Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (79 page)

Through his wife, Debra, Gravano sent a message to Frank Spero and Matthew Tricorico, the FBI agents on the Gambino Squad who had been investigating him for several years. The startled agents learned from Debra that Sammy wanted to discuss a deal. One day in October, after a routine pretrial appearance at the courthouse in Brooklyn, Gravano was secreted through back corridors to a confidential meeting. Waiting for him were prosecutor John Gleeson and the FBI’s Bruce Mouw. “I want to switch governments,” Gravano said calmly.

Having sized up Gravano during eleven months of pretrial sessions, the prosecutors and agents had evaluated him as the least-likely mobster to crack. “He’s the toughest guy in the courtroom,” Gleeson thought. “He has a gangster’s bearing about him. He looks more intimidating and menacing than anyone else.” If Gleeson had bet on a defector, he would have chosen Frank Locascio as most vulnerable. Tears had welled in Locascio’s eyes when a judge refused to temporarily release him on bail to visit with his gravely ill mother. “He’s not acting like a wiseguy but like a regular person,” Gleeson conceded.

A cooperation agreement proposed by Gleeson obligated Gravano to disclose his entire criminal history and all his knowledge of crimes committed by mobsters in the Gambino and other families. Most important, he would be cast as the main witness against his former hierarchy soul mates, Gotti and Locascio. His reward was Gleeson’s promise that, in return for a guilty plea to a reduced RICO count and his aid in convicting Mob rulers, the government would recommend a maximum sentence of twenty years; he had been facing a RICO term of life without parole. Gravano wanted an even shorter sentence, but Gleeson would not budge. The turncoat negotiated one concession: his mandatory use as a Mafia trial witness was capped at indictments obtained within two years after his defection; after that deadline he could not be compelled to testify. He argued that the provision would allow him to lead a more normal life once he was released from prison.

Gravano also wanted exemptions from testifying against former friends in his old Brooklyn crew and against relatives. The government refused to make that concession in writing, but in effect granted it to him; he was never called as a prosecution witness against pals from that crew or any of his relatives.

News that John Gotti’s right-hand man had defected was electrifying to the small number of prosecutors and agents let in on the secret. Sammy the Bull was the highest-ranking Mafia mobster ever to flip and to agree to testify. Inveterately suspicious of the devious Gotti, Andrew Maloney, the U.S. Attorney,
and several agents wondered if Gravano’s bid was genuine. “It’s unheard of,” Maloney cautioned his top aides. “The underboss of a major family testifying against his boss? Is he for real, or is this some kind of setup manipulated by Gotti?” Maloney’s greatest concern was a double-cross: Gravano would step into the witness box, recant all his incriminating admissions, and undermine the prosecution’s carefully wrought structure.

At midnight on November 8, 1991, Bruce Mouw, George Gabriel, and the two agents who had bird-dogged Gravano, Frank Spero and Matthew Tricorico, arrived unannounced at the MCC with documents authorizing the transfer of a prisoner into their custody. “You want us to bring down John Gotti?” asked a guard, misreading the court papers. “No. No,” an alarmed Gabriel said forcefully. “Salvatore Gravano.” Less than an hour after Gravano’s departure, a guard, probably courting favors from Gotti, woke him in his cell. The news whispered into Gotti’s ear was a thunderbolt: his underboss had been removed by the FBI. The midnight transfer, Gotti knew, meant only one thing: Sammy the Bull had become a rat.

That night, surrounded by a convoy of agents, Gravano was taken to an FBI “safe house,” a motel in Long Island, for preliminary questioning. The next day, he was transported to the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia, for extensive debriefings. Gleeson, Maloney, and Mouw were quickly relieved to learn Gravano’s defection was authentic, not a devilish Gotti trap. Retracing his underworld life, Gravano cleared up a miscellany of violent felonies that otherwise would have gone unsolved. He also alerted them to ongoing Mafia deals and activities. Indicted for three murders, Gravano stunned his questioners by confessing to participating in sixteen others, all unsolved. Maintaining that he had pulled the deadly trigger in only one of the nineteen Mob rubouts, Gravano rationalized that he had been an onlooker, not a serial killer. “Sometimes I was a shooter. Sometimes I was a backup guy. Sometimes I set the guy up. Sometimes I just talked about it.”

