John Gotti

George Martorano, the son of mobster Raymond "Long John" Martorano, was in his cell one night when a guard stopped by with a new cellmate. "Here's the boss of all bosses standing in my doorway," Martorano recalled. "John Gotti walks in with a bedroll. I say, 'You're the guy who's on TV.' " That was how Gotti, then in a highly publicized federal trial, became Martorano's "cellie" at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in 1986. Martorano, now serving a life-without-parole sentence in federal prison in Marianna, Fla., recently recalled living with Gotti and other mob bosses.

Imprisoned New York mob boss John Gotti has throat cancer and will undergo surgery soon, his lawyer Bruce Cutler said yesterday. He called the condition "serious, it's life-threatening," but added: "Everyone feels he's going to lick this. " Cutler noted that docs "feel it's treatable, and they're optimistic. " They found a tumor at the back of his throat near his tonsils and lymph nodes. "As I understand it, it was cancer of the tonsils and then metastasized," Cutler said. "It's been difficult to get precise information from prison authorities.

Michael Milken, the junk-bond wizard and thief, is now a popular lecturer at the business school of the University of California at Los Angeles. This can be seen as good news for Leona Helmsley, who would presumably be UCLA's idea of an appropriate professor of Real Estate Tax Practices, as soon as she finishes up at the half-way house. Is Jim Bakker available to teach a UCLA School of Religion course called "Church Management 101: Imaginative Ideas in Religious Fund Raising"? Or is he still in the slammer?

One defendant was involved in a barroom brawl with an off-duty state trooper and showed up in court the next day in a bloodied shirt and handcuffs. Another collapsed at the defense table with what appeared to be a heart attack. The state's star witness traded curses and epithets from the witness stand with the lead defense attorney. And a celebrity gangster who was expected to testify was never called. Through stops and starts, mistrial motions and time-consuming legal arguments, the racketeering trial of reputed mob leader Robert "Bobby Cabert" Bisaccia and six co-defendants has bounced along in a ninth-floor courtroom of the Essex County Superior Court here for the last six months.

The resounding guilty verdict in the trial of John Gotti has prompted a flurry of obituaries noting the death of organized crime. True, with this modern-day "godfather" off the streets and behind bars, the Gambino crime family has been dealt a serious blow. But those who believe that Gotti's conviction signals the end of the mob in New York or anywhere else are deceiving themselves. The history of organized crime in the United States shows, if nothing else, tough resilience. This can be seen in the Mafia's ability to modify its management style to accommodate increasing legal pressures.

John Gotti's son, John A. "Junior" Gotti, was married two weeks ago, and the New York tabloids went crazy. Blaring headlines and breathless stories were built around bits and pieces of information - some factual, some little more than gossip - about the 26-year-old bridegroom and his 21-year-old bride. There was even more about the wedding reception, a splashy affair at the Helmsley Palace in Manhattan, where, it was later reported, 240 guests were served tenderloin of beef, stuffed veal loin, pasta, shrimp, seared medallions of veal and lobster, mousse and fresh fruit.

Daniel J. Marino, mentioned in some law enforcement circles as a possible successor to John Gotti as head of New York's biggest mob family, has a date tomorrow with New Jersey casino regulators. Marino, 52, is scheduled to appear at an administrative hearing in Atlantic City to respond to a petition that would permanently bar him from the state's casinos as an undesirable. "Frankly, I'd be surprised if he shows up," said one law enforcement source last week. "He doesn't need this kind of attention.

South Philadelphia mob associate John "Johnny Gongs" Casasanto was angling to join New York's Gambino crime family in 2002, but a bullet to the back of the head short-circuited that career move. None other than John Gotti Jr. backed Casasanto, 35, who hoped to get "straightened out" - formally initiated - after befriending the mob boss while they were inmates in a federal detention center in New York state, according to a key government witness. The Casasanto-Gotti connection has been described by mob informant John Alite, the prosecution's star witness in the ongoing racketeering trial of Gotti Jr. in federal court in New York City.

It was a wiseguy lesson in street-corner economics, a how-to-succeed-in-business speech that you won't hear at the Wharton School. Reputed mob soldier Anthony Nicodemo was explaining about the "sharks" and the "lions" and the "lambs" to bookmaker Andrew Micali, who was running an illegal multimillion-dollar sports-betting operation out of the poker room of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. Nicodemo, 36, "exercised leadership authority" over the $60 million betting enterprise, according to New Jersey authorities who used the secretly recorded 13-minute conversation to support that allegation in a gambling indictment.

NEW YORK GOTTI PREDICTS ACQUITTAL John Gotti, reputed head of the Gambino crime family, confidently predicted during a break in his racketeering trial yesterday he will be acquitted. Gotti, 51, also complained to co-defendant and alleged Gambino underboss Frank Locascio, 59, about prosecutor John Gleeson's single-minded determination to put both of them in jail for life. Said Gotti of Gleeson: "This guy, you know what he says to his wife when he gets up in the morning?

