“I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of support,” said the former capo as he turned around and smiled at a courtroom full of smiling current and former prosecutors and FBI agents.
DiLeonardo apologized for his crimes, telling a Manhattan federal judge: “I stand here your honor in judgment. One day I will stand in judgment in the hereafter.”
He plotted at least three murders and committed at least one, extorted construction companies, contractors, and labor unions in and around New York, prosecutors said when he was arrested in 2002.
But he also helped the feds prosecute John Gotti’s son, John (Junior) Gotti for shooting and wounding radio host Curtis Sliwa, mob hit man Charles Carneglia and others.
“Mr. DiLeonardo’s cooperation in the last nine years is nothing short of historic,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elie Honig said, adding that DiLeonardo as a result became a “marked man” by many mobsters.
Looking typically dapper in a light blue blazer, a pocket handkerchief and a new haircut for the occasion, DiLeonardo was grinning like a man who just had a baby as he strolled into the audience to shake hands and hug the nearly two dozen current and former law enforcement officers there to see him be later whisked away to the witness protection program.
Sliwa, who sat grim-faced in his trademark red Guardian Angels jacket in the back of the courtroom, refused to shake hands, later expressing profound mixed feelings.
“He’ll be absolved for ratting out Gotti Jr.,” Sliwa said. “But you can’t just eliminate the fact that he murdered three people.
“I will never forgive, I will never forget,” he said. “I hope in his first hot shower of freedom he falls and breaks his neck and goes straight to hell without an asbestos suit.”
Besides sentencing DiLeonardo to the three years he already served, District Judge John Koeltl added a three-year-sentence of supervised release.
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