The feds filed the titillating transcripts along with scads of less sexy material last week in an effort to convince Judge Barrington Parker that Junior deserves 87 months — the maximum sentence under his plea bargain agreement. Junior’s lawyers are looking to postpone the sentencing, scheduled for Thursday.

John J. Gotti, the onetime Dapper Don now behind bars for racketeering and murder, voiced the opinion on Jan. 29, 1998, a week after Junior was indicted for racketeering, that his son was guilty of “stupid acts” and should be sent to an “insane asylum.”

Separated by a glass partition, Gotti spoke to his daughter and brother, a reputed Gambino capo, on a telephone hookup. In an angry rant, the elder Gotti called Junior an “imbecile,” an “asshole,” “a babbling idiot” and much more.

Using his words like knives, Gotti mocked his son, his son’s associates and the evidence they left in a Queens basement that tied Junior to criminal activity — some $358,000 in “wedding gifts,” two guns and a list of men who had been inducted into the Mafia.

“This is stupidity from down the line,” he said, singling out Junior’s codefendant, Steven Sergio, whom the elder Gotti has never met. “I can’t even identify two people in the indictment — uh, uh, the Sea Monster, Sigmund the Sea Monster. I’m not away 100 years. I’m only away seven years. Where do these creatures emerge from?

“All I know is one thing. I don’t think I’ll ever find myself in a position where I’ll put my wedding money, 380 thous … whatever it is, in the basement near a broken safe, with a bunch of old jewelry.”

He couldn’t believe his son kept guns, including an old derringer (“The derringer was my derr — that derringer was minding it’s business on top of a goddamn dresser for 10, 12 years and didn’t bother nobody”) in the basement “behind a sealed wall? Let’s assume I keep this gun here for protection, or two guns for protection. I see some people coming, I need the protection, I got to first break the wall, [no], first I gotta go downstairs, then I got to break the wall, then I got to hope it’s clean.”

As to the list of mobsters — Junior’s fingerprint was on it — let alone that it was left it in the basement of a building owned by a close associate. “Maybe somebody somewhere down the line could tell me what the reason for this list is to begin with … What do you need a list for? I don’t understand that. Assume, uh, well, say you wanted to be a nice guy. Your wife was feeling under the weather, you wanted to go shopping, she gave you a list. After you bought your groceries, what do you do with the list, you put it away for posterity? To show that you went shopping one time?”

Gotti repeated the same points over and over. When he pressed daughter Victoria for her opinion, she usually agreed with him. He said he couldn’t understand how lists of guests at Junior’s gala wedding and amounts of money they gave as gifts were left in a basement if he lived twice as long as the 2,000-year-old man in Mel Brooks’ classic routine. Victoria shook her head and said it made no sense. She also agreed with her father’s assessment that whoever put guns behind a sealed wall, “if there were guns behind the wall,” had to be an idiot.

But the senior Gotti himself comes off as the head of a dysfunctional Mafia family who has apparently forgotten that he’s largely responsible for the prison term his son is about to get. He brought his son to his Ozone Park, Queens, social club and into his sordid world when Junior was a teenager. After Gotti engineered the assassination of Mafia boss Paul Castellano and moved from Queens to the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy, he brought his son there, too, and inducted him into the Gambino crime family in his early 20s.

By age 27, Junior was a capo; by 30, the acting boss of the family, following in his father’s footsteps. And as silly and amateurish as some of his mistakes may have been, Junior never made any as big or as dumb as the ones that landed his father in Marion for life, where he could pontificate and second guess his son’s mistakes from behind bars. Junior never sat around in a bugged apartment above his social club in these high-tech times, chatting and boasting about ordering three murders and scores of other crimes, which he committed with the likes of 19-time killer Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano.

John Gotti’s remarks about his son’s trials and tribulations give more insight into the father than the son. Yet they were submitted by White Plains federal prosecutors to the judge who will sentence Junior, whose lawyers cannot oppose the government’s motion that Junior receive the full 87 months, according to the plea bargain signed by both sides.

In a 17-page letter to Judge Parker that accompanied the transcript of the elder Gotti’s remarks — it was part of a three-inch-thick pile that ranks as the largest pre-sentencing package Gang Land has ever seen and we’ve seen hundreds and hundreds — Assistant U.S. Attorneys Carol Sipperly, Marjorie Miller and Bart Van De Weghe wrote that because Junior’s lawyers could not object, they were submitting “a more limited presentation of its proof to assist the Court in imposing sentence.” Guess they would have needed a truck if Junior’s lawyers were allowed to argue against an 87-month sentence.

