Sammy Gravano

• 1. Introduction

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  Sammy Gravano, known to the world as Sammy the Bull, once faced up to 20 years in prison and received a sentence that amounted to less than one year. In 1994 a federal judge gave him five years, but he had already served four. The judge went easy because Gravano had testified for the government.

  Gravano was an American mobster who had risen to the top ranks of the Gambino crime family in New York City. He ranked among the highest men in the Five Families. Then he broke his blood oath and helped send his own boss, John Gotti, to prison for life.

  This documentary asks how a boy from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, climbed so high in the Mafia. It asks what he did on the way up, and why a man so deep in the life decided to turn on it. And it asks what became of him once the government had no more use for his testimony.

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• 2. Bensonhurst Boyhood

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  Salvatore Gravano was born on the 12th of March 1945 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the youngest of five children. Two of his siblings died before he was born, which left him with two older sisters. His parents were Giorlando, called Gerry, and Caterina, called Kay.

  Caterina, born in 1906, came to the United States as a young girl from Apulia, in southern Italy. Gerry, born in 1901, arrived by jumping ship in Canada. His older brother Alphonsio helped smuggle him into the country illegally. Alphonsio was already an established bootlegger during Prohibition and a made member of the Sicilian Mafia.

  Alphonsio's operation was known as the Sunset Fleet. It ran liquor along the Hudson River and other New York waterways, and the supply reached city speakeasies by way of the Fulton Fish Market. Gerry had been a skilled fisherman in Sicily, but in New York he became a house painter. Later he and Kay ran a small dress factory, where Kay's talent as a seamstress kept the family in comfort.

  A relative once remarked that the boy looked like his uncle Sammy. From then on, everyone called him Little Sammy instead of Salvatore or Sal.

  At age 13, Gravano joined the Rampers, a prominent street gang in Bensonhurst. The trigger was a stolen bicycle. Older boys had taken it, and Gravano went to fight them. Mafiosi watching from a café saw him take on several of the older boys at once, and they got his bike back for him. As he left, one of the made men said the little guy fought like a bull. The nickname "the Bull" stuck.

  School went badly. Gravano has dyslexia, was bullied, and was classified by teachers as "a slow learner." He was held back in the 4th and 7th grades and punched school officials on two occasions. He was sent to a school for "incorrigibles," known as 600 school, but just before he turned 16 it refused to keep him. His father tried to discipline him, even forcing him to attend Mass, with little success.

  In 1964 the Army drafted him, and he served at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He worked as a mess hall cook, rose to corporal, and received an honorable discharge after two years. In 1971 he married Debra Scibetta. They had two children, and their daughter Karen later appeared on the VH1 series Mob Wives, beginning in 2011.

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• 3. Becoming Made

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  In 1968, Gravano was first associated with the Mafia through his friend Tommy Spero. Tommy's uncle, also named Tommy but called Shorty, was an associate of the Colombo family under future boss Carmine "the Snake" Persico. The Mafia had long been present in Bensonhurst through the Profaci family, which evolved into the Colombos. Despite his father's attempts to dissuade him, Gravano drifted into La Cosa Nostra like many of his fellow Rampers.

  He began with larceny, hijacking and armed robbery, then moved quickly into racketeering and loansharking. He also ran a lucrative poker game in the back room of an after-hours club in which he owned a share. Persico took a liking to him and used him to picket the Manhattan headquarters of the FBI, as part of Joe Colombo's Italian-American Civil Rights League. Gravano rose so fast that people expected him to be among the first made when the membership books reopened. They had been closed since 1957.

  In 1970 Gravano committed his first murder. The victim was Joseph Colucci, a fellow associate of the Speros, whose wife Tommy Spero was having an affair with. Gravano said he acted because Colucci was plotting to kill him and Shorty Spero. He later described the moment this way: "I felt like I was a million miles away, like this was all a dream." The killing won Persico's respect.

  Colucci's son Jack later became a Gambino associate in the construction industry, and Gravano mentored him. Jack did not learn that Gravano had killed his father until 25 years after the murder.