NOT TO BE outdone by former mob boss Ralph Natale , who is working on a memoir, it turns out that Joey Merlino , who was just released from a Florida halfway house and whom Natale testified against, has been talking to veteran actor and screenwriter Leo Rossi about writing a movie about his life. On Friday, Northeast native Rossi confirmed that he has had six phone conversations with Merlino, who he says "has got a great sense of humor. " Rossi says that he and Merlino are both trying to line up financing for a possible biopic about the jailed mob boss.

LOS ANGELES - Lindsay Lohan was led from a Los Angeles courtroom yesterday by several bailiffs after a judge who heard evidence against her in a theft case sentenced her to 120 days in jail for a probation violation. Lohan's attorney, Shawn Holley, said she will appeal the ruling, which will allow the actress to post bail, which was set at $75,000. The "Mean Girls" star also was ordered to serve more than 400 hours of community service, including 300 hours at a women's center. It will be Lohan's fourth jail stint.

NEW YORK - Meet four women with family problems: Renee Graziano's dad is Anthony Graziano, who is a high-ranking member of the mob, feds say, and is serving time for racketeering. Her ex-husband has also had a scrape with the law on a gambling charge. Drita D'avanzo is the wife of Lee D'avanzo, the alleged leader of a Bonanno and Colombo crime family team who has been incarcerated for bank robbery - twice - spanning most of their married life. Carla Facciolo's father went to prison when she was a girl.

Bosko Radonjic, 67, a Serbian nationalist emigre who participated in the bombing of a Yugoslav diplomat's home in suburban Chicago in 1975 and who later became an associate of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, died March 31 in Belgrade, Serbia. Radonjic was one of six Serbs who were convicted or pleaded guilty in 1979 in the bombing of the Yugoslav consul's home four years earlier, as well as a plot to bomb a Yugoslav club in Chicago. Like the others, Radonjic was said to have been motivated by hatred for the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito and his communist government.

South Philadelphia mob associate John "Johnny Gongs" Casasanto was angling to join New York's Gambino crime family in 2002, but a bullet to the back of the head short-circuited that career move. None other than John Gotti Jr. backed Casasanto, 35, who hoped to get "straightened out" - formally initiated - after befriending the mob boss while they were inmates in a federal detention center in New York state, according to a key government witness. The Casasanto-Gotti connection has been described by mob informant John Alite, the prosecution's star witness in the ongoing racketeering trial of Gotti Jr. in federal court in New York City.

It was a wiseguy lesson in street-corner economics, a how-to-succeed-in-business speech that you won't hear at the Wharton School. Reputed mob soldier Anthony Nicodemo was explaining about the "sharks" and the "lions" and the "lambs" to bookmaker Andrew Micali, who was running an illegal multimillion-dollar sports-betting operation out of the poker room of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. Nicodemo, 36, "exercised leadership authority" over the $60 million betting enterprise, according to New Jersey authorities who used the secretly recorded 13-minute conversation to support that allegation in a gambling indictment.

Hollywood's superhero foursome is still fantastic at the box office. The 20th Century Fox sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer debuted as the No. 1 weekend flick with $57.4 million in sales, slightly surpassing the $56.1 million opening of Fantastic Four two years ago, according to studio estimates yesterday. Among other new wide releases, a favorite teen detective had trouble finding an audience as the Warner Bros. mystery Nancy Drew premiered with a so-so $7.1 million to finish at No. 7. Opening in narrower release was the Weinstein Co. thriller DOA: Dead or Alive , an adaptation of the martial-arts video game that pulled in just $232,000.

A SQUABBLE BETWEEN two reality TV stars would generally appeal little to Tattle, but when those stars are Paris Hilton and Victoria Gotti, that item jumps from the Tattbits right to the top. According to Rush & Molloy in the New York Daily News, Victoria's son Carmine is a big fan of the wifty heiress. So when Victoria heard Paris was partying at the club Mansion in Miami, she brought her three sons over to meet her. The daughter of the late John Gotti sent an emissary to tell Hilton the family requested an audience.

In 1992, the feds gave Andrea Giovino a choice: Move from her home on Staten Island to a small town north of Manhattan, or down to Bucks County. One of 22 people arrested in a sting operation involving drugs and murder, Giovino had agreed to testify against the mob in exchange for relocation. She picked a three-bedroom townhouse near Doylestown. "The agents told the landlord what the story was, and paid him $10,000, a year's rent in advance. I guess he figured it was a pretty good deal," she writes in her new tell-all autobiography, Divorced From the Mob. "I wanted to ask him if he knew that spackle wasn't good for filling in bullet holes.

The cast and crew of Friends were said to be stunned by the arrest this week of two alleged drug dealers on the set of the hit NBC sitcom. Ricardo Jacob, 46, and Wilman Martinez, 33, were seized and handcuffed at the Warner Bros. studios by Los Angeles police while shocked stars looked on. The two, accused of selling cocaine and marijuana to various Warner Bros. employees, reportedly had been under surveillance for two months. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer are currently filming the show's final episodes.