My dad was ruthless Mafia Godfather who murdered rivals in cold blood… brutal attack when I was 5 lives with me forever

ONE moment a five-year-old Rita Gigante had been playing happily underneath her grandmother’s table, the next she was witness to the fearful truth about her father. In what she describes as “an out of body” experience, the New Yorker saw her Mafia don dad Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante repeatedly punch a man so hard that his face was “ripping apart”. Mafia Godfather Vincent “Chin” Gigante being led to court in 1997 Credit: AP:Associated Press Rita Gigante signs copies of her book The Godfather’s Daughter Credit: Alamy And then she heard him almost whisper “don’t ever f***ing disrespect me again” before stomping on his victim’s blood-stained skull. For years, Rita never knew whether that poor man had lived or died. What she did know was that the innocence of youth was over and that her father was a very dangerous man. As she got older Rita learned more shocking revelations about Chin Gigante, a light heavyweight boxer who rose to become arguably the most powerful Italian crime boss in the United States. A real life Godfather. Vincent, who died in 2005 aged 77, had a second family that neither Rita nor her mum knew about. Among his crimes were heroin trafficking, the attempted assassinations of two rival clan bosses, racketeering and bribery. Rita was born in spite of her father’s rages and wandering eyes. She tells The Sun: “When I came along, he already had one with that other woman and she was pregnant with their second child at the same time my mother was pregnant with me. “And he did ask my mother to get an abortion it was the only time my mother told him to go f*** himself because she would never have done something like that. “It was the only time my father ever raised his hands to her. He swung and hit her and broke her tooth.” Her father had eight children that she knows about, five with Rita’s mother and three with his other woman. By the time Rita, 58, was born, Chin was already infamous. In 1957 he shot and wounded Frank Costello so badly that the Luciano crime family boss was persuaded to give in to his rivals. Two years later Gigante was sentenced to seven years in prison for heroin trafficking and on his release became a much feared “captain.” Talking to the trees In order to avoid going back to prison, the wily gangster pretended to be mentally-ill, wandering around New York’s Greenwich Village in a dressing gown. By claiming to have schizophrenia, Gigante was able to get cases against him dropped, including one in 1969 for bribing police officers. The man Rita knew was perfectly in touch with reality. She recalls: “He would walk around in a bathrobe, slippers and pyjamas, talk to trees and parking meters. Sometimes I would walk with him in the street. “It was all an act. Whenever he felt the FBI were getting close to something he would book himself into a mental hospital for people who had schizophrenia, bipolar, things like that. “He would do a three-week stint. He would go in and act crazy. We would go visit him. “I remember a nurse would come in and give my dad his pills. She thought he took the pills, but when the woman left he would have his pills underneath his tongue and he would give them to my mother and say, ‘you go home flush them down the toilet.’” Vincent Gigante was arrested in 1957 Credit: AP:Associated Press Anthony Salerno pretended to be the Mob boss – but really it was Gigante Credit: Getty Whenever Gigante returned from his spell in a mental health facility, he continued to run his burgeoning empire. The young Rita was shielded from much of what he did, because she lived in New Jersey while he stayed in central New York close to his mistress. Much of the time Gigante conducted his business from his mother’s home. He was careful to make sure that any FBI listening devices did not pick up his clandestine conversations. Rita recalls: “He always spoke above a whisper, sometimes he wrote things down. I remember being witness to his crew coming into my grandmother’s apartment sitting around the table. They were such nice people, nice men. “I didn’t know what he did for a living when I was young, but I knew they answered to him, so I knew he was somebody important. “And they would be passing notes back and forth or they would go over to him and whisper in his ear. “The TV was on, the radio was on, nobody could hear him. Sometimes he would nod his head. “The other thing is nobody could speak his name ever. They would have to point to the chin.” Rise to the top Gigante’s cunning saw him rise to become the boss of the Genovese crime syndicate in 1981, with Fat Tony Salerno pretending to be in charge in an attempt to fool the authorities. The main rival for control of New York was Gambino boss John Gotti, who courted publicity much to the low profile Gigante’s disgust. Rita explains: “I can tell you that my dad did not like John Gotti at all because he felt like he was too flashy. “He felt like he drew attention to the business and his ego, he felt was off the chart. My dad had a big ego too, but he just did it differently.” A bloody war broke out between the clans and at one point Gigante attempted to have Gotti assassinated. His rival, though, was not in the vehicle when the bomb went off and after that a fragile truce developed. She goes on: “There was a hit put on Gotti by my dad. Unfortunately for the man who was in the car when it happened the man died, but Gotti wasn’t in the car. “At that point my dad was like, ‘enough.’ After that nothing happened.” After Gotti went to prison in 1992, Gigante became the Godfather, a boss of bosses whose reach stretched across the United States. “A fair man” Gigante was arrested wearing a dressing gown in 1997 Credit: AP:Associated Press Gigante tried to have rival Mafia boss John Gotti killed Credit: AP Rita, though, believes that her dad was a “fair” man who did not sanction a murder without considering the case carefully first. She says: “My father wasn’t the type of person to just say, oh, yeah, here do it. You must have a good reason. “And my father had to do his own investigation to figure out if that’s something that is going to happen or not happen. “Was he powerful? Extremely powerful. People respected him, feared him, loved him, but knew that he was an extremely fair man and not a rash man, so there weren’t sprees of killings going on. “If somebody took it into their own hands to go above him or do something it wasn’t sanctioned by him then, ultimately, they would have a hit put on them.” The pretence of insanity, though, could not hold forever. After much legal wrangling, a judge ruled that Gigante was mentally fit to stand trial and in 1997 he was jailed for conspiring to kill Mafia rivals, including Gotti. He was also found guilty of bribing unions and extortion. Gigante was only sentenced to 12 years in prison, due to his age and ill-health. The reconciliation Seeing her father bludgeon a man had a long term impact on Rita. She had her first panic attack aged seven and developed obsessive compulsive disorder aged ten. She says: “I was feeling my mother’s anxiety and her stress and her depression, my father’s and my siblings as well.” Rita saw a therapist and later discovered that the man, who had owed her father money, had survived the beating. She visited her father in prison, avoiding seeing him on the weekends when his “other family” were there. Rita recalls: “He was loving and I couldn’t even touch him because you’re not allowed to. So, it felt very strange to be because I would hug him and kiss him anytime I saw him and there we were not allowed to.” Gigante died in prison in December 2005 aged 77. Before he passed away she wrote him letters of “forgiveness”. And she concludes about his life of crime: “I don’t make any of it right and I don’t condone any of it, but I understand it in a different way than I did before. “So, I can empathise and understand my father’s life and why it was the way it was. “ Rita Gigante’s book The Godfather’s Daughter is available via Amazon.