Mob prince John (Junior) Gotti broke his Mafia vow of omerta last year and used a pre-trial sitdown with federal prosecutors as an opportunity to settle some old scores with two of his dad’s former top lieutenants, Gang Land has learned. 

Gotti has acknowledged the January 2005 secret session with the feds, but has maintained it was merely an effort to convince the feds of his innocence of the charges in the racketeering indictment.

He said he indignantly stomped out once he realized that prosecutors were seeking his cooperation. In a June 27 interview with the Daily News, he insisted he would never tell on his former crime cohorts, underscoring his own attitude about informing by quoting his late father’s extreme views on the subject.

“I could have robbed a church but I wouldn’t admit to it if I had a steeple sticking out of my ass,” Gotti said the Dapper Don had told him. 

But several sources confirmed to Gang Land that in a failed bid to persuade prosecutors to drop their case against him, Gotti spilled old secrets about two

“made men” and a Gambino crime family associate – all underlings of the elder John Gotti. 

According to the sources, Junior fingered capo Daniel Marino, (left) soldier John (Johnny G) Gammarano and longtime associate Joseph Watts for crimes that took place before 1999, when Junior Gotti has insisted he walked away from the Mafia life.

Gotti also allegedly gave the feds information about a crooked Queens cop who enabled him to beat one case during the 1980s, and a corrupt politician who was part of a land-grab scheme during the same time frame, sources said. Both men are deceased.

Despite Gotti’s claims of retirement, and his ultimate decision not to cooperate, any informant activity by the mob scion would be viewed as an abomination within his former realm, and equate him with the defectors who have testified against him and his late father.

“If it’s true, he’s a rat, just like Sammy and Scars,” said one underworld source, referring to the two major Gambino family defectors, former underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and onetime capo Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo. 

The disclosure about Gotti’s discussions comes as his third trial stemming from the kidnap-shooting of Curtis Sliwa is underway in Manhattan Federal Court. Trial judge Shira Scheindlin has issued a gag order in the case and prosecutors

and defense lawyers are prohibited from discussing it.

Gang Land’s sources declined to discuss specifics that Junior gave the feds, but said that he focused primarily on Marino, 65, a powerful family capo and longtime thorn in the side of the Dapper Don, and Watts, 64, once viewed as a possible FBI informer by the Junior Don and his cohorts.

While informing about Marino, Gotti, almost as an afterthought, sources said, also related alleged criminal activity by Gammarano, 65, (right) a soldier in Marino’s crew.

Marino, who served six years behind bars for a murder conspiracy ordered by the elder Gotti, was released in 2000. Watts, who spent 10 years in prison for his involvement in the same plot, and a separate tax case, got out of prison in May. Johnny G, who served three years for a labor racketeering scam in Brooklyn and a Joker Poker gambling machine scheme in New Orleans, has been back in action since 2002.

“Junior has had a real hard on against Danny Marino and Joe Watts for years. He’s talked about killing them both,” said one source.

The Gotti faction has long believed that Marino was poised to take over the crime family in the early 1990s as part of a retaliation plot by the Genovese and

Luchese families for the unsanctioned 1985 killing of Gambino boss Paul Castellano. 

Even after Marino was incarcerated during the late 1990s, Junior, Mikey Scars, Peter Gotti and other supporters of the then-jailed Dapper Don debated whether to kill Marino, according to FBI documents. The discussions revolved around suspicions that Marino may have had a role in the murders of Frank DeCicco, Bartholemew (Bobby) Borriello and Edward Lino – all key allies of the elder Gotti – from 1986 to 1991.

In the early 1990s, according to testimony at Junior’s second trial, Gotti had two gunmen waiting in the closet of a Brooklyn apartment ready to kill Marino and Johnny G and dispose of their remains in body bags after Junior suspected they had kept $400,000 in annual construction industry extortion payments that should have been forwarded to him. The plot was thwarted, probably intentionally, by Watts.

Watts, who would become the focus of rubout talk a few years later, had been instructed to bring Marino and Johnny G to a meeting that would end with their execution. But when Watts and the targeted mobsters arrived in a stretch limo along with another mobster and a driver, Junior aborted the plan, according to the testimony. 

In 1994 and 1995, according to court documents, Junior discussed killing Watts

when “rumors began to spread within the Gambino family that Watts might be cooperating” and Gotti feared that Watts (left) and then-superstar witness Sammy Bull would be a “deadly combination” that would threaten the “survival of the Gottis and the Gambino family.”

The nasty talk about Watts fizzled out after he pleaded guilty and went to prison. But Junior has long suspected that Watts, who referred to Junior as “Boss” whenever they met, had worn a wire against him, according to FBI documents. And, during his session with the feds, said one source, “Junior was quick to point a finger at him.” 

Sources said that Gotti did implicate himself, and a few longtime friends, in several crimes, but they took place too long ago to be used in an indictment.

Gotti denied any role in a 23-year-old murder, a crime for which there is no statute of limitations, sources said. He insisted that he did not kill Danny Silva, a 24-year-old Queens man who died from a knife wound during a wild melee in an Ozone Park bar when Junior was a rowdy and arrogant 19-year-old wannabe wiseguy. “He said he was there, but he said he had nothing to do with the stabbing,” said one source.

As Gang Land reported four years ago, a formerly reluctant witness has told authorities that he “personally saw Junior stab Danny Silva” and the police and FBI re-opened the case with an eye toward charging Gotti with Silva’s murder.