As dusk fell, a Lincoln Continental parked outside Andrea Giovino’s Staten Island home. Dinner was being cooked on the stove, her children were playing, and the $6,000 worth of roses she had planted out front were swaying in the wind.
But her husband was not alone in the car that night – there were two bodies in the trunk. For most, it came straight out of a Scorsese script – but for Andrea, it was just another day as the real-life Carmela Soprano.
Her husband pulls up in front of their home.
Andrea, now in her late 60s, told The Sun: “When you come from the background I come from and you know about a lot of murders, and your husband pulls up in front of the house and there are two bodies in the back of the trunk…
“I mean, normal people can’t deal with this.
“Normal people never experience this. It took me almost 30 years to recover from this.”
Andrea’s life, steeped in the “street code” from childhood, began when she was born in Brooklyn and raised among mobsters.
She grew up watching people like Crazy Joe Gallo – an Italian American gangster and capo (mafia boss) in New York City. Colombo’s notorious family played cards in the basement of his mother’s house.
As a young woman, she dated three prominent mob figures.
When she was just 21 years old, she married mob capo Frank Lino, 24 years her senior.
Following her separation from Lino in the 1980s, she developed an affair with mobster Mark Reiter, making eye contact while sitting next to the top crime boss of the Gambino family. John Gotti was at Club A in Manhattan.
Gotti once said that Andrea had “more balls” than some of his captains – and he lived up to it.
Nicknamed “Rocky” after saving herself in a bar fight, she was never anyone’s girlfriend.
She was a part of a world characterised by glittering dinners, $2,000 suits, Dom Pérignon, and pinky rings, where women adorned themselves with diamonds and maintained a respectful silence.
In 1985 she met her second husband, Irish mob enforcer John Fogarty, whom she married in 2010 and has two children with. While living together, their home was furnished with custom Italian furniture, and they drove a Mercedes 250 convertible.
But for all the glitz and notoriety, there was blood beneath the glitter.
His brother, ‘Johnny Bubble Gum’, became a hitman at the age of 17, and John Fogarty would come home with blood on his shoes.
Instead of reacting with shock, Giovino asked her to take off her shoes before coming into the house – later providing evidence of how deeply she had been affected by the criminal world around her and how numb she had become to its brutality.
He displayed extreme bravado, cautioning her that he believed he was “invincible” and could get away with anything.
He feared that his reckless actions would lead to his capture.
In Andrea’s world, the identities of victims often remained unknown to those on the periphery.
She never revealed who the two bodies in Fogarty’s trunk were, and in the violent, secretive environment of the Mafia, it’s possible she never knew – and perhaps didn’t even want to.
As a mob wife, it was unnecessary, even dangerous, to know the names or details of the victims. What mattered was survival and maintaining appearances.
“I really don’t miss those days.” I have worked very hard from within to get to where I am today,” he said.
“It’s a very brutal life. You must possess immense strength and resilience. It’s not for the weak.”
In fact, Andrea’s glamorous life was ruined on September 9, 1992, when DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents stormed her home at 6 a.m. She was preparing to send her children to school when the DEA agents stormed her home at 6 a.m.
At the age of 35, he was arrested and convicted on RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act) charges – facing life imprisonment as part of a larger bust that implicated 20 other people.
The children were screaming as agents turned over mattresses and read the murder and drug charges against their father.
“The impact of RICO carries a life sentence,” she stated.
“My husband has been in jail since the early 1990s, so I had to care for the kids.”
Fogarty served nearly six years in a federal prison before entering the witness protection program.
This was the moment when Andrea decided to change.
She refused witness protection but nevertheless escaped prison after her husband, Fogarty, and her brother cooperated with the feds.
He did not formally testify, but their deals led to his acquittal.
In 1992, she moved to a Pennsylvania suburb with her four children and started a new, safe life away from the turmoil of her past.
She joined the PTA, signed up for church committees, and eventually wrote a bestselling memoir, Divorced from the Mob, released in 2004.
After serving nearly six years in federal prison, Fogarty entered the witness protection program, leaving the mob’s life behind.
Years later, he left the programme and attempted to rebuild his life, occasionally reconnecting with Andrea.
Although they have had some contact since her release, by the time she moved to Pennsylvania, their marriage was already over.
Today, she’s a grandmother, sharing her shocking story as host Andrea Giovino shows on YouTube.
But speaking has become costly.
