Victoria Gotti’s bragging
is a little premature

Plus: Scientologists at center of the storm

Jim Cooper / AP

Victoria Gotti may be a proud mom, but her son isn't headed for Harvard.

By Jeannette Walls

msnbc.com

updated 2:44 a.m. ET Aug. 18, 2004

Victoria Gotti has been boasting that one of her sons is Harvard-bound.

The mob daughter-turned tabloid columnist-turned reality show star has told several reporters that 17-year-old John — who has a massive tattoo of a cross with the image of his late crime boss granddad John Gotti — is going to the prestigious institution of higher education.

“I’ve put a lot of time and effort into these kids,” Victoria Gotti told a reporter for the Toronto Star, for example. “I have a middle son who is going to Harvard to study law.”

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That news came as a surprise to administrators at Harvard. A source there tells The Scoop there is no record of John’s being accepted to the college. What’s more, a spokesman says an undergraduate student wouldn’t study law anyway.

A spokesman for Victoria Gotti concedes that her boasting may be a tad premature. “It has been her son’s dream to attend Harvard since he was in grade school,” the rep told The Scoop. “That is his goal and that is his focus. He is about to start his senior year in high school and has not been accepted to Harvard. It is his dream and belief that he will be accepted.”

Perhaps Victoria Gotti will make Harvard admissions officials an offer they can’t refuse.

Center of the storm
IMAGE: Cruise
Matt Sayles / AP
Wherever disaster strikes, Scientologists seem to follow.

The controversial group — which counts Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its members — has been sending volunteers to help the victims of Hurricane Charley in Florida. After 9/11, volunteers set up centers at Ground Zero, where they were criticized by some for supposedly trying to recruit members even as they administered aid.

Scientologists have set up one center in Port Charlotte, Florida and another in hard-hit Punta Gorda, says a source.

“If they’re just handing out supplies and food, that’s really great,” says one Scientology critic. “But if they’re also proselytizing and passing out literature to vulnerable victims of natural disaster, that’s truly despicable.”

Notes from all over
IMAGE: Moss
Toby Melville / Reuters
Kate Moss (left) and Jade Jagger have had a falling out over a guy, reports the London Mirror. Both are said to be hot for someone named Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, who the tab declares is the current “It Boy.” . . . Novelist George Nelson has written the liner notes for an upcoming box set of Michael Jackson CDs, according to a source. . . . James McGreevy fans can ogle his senior pic. Someone is auctioning off the 1971-1972 yearbook from St. Joseph's High School, Metuchen, N.J, where the out-of-the-closet New Jersey governor graduated.