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My brother made me do it

Robert Spinelli, 36, has an IQ of 63. A user and abuser of drugs since he was a teenager, he was never viewed by the Luchese family as even an associate. Mobsters and associates refrained from using the lowest of salutations– “a friend of mine” — when they introduced Robert when he showed up at a Christmas party or other gathering with his mobster brother Michael (Baldy Mike).

“This is Mike’s brother,” is all they’d say, recalled turncoat gangster Frank Gioia Jr. when he testified at the brothers’ attempted murder trial last fall.

At the same trial, Dino Basciano, the trigger man in the rub-out attempt for which the brothers were convicted, said he never would have chosen Robert to be part of the team that tried to kill Patricia Capozzalo, the innocent sister of a Mafia turncoat, in 1992. The crime is one of the low points of the mob legacy in this country. “If it was up to me, Robert would not be on the hit,” said Basciano. “It was up to Michael.”

Citing Robert’s low IQ and his “hero worship” of his older brother, lawyer Gail Laser has asked Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie to mete out a much lower sentence than the 14 to 17 years that sentencing guidelines mandate.

In court papers, Laser noted that Robert was not involved in the planning, wore no disguise and carried no weapon in the shooting, but was selected by Michael to sit in a “switch car” far from the scene and drive the shooters away when they finished their work. Nonsense, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Lesser in her reply papers. Lesser noted that Robert has a history of violent crimes back to the age of 16, including 11 robberies of senior citizens, and asked Dearie to impose a full sentence within the guidelines.

Robert is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

Michael Spinelli, who drove Basciano during the attempted hit, was last month sentenced to 19 years, seven months. Mobster Jody Calabrese, who drove a “crash car” in the scheme, received 10 years.

The revelation about Spero’s reduction in rank, Walden told the judge, was fresh and credible. It had come from one of two confidential informers who, only a few weeks before, told the FBI that Spero was the Bonnano family consigliere, which would make him one of the top 15 gangsters among New York’s five crime families, which also include the Gambino, Genovese, Luchese and Colombo clans. But, Walden said, Spero’s arrest had apparently prevented him from carrying out his lofty gangster duties so he was demoted to capo. (A capo is sort of a high-level “working foreman.” There are 10 or 12 capos in the Bonanno crime family, each of whom runs a crew of 10 to 60 soldiers and associates.) For security reasons Walden said he could give few other details.

And, “It’s not official,” said Walden, adding that the FBI still listed Spero as consigliere. “The FBI has a policy — until they hear a fact from two sources they will not act on it. We’re not taking the position that he is not the consigliere.”

Since federal judges generally view “top three” mobsters as dangerous men merely because of their high rank, the distinction between consigliere and capo is a big one. This was shaping up as Spero’s “get out of jail” card. He had been detained without bail as a danger to the community based primarily on clear and convincing evidence that he was an executive in the Bonanno family, a member of the administration. That evidence had gotten a little cloudy.

“Stand up, Anthony,” whispered one defense lawyer in the gallery with a big smile. “You be the second source.”

In the front of the courtroom, Spero’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, was already driving the point home to Judge Edward Korman of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. He lambasted the prosecution for using faceless and nameless paid informants to call his client “one of the top three members of an organized crime family” and for continuing to maintain that position when one of the informants had reversed himself.

Sensing things were going his way, Shargel forged ahead with another important factor in these kinds of detention cases: Money — lots of it. Friends and relatives would post $3.5 million in property as assurances Spero would behave while out on bail. Spero’s daughter Diana, whose Big Apple Car Service nets $1 million a year, would put up the business and sign a $10 million personal recognizance bond.

Walden argued that Spero had several prior convictions for violent activities, and as a capo, he now had a crew of made mobsters and mob associates (wannabes) he could call on to threaten and kill potential witnesses. Walden, however, did not explain whether the other stool pigeon was asked about the supposed demotion.

Two days later, on June 24, Judge Korman, citing the new information and the increased financial package, set strict house arrest conditions for Spero’s release. His house on Staten Island will be surrounded by video cameras. His telephone will be tapped. Only blood relatives and those of his longtime companion, Louise Rizzuto, will be allowed to visit.

Spero should be home in time for a Fourth of July barbecue, but only after a lot of i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed, the surveillance equipment put in place and his benefactors have signed papers authorizing forfeiture of their properties if Spero violates his bail conditions.

“I certainly am happy my father’s coming home, but very disappointed about the onerous and expensive conditions,” said daughter Diana. “My father will be vindicated and to that end I will pledge all that I own, as well as my future earnings, to secure his release.”

