by a dozen agents in a swoop on his Long Island home involving helicopters which his lawyer complained had turned the event into a public spectacle. The charges that will be pressed on him are understood to relate to a drug ring operated in New York, New Jersey and Florida and the killings that date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Gotti, 44, has been the subject of FBI interest on and off for years.

He served five years between 1999 and 2005 for racketeering, then he was almost immediately put on trial for an earlier attack on the founder of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa. Three attempts to nail him all ended in mistrials and the charges were dropped.

Such has been the intensity of the FBI's focus on him that Gotti has sought to present himself as a victim of judicial harassment. He claims to have renounced all mafia involvement and after the most recent attempt last November to put him back behind bars for failure to pay taxes, he raged that prosecutors were putting his families lives in danger.

"What happens next? Does it make it all better if I get one in my head? Does it make it all better if I'm found in the street?"

The latest move against the Gambinos emerges from a widening investigation by federal prosecutors based in Tampa, Florida, into an alleged mafia drug ring. Five suspects have already been charged, including Ronald "Ronnie One Arm" Trucchio who has already been sentenced to life in prison, and John Alite who is facing trial having been extradited from Brazil to Florida.

Gotti's lawyer, Charles Carnesi, told the Tampa Tribune that his client was frustrated by the continual investigations of him. He pointed out that all three trials from 2005 against him had ended in hung juries.

"Now, after the third hung jury, the idea now that suddenly in Tampa, there is new information, previously unknown about this kid, who has been investigated, ad nauseam for at least the last five years or so, doesn't make any sense to me."

The news that Junior Gotti was to be dragged yet again before a Manhattan court house today underlined the slow but steady decline of America's mafia families.

In their heyday in the 1950s they were as a mob financier once put it "bigger than US Steel", their special interests ranging from racketeering to illegal gambling and drugs.

The Gambinos were one of five great New York mob clans, or borgatas, the others being Bonanno, Colombo, Genovese and Lucchese. They settled their differences between them through their ruling Commission, or when that failed at the point of a gun.

For years the Gambinos were run by the colorful John Gotti Sr whose taste for bespoke suits earned him the moniker Dapper Don. His ability to wriggle out of the clutches of the Feds also earned him a second nickname: Teflon Don.

But his brutal style of leadership and the growing number of turncoats in the mafia eventually caught up with him. He was sentenced to life in 1992 and died of throat cancer ten years later.For several years the FBI has kept up an almost relentless pressure on the mob, threatening lower foot soldiers with long prison sentences under the so-called Rico law to force them to betray their fellows.

The Gambinos are now a shadow of their former self, with the elder Gotti's brothers Gene, Peter and Vincent and his nephew Richard all in jail, and his son now facing fresh charges.

The FBI estimates there are still 3,000 active mafia members and associates in the US, mainly in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But the glory days are long gone.

Up to 60 alleged associates of the Gambinos face murder and extortion charges in a huge federal sweep, including Nicholas "Little Nicky" Carozzo, reputed to be one of Junior Gotti's former captains, who last pleaded guilty to corruption.