  Success bred envy. Ralph Spero, a Colombo soldier and Shorty's brother, feared Gravano would be made before Ralph's own son Tommy. After the death of another Colombo soldier, Ralph Ronga, a rumor spread that Gravano had tried to pick up Ronga's widow, Sybil Davies, at a bar. Gravano said she had been the one flirting. Ralph used the rumor to try to rally support for killing Gravano. Shorty believed Gravano, but he and the Colombo leadership decided the peaceful answer was to transfer him to the Gambino family.

  Among the Gambinos, Gravano became an associate of the capo Salvatore "Toddo" Aurello, who became his mentor. Gravano took a construction job and later claimed he had considered leaving crime. Then a former associate falsely told the New York District Attorney's Office that Gravano and another man had committed the 1969 double murder of the Dunn brothers. Gravano was indicted and needed money for legal bills. He quit the job and went on what he called a "robbing rampage" for a year and a half with Alexander "Allie Boy" Cuomo. A couple of weeks into the trial, his lawyers moved to dismiss because the witness had been declared legally insane. Gravano said of the ordeal: "Never stopped stealing. Never stopped robbing. I was obsessed."

  Aurello was impressed. In 1976, soon after the books reopened, Gravano was formally initiated as a made man in the Gambino family, alongside Toddo's son Charles, called Charlie Boy, a friend since childhood.

  In 1978, the Gambino boss Paul Castellano allegedly ordered the murder of an associate named Nicholas Scibetta. Nicholas was a cocaine and alcohol user who had been in public fights and had insulted the daughter of a Gambino soldier. He was also Gravano's brother-in-law. Gravano was furious at first, but Frank DeCicco calmed him. Gravano later said, "I chose against Nicky. I took an oath that Cosa Nostra came before everything." Scibetta's body was dismembered, and apart from a hand it was never found.

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• 4. Money and Murder

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  Gravano opened an after-hours club in Bensonhurst called The Bus Stop, and one night a rowdy biker gang tried to ransack it. In the melee he broke his ankle, but the bikers were chased off. He then went to Castellano and got permission to "kill them all." With Liborio "Louie" Milito, he hunted down the gang's leader, wounding him, and killed another member. Castellano was flabbergasted to learn that Gravano had joined the hit on crutches.

  Castellano preferred sophisticated schemes in construction, trucking and garbage disposal over street crime, and Gravano followed him into building. He went into the plumbing and drywall business with his brother-in-law Edward Garafola. He became known as a "big earner," and his businesses made him a multi-millionaire. He built a large estate for his family in Cream Ridge, New Jersey, and invested in trotting horses that raced at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford.

  His showpiece was The Plaza Suite, a discotheque in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. Gravano owned the building and ran his business from the lower level. Patrons often waited an hour to get in, and the club booked live acts such as Chubby Checker. He reportedly made $4,000 a week from it. Years later he boasted about his reach in the building trades: "I literally controlled Manhattan, literally. You want concrete poured in Manhattan? That was me."

  The violence continued alongside the money. In March 1980, the Philadelphia boss Angelo Bruno was assassinated by his own consigliere, Antonio "Tony Bananas" Caponigro, and by Alfred Salerno. They had no authorization from the Commission. The Commission summoned Caponigro to New York and sentenced him to death. It then placed contracts on his co-conspirators, including John "Johnny Keys" Simone, who was also Bruno's cousin. The Simone contract went to Gravano.

  Gravano befriended Simone over a series of meetings. Then, with Milito and Joseph "Stymie" D'Angelo, he abducted Simone from Yardley Golf Club in Pennsylvania and drove him to a wooded area on Staten Island. Simone asked to die with his shoes off, as he had promised his wife, and at the hands of a made man. Gravano agreed, and Milito shot him in the back of the head. Gravano later spoke admiringly of the calm with which Simone faced death.

  In 1982 a wealthy Czechoslovak businessman and drug trafficker named Frank Fiala paid Gravano $40,000 to rent The Plaza Suite for his birthday party. Two days later Gravano accepted a $1,000,000 offer to sell the club, far above the property's value. The deal included $50,000 in cash, $650,000 in gold bullion under the table, and $300,000 at the real estate closing. Before it closed, Fiala began acting as though he already owned the place.

