Philomena Gotti, 96, whose brood of 13 children included Gambino crime-family kingpin John Gotti, died Wednesday at her Long Island home, said Charles Carnesi, a lawyer for her grandson John “Junior” Gotti.
Philomena Gotti, known as Fanny, was born near Naples, Italy, where she married John J. Gotti Sr. They moved to the U.S. in the 1920s. He died in 1992.
John Gotti Jr., their fifth child, earned notoriety for scheming and murdering his way to the top of the Gambino family in the mid-1980s. Four other sons also chose criminal careers and are doing time or awaiting sentencing.
Abie Nathan, 81, who made a dramatic solo flight from Israel to Egypt in a rattletrap single- engine plane, died Wednesday in Tel Aviv, officials said. His daredevil escapade won the affection of many Israelis and launched a one-man crusade to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.
He was born in 1927 in Iran, was educated in India and served in the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot before joining the Jewish immigrant influx into newly born Israel in 1948.
He ran for parliament in 1965 on a promise to fly his plane to Cairo and talk peace with the Egyptian president. The voters rejected him, but he flew there anyway. Egyptian authorities treated him courteously and sent him home.
He bought a freighter, anchored it off the coast of Tel Aviv and turned it into a pirate radio station, “The Voice of Peace,” with a mix of pop songs and peace messages.
In the 1970s, Nathan went on hunger strikes to try to force the Israeli government to make concessions for peace with Egypt and to reverse a law making meetings with the Palestine Liberation Organization a crime. In January 1993, the Israeli parliament did just that and later signed an interim peace agreement.