She noted that six years ago federal prosecutors in Manhattan had charged her father with another murder and dropped the whole thing. “The government is wrong now, as it was then,” she said.

The government is also curtailing the 70-year-old man’s only avocation. He has bred and raced pigeons for half a century, but won’t be able to visit his coops on the roof of the Big Apple Car Service in Bath Beach, which he has done virtually every day since his release from prison in 1997. Walden claims Spero has used his hobby to facilitate his role as consigliere, using fellow pigeon enthusiasts to carry messages to and from the Bonanno social club, which was off limits for Spero as a condition of his parole.

But one of Spero’s loyal friends and a fellow pigeon fancier, Murray Kufeld, former owner of the Big Apple Car Service, has been in court every time Spero’s case has come up. Kufeld, when called to testify by Walden, answered every question with doubletalk and mobspeak and essentially said he didn’t know nothing about nobody. With friends like this, if Spero beats the case, he can be assured his flock of champion pigeons will be awaiting him.

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Oops: Junior Gotti misses a payment

John A. (Junior) Gotti, who has whined and whimpered about the high cost of his house-arrest and bail package, is having trouble raising the $1 million he owes the feds as part of his plea bargain. He missed a deadline for a $750,000 payment due 20 days before his July 8 sentencing and wants to put it off a few weeks. Gerald Shargel, who is also Junior’s lawyer, downplayed the hassle as a minor snag. “The case has had its twists and turns, but it will all work out,” he said.

Frank Gangi, a wannabe mobster, was a high-class burglar and a low-class drug dealer and killer when he was arrested for drunken driving after a police chase in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in April 1990.

He was taken to the 62nd Precinct and absolutely floored the cops, who were pissing and moaning about all the paperwork they had ahead of them.

He told them he was a serial killer and wanted to confess his sins, tell authorities where the bodies were buried, cooperate and start a new life for himself. “The feds have already approached me. Now I’m ready,” Gangi said.

Gangi made good on his promise. He served up Bonanno mobster Thomas (Tommy Karate) Pitera for a litany of brutal murders that landed Pitera in federal prison for life and earned Gangi a new lease on his.

Most of the victims — authorities dug up the remains of five — were dismembered and buried in marshland on Staten Island by Pitera and Gangi, who admitted roles in five slayings, including a woman.

“I still have hope for you; you still will have a chance for a life, which is more than those five people you killed will,” Judge Reena Raggi of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn told Gangi as she sentenced him to 10 years, a light term justified by his cooperation.

But some gangsters want everything. He bitched about the length of the sentence and appealed the judge’s refusal to reduce it. He finally shut up and did the time. His new life began in December, when he got out of prison after serving eight and a half years and was given a new identity under the federal Witness Protection Program.

Within a few months, Gangi, now 41, had been arrested twice for drunk driving in his new hometown and jailed for violating his parole. He was hauled back to Brooklyn and on June 15 made a personal plea behind sealed courtroom doors to Raggi. She gave him another chance and released him with the caveat that he undergo alcohol counseling, seek and maintain a job and report once a week to parole officials.

Pitera, who berated Gangi after he appealed his sentence for “weeping and whimpering to the judge” instead of taking his punishment “like a man,” couldn’t be reached for comment at Leavenworth. But Pitera’s trial lawyer, Mathew Mari, had this reaction: “This slap on the wrist bolsters Tommy’s nine-year contention that Gangi was given a lifetime license to kill and can get away with anything and everything.”

Gangi may still be weeping and whimpering to the judge, but he probably hasn’t killed anyone, yet. He’s had two chances to use the incredible but true story he used to dodge the drunken driving rap in Brooklyn nearly nine years ago and hasn’t.

Capozzalo was marked for death by Luchese crime boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso in an ill-conceived attempt to convince her brother, Peter (Fat Pete) Chiodo, to change his mind about testifying at Amuso’s then-upcoming racketeering and murder trial. Amuso is one of those hot-headed gangsters who don’t always think things through. Capozzalo was shot in the neck and back in front of her home in 1992 after dropping two of her children off at school. Spinelli drove the van that carried the shooter. Had his sister died, it’s hard not to imagine Chiodo being even more eager to testify against his old friends.

Baldy Mike’s participation in the shooting earned him a place in the Luchese family. He was officially inducted at a makeshift ritual in a bathroom at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was being held on racketeering and murder charges. Spinelli’s inductors had to do without the gun and knife, props in the traditional ceremony, and instead of a picture of a Catholic saint, they set toilet paper afire in his hands as he swore undying allegiance to the family.

