Sammy Gravano

Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
(1945- )
Turncoat Underboss for John Gotti

The headline in the New York Post blared "KING RAT!"

The Daily News, the city's other main tabloid was a bit more inventive on its front page: "DON'S NUMBER TWO WILL SING THE HITS."

They were talking about Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, John Gotti's underboss in the Gambino crime family. He had decided to "flip," the first time ever that an underboss facing trial with his boss had turned against him. "This defection is unprecedented in the annals of New York organized crime," said Edward McDonald, former head of the eastern district's Organized Crime Strike Force.

Prosecutors were confident in November 1991 that they were about to destroy the image of "the Teflon Don," the best-known mobster since Al Capone and one who had beaten all past charges against him and created a persona of invincibility that infuriated law authorities.

But this time was different. The prosecution had over 100 hours of taped conversations that doomed Gotti with his own words. The Bull - so named for his compact muscular body and thick bovine neck - had actually witnessed the damning situations recorded on tape and could provide personal corroboration the authorities had never had before against Gotti.

It could be said that what made Gravano so fascinating to the authorities, the press and the public was his very unwholesomeness. Gravano confessed his guilt to a mere 19 murders.

One newspaper splashed its front page with a tombstone labeled "R.I.P." and listing all 19 Gravano murder victims from Joseph Colucci in 1970 to Louis DiBono and Edward Garafalo two decades later.

Despite this, the prosecution was ready to trade immunity for information about Gotti, including facts tying him to the scene of the curbside murder of Paul Castellano outside a fashionable New York steakhouse. The damage the Bull did the Gambino family was staggering. Besides Gotti, Gravano was directly responsible for dozens of voncitions, guilty please or added prison terms for Gambino family members.

Top aide Frank Locascio (Frankie Loc) went down, along with seven capos, for counts varying from murder to racketeering. That group included Tommy Gambino, the son of Carlo Gambino and operator of the family's empire in the garment industry. High-up figures in the Colombo family and New Jersey's DeCavalcante family fell, as did the underboss in the Genovese family and a consigliere and three capos from other New York families. The Bull also caused eight union officials to plead guilty to charges of labor racketeering. Others who fell under the Bull's tell-all were a city criminal intelligence cop who was feeding information to Gotti and a corrupt juror from one of Gotti's previous prosecutions.

It remained stunning to many observers that the Bull had flipped; however, it was obvious that he had no choice, since otherwise, he concluded in conference with his lawyer, he faced a sure sentence of 50 years to life. The tapes had doomed him, and Gravano was bitter about that. Gotti's words on the tapes tied the Bull to two or three murders for certain. He blamed Gotti's "big mouth" for dooming him.

Some observers noted that if the case against Gravano had been that strong, and it obvious was, it was doubly true about Gotti himself. Why then, they wondered, was it necessary to make a deal with Gravano? The only explanation was that the prosecution suffered from "teflon don syndrome," a fear that if the case against Gotti somehow fell through, the government would never be able to prosecute him again. Under that theory Gravano was a godsend.

In 1995, in exchange for his testimony in the Gotti case and some others, the prosecution agreed to no more than a five-year sentence for Gravano. Since he had been imprisoned since 1990, he was free.

After that the Bull was out there somewhere. He left the witness protection program. His wife divorced him, selling their home and some building property in her name and left New York with their children. That was the official version, but some people in the media predicted there would someday be a family reunion for the Bull.

The new Gravano was described as a man with a legit job, determined to start a new life. The same could not be said for John Gotti.