Reply #12: At Gotti Trial, Sliwa Tells of Stretching Truth for Attention [View All]

[struggle4progress]

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: February 28, 2006

... He or his troops claimed — falsely, Mr. Sliwa said yesterday — to have rescued a woman's purse with $300 in it from a purse snatcher, fended off a rapist, and foiled an assault on a subway platform. In the purse snatching, he said, his sister posed as the victim.

He also falsely claimed to have been harassed by the police or others, he said. He described one time in which he wrote "KKK" on the walls of his apartment because he was being threatened with eviction ...

Mr. Sliwa said he had reported being kidnapped twice before ... In 1980, he said, he falsely claimed that transit police officers in plainclothes abducted him, then dropped him off in a Jones Beach parking lot after warning him to stop his anticrime activities ...

But in 1981, he said, he was kidnapped — for real — by men posing as police officers in Washington ... His abductors, he said, .. tossed him into .. the river. He said he did not file a formal police report ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/nyregion/28gotti.html