The centerpiece of his revelations was the execution of Paul Castellano and Tommy Bilotti outside Sparks Steak House. Gravano had not been implicated in the double slaying, but he nevertheless provided inside details of the conspiracy, the planning, and the identity of the assassination team. His interrogators were astonished to learn that he and Gotti were at the scene, sitting in a parked car, watching the murder drama unfold. Moreover, he presented a radically different version of the slayings than the prosecution had pieced together for the trial.

“You guys had it all wrong,” Gravano told Gleeson. “We never got out of the car.” Standing in the street would have been too dangerous, Gravano added, because Castellano might have recognized them and fled before he was waylaid by the assassins. Gravano’s portrayal of the murder scene disqualified a mystery witness who was ready to testify that he had spotted Gotti on the sidewalk outside of Sparks. Based on Gravano’s evidence, the prosecutors speculated that the witness honestly misidentified one of the actual gunmen, Vincent “Vinnie” Artuso, who resembled Gotti physically.

In addition to the Sparks murders, Gravano gave a firsthand account of Gotti’s takeover and actions as boss of the Gambino family for five years. His testimony solidified the cornerstone charge that Gotti was the emperor of a RICO enterprise. Another gift for the prosecution and the FBI was Gravano’s disclosure of the jury-fixing in Brooklyn at Gotti’s first RICO trial and acquittal in 1986. He provided the complete picture of how, with the help of the Westies gang, he had transmitted a $60,000 bribe to a juror in the case prosecuted by Diane Giacalone.

Sammy the Bull’s incisive knowledge of previously unknown details required drastic changes in the prosecution’s original trial scenario. As lead prosecutor, Gleeson spent two hectic months reconfiguring the game plan for convincing a jury to convict John Gotti. For relaxation during the countless debriefings at Quantico, the macho but hypertense Gravano jogged three to five miles daily and mixed it up in the boxing ring with younger and stronger FBI agents.

From day one—the outset of jury selection in January 1992—Gotti’s persona dominated the courtroom atmosphere. His reputation, as America’s premier gangster and the Justice Department’s most-wanted mafioso, drew a cross section of the national and international press to the event. It was Gotti’s fourth trial in five years. The stakes were high. An acquittal would be a demoralizing defeat for the government, fortifying the Teflon Don’s reputation for invincibility and possibly immunizing him forever from further prosecutions.

John Gotti, of course, flagrantly displayed his arrogance and contempt for his opponents. He glared defiantly at Judge Glasser, as if to mentally disquiet and bully him. Outside the presence of the jury, in audible stage whispers, he spewed profanities at the prosecutors. During one recess, Peter Bowles, a reporter for the newspaper Newsday, heard him label the judge and the prosecutors “faggots” with “unwashed hair.” Eyeing Gleeson, he stage-whispered that
the prosecutor was conducting “a vendetta” against him, muttering to Locascio that Gleeson was obsessed with him and could concentrate on no other person. “I’m his only defendant. He wakes up in the morning and says to his wife, ‘Hi ya, John.’” Often when Gleeson walked near the defense table, Gotti snarled, “Your wife’s a junkie,” an absurd allusion to Gleeson’s wife, a nurse who presumedly had access to drugs in the course of her work.

Another prosecutor, James Orenstein, was tagged by Gotti as “that Christ killer,” obviously because he was Jewish. On other occasions, Gotti openly called an FBI agent “a fucking scum bag,” and Maloney “a fucking bum.” In a totally inappropriate literary metaphor, he pointed to the well-built, muscular agent George Gabriel, mocking him as “Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

Generally viewed as a fair-minded and firm judge, Glasser, the former dean of Brooklyn Law School, put a stop to the high-jinks that Gotti and his lawyers had pulled off in previous trials. Any more unruliness, the judge warned, and Gotti would be removed from the courtroom and forced to watch the proceedings over closed-circuit television. Gotti’s courtroom antics ended.

Replacing Bruce Cutler in the courtroom was Albert Krieger, a highly respected trial attorney from Miami, a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The tall, bald Krieger, who resembled the actor Yul Brynner, was a masterful cross-examiner, but his gregariousness irritated Gotti. Observing Krieger chatting during a break with Maloney, Gotti motioned imperiously for his lawyer to stop talking with the enemy. “I better end this or I’ll wind up in the trunk of a car,” said Krieger, winking at Maloney.

