Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Stephen Taylor, Julia Timms
For generations, the Mafia has proved that crime does pay. The Mob has made untold billions out of its rackets - extortion, gambling, drug running and prostitution.
And our fascination with these American crime families has never been greater. The phenomenally successful television show, the Sopranos tells it all.
But in real life, these gangsters are even more ruthless, more violent. And nowhere is it more evident than in New York, home of all the big Mafia families.
For decades, the good guys, the cops and the FBI, were fighting a losing battle against these Mafia clans but now, they may just be winning.
And the current trial of mob boss John Gotti Jnr could be their biggest victory yet. There's even talk of the unthinkable - the death of the mafia.
Story contacts:
Henry Hill's life is covered in full in the book “Gangsters and Goodfellas: Wiseguys, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run”
Available from Amazon at:
www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Goodfellas-Wiseguys-Witness-Protection/dp/1590770293
Jack Garcia's undercover story has been made into a book. You can order Making Jack Falcone from www.borders.com.au
Henry also is on MySpace: www.myspace.com/artbyhenryhill
Full transcript:
STORY -
TARA BROWN: He is head of America's notorious Gambino crime family, and the cops want to nail him for good, but John Gotti Junior is not going down without a fight. Just ask his mum. And John Gotti is, what - innocent?
MRS GOTTI SENIOR: Oh, God, do you believe this? Yes, he is, honey, he is, OK? For the fourth time, yes, he is.
TARA BROWN: Each day, Mamma Gotti dutifully makes her way to New York's Federal Court to support her boy, on trial for murder and racketeering. And he's not a murderer? Never whacked anyone? Never murdered people? Never dealt drugs?
MRS GOTTI SENIOR: No, honey, he didn't.
MRS GOTTI SENIOR: He may be a little bastard at times, but no, no, no.
TARA BROWN: Is he a pimp?
MRS GOTTI SENIOR: No, he is not.
PRESS CONFERENCE: The most notorious of those arrested early this morning is John A. Gotti, the son of now deceased John J. Gotti.
TARA BROWN: It is a landmark case that could finally bring down the American Mafia, and it's the best show in town. Sit in on John Gotti Jr's trial and it's like you're on the set of some over-the-top send-up of the Mob, but you cannot write this sort of stuff! Gotti Junior's former best mate has turned rat, which means he's the star witness against Gotti. Today, he was giving evidence of yet another Mob murder when Gotti was seen to mouth the words, "I'm going to kill you." His mate replied, "You got something to say to me?" Which, in turn, caused Gotti to explode, yelling at the turncoat, calling him a 'punk' and a 'dog' - just another day in the trial of a New York Mafia boss. The demise of the Gottis has been a long time coming. It began 15 years ago, when John Junior's dad, known as the 'Dapper Don', was sentenced to life in prison for, among other things, 13 murders. He is now dead, and business may not be what it was, but the Gambino family, like the rest of the Mafia, is still feared.
ERNEST VOLKMAN: They are killers, they are knee-breakers, they are extortion artists, they are arsonists, they are racketeers, they are really bad people.
TARA BROWN: Ernest Volkman was born and raised in the heartland of the Mob. He has brought me to New York's Little Italy, where the Gottis once ruled.
ERNEST VOLKMAN: The Mafia was very heavily infiltrated into this area. This was their comfort zone, this was their home base.
TARA BROWN: As an author, he documented the all-powerful influence the Mafia wielded over this city through fear and violence. Now, he is charting its fall.
ERNEST VOLKMAN: They no longer have that system of racketeering that dominated and controlled entire industries. They no longer have that nexus between politics, business and crime that made them really, really, dangerous for so many years.
TARA BROWN: From its earliest days, the Mafia traded in extortion, prostitution, illegal gambling and drugs - all run on violence and the constant threat that anyone who stood in their way would be quickly disposed of. How many murders did you witnessed?
