Welcome back to Mafia, and in this audio boom original podcast series,

we explore America's criminal underworld to reveal the lives and careers of its greatest gangsters.

The series has been extensively researched and produced in consultation with experts, authors, and those who are actually there.

Our sponsors are Blue Apron and Casper.

In the 1980s, one man became the face of the Mafia.

The most famous gangsters since Al Capone, John Gotti.

His pictures on page one of newspapers, his name is all over TV. He's a headline figure.

He was Moby Dick in the organized crime world. Everybody wanted to prosecute John Gotti.

He was his guy. He had just come and get me out of the law enforcement. He made fun of them.

In the previous episode, we saw how Lucky Luciano hid his brutality and violence behind sharp suits and an air of sophistication.

Two decades after Luciano's death, a new boss would take that tactic to a whole new level.

But before John Gotti became the Teflon Don, he was a relatively minor player in the mob.

John Gotti came from a very poor family. He was early on a street fudge, hijacker, petty crimes.

His initial forte in organized crime was hijacking trucks and beating people up and killing people. He was a thug in my view.

This is Mafia.

John Gotti began his mob career in the late 1950s. Always ambitious.

He was determined to join the most powerful of New York's five organized crime groups.

Selwyn Rab is the author of the book, Five Families.

One of the two most powerful families in New York and in the country was a family known as the Gambino family.

It was named after Carlo Gambino, who took over control of the family. In the 1950s, the Gambino family had really expanded the Mafia's influence and power.

It had gone beyond the old-fashioned, thuggery, hijackings, extortion, gambling, and loan-charging, which put bringing in millions.

But he went into a white collar crime. And he especially used the unions as a weapon to gain control or influence or loot from such industries as the construction industry, the garment center industry.

...