‘He called me a liar.’
Andrea was one of a few women featured in Netflix’s hit 2023 documentary Get Gotti.
But as soon as the show aired, the backlash started.
“Many men of that era were very chauvinistic,” he said.
“People on the streets, who could have been my children, were calling me a liar.
“They have no idea what I went through.”
Meanwhile, big names – such as former mobsters Sammy Gravano and Michael Franzi – publicly rejected her, with Franzi claiming she did not know her.
But Andrea replied: “Mark Reiter [a major organised crime figure] Once told me, ‘You were probably with him [Gotti] even more than the company [Franzese] ever had.’”
In fact, Reither once called into the podcast from federal prison to verify Andrea’s story.
“Yes, Andrea knew John Gotti. Yes, Andrea was on the streets,” he said.
Former mobster George Martorano, who served 32 years and shared a cell with Gotti, also confirmed on his show that the mob boss had talked about him.
Still the attacks continued.
“Then they were saying I was just arm candy and I was a gooma [slang for mistress] And I was nobody,” Andrea said.
According to him, even Gotti’s own children allegedly harassed him by calling him a “groupie.”.
Andrea shouted, “What kind of groupie? Are you guys crazy?
“Just because I knew Father and he liked me? How do you know who your father knew?”
The money, the lifestyle, the jewelry—it all looks very glamorous. It really isn’t.
Andrea Giovino
Some reactions turned ugly.
“They were saying, ‘That rubbish has to go,'” she claimed.
Yet Andrea insists that she is telling the truth.
She said, “I have nothing to lie about. I tell the truth.”
“There’s nothing you can ask me that will upset me.”
She says that people do not understand that life married to the mafia is not glamorous.
Andrea explained, “The money, the lifestyle, and the jewellery all seem very, very glamorous.” it looks very, very glamorous. It’s really not.
“It is really very sad for the women and children.
“Children are affected. A lot of them.” When children get into drugs, they adopt the same patterns of crime that their fathers did.
I am not concerned with fame and fortune nor am I preoccupied with the pursuit of celebrity status here on earth. It doesn’t matter to me.
“When I go up there, I’m worried about the person up there. I want to be a celebrity for him.”
Andrea was determined to break this cycle.
“All of my children are doing great and thriving, and I have a beautiful family, and I raised them hard,” he said.
“As long as I am your mother, there is no way you will be able to send yourself behind bars.
“I’m very close to the Catholic Church. The entire community there feels like a second family to me. My life is beautiful.”
Behind the mansion and the money, Andrea says the mob wives live with fear, betrayal and abandonment.
“Maybe Mom is travelling and has a big, beautiful house and jewellery and no money problems, but it all falls down, and she’s empty and lonely,” she said.
‘Never live in fear’
Despite the danger all around her, Andrea insists that she never felt powerless.
“No, never; I have a very strong personality,” she said.
“I don’t listen to anybody. I don’t care who you are. People always ask me, ‘Are you scared?’ I never felt scared.
“I’m a survivor. No matter what, I’ll survive. I’m a fighter. I’m a tiger; if you tame the tiger, she’ll come for you.”
Recalling the “old Andy” who “fought tooth and nail” with critics, Andrea said, “I handle everything in a very different, classy way.”
And what would she say to her younger self?
“I’m hot-headed. Very hot-headed. I would tell him to calm down, breathe, take it in, and then react,” she revealed.
More than three decades after bodies turned up in her driveway at night, Andrea Giovino is still standing – blood on shoes replaced by faith, anger replaced by grace, and road codes replaced by her own voice.
But the fire that once made him “Rocky” is still there.
This section discusses the rise and fall of John Gotti.
John Gotti, also known as “The Teflon Don” and “The Dapper Don”, rose to power in the Gambino crime family, one of the five families of the Italian-American Mafia in New York City.
Gotti became boss of the Gambino family in 1985 after ordering the murder of his predecessor, Paul Castellano.
Gotti’s flashy demeanour and high-profile lifestyle, as well as his ability to avoid conviction in multiple trials, earned him notoriety as the most powerful mob boss in America during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But Gotti’s reign ended in 1992, when he was convicted of murder, robbery, extortion, and other charges.
The conviction was largely due to the testimony of turncoat mobsters, including his former right-hand man, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.
Gotti was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and died while in prison in 2002.
Despite his downfall, Gotti remains a legendary figure in the history of organised crime in the United States.
