NY- John Gotti’s secret family would be welcomed to the Gambino clan if DNA tests verify the lineage to the Dapper Don, his widow said yesterday.
“I hope they are blessed with his good looks,” Victoria Gotti told the Daily News.
“If they turn up after a DNA test, I would welcome them. Any part of John Gotti has got to be a class act.”
Law enforcement sources identified Gotti’s goumada – the mother of his love child – as the illegitimate daughter of his most revered mentor.
Former Daily News reporters and Mafia experts Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain also identified his girlfriend as Shannon Grillo, the daughter of Aniello (Neil) Dellacroce.
But Gotti’s widow blasted the sensational claims, made on Friday in the racketeering trial of her son, as baseless attempts to discredit her deceased husband.
“This is a very, very old story,” she said.
Mob snitch Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo dropped the bombshell as he testified against John A. (Junior) Gotti.
“His father has a secret second family and a daughter he fathered out of wedlock,” DiLeonardo said from the stand in Manhattan Federal Court.
The sordid announcement brought gasps from Gotti family members, even though reports of Gotti’s love child have circulated for years.
“When it’s proven, again with DNA, that’s when I will take it serious,” the Dapper Don’s widow told The News yesterday.
“I was told by Rosemarie Dellacroce \[Shannon’s mother\] that there was absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. Her words to me \[were\], ‘I swear to you on my son’s life this is a lie.’
“So it certainly would surprise me if it is true.”
She also said she knew that others outside her family were financially reliant on her husband.
“Johnny was supporting a dozen households at the very least, but not in the way these weasels would have you believe,” she said.
“As for hidden children, if you knew John Gotti, you would know that that would not have been acceptable to him, to relegate a child or children to the status of back street. He would have left home first.”
She added massive FBI surveillance would have made it impossible for her husband to carry on an illicit affair.
“They had nine agents from the FBI searching for years for Johnny’s supposed millions,” she said. “Wouldn’t you think it logical, if he had other families, they would have gone to them as well?”
A law enforcement source told The News yesterday that Gotti had been caught professing love for the other woman in secret telephone calls. The source said Gotti was recorded on a public telephone making romantic small talk with his secret lover.
Capeci and Mustain reported on the reputed extramarital dalliance in their 1988 book, “Mob Star – The Story of John Gotti.”
They told how Gotti attempted to keep secret “a longtime affair he had with Neil’s out-of-wedlock daughter Shannon.”
Dellacroce, who has been described as being like a father to Gotti, was the second in command of the Gambino family when he died of cancer in December 1985.
Gotti’s widow lashed out yesterday at the mob turncoat who made the claims.
“DiLeonardo is a vile and vicious man,” she said. “He needs to be spiteful. . . . John Sr. is an easy target. He is not here to defend himself.”
The Dapper Don has also been linked with another woman, the ex-wife of former New York Jets star Mark Gastineau.
Capeci and Mustain, in their book, “Gotti: Rise and Fall,” said the Dapper Don took Lisa Gastineau, a statuesque, upper East Side blond, to intimate dinners.
They said he had planned to take Gastineau, the star of reality TV show “Gastineau Girls,” to Frank Sinatra’s 75th birthday concert the night the Gambino boss was busted by the FBI.
Asked about Gotti’s reputed love child, Gastineau said, “Wow. I had no idea.”