Named after his father, John Joseph Gotti was born in the Bronx in New York on October 27, 1940. The son of a construction worker, he had five brothers. The Gotti family moved to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, when John was in the fourth grade. Already street tough, Gotti and his brothers held their own against the neighborhood's reigning hoodlums, the Santoro brothers. A bright student, Gotti attended P.S. (Public School) 209 through the end of the sixth grade.

When Gotti was twelve his family moved to Brownsville-East, New York. The area supported a thriving underworld (Mafia activity). The breeding ground for the mob's hit squad called Murder, Inc., it was the former stomping ground of gangsters such as Benjamin "Bugsy"Siegel and "Kid Twist" Reles. Gotti attended P.S. 178 and, together with his friend Angelo Ruggiero, joined a gang known as the Fulton-Rockaway Boys. Soon recognized as a bright and...