Nov. 25, 1996 DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE WISEGUY WHO...By Jerry Capeci
He could feel the penetrating eyes of John Gotti and Gene Gotti as Gambino mobster Leonard DiMaria (right) walked over to him and handed him an envelope. "I made a little gift for you in my jail cell, and I want you to have it. Here," said DiMaria, who was on trial in Brooklyn Federal Court with the Gotti brothers and four others a decade ago for murder and racketeering. Bowles, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for Newsday, protested, but DiMaria would not take no for an answer. "C'mon, it's a little thing but it means a lot to me. The (deputy U.S.) marshals said it was okay," said DiMaria, who was serving time for an unrelated cigarette smuggling conviction at the time. So as gangsters, reporters, marshals, lawyers, court officials and court gadflies watched, Bowles opened the envelope and almost jumped out of his skin when it exploded in a "whirring noise that sounded like a rattlesnake," recalled Bowles. "Lenny had rigged a rubber band, a paper clip, a button and cardboard,
like when we were kids, and I jumped," said Bowles, who grew up in Oklahoma. "Gotti got a big laugh out of it. Everyone did." While the seven defendants saved their best laughs for the end of the trial when they were acquitted of all charges, DiMaria had everyone but the prosecution team chuckling from the beginning. His antics began during the weeks-long jury selection process. Each time the judge introduced a new panel of potential jurors, DiMaria, whose loud booming voice had been tape-recorded and would be played during the trial, would stand and squeak in a high-pitched voice, "Hello." Later, after cops and FBI agents ended their testimony and stepped off the witness stand to walk out of court, DiMaria would rise, smile and extend his hand and say, "Gee, thanks for coming." Many of the law enforcement types would shake his hand reflexively. One time a bomb scare forced the evacuation of the courthouse. Reporters and others complained about standing out in the cold, but DiMaria said he didn't have it so bad. "They chained me to a steam pipe in the basement," he quipped. DiMaria seemed to enjoy himself throughout the seven-month trial. He drew cartoons and passed them to the sketch artists saying his work was better than theirs. He joked that FBI agents and detectives who testified about conversations they overheard "were riding the Erie again, yep they're on the Erie," as he cupped his hand behind his ear. During testimony that the Gambino family "gave a pass" to a gangster marked for death, DiMaria turned to a reporter who had made a serious mistake in that day's paper, and mouthed the words, "Don't worry, we're gonna give you a pass."
As Gang Land disclosed yesterday in The Daily News, Corozzo, 56, will take over the crime family as soon as Gotti's latest appeal for a new trial is denied. DiMaria, 55, a capo, is Corozzo's right hand man and has been there for three decades. "I'm not surprised about Corozzo," said Bowles, "He never smiled and struck me as the meanest of the bunch." DiMaria, Bowles said, "was the funniest defendant I've ever covered, but he had the hands of a fighter, large hands, and could take care of himself. I was almost hoping he had decided to go straight." Bowles, 58, is still at Newsday, but he no longer covers the Brooklyn Federal Court. But if DiMaria ever winds up in the dock again, Bowles is sure to attend, if only to say thanks for the laughs and for sending him a get well card from prison in 1989, when Bowles suffered a heart attack. "It was a terrible, ugly cartoon, but it said, 'Get well, Pete,' and was signed, 'Uncle Lenny.' I sent him a thank you note, but I never thanked him in person," Bowles said.
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PETE Bowles wasn't sure what to expect.
The only person
who never seemed to smile at DiMaria's antics was co-defendant and longtime buddy Nicholas
(Little Nick) Corozzo, who is about to succeed Gotti as Gambino boss, according to
underworld and law enforcement sources.
NEARLY 10 years after the stunning not guilty verdicts in the Gotti trial - the
only case in which a Mafia boss was acquitted of federal racketeering charges - only
Corozzo and DiMaria remain as viable gangsters.
After his big win on Friday, March 13, 1987, Gotti had a run of a
little more than three and a half years as the Dapper and Teflon Don. But he was arrested
on Dec. 11, 1990, and since June 23, 1992, has been serving a life sentence in virtual
isolation at Marion Federal Penitentiary. 
His
brother, Gene, (left) and good buddy John Carneglia (right) didn't last quite as long as
their crime boss, although for them there is light at the end of a long tunnel. After two
mistrials, both were convicted of heroin dealing in 1989 and sentenced to 50 years. With
good time, they're scheduled to "max out" of federal prison in about 2014. 
Gotti pal Anthony
(Tony Roach) Rampino (left) lasted less than four months as a free man. A heroin addict,
Rampino cleaned up his act during the trial, but quickly went back to his old ways and was
nabbed selling a load of heroin to an undercover cop in late June, 1987. Rampino's doing
25 to life and won't be out until 2012, at the earliest.
All of them are
better off than Wilfred (Willie Boy) Johnson, who was exposed in the case as having been a
top echelon FBI informer. Johnson (right) was shot to death as he left his house for his
construction worker job on Aug. 29, 1988, demonstrating that mob life is more than fun and
games, no matter how comical it seems at times.
