New York, June 10: John Gotti, the swaggering, sartorially elegant and talkative boss of the Gambino crime family who was jailed for life in 1992 for murder after years of evading the law, died in a prison hospital on Monday. He was 61. New York law enforcement sources and people close to Gotti's family said the man nicknamed the "Dapper Don" died from complications of neck and throat cancer at a federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri.

"He was the charismatic, Machiavellian boss of the family and he was ruthless and dangerous," said one former FBI agent who investigated Gotti. "He held the command and respect of a lot of criminals." One of Gotti's lawyers from his many trials, Joseph Corozzo, said the mobster had been bedridden since January "and steadily going down."
Gotti was serving a life term in a maximum security federal prison in Marion, Illinois, when he was diagnosed with cancer in September 1998.
Bureau Report