John Favara

John Favara (March 4, 1929 – July 28, 1980) was the backyard neighbor of Gambino crime family godfather John Gotti, in Howard Beach, New York.

On March 18, 1980, 12-year-old Frank Gotti, the youngest son of John Gotti, darted into the street on a motorized minibike from behind a dumpster where he was struck by John Favara's car and killed. Favara, 51, who lived a block behind the Gotti family, worked as a service department manager for a furniture store, Castro Convertibles in New Hyde Park, New York. He had been on his way home from work. His adopted son, Scott, was a friend of the Gotti children and had been their guest for sleepovers. He was a close childhood friend of the son of Gambino crime family caporegime Ettore Zappi, himself a distant cousin of crime family patriarch Carlo Gambino. While Ettore pursued a life in organized crime, Favara remained in the legitimate world, but the two remained close.

No charges were ever filed against him. However, in the months after the accident, the word "Murderer" was spray-painted onto Favara's car. On May 28, Victoria Gotti, Frank's mother, attacked Favara with a metal baseball bat, nearly missing him with each swing. Favara decided not to press charges and planned to move out of Howard Beach.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), on July 28, 1980, before Favara and his family were able to move, he was shoved into a van by several men near his work. There were several witnesses to the abduction, and accounts ranged from him being beaten with a baseball bat, shot with a silenced .22 caliber pistol, or both. Accounts differ on what happened to Favara's body. One account says that while alive he was dismembered with a chainsaw and stuffed into a barrel filled with concrete and dumped in the ocean or buried on the chop shop lot somewhere. Favara's wife and two sons moved out of Howard Beach, having John declared legally dead in 1983. In November 2004, informants led the FBI to excavate a parking lot in New York City suspected to be a mob graveyard and the site of Favara's body. While two bodies were found, Favara's was not.

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