The Mafia with Trevor McDonald

Trevor begins his journey in Queens, New York, where he meets John Alite, widely known as “The Sheriff”. John grew up in the neighbourhood and became a killer in an area nicknamed Death Haven. He says: “There were constant murders here, constant rivalries between different guys in the streets, different mob families. So we would kill almost at will, as someone given a beating.” The mafia was built on fear and intimidation. For a man like John rising up through the ranks would depend on a willingness to carry out orders, however brutal. In the 1980s and 1990s Alite worked for John Gotti Senior, who was the Godfather of the Gambino crime family, the most powerful and feared mobsters in America. John’s first hit was to kill a local drug dealer and he explains to Trevor how he lured him into a car and shot him in the back of the head twice. John says: “I don’t like to use the word pride, but at the time that’s what I was thinking. I’m going to take pride in what I do and I’m going to do it good. We wanted the public and more so, the street guys and his brother-in-law to understand. You do something you’re not told and you disobey our laws and our rules, there is no negotiating. You’re going to be killed.” The godfathers maintain their control by relying on men like John to kill on command. But their loyalty often turns into betrayal with gangsters doing deals with the FBI and testifying against their bosses to avoid long prison sentences. John’s boss John Gotti Senior appeared invincible in the 80s, until his most trusted lieutenant broke the code of silence. Trevor then meets Michael Di Leonardo, also known as Mikey Scars, a former high-ranking member of the Gambino crime family. Mikey has single-handedly inflicted more damage on the mafia than anyone else in recent times, testifying against the men he worked with, to save himself from a life behind bars.

In the second programme, Trevor learns more about the lives the former mobsters have made for themselves since trying to leave the Mafia behind. He continues his journey across America to meet prolific mob member John Alite at his home. John has recently been released from a ten-year prison sentence after making a deal with the FBI and now lives just outside New York in his son’s apartment. John admits that on occasion his son accompanied him on hits, when he was as young as seven years old. John says: “I’m an alcoholic, with violence, not with alcohol. I was (addicted to violence). Now I handle it. I changed myself and I’ve proven over the years I’ve changed myself. And every day is a struggle I’ll lie to you if I say it, if you said something wrong to me on the street and I didn’t know you, my first thought in my mind is, hurt that guy.” Alite’s son Johnny says: “For the most part, for a little while, he was the best at what he did. Did I admire him growing up, see what he did and watch those movies? You say, ‘wow like I would love to do that’? Yeah. But then when you do mature and you get older and then you think about the consequences that come with it.” Instead of living under witness protection, Alite chooses to live out in the open, working in the construction business, accepting that one day someone could make him pay for his betrayal. He says: “I have more than dozens of victims, over a hundred people. Killing, shooting, batting, stabbing, more than a hundred guys…When you go out and hurt as many people as I did, you are going to get hurt too.” Of the burden of his past, Alite tells Trevor: “When I go home, if someone tells you they are sleeping sound, there’s something wrong with them if they were doing what we were doing. When you are involved in what we were involved with, you don’t sleep sound. I don’t believe anyone who says they are, I think they’re lying.”