Gotti also occasionally exhibited a light-hearted spirit. One afternoon Maloney informed Krieger that Thomas Gambino, the son of the late Don Carlo, had just worked out a deal with the Manhattan DA’s prosecutors. In a plea-arrangement on charges that as one of Gotti’s premier capos he illegally controlled much of the Garment Center’s trucking business, Tommy agreed to pay a $12 million fine. He also agreed to relinquish his trucking routes in the center. The quid pro quo for Gambino was that he escaped serving a day in prison by pleading guilty to a reduced state racketeering complaint.

After Krieger whispered the news to Gotti, the lawyer returned to Maloney with a message: “Tell Maloney, I’ll take the same deal for $20 million any time.”

Fears that Gotti’s leg breakers would again try to pressure the jury led to unprecedented measures. For the first time in the Eastern District, a jury was sequestered for a lengthy trial and lodged in hotels. Extraordinary security was
imposed to shield the twelve jurors and four alternates, whose identities and addresses were withheld from both the prosecution and the defense. Guarded around the clock by marshals, the jurors were prohibited for the duration of the trial from seeing any visitors, even relatives, and all their telephone calls were monitored.

Every day a fan club of Gotti’s relatives and acolytes packed one side of the walnut-paneled courtroom, gazing admiringly at him. On the opening trial date, outside the courthouse in downtown Brooklyn, Gotti’s minions picketed, carrying placards, reading, “We Love You, John.” Accompanying the demonstrators, a sound truck blared encomiums to him as if he were a candidate running for office. Hollywood’s Anthony Quinn and Mickey Rourke, who often played fictional tough guys, and other show business personalities were invited by Gotti’s retinue to join his rooting section as a subtle ploy to influence the jury. The actors waved at Gotti and wished him luck. “We better get Clint Eastwood to support our side,” Maloney quipped, aware of the public relations program launched on Gotti’s behalf.

Beginning with his opening statement, Gleeson unveiled a graphic canvas of crimes that, the prosecution alleged, proved Gotti’s massive violations of the RICO law. The prosecutor traced the major elements of the case: Gotti’s role as a capo; the daring preemptive plot to kill Castellano; Gotti’s surfacing as Gambino boss; and the murders and other acts subsequently committed at his behest. Much of Gleeson’s evidence was woven from eight years of electronic bugging by state investigators and the FBI. Carried back into time, the jury heard Gotti conversing in his private office next to the Bergin Club, in Aniello Dellacroce’s home, and—most damaging to Gotti—in the hallway outside the Ravenite Club and in Mrs. Cirelli’s apartment.

In the early stages of the trial, an impassive Gotti outwardly ignored the proceedings. He was forced to listen to six hours of incriminating tapes played over speakers in the courtroom, but he declined to don head phones to hear the conversations more clearly. To establish dates and to prove who was present when the eavesdropping occurred, the prosecution showed video and still photos of mobsters entering and leaving the Ravenite. Sometimes, when the pictures flashed on a huge screen, Gotti turned his back, as if to indicate that they were meaningless to him. Perhaps he finally realized the damage caused by his inflexible order that capos and important soldiers pay frequent homage to him at the Ravenite. Those visits had boomeranged and were now fortifying evidence that he was a Mafia boss.

The only time Gotti totally withdrew from his cocoon was for a caustic confrontation with the prosecution’s most anticipated witness, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. Defecting had been a traumatic experience for Gravano. “He was a nervous wreck when he came in,” Bruce Mouw noted, observing that the hard-edged Sammy needed constant reassurance that prosecutors and the FBI would support his leniency bid. “He told us, ‘For years I hated you guys. How do I know you’re going to back me and verify I was a good witness?’ “Before Gravano testified, Mouw, Jim Fox, the bureau’s New York commandant, and other agents met often with him to pledge their support. “We wanted him calm and on the beam, not to get cold feet on the stand,” Mouw said.

On the
days before Gravano’s
scheduled appearance, flyers showing a photo of Gravano’s face superimposed on the body of a rat were distributed near the courthouse and fastened to trees and buildings. The caption said, “Epitome of a Rat Who Lies: Sammy the Liar Gravano.” For his debut as a witness, Gravano shunned his customary casual workingman’s dress style, and every day came to court clothed, almost in imitation of Gotti’s high fashion, in well-tailored, conservative, double-breasted suits and matching accessories. Taking no chances with the welfare of their exceptional witness, the government ringed the courtroom with burly U.S. marshals. In the first row of public benches, directly in front of Gotti’s cheerleaders, the FBI stationed a corps of muscular, crewcut agents from a SWAT team.