Original Gangsters Podcast · Original Gangsters, a True Crime Talk Podcast

Was Gotti involved in the Giovanni Falcone Assassination?

·29 min·1 clip

Jimmy says he is “calling bullshit” on the claim that John Gotti sent a bomb maker to Sicily.

1. Original Gangsters Podcast examines whether John Gotti was involved in the Giovanni Falcone assassination. 2. Jimmy Bucciolato hosts with Scott Bernstein, and Scott’s mafia-history knowledge matters because the episode tests a specific allegation from Italian press reports. 3. The episode asks whether Maurizio Avola’s claim about a Gotti-linked bomb maker is believable. 4. Jimmy says Avola was a Santa Paola hitman in Catania, Sicily, and a pentito who cooperates with authorities. 5. Avola’s recent press leak says he was also an asset for Italian secret services, which Jimmy treats as background rather than proof. 6. The central allegation is that John Gotti sent an American explosives expert to Sicily in 1992 for the Falcone job. 7. Jimmy frames Giovanni Falcone as an anti-mafia prosecutor whose murder became one of Europe’s most infamous political assassinations. 8. The hosts describe Falcone as isolated before May 23, 1992, as the Italian state reduced his security detail. 9. They describe the Capaci attack as 500 pounds of explosives detonated on the expressway, killing Falcone, his wife, and bodyguards. 10. Jimmy says the mafia men near the roadway were posing as construction workers and had placed explosives in a large metal pipe. 11. Jimmy rejects the Gotti allegation and says the Sicilian mafia did not need American help for bomb making. 12. He points to Italian history of violence, including the 1984 Train 904 bombing from Naples to Milan. 13. He also mentions the Red Brigades and right-wing neo-fascist groups as other Italian actors with bombing experience. 14. Jimmy brings up the July 19, 1992 killing of Paolo Borsellino as part of the same anti-mafia campaign. 15. Scott adds that John Gotti was not on the street in 1992 and was fighting his federal case before entering Marion in 1993. 16. Scott says Gotti had bigger problems than helping Sicilian counterparts and questions what the return on investment would be. 17. The discussion opens a narrow possibility that later Gambino-Sicilian relationships could have moved through men like Jackie D’Amico rather than through Gotti himself. 18. The tone is conversational and argumentative, with Jimmy and Scott trading off while correcting each other on dates and prison timelines. 19. Listeners interested in Sicilian mafia history, Falcone, and John Gotti will get the most from it. 20. Listeners wanting a short recap without mafia-history detail may skip it.

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