HENRY HILL: Over a dozen, you know, that I was present when it happened in front of me.
TARA BROWN: And how were those people killed?
HENRY HILL: Ah, brutally. They were brutally slain.
TARA BROWN: And you have meted out a lot of violence?
HENRY HILL: I've hit, ah, a couple of people with baseball bats in my time.
TARA BROWN: Henry Hill was what they call a Wiseguy, immortalised in Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film 'Goodfellas'. Ray Liotta played Henry, a young man seduced into a life of a brutal crime by the status and wealth that came with being a gangster. These were the glory days for the Mafia. At your best, how much were you worth? How much money did you bring in?
HENRY HILL: Probably for myself, I don't know, $50 million or $60 million, I probably earned.
TARA BROWN: $50 million or $60 million! Where is it?
HENRY HILL: Slow horses, fast women, and stupidity.
TARA BROWN: But times have changed. It's now the good guys' turn. Men, like undercover FBI agent Jack Garcia, have managed to beat the Mob at their own game, and it has made him a marked man.
JACK GARCIA: They have a propensity for violence. This is the fear they instil in others. So, what happens is, you've just got to be alert, never give them the opportunity but, of course, whenever I travel in the city I make sure I'm always, uh, packed.
TARA BROWN: So, really, you're carrying a gun right now?
JACK GARCIA: Well, let's just say, if something was to go down, I'm ready.
TARA BROWN: Jack Garcia is perhaps the bravest, and most unlikely looking undercover FBI agent in history. But this big man pulled off a very big act. For more than two years, this Cuban-American had the Mob convinced he was Jack Falcone - a crim and an Italian.
JACK GARCIA: I had to learn all your basic things. I felt like, in 'My Fair Lady', like Mr Higgins. I was like, instead of, "The rain in Spain flows gently on the plain," I was, "Hey, how you doin'?" "Forget about it, Minkey. "How, what, the dees and the dos?" You know what I mean? 'Cause they do sound like that and they do say, "Forget about it," all the time, and it's one of those things that I wanted to convince them. I mean, I was believable. Not once did anyone say, "This guy ain't an Italian."
GREG DE PALMA: That guy never showed up.
FALCONE: Which guy?
GREG DE PALMA: Today, that guy who got cracked last night.
TARA BROWN: Jack risked his life every day, infiltrating the feared Gambino family once headed by John Gotti. Here, wearing a wire, he records every word as the gangsters discuss a Mob murder.
GREG DE PALMA: Listen, what I'm going to tell you. They are lucky. I'm telling you from the boss's mouth. You know Dave Valbella? They hung him.
TARA BROWN: Jack's cover was this seedy strip joint in the Bronx. He pretended to be part-owner, but the package wasn't complete without the Rolex, the Italian suits and, of course, the Hummer. But, even with the best props in the world, he knew one slip up and he'd be dead.
JACK GARCIA: There are no second takes, so, whenever you open that mouth of yours, you better be on the money and, if you lie, you're going to die, and it's just as simple as that.
TARA BROWN: Jack pulled off the performance of a lifetime. So convincing, Gambino's local boss, Greg DePalma, offered him the ultimate Mafia honour - what's known as being a 'made man'.
GREG DE PALMA: That means you're a made guy. That is how they say it. I mean, you want it, right?
FALCONE: I'm honoured for that. I'm even honoured that, you know, you know that I will never let you down, either.
TARA BROWN: Greg DePalma, who made that offer, was arrested, along with another 35 gangsters. But Jack now lives with a Mob death threat - $250,000 contract on his head. What was Greg DePalma's reaction when he learned who you were?
JACK GARCIA: I walked by him and I looked at him, and he just looked at me and he said, "You (bleep)." Like that.
TARA BROWN: But, while authorities were cracking down, the Mafia was also crumbling from the inside. The unwritten code of never ratting on the Family went out the window. One of the first to squeal was drug-runner Henry Hill. You've been described as the biggest rat in Mob history?
