Gotti Crony Joe Watts Pays Piper

Lost in the blinding media spotlight of the January 20th bust of about 130 mobsters and associates was the writing of what could be the final chapter in the story of Joseph "Joe The German" Watts, a gangster's gangster, whose resume goes all the way back to Carlo Gambino's reign, for whom he served as a hit man in the 1970s.

Joseph The German Watts is a longtime Gambino crime family associate.
Mugshot of a haggard looking Joe Watts.

Watts --  never "made," or officially indoctrinated into a Mafia family, because he isn't Italian -- was still part of John Gotti's inner circle and often afforded the status of a capo. Watts was respected for his ability to earn and do "work," aka murder, in Mafia parlance. A strong-arm enforcer, Watts was capable of torture, which, contrary to public opinion, most mobsters do not have the stomach for.





Watts, 69, has signed a plea agreement under which he will serve 13 years; initially the Feds had indicated that they might seek the death penalty for Watts (and Gambino capo John "Jackie Nose" D'Amico, who also was charged for the Weiss murder, as were numerous others. D'Amico pleaded guilty to lesser charges in August of 2010 and was sentenced to three years.)


Watts and D'Amico were held on federal murder charges since February 2009 for the 1989 slaying of a potential federal witness who was actually killed by members of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family.

Additional crimes were added to Watts and D'Amico's charges over the years.
The slick version...

But the lynchpin of the indictment was the September 11, 1989, murder of Frederick Weiss, a Staten Island businessman. Gotti feared Weiss was an informant.

Watts and D'Amico had nothing to do with the actual killing, but the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office held that since Gotti “believed” Weiss might become a witness, even though he supposedly was not, Watts and D'Amico could still be charged under the murder witness statute for conspiring to carry out the Weiss murder.

The Feds offer a more detailed picture of Watts's role in a conspiracy to kill Weiss, as well as threaten another man in an unrelated racket.

In 1989, FREDERICK WEISS was a defendant in a case that was pending in the Southern District of New York. JOHN J. GOTTI, then-boss of the Gambino Family, suspected that WEISS was cooperating with the government because he terminated a lawyer who regularly represented Gambino Family members and associates. GOTTI ordered WEISS to be murdered—an order that GOTTI communicated to WATTS and others. WATTS then put together a murder team to carry out the hit.

In September 1989, WATTS and others went to a house on Staten Island where they expected WEISS would be. WATTS assigned different Gambino members and associates to different tasks, including digging the grave where WEISS would be buried. WATTS himself stood in the garage, holding a gun and waiting to shoot WEISS upon his arrival. Because WEISS did not show up to the house as WATTS had expected, he was not killed that day. However, a different team of shooters to whom GOTTI had also assigned the task of killing WEISS successfully located him the next day. He was shot to death in front of his apartment building.

While WATTS was serving a prison sentence in connection with his 2001 conviction for money laundering, he met Victim-1, whom he came to admire because of Victim-1's purported stockpicking abilities. When Victim-1 was released from prison, WATTS sent an emissary to deliver approximately $350,000 to $400,000—all cash—to Victim-1 to invest on WATTS’s behalf. The investment failed. In 2002, WATTS demanded his money back from Victim-1, who returned some, but not all, of WATTS’s money.


To force Victim-1 to give him back all the money, WATTS began threatening Victim-1. On one occasion, WATTS and another individual confronted Victim-1 in Manhattan and physically assaulted him. On a subsequent occasion, WATTS threatened Victim-1 and physically shoved Victim-1 against a wall.



According to court records, Watts has been involved in about 10 mob hits, and was usually the one who pulled the trigger (see above). He was released from prison in 2006 after doing ten years owing to another murder plot orchestrated by Gotti, as well as loansharking and other mob-related crimes. (Many a mobster has died, or will die, in prison for committing murders at the behest of Don Gotti; he was quicker to kill than other mob bosses, such as Paul Castellano, mob experts have agreed.)

Viewing his years of freedom as an affront for an alleged lifetime of murdering and thieving, Manhattan federal prosecutors had to dig deep to find something with which to nail Watts. (Mobsters who don't get a life sentence typically serve life on the installment plan if they have a rich enough history in Mafia mayhem.) And they did it despite the fact that, as part of a plea deal in 1996, Watts was assured by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn that he would not be prosecuted for the Weiss slaying when he pleaded guilty to killing yet another supposed informer under the orders of the late John Gotti, who died in prison in 2002 of throat cancer while serving a life sentence.

According to court records in the Brooklyn case, Watts received “coverage” from federal prosecutors for the Weiss murder as well as several other mob hits. Manhattan prosecutors likely took the position that they made no such agreement; Brooklyn prosecutors did.

Watts may be largely unknown to the general public, but he played a pivotal role in the world of organized crime. He helped bring Gotti to power. Watts, prosecutors said, was even a backup shooter in the curbside murder of Castellano and his driver and then-underboss, Tommy Bilotti, in 1985 in front of Spark's Steakhouse, one of the more infamous mob hits of the 20th century. For his role in that hit, Watts was supposedly given by Gotti Bilotti's loan shark business, which earned Joe The German millions a year. Watts also took over the murdered Roy DeMeo's role as liaison with the Westies, an Irish street gang that for a time ran scams under the Gambino flag on the West Side of Manhattan.


During the mid- to late 1980s, Watts often went bouncing around with John Gotti and his entourage and can be glimpsed in newspapers of the time and organized-crime books, as well as those news clips and grainy black and white surveillance videos often played on TV programs about Mobsters. Watts is always the man in the background -- tall, burly, decked out in a suit, a thick, full head of black hair combed back into a subtle pompadour -- seen milling about in front of the Ravenite or playing interference for the boss when his entourage would get surrounded by the media and the curious (and perhaps a potential assassin).

Despite his closeness to Gotti, Gotti's son Junior had it in for Watts in the 1990s after his legendary father went away for life and Junior was sitting in the big seat. The friction between the two was caused by a variety of reasons, chief among them Junior's belief that Watts deliberately foiled a murder plot to take out Daniel Marino, who was believed to be involved in a plot with allies in the Lucchese and Genovese families to take out Gotti Senior. Watts was also suspected of being a turncoat, but then he copped a plea agreement and went off to prison.

In photos available over a decade ago when Watts's was on trial in 1996, he still wore his thick pompadour, only it was silver. He had aged gracefully, but never left the life. When he was arrested in 2009 he was described as looking gaunt and feeble, and walking with a cane.

Comments

  1. Was there ever any confirmation about the comments Mikey Scars made about Watts and his status in the family? Eluding that he was more then just an associate??? Puffdaugherty

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