Gotti Ran the Gambinos From Prison — The FBI Couldn't Stop Him for 6 Years

June 24, 1992. Marion, Illinois. 7:35 in the morning. A federal van pulls into the receiving bay of the United States Penitentiary at Marion, the toughest federal prison in America. The doors open. A 51-year-old man in chains steps out into the southern Illinois heat. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had been the most famous gangster in the country, hand-tailored suits, painted silk ties, the Dapper Don. Now he is wearing military surplus khaki. Three shirts. Four pairs of pants. Underwear and socks issued at intake. They take him underground. They put him in a cell eight feet by seven feet. A cot. A basin. A toilet. A black-and-white television bolted to the wall. The door closes. Twenty-three hours a day. One hour out. Solitary. Here is what nobody tells you. That door closing on John Gotti was not the end of his reign. It was the beginning of six years of ghost rule, and the FBI could not stop it. His name was John Joseph Gotti. Fifty-one years old. Boss of the Gambino crime family. The most powerful mafia organization in the United States, with an estimated 250 made men and revenues between five and twenty million dollars a year. He had just been convicted of five murders, including the public assassination of his predecessor Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steak House on December 16, 1985. The central irony is this. The American mafia operates by a single iron rule. A boss who goes to prison steps down. Gotti refused. From a sealed cell in southern Illinois, with five visits a month and three phone calls, he kept the title. He gave the orders. His brother Peter carried them out. His son Junior carried them out. And every other family in New York watched him do it. He had no idea what was coming for the next generation. You probably think you know this man. The truth is colder.