Dapper Don 'bribed' cop for Junior
John "Junior" Gotti fatally stabbed a man during a Queens bar brawl in 1983 -- but his father paid an NYPD detective $10,000 to make the investigation "go away," a former member of Gotti's crew testified yesterday.
Kevin Bonner said the up-and-coming mob scion "went to work" after 24-year-old Danny "Elf" Silva wouldn't stop drunkenly pestering Gotti one night at the Silver Fox Bar in Queens.
Gotti's youthful gangsters surrounded their 19-year-old leader as he savagely beat Silva on March 12, 1983, but all hell broke loose after someone tossed a glass that shattered on Bonner's forehead.
"It just became a big brawl," Bonner, 45, said during a day of highly detailed testimony at Gotti's racketeering and murder trial in Manhattan federal court. "As I was tussling, I looked over at John and I seen he stabbed this kid."
Other patrons dragged Silva onto a bar stool, where he moaned in pain.
"He had blood all over," Bonner said. "He got stabbed in the belly."
Gotti and his group hightailed it to a woman's apartment in the Lindenwood section of Howard Beach, where Bonner said Gotti showed "no emotion" after washing off Silva's blood in the bathroom.
"It was a little awkward at the table. Nobody said nothing," said Bonner, who then coldly headed off with his girlfriend for a late-night dinner in Manhattan.
But Bonner said neither he nor any other crew members were ever questioned by the cops afterward, with crew member John Gebert explaining that Gotti's father -- at the time a "very feared" captain in the Gambino crime family -- "was taking care of the investigation" by paying off a detective.
"He paid him money to kind of, I guess, make it go away," Bonner said, without naming the rogue cop.
The testimony marked the latest claim of police corruption tied to Junior Gotti's case, following a leaked FBI report last week that detailed allegations from former Gambino thug John Alite about cops in league with the mob.
Bonner -- who turned rat after being hit with a 25-year sentence for a string of armed robberies in Florida -- also pinned a mid-'80s shooting on Gotti, saying he opened fire during a fight that erupted at a Queens disco after a bouncer demanded proof of Gotti's age.
The victim, Bonner said, turned out to be connected to the Bonanno crime family, and everyone present was later summoned to the elder Gotti's Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park to help settle the matter.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/dapper_don_bribe_7djbc9sRki5h7Lj6mdQdsO
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