US mafia boss daughter publishes memoirs

This Family of Mine: What it was like growing up Gotti is the title of the book by Victoria Gotti, daughter of alleged US mobster.

The daughter of alleged US mobster John Gotti has just published her memoirs with a rare inside look into growing up as part of a mafia family.

- This Family of Mine: What it was like growing up Gotti - is the title of the book by Victoria Gotti, 46, who says she wanted to set the record straight after years of living in ignorance about the true nature of her father's work as the head of the Gambino family.

- I was eight years old, I was 10 years old. You believe what you want to believe - she told ABC's Good Morning America.

- Later in life, things start to come together - Gotti said.

It was only in the 1980s that she says she and her mother and sister became aware of John Gotti's powerful role in the New York based mafia.

Gotti, who was nicknamed the ''Dapper Don'' was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 for racketeering, five murders and a long list of other serious crimes, making him the country's most notorious mobster. He died of cancer in 2002.

- My family came to me and said: 'Enough. When are you going to set the record straight'?" -Victoria Gotti said.

- They won out at the end, and I did it - she said.

Her brother John Gotti Junior is on trial on charges of racketeering and murder -- the fourth time the scion of New York's most famous Cosa Nostra family has been tried in five years.

Gotti, 45, says he left the mafia years ago and that the repeated trials amounted to persecution.

According to the charges, he is accused of involvement in three gangland slayings in the 1990s during a racketeering and drug dealing career in New York and Florida.

The Gambinos are one of the Five Families operating in the New York area, though much reduced by arrests and the shattering of the Italian Mafia's code of silence, the omerta.