  Gravano set up an ambush with Garafola, Milito, D'Angelo and several others. That night he greeted Fiala on the street with the words "Hey, Frank, how you doing?" Milito shot Fiala from behind, then fired a shot into each of his eyes while the crowd fled screaming. Gravano walked up to the body and spat on it. He avoided charges by paying $5,000 to the homicide detective Louis Eppolito, who was later disgraced.

  Castellano was livid that Gravano had not asked permission. Gravano lay low for nearly three weeks and told his crew he would kill Castellano if necessary. At a Manhattan restaurant meeting, he talked his way out by saying he had kept the boss in the dark to protect him if the hit went wrong. The Internal Revenue Service then investigated the sale and charged him with tax evasion. He was acquitted at trial. His lawyer in that case, Gerald Shargel, would later be pulled out of a far larger fight.

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• 5. Killing Castellano

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  Louie DiBono, a member of another Gambino crew, was Gravano's business partner when a meeting about money ended with Gravano punching him around the room. DiBono claimed only $50,000 was owed, and Gravano believed he was being scammed. Striking another made man is a death offense in Cosa Nostra. DiBono told his captain, Pasquale "Patsy" Conte, who told Castellano, and a sit-down was called.

  Toddo Aurello spoke for Gravano, and the underboss Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce intervened for him. Castellano ordered DiBono to pay Gravano $200,000 and end the partnership. Gravano's standing with his boss slipped. But Dellacroce was the mentor of a rising star named John Gotti, and Gotti was impressed that Dellacroce had backed Gravano.

  Meanwhile, the FBI was closing in. In August 1983, three members of Gotti's crew were indicted for heroin trafficking. They were Angelo Ruggiero, John Carneglia and Gene Gotti. Castellano forbade drug dealing in the family and wanted copies of the FBI tapes of Ruggiero's conversations, which also covered talk of the bosses and the Commission. Dellacroce stalled him. Later Castellano was indicted in connection with Roy DeMeo's stolen car ring and in the Mafia Commission Trial. He learned his own house had been bugged, partly through evidence from the Ruggiero tapes. In June 1985 he again demanded the tapes, and Ruggiero refused.

  Around then, Robert "DB" DiBernardo, acting for Gotti, told Gravano that Gotti and Ruggiero wanted to meet in Queens. Only Ruggiero showed up. He said the pair planned to murder Castellano and asked for Gravano's support. Gravano consulted Frank DeCicco, and both worried about who Castellano might install if he went to prison. They feared his nephew Thomas Gambino as acting boss and his driver, Thomas Bilotti, as underboss. They agreed to back the hit.

  Gravano's first choice for boss was DeCicco. DeCicco argued that Gotti's boldness, intelligence and charisma would make a good boss, and the two men struck a secret pact. If they disliked Gotti's leadership after one year, they would kill him and take over as boss and underboss. They recruited the old-timer Joseph "Piney" Armone, whose standing could win over Castellano loyalists.

  Trouble with the other families was the next hurdle. A boss could not be killed without a majority of the Commission, and an unsanctioned hit would have been the first since Frank Costello was nearly killed in 1957. The conspirators quietly won off-the-record support from mobsters in the Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families. They skipped the Genovese family because Castellano was close to its boss, Vincent "Chin" Gigante. Dellacroce died on the 2nd of December 1985, and Gotti was enraged when Castellano did not attend the wake.

  Castellano had invited DeCicco and several capos to a meeting on the 16th of December 1985 at Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. The conspirators liked the spot because holiday shoppers would crowd the street and cover an escape. Gotti suggested the shooters wear long white trench coats and black fur Russian hats, an idea Gravano called "brilliant."

  Gotti and Gravano parked within view of the entrance shortly before 5 o'clock. Around 5:30 Gravano spotted Castellano's Lincoln Town Car and warned the hitmen by walkie talkie. Bilotti pulled up at the door. As he and Castellano stepped out, gunmen killed them in a barrage of bullets. Gotti then drove slowly past the scene. Looking down at Bilotti's body, Gravano remarked, "He's gone."

