After six years of legal wrangling, legendary New York City Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante  was arraigned in 1996 on a litany of federal murder, labor racketeering and other charges   following a ruling that he had been feigning insanity for 30 years in an effort to avoid prosecution for his Mafia activities. Gigante underwent open heart surgery Dec. 10, 1996. He was released from the hospital a month later. He went to trial that summer, was found guilty of labor racketeering, and sentenced to 12 years in prison in December, 1997.

A little more than five years later, on Jan. 23, 2002, Chin, his son Andrew, and family wiseguys who included former acting boss Liborio (Barney) Bellomo, were charged with running lucrative extortion rackets on the New York, New Jersey and Miami waterfronts. Scheduled for trial before Brooklyn Federal Court Judge I. Leo Glasser in March, 2003, Chin admitted that he had been playacting the role of a crazy man for years and pleaded guilty in a deal that cost him an additional three years in prison. Due out in 2010, at age 82, Gigante died in December 2005 in a federal prison hospital in Springfield Missouri, the same facility where his longtime rival, John Gotti, died three years earlier. 

Nearly 50 years ago, on orders from Don Vito Genovese, Gigante, (right) then a wet-behind-the ears but ambitious assassin, tried to take out Mafia-fixer Frank Costello (left) -- the Prime Minister of Organized Crime for Vito Genovese. Chin became the family's boss in the early 1980's. At his 1997 trial, he was acquitted of ordering six mob slayings and he beat the rap for conspiring to kill Gotti as retribution for his assassination of Castellano on statute of limitations grounds. (GOTTI: Rise and Fall provides  insight about the murder plot against Gotti, disclosing that two members of Gotti's inner circle joined in Chin's scheme and were poised to take over the Gambino family if the murder plot had succeeded.) Chin's lawyers insisted Gigante was crazy but prosecutors, Gravano, mobster Joe Black, and ultimately a federal jury decided Chin was the head of a sophisticated bid rigging and kickback scheme and found him guilty of labor racketeering. Meanwhile, his original team of federal prosecutors moved on to other things, and one, Charles Rose, passed away in 1998. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Gigante's conviction in January, 1999. A few months later, Chin's lawyers and federal prosecutors were back in court again after prosecutors learned that the Gigante family had hired a sexy operative to try and obtain some dirt on the anonymous jurors who convicted the Chin.

In 2002, the feds hit Gigante with waterfront racketeering charges involving the Genovese family's longtime control over the New Jersey and Miami piers through the family's influence over the International Longshoremen's Association. His son Andrew served as Chin's point man in the scheme, according to the indictment. The following year, father and son, along with six other family wiseguys and associates copped plea bargains that added three years to Chin's prison days and cost Andrew a two year stretch behind bars. Andrew was released in July, 2005.