Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti stood by her infamous husband's side throughout his bloody rise to the top of the Gambino crime family, raising their five children while he spent years at a time behind bars.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoVictoria DiGiorgio Gotti, the wife of Gambino family boss John Gotti.
They say behind every great man is an even greater woman, and that applies even to the Mafia. Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti was the wife of infamous Gambino family mob boss John Gotti, and though she has largely remained out of the public eye since her husband’s death in 2002, her story is nevertheless intertwined with his.
Victoria DiGiorgio first met John Gotti at a Brooklyn bar in 1958, and the two got married four years later in 1962. They remained together for the next 40 years, right up until Gotti’s death in 2002, despite Gotti’s less-than-savory business dealings. The couple also had five children together, though tragically, their young son Frank was killed in 1980.
While Victoria stood by her husband, however, she never explicitly endorsed his lifestyle. In fact, when her own son, John Gotti Jr., got involved with the mob, she expressed disappointment that he’d followed in his father’s footsteps.
The few times Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti did comment publicly on her husband’s work and her life at home, her revelations painted a sad picture of a woman burdened by her husband’s choices.
Becoming John Gotti’s Wife
While little is known about Victoria DiGiorgio’s life before John Gotti, FBI records indicate that she already had one child from a previous relationship when they met and may have even been married before. However, the story of Victoria DiGiorgio and John Gotti began in a Brooklyn bar in 1958, where they quickly hit it off. He was 18; she was just 16.
Gotti FamilyJohn and Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti in the 1960s.
They wed four years later on March 6, 1962. Together, the two welcomed five children: Angel, Victoria, John Jr., Frank, and Peter. Gotti wasn’t yet a made man in the Gambino family, and he was in prison for much of his children’s early years for airport truck hijackings. Soon after his release in 1972, he became an official member of the criminal group.
However, even once Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti’s husband was out of prison and bringing in more money through his illicit dealings, things were not always easy for the family.
On March 18, 1980, 12-year-old Frank Gotti was hit by a car driven by the Gottis’ neighbor, John Favara. In her 2009 memoir This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti, Victoria Gotti, the daughter of John and Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti, recalled the aftermath of the tragedy.
“My father said the hardest thing he ever had to do was tell my mother that their son was dead,” the younger Victoria wrote. “He’d told me that just seeing her sitting in the waiting room, just outside the trauma unit, shaken and looking like a ghost, made him afraid for ‘the first time in my whole life.'”
Gallery BooksFrankie Gottie was just 12 years old when he was killed in 1980.
In the weeks and months that followed, Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti fell into a deep depression. According to her daughter, she tried to take her own life twice, and she even went to Favara’s house with a baseball bat, beat his car with it, and then lunged at Favara.
To get his wife out of town for a change of pace, John Gotti decided to fly the family to Florida. When they returned, Favara had gone missing. Gotti denied any involvement in his disappearance, and no trace of him was ever found.
“I don’t know what happened to him but I’m not sorry if something did,” Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti reportedly told detectives when asked about Favara’s disappearance. “He never sent me a card. He never apologized. He never even got his car fixed.”
Frankie’s death was far from the only tragedy to befall the Gotti family, though.
Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti’s Life As A Mob Wife
As John Gotti rose through the ranks of the Gambino crime family in the 1970s and ’80s, he spent more and more time away from home, either in prison or at social clubs.
Gotti FamilyVictoria DiGiorgio Gotti holds her youngest son, Peter, alongside John Gotti and their daughter Victoria.
“I pretty much raised my children alone with Johnny being gone for years at a time,” Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti told the Daily News in 2006. When John was home, the two fought about money and his dealings with the Mafia. Victoria once purportedly had his entire wardrobe sent to a club since he spent so much of his time there.
In the 1980s, John Gotti’s work in the underworld started to pay off. When Carlo Gambino had died in 1976 and appointed Paul Castellano as the family’s new boss instead of his underboss Aniello Dellacroce, a silent civil war had broken out within the Gambino family. Gotti considered Dellacroce a mentor, and he had a newfound disdain for Castellano, as the new boss banned drug trafficking, which was allegedly a lucrative source of income for Gotti.
So, Gotti plotted to have Castellano killed. In December 1985, that plan came to fruition, and Castellano was gunned down in the street, with Gotti reportedly watching nearby. A month later, he was the new Gambino boss, and he reinstated the drug trafficking business. It paid off for him, as the family began bringing in more than $500 million yearly, establishing them as the most powerful crime group in the country.
Susan Watts/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesJohn Gotti Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps before reportedly walking away from the Mafia forever.
That success, however, was short-lived, as John Gotti was arrested by the FBI on Dec. 11, 1990. He was charged with murder, racketeering, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, bribery, and conspiracy to commit murder. When his trial concluded in 1992, Gotti was hit with a life sentence.
Meanwhile, John Gotti Jr. was serving as the acting boss of the Gambino family. Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti reportedly didn’t even know her son was involved in the Mafia until he was arrested himself for racketeering in 1998.
The Gottis’ oldest daughter, Angel, told CBS News in 2009 that her mother was livid her father had allowed John Jr. to join the Gambino family. “She wasn’t speaking to my father when he was in prison for a while,” Angel said. Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti told the Daily News of her husband’s role in John Jr.’s mob involvement, “It broke my heart. I felt betrayed, the worst betrayal. I would rather have dealt with other women.”
John Pedin/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesJohn Gotti (left) and John Jr. (far right) walking together in 1987.
John Jr. ultimately asked his father for permission to accept a plea deal and walk away from the mob. John Gotti was reluctant — but then his wife got involved. The younger Victoria Gotti told CBS News, “Mom goes to see Dad and Mom threatens Dad. And she says, ‘Either you release him or… I’ll never speak to you again. I won’t be here anymore. You’ll never see me in your life again.'”
John Gotti must have relented, because Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti stayed faithfully by his side until he took his final breath just three years later.
The Aftermath Of John Gotti’s Death
In 1998, just as John Jr. was facing charges, John Gotti was diagnosed with throat cancer. The following year, Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti spoke with the New York Post about her husband’s illness. “[W]hat they are doing to John is just extremely cruel,” she said. “He had cancer for months before they even wanted to treat him.”
John Gotti was transferred to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Missouri, where doctors successfully removed a tumor, but by 2000, the cancer was back.
“I have spent 39 years of my life with him and God willing, I will spend the next 39 years of my life with him,” Victoria said. But that wasn’t to be.
New York Daily NewsThe New York Daily News headline about John Gotti’s death.
John Gotti died in prison on June 10, 2002, at the age of 61. His family held an extravagant funeral for him back in Queens. Gotti was laid to rest in a bronze coffin and carried to the cemetery in a Cadillac hearse with 19 cars in tow carrying lavish flower arrangements shaped like Gotti’s favorite things. Hundreds of people lined the streets, many of them holding signs to honor the Dapper Don.
Since her husband’s death, Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti has maintained her privacy and largely avoided any public appearances. Still, in an era when many mob wives were unfaithful or even testified against their husbands in court, Victoria stood out as a devoted partner to one of the world’s most powerful criminals. “Is John a saint?” she said in 1999. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. But I love him.”
After reading about John Gotti’s wife, Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti, go inside the life of Beryl Hovious, the wife of “Public Enemy Number One” John Dillinger. Then, learn about Pablo Escobar’s wife, Maria Victoria Henao.