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• 6. Gotti's Gambinos

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  On the 15th of January 1986, a meeting of 20 capos acclaimed John Gotti as the new Gambino boss. Before that, the consigliere Joseph N. Gallo had set up a three-man committee with Gotti and DeCicco, but nearly everyone knew Gotti had been behind the hit. Gotti named DeCicco underboss. He elevated Gravano to capo after Toddo Aurello said he wanted to step down.

  On the 13th of April 1986, DeCicco died when a bomb destroyed his car after a visit to Castellano loyalist James Failla. Gotti had planned to go along but canceled. Lucchese men Victor Amuso and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso carried out the bombing on orders from Gigante and the Lucchese boss Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo. Bombs had been banned by the Mafia for endangering bystanders, so the Gambinos first suspected Sicilian mobsters known as "zips."

  The first name on Gravano's own hit list was Nicholas Mormando, called Nicky Cowboy, a former member of his crew. Mormando had become addicted to crack cocaine, and Gravano suspected him of getting a crew member, Michael DeBatt, hooked as well. With Gotti's permission, Gravano lured Mormando to a meeting at his Bensonhurst restaurant, Tali's. A man named Joseph Paruta shot Mormando twice in the back of the head, and the body was dumped in a vacant lot.

  In May 1986, Gotti went to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York to await trial on racketeering charges. He relied on Gravano, Ruggiero and Armone to run daily affairs. In June, Ruggiero told Gravano that Gotti wanted the capo Robert DiBernardo dead for criticizing his leadership. Gravano resisted, but Armone confirmed the order. Joe Paruta, a member of Gravano's crew, shot DiBernardo twice in the back of the head. Gravano later learned that Ruggiero owed DiBernardo $250,000 and may have invented the order. The killing still paid off for Gravano, who took over DiBernardo's control of Teamsters Local 282.

  Gotti's trial ended first in a hung jury, and a second racketeering trial began in August 1986 with Willie Boy Johnson among the defendants. A juror named George Pape hid his friendship with Boško Radonjić, and through Radonjić he agreed to sell his vote to Gravano for $60,000. On the 13th of March 1987, the jury acquitted Gotti and his codefendants of everything. The American media nicknamed him "The Teflon Don," because no charge stuck.

  In 1987 Gravano replaced Gallo as consigliere, and by 1990 he had moved up to underboss. He mingled with construction executives and union officials at Tali's and claimed to send Gotti over $2 million a year from his union activities alone. But the FBI had noticed his rise and placed him under surveillance. He also sensed jealousy from Gotti over his legitimate profits. In January 1988, against Gravano's advice, Gotti began requiring capos to meet him weekly at the Ravenite Social Club. The FBI had hidden bugs in the main room, the first-floor hallway and the upstairs apartment.

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• 7. Turning Witness

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  On the 11th of December 1990, FBI agents and New York police detectives raided the Ravenite and arrested Gravano, Gotti and Frank LoCascio. Tapes from the bugs were played at pretrial hearings, and the Gambino leadership was denied bail. Prosecutors also had the defense lawyers Bruce Cutler and Gerald Shargel disqualified. They argued the two were "part of the evidence" and had worked as in-house counsel for the family. Gotti hired Albert Krieger, a Miami attorney who had represented Joseph Bonanno.

  The tapes did more damage inside the family than outside it. On them Gotti called his new underboss too greedy and discussed framing Gravano as the main force behind the murders of DiBernardo, Milito and DiBono. A attempt at reconciliation failed. Gravano, disillusioned and doubtful of winning without Shargel, agreed to testify on the 13th of November 1991. He was the first member of the hierarchy of a New York crime family to turn informer. He was also the second confessed underboss in American Mafia history to do so, after Philip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti of Philadelphia.

  Gotti and LoCascio were tried before Judge I. Leo Glasser in federal court in Brooklyn. Jury selection began in January 1992. The jury was anonymous and, for the first time in a Brooklyn federal case, fully sequestered, because of Gotti's reputation for jury tampering. Prosecutors Andrew Maloney and John Gleeson opened on the 12th of February by playing tapes of Gotti discussing family business and murders he approved.

  Gravano took the stand on the 2nd of March. He laid out Gotti's place in the family and described the Castellano plot and its aftermath in detail. He confessed to 19 murders and implicated Gotti in four of them. Krieger and LoCascio's lawyer, Anthony Cardinale, could not shake him on cross-examination. The government rested on the 24th of March. Along the way, Gotti shouted that Gravano was a "junkie," while his lawyers tried to raise Gravano's past steroid use.

