NEW YORK (AP) – There was a time when the Gottis, New York’s first family of organized crime, rarely opened their mouths in public. John, the brutal head of the Gambinos, could have told you as much – except he would never tell you anything.

If you visit the Gottis these days, bring earplugs.

Omerta? Try no-merta.

The racketeering retrial of John A. “Junior” Gotti, which ended Friday with a hung jury and a mistrial, featured the Gotti clan discussing everything from their late patriarch’s job as mob boss to an alleged illegitimate grandchild. They gave interviews, offered trial analysis, even took the witness stand.

“Your sons are next,” said Victoria Gotti, widow of the late “Teflon Don” John Gotti, after the mistrial. “”That’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to railroad my son.”

Earlier, she spoke with the city’s two tabloids about allegations that her husband had fathered a love child. Her daughters Angel and Victoria – the latter was the blonde-maned star of the defunct reality show “Growing Up Gotti” – chatted about the case, too. And son Peter was called to testify – not by the prosecution, but as a defense witness.

Once there, Peter acknowledged what his father never did: the elder Gotti was a major organized crime figure.

“Do you know what your father did for a living?” asked prosecutor Michael McGovern.

“Boss,” replied Gotti.

Pressed on whether his father was the head of the Gambino crime family, Gotti replied, “I would probably say he was.”

Ouch.

It’s the kind of behavior the old man would never have tolerated. Before his 1992 sentencing for murder and racketeering, Gotti offered his attorney these instructions: “Get it over with without anybody making any speeches.”

Gotti shook his head no when asked if he wanted to address the court. The smirk on his face delivered his message.

The whole thing lasted five minutes. Gotti went away to prison, where he died 10 years later.

When John Gotti did speak in public, it was generally to drop a one-liner. “They’ll be ready to frame me again in two weeks,” he said after a 1987 racketeering acquittal.

“I’m the boss of my family – my wife and kids at home,” he told reporters before another court appearance.

“Three-to-one odds I beat this,” he said after a 1990 indictment.

Gotti never publicly acknowledged his role in the mob; he never even acknowledged there was such a thing as the mob. While he was reticent about speaking in public, he did wind up talking too much on secretly recorded government tapes about life in La Cosa Nostra.

While John suffered in silence, as did his jailed brother Gene, a third brother complained about his 2003 racketeering conviction. “It’s easy to convict a Gotti,” said Peter Gotti, a former garbageman turned mob boss. “All you have to have is the name.”

It was a mantra picked up at Junior’s retrial on racketeering charges that included ordering a botched kidnapping meant to silence talk show host Curtis Sliwa’s daily radio rants about his father’s criminal activities.

Sliwa was no fan of the “Dapper Don,” although he gives Gotti credit for going away quietly. He sees the new, talkative Gottis as a family effort to spread the word that Junior Gotti really has quit the mob.

Gotti, 42, would face 30 years in prison if convicted at his third trial on the charges.

“It’s all about saving Junior Gotti’s neck,” he said. “They realize that basically, it’s the only chance to avoid him going away forever.”