HENRY HILL: Yeah, well, the biggest rat alive. I guess.
TARA BROWN: How is it that you're not dead?
HENRY HILL: Ah, I guess someone up there likes me, you know.
TARA BROWN: Facing the choice of lifetime imprisonment... ..or being whacked by his Wiseguy buddies, Henry blew the whistle. 50 of his former associates ended up in jail.
HENRY HILL: I know that I saved a lot of lives, because every one of these guys were homicidal maniacs. I mean, you know, but it took me, it took me many years to forgive myself for what I did.
TARA BROWN: Between the informers and the Feds, the Mafia's golden era was over, and being a gangster didn't seem much of a career choice any more.
ERNEST VOLKMAN: The new generation of young Italians wanted to be doctors and lawyers and businessmen. They didn't want to become Mobsters any more. And FBI wiretaps, for years, began to pick up these complaints from the leaders of these families, saying, "Where are we going to get good people?
TARA BROWN: It's hard to find good people out there?
ERNEST VOLKMAN: Yeah, they would say, "We're getting morons, "we're getting the dregs, we're getting idiots." And cops and FBI agents could show you wire taps in which people would whisper, "I think the line is tapped, OK?" Or they would get a wire tap, people would be spelling, they would say, "OK listen, I'm going to get the G.U.N., OK? "And we'll meet on the corner tomorrow."
TARA BROWN: No, that's not true?
ERNEST VOLKMAN: Absolutely true, absolutely true. I've heard them.
TARA BROWN: Quality gangsters, it seemed, were gone, and in their place came a brash new breed - flashy and fond of the spotlight. 'GROWING UP GOTTI' GRAB: That's me, Victoria Gotti.
TARA BROWN: The Gotti Family invited attention and even made a TV show about their lives.. 'GROWING UP GOTTI' GRAB: People make a lot of stupid assumptions about me when they hear my last name, like I run the Mob.
TARA BROWN: All led by John Gotti Snr.
ERNEST VOLKMAN: He personifies every reason why the American Mafia ain't what it used to be, as they say. A - stupidity. B - ignorance. C - arrogance. D - an insatiable desire for publicity.
TARA BROWN: Even when finally jailed for life, Gotti was still unashamedly playing Godfather for the cameras.
JOHN GOTTI JNR: You should have went there and told the mother, "Listen..." When his grandson was being harassed at school, his advice to his daughter was simple. Take on the bully's mother in true Mafia style.
JOHN GOTTI JNR: Do you want to wake up in the morning and don't see your son no more, Do you want us to cut his tongue out of his mouth?
TARA BROWN: Like father, like son. Now, John Gotti Junior is facing prison in what may be the last great Mafia trial.
ERNEST VOLKMAN: It's going to be tough to beat. Really tough to beat. He is proposing a defence that a lot of people find kind of laughable. The defence basically is, "I learnt my lesson when I went to jail in 1999 for racketeering, and I've decided I want no more of this life, so I resigned. I left the Mafia."
TARA BROWN: Not many people leave the Mafia and live to tell the tale. Henry Hill is one of the few. He now writes cook books, film scripts and sells his own pasta sauce.
HENRY HILL: For an old man, I'm doin' OK. I'm alive.
TARA BROWN: You are alive, indeed.
TARA BROWN: Old Mobsters like Henry Hill and the Mafia of the movies may belong to a different era but, where there's money, there is always crime. Never underestimate a new Mafia coming up with a new scam. Would you say the good guys have won, or are they winning?
ERNEST VOLKMAN: Oh, the good guys have won. There's no question about that. The question is, can they keep it?
JACK GARCIA: As long as there is money to be made, there is going to be a Mafia. Yes, we've had tremendous success in taking down some of these groups, but they have morphed themselves and they have regrouped and they want you to think that they are, indeed, dead, but they're not dead. They're just simply out there, still making their money, growing as we speak.
