Clenched Fist

John Gotti Clenched Fist It was early evening on December 16, 1985. The sidewalks were jammed with people who had just flooded out of the many office buildings around East 46th Street between Second and Third Avenue. Some rushed home from work, eager to get out of the wintry gloom; others were lured by the strings of brightly colored lights into the stores for some Christmas shopping. There in the midst of the mid-town bustle on 46th …

…the carefully executed plan. John Gotti and his colleague Sammy the Bull Gravano and the conspiratorial group of ten men called the Fist had pulled off the first major gangland assassination since Albert Anastasia had been hit in 1957. In the next few days all New Yorkers and much of the rest of the world would know the name John Gotti as he skyrocketed to fame as the daring new head of the Gambino crime family.