Spinelli, 45, isn’t likely to resurface until 2027, if he lives that long. The new sentence was tacked onto the 13 years he still has to serve for other violent crimes. In a prepared statement, Spinelli with a straight face and no sign of remorse said he hoped his sentencing would bring closure to his and Capozzalo’s families. “They’ve both suffered enough,” he said.

Not surprisingly, the sentencing judge’s sentiments were similar to the pervasive view of the shooting in many corners of Gang Land.

“This is not just another criminal living and dying by the sword or a gun,” said Brooklyn U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie. “This is really an unthinkable act of cowardice” that broke one of the “rules that just aren’t broken” and is a “black indelible mark (on the Luchese crime family) that will never be washed away.”

Three days later, on June 11, in a federal courthouse 60 miles away, a Luchese mobster who once did much of the dirty work for a mob-linked carting company got a shorter stretch for the same crime. Jody Calabrese, 37, who pleaded guilty, got 10 years for his role in the attempted hit on Capozzalo, as well as the attempted murder of a salesman for a rival garbage hauler Calabrese shot five times in 1997. He’s due out of prison in 2006.

In a plea bargain, Calabrese admitted his roles in both shootings and in two extortion attempts. Prosecutors expected his sentence to be between 135 and 168 months under federal sentencing guidelines. But Calabrese’s lawyer, Joel Winograd, convinced Hauppauge, N.Y., U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley that because both shooting victims did not suffer permanent injuries and because Calabrese had no prior criminal convictions, the guidelines called for less, somewhere between 108 and 135 months.

Spinelli drove the van that carried gunman Dino Basciano to the Gravesend, Brooklyn, street where Capozzalo was ambushed. Calabrese and another mobster, Gregory Cappello — who died in prison two years ago while serving time for unrelated crimes — were in a “crash car” that tailed the van and was ready to block police or other pursuers.

Spinelli’s brother Robert drove a “switch car” that took the hit team to safety after they ditched the van. He was also convicted and is to be sentenced next month.

Gregory DePalma flourished in those halcyon mobster days before federal racketeering cases.

In 1976, a smiling DePalma stood between Frank Sinatra and Mafia boss Paul Castellano for the now-infamous backstage photo with Carlo Gambino and other mobsters that would later be used to bolster tape-recorded evidence against DePalma and 10 others in a bankruptcy fraud case.

On June 11, hooked to intravenous tubes and breathing through an oxygen mask, the aging Gambino gangster, who unwittingly helped the feds make a racketeering case against John A. “Junior” Gotti, lay helpless in a sparsely furnished hospital room as he was sentenced to six years in prison.

White Plains, N.Y., U.S. District Judge Barrington Parker had traveled to the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla to put a cap on DePalma’s criminal career.

DePalma, 67, suffers from cancer, diabetes and a host of other ailments. He could have received up to 13 years, but Parker cited DePalma’s failing health in departing from the normal sentencing guidelines.

But a few hours later, back at the White Plains Courthouse, Parker showed no mercy for DePalma’s mobster son Craig DePalma, meting out the harshest sentence he could for the 33-year-old: 87 months.

“You saw what your father’s life was like and you saw what that life brought upon your family, particularly the women, [yet] you cast your lot with Gotti and associates,” said Parker.

The DePalmas implicated themselves and Junior Gotti in numerous crimes in hundreds of conversations tape-recorded from 1995 to 1997. In an ironically memorable one, Junior and Craig made fun of the elder DePalma’s propensity to get caught on tape.

All three pleaded guilty to racketeering charges that included loan sharking and extortion practiced on workers and owners of Scores, a trendy Manhattan strip joint popular with celebrities, sports figures and tourists.

Junior gets his turn before Judge Parker next month. Like Craig DePalma, he faces up to 87 months. Like DePalma, Gotti saw what his father’s life was like and opted to follow in his footsteps, even to the point of getting caught on tape.

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hey, we’ll accept endorsements from anybody

No matter what the feds say about Murray Kufeld, a longtime buddy of Bonanno family consigliere Anthony Spero, Gang Land thinks you gotta like the guy.

Kufeld, who shares Spero’s love of racing pigeons, was called as a witness at Spero’s recent detention hearing in an effort by prosecutor Jim Walden to buttress his assertion that Kufeld carried messages from Spero to underlings at a Bath Beach, Brooklyn, social club a block from Spero’s pigeon coops.

Kufeld denied any improprieties, but admitted under grilling by Walden that he knew many people the prosecutor identified as mobsters, including Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, insisting however that he never knew any of them to commit any crimes.

“Where have you seen Mr. Massino?” demanded Walden.

“In the newspapers and in [Jerry Capeci's] ‘Gang Land,’” said Kufeld.