TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/031692/0316107.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 8.1 KB | 179 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 31

TRIALS 

Why Is "Sammy the Bull" Singing?


Copping a plea for 19 murders, a high-ranking Mafia turncoat
offers testimony that may finally scrape the Teflon off Gambino
boss John Gotti

By RICHARD LACAYO -- With reporting by Richard Behar/New York


    With his stocky build, thick neck and gravelly voice,
Salvatore Gravano lives up to his nickname, "Sammy the Bull."
But as he said on the witness stand last week, his enemies are
more likely to start calling him by a new moniker, "Sammy the
Rat." In five days of often chilling testimony, the former
Gambino family underboss calmly described the secret inner
workings and rituals of La Cosa Nostra and provided gory details
of the 19 killings he admitted taking part in. Most of all, he
tried to hammer nails into the legal coffin of John Gotti, the
head of the Gambino crime family, who is on trial in Brooklyn
for racketeering, gambling, tax fraud and murder. Known as the
Teflon Don because of his acquittals in three previous trials,
Gotti may find that his luck has finally run out.

    Gravano, 46, was originally supposed to stand trial along
with Gotti and Gambino lieutenant Frank (Frankie Locs)
Locascio. But last fall, after learning that the government had
witnesses ready to link him to several killings, Gravano struck
a deal with the feds. In return for a maximum 20-year sentence,
which he will probably serve in a high-security
witness-protection cellblock, Gravano agreed to testify in
Gotti's trial and others to come. He thus became one of the
highest-ranking mafiosi ever to turn state's evidence and
perhaps the most important gangland informant since Mob soldier
Joseph Valachi turned on his Genovese bosses in 1963.
Prosecutors hope Gravano's testimony, along with that of other
witnesses, will help get the don out of his trademark
double-breasted suits and into a prison uniform for the rest of
his days.

    A onetime boxer and lifelong hoodlum who dropped out of
school at 16, Gravano had plenty to say about the workings of
the Gambino family. Until their arrest in December 1990, Gravano
was the don's right hand and heir apparent. On FBI surveillance
tapes, Gotti was frequently heard speaking of his love for Sammy
and once told his men, "Soon as anything happens to me, I'm off
the streets, Sammy is the acting boss." As the man who
controlled the Gambino business interests in the New York City
construction trade, Gravano claimed to have passed along to
Gotti as much as $100,000 a month in kickbacks and other illegal
payments. Gravano said other Gambino captains made similar
"turn-ins" from the industries they had muscled in on --
including private trash collecting, the docks and the garment
trade -- as well as $3,000 cash tributes to Gotti on Christmas
and his birthday.

    But it was Gravano's testimony about what he called "hits"
and "whacks" that could damage Gotti the most. Under
questioning by prosecutor John Gleeson, the witness testified
that Gotti ordered 10 of the killings in which Gravano admitted
having a hand. "Sometimes I was the shooter," said Gravano.
"Sometimes I was a backup guy. Sometimes I set the guy up.
Sometimes I just talked about it." Foremost among these rubouts:
the 1985 murder of Gambino boss Paul Castellano and his
bodyguard Thomas Bilotti outside a New York City steak house --
an execution that put Gotti in the top job. Gravano says he and
Gotti planned the killing because Castellano had got too greedy
and "was selling out the family for his own basic businesses."
According to Gravano, he and Gotti watched the shooting from
behind the tinted windows of a Lincoln Continental parked
nearby, then coolly drove past the bullet-riddled bodies.
Recounted Gravano: "I looked down at Tommy Bilotti ((and)) I
said he was gone."

    Gravano also spoke about the aggravations that went with
being a Mafia headman -- including constant electronic FBI
surveillance of the Gambino-family clubhouse in Little Italy.
Whenever they wanted to talk business, Gotti and his pals were
obliged to take walks or retire to another apartment upstairs.
They felt it was safe, Gravano explained, "because an
80-year-old woman owned the apartment." That was a big mistake:
the flat was bugged, and tapes made there provided key evidence
against Gotti and his chums.

    As for Gotti's success with juries in the past, Gravano
suggested that there may have been more to it than luck. The
Bull claims to have personally handled a $60,000 bribe for one
of the jurors who acquitted Gotti in 1987. The juror was charged
last month with obstruction of justice in the alleged
bribe-taking incident. At the present trial, jurors are
identified only by number and are sequestered in an undisclosed
location guarded by federal marshals. Even so, Judge I. Leo
Glasser replaced two of them last week with alternates after
they asked to be excused. One was reported to have made the
request because his girlfriend complained of being frightened.

    In his cross-examination of Gravano, Gotti's attorney
Albert Krieger tried to paint the Bull as a traitorous
opportunist who betrayed a longtime friend because he feared for
his own neck. Krieger asked Gravano if people in his old
Brooklyn neighborhood had a word for someone like him.

    "Informer," Gravano replied.

    Krieger came back at him. "Is there another word?"

    "A rat," Gravano said.

    Gravano is just one of a number of high-ranking mobsters
who have turned state's evidence recently, including
Philadelphia underboss Philip Leonetti and Lucchese family boss
Alphonse D'Arco. One reason for the rash of defections may be
that prison conditions are getting less congenial these days for
the Mafia. "There was a time when Mafia guys ran the jails,"
says Joseph Coffey, a top investigator with the New York State
Organized Crime Task Force. "They were like country clubs. Now
the blacks run the jails, and mobsters are second-class
citizens."

    Even if Gotti is acquitted, law-enforcement officials say,
his hold on the family leadership has been seriously weakened
because the don has caused too many headaches for his Mob
colleagues. "He's been a disaster for the Gambino family," says
Ronald Goldstock, head of the New York task force. "Even though
he knew that he was a target of law-enforcement and electronic
surveillance, he was unable to avoid [arrest]." Though the
media have often portrayed Gotti as a new-style yuppie don with
a penchant for smart suits, he is also a throwback to the
gun-crazy gangland bosses of the past at a time when the Mob
prefers to keep a lower profile.

    Goldstock says most of the Gambino crime operations could
function even with a leadership vacuum at the top. The trouble
will start if the family becomes involved in disputes with other
Mob families about dividing the take in shared territory, such
as construction or private trash carting. Some organized-crime
experts predict that Gotti could meet the same fate as
Castellano -- a Mob assassination -- if he ever goes free. The
same goes for Gravano. By breaking the sacred code of omerta,
or silence, he has committed a capital crime in the eyes of his
Mafia brothers. "This is a guy who lived and breathed the Mafia
attitude all his life," says a federal agent familiar with the
case. "What he's doing now is contrary to everything that he
believed in since he was a child."

    Last week Gravano described his 1976 induction into the
Gambino family, a solemn ceremony over which Castellano
presided. The man whose murder Gravano would later help
orchestrate pricked the novice's trigger finger and dripped
blood onto the picture of a saint, which was then set on fire.

    "He told me that if I should ever divulge any of the
secrets of this organization my soul should burn like this
saint," Gravano said.

    "Is it fair to say you are violating that oath by
cooperating with the government?" asked Gleeson.

    "Yes," Gravano replied.

    Just 20 feet away, a silent John Gotti looked on.