  On the 23rd of June 1992, Glasser sentenced Gotti and LoCascio to life in prison without parole, with a $250,000 fine. Gotti reported to federal authorities on the 14th of December 1992 to begin his term.

  In all, Gravano implicated 29 mobsters. They included Gambino captains, soldiers and associates. He also testified against Colombo acting boss Victor Orena, Genovese underboss Venero "Benny Eggs" Mangano and DeCavalcante boss Giovanni "John" Riggi. The murders he admitted included Alan Kaiser in Brooklyn in 1977 and Frank Stillitano in Philadelphia in 1981.

  On the day of his own sentencing, federal authorities summed up his value to them: "37 convictions, nine people awaiting trial, eight people resigned from the unions as a result of Gravano's cooperation." They added that he was indirectly responsible for more, because his example encouraged others to testify against the Mafia.

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• 8. Life After Testifying

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  Gravano left the federal Witness Protection Program in 1995 after only eight months. The government had moved him to various locations. He settled in Phoenix, Arizona, took the name "Jimmy Moran" and started a swimming pool installation company. A federal prosecutor later said he disliked the program's constraints. He began living openly, gave magazine interviews, and appeared in a national television interview with Diane Sawyer. Reports said he had also had plastic surgery on his face.

  In 1997 he was consulted several times for Underboss, a biography by Peter Maas. In it he said he became a witness after Gotti tried to defame him at trial, and that he finally saw the Cosa Nostra code of honor as a sham. Gravano also hired a publicist, though he often complained about Gotti seeking publicity. Several victims' families filed a $25 million lawsuit after the book appeared, but lost. New York State also indicted Gravano on an old racketeering case and seized his profits from the book.

  An interview with The Arizona Republic stirred more anger. Gravano said federal agents had become his friends and visited him on vacation. He claimed the paper threatened to reveal that his family lived with him in Phoenix if he did not let it publish. His former associates were incensed. The FBI alleged that Peter Gotti ordered two Gambino soldiers, Thomas Carbonaro and Eddie Garafola, to murder Gravano in Arizona in 1999.

  By the late 1990s he had returned to crime. His son Gerard had become friends with Michael Papa, a 23-year-old leader of the Devil Dogs gang. Gravano started a major ecstasy trafficking organization, selling over 30,000 tablets and reportedly taking in $500,000 a week. In February 2000, he and nearly 40 other ring members were arrested on federal and state drug charges. They included Debra, Karen and Gerard. Informants and recorded conversations about profits with Debra and Karen implicated him.

  Gravano pleaded guilty in New York federal court on the 25th of May 2001 and in Phoenix on the 29th of June 2001. In 2002 he was diagnosed with Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder. On the 7th of September 2002, he was sentenced in New York to 20 years in prison. A month later Arizona gave him 19 years to run concurrently, plus lifetime supervised release and a $100,000 fine. He served time at ADX Florence in Colorado, part of it in solitary confinement. Gerard received nine years. Debra and Karen received probation. In November 2003, Sammy and Karen were ordered to pay $805,713 in costs from an earlier drug ring judgment.

  On the 24th of February 2003, New Jersey prosecutors announced his indictment for ordering the 1980 killing of NYPD detective Peter Calabro by Richard "the Iceman" Kuklinski. Gravano denied involvement and rejected a plea deal that would have added no jail time if he confessed and named accomplices. The charges were dropped after Kuklinski died in 2006.

  A request for early release was denied in August 2015 because of his "long-standing reputation for extreme violence." He had been scheduled for release in March 2019, but he walked free on the 18th of September 2017. In 2013 the National Geographic Channel had dramatized his ecstasy ring in a Locked Up Abroad episode, "Raving Arizona," about his main competitor, "English" Shaun Attwood. In December 2020 Gravano launched a YouTube channel and a podcast called Our Thing.

  In May 2025, after contracting coronavirus, Gravano became a born-again Christian, saying he heard the voice of God. His baptism testimony said he had "always believed in God but this time, it was different... this time, I surrendered."

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