Mafia chief Gotti, 61, dies in prison

John Gotti, the former Mafia chief who earned the nickname "Teflon Don" because of his success in brushing off attempts by federal prosecutors to put him behind bars, died in an Illinois prison hospital yesterday. He was 61 years old and had been suffering from throat cancer.

It is almost a decade since Gotti was finally convicted by a Brooklyn jury for racketeering and six killings, including the murder in 1985 of "Big Paul" Castellano, whom he subsequently replaced as the head of the Gambino crime family in New York.

Gotti – also known as the "Dapper Don" because of his penchant for Italian suits and jewellery – reigned for six years. He allegedly exerted control even after his incarceration, though his influence dwindled over the years. A week ago, prosecutors in Brooklyn charged two of his brothers, Peter and Richard, with overseeing graft and racketeering on the New York waterfront.

Gotti was twice acquitted by juries after prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence to satisfy them. He jauntily predicted he would elude conviction one more time when he was arrested in New York in 1990. That time, however, the authorities had tapes of conversations at his Brooklyn headquarters.

Born on 27 October 1940 to immigrants from Naples, Gotti got into petty crime almost the instant he was out of school. He married in 1960 and has four children, including Victoria Gotti, a romance novelist who writes a column for the New York Post tabloid.