♪♪
Gravano: I'm loyal to anybody.
Unless you [bleep] with me or betray me or do something crazy,
then I could become your worst nightmare.
And I admit it.
I want to eat you alive.
♪♪
Welcome to "Very Scary People."
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
was one of America's most feared mobsters.
He was also the highest-ranking crime family member in New York
to turn government witness.
In 1992, he testified against his former boss, John Gotti,
and spilled secrets of his life in organized crime.
Sounded like a thriller straight out of the movies,
but Gravano lived the life and lived to tell.
He calls himself a loyal soldier who believed in the brotherhood.
But, to many, he is nothing more than a cunning,
cold-blooded murderer.
This is Sammy the Bull.
♪♪
Destefano: There's an old saying in the Mafia,
that only a friend can hurt you.
♪♪
Gravano: Joe Colucci was a bricklayer.
He was a hunter, a tough guy.
I really liked him.
Schumacher: Gravano and Colucci were friends.
They worked well together. They respected each other.
Joe Colucci was actually part of a crew
within the Colombo crime family.
Colucci: One of my mother's friends used to call him
the male Elizabeth Taylor. [ Laughs ]
That he was so handsome,
he was so -- and beautiful,
with his black hair and blue eyes.
He was a great father.
He loved his kids to death.
♪♪
Gravano: One night, we went out drinking.
We went to an after-hour club.
It was about four o'clock in the morning.
Destefano: They get Colucci to go out with them,
carouse around, drinking in clubs
and hitting various nightspots.
They get in a car,
and Colucci doesn't want anybody sitting behind him,
so he sits in the backseat.
And at some point as the night works on,
Colucci gets his guard down and sits in the front seat.
Hunter: The Beatles were on the radio.
Sammy's sitting, you know, catty corner from him.
Gravano: The car took off.
The windows were rolled up.
I went in my waistband and pulled out a .38.
I put the gun to the back of his head, and I pulled the trigger.
And then they ultimately dump the body,
and at that point, Sammy fires,
he said, a few more shots into the body.
This is his first hit.
Gravano: The order came down to kill him.
When it comes from the top and you have to do it,
that's part of the code of the Mafia.
If you refuse, you can be killed.
In most cases, you will be.
Destefano: Sammy felt good about it --
good in a strange way, because he felt empowered.
He didn't feel remorse. He didn't feel sad.
He said afterwards, "The easiest thing was pulling the trigger."
Gabriel: Sammy's first murder
was a little bit of an awakening.
He wasn't as bothered by it as he probably thought he might be.
I slept like a baby the entire night.
Why don't I feel guilt, remorse?
Why don't I feel anything?
I did feel something.
I thought I had power over life and death.
I know one thing --
that night I became a professional killer.
Destefano: Sammy Gravano grew up in Bensonhurst,
and that was an Italian-American enclave
for New York City at that time.
Colucci: Everybody was friends.
Like, if somebody got married, everybody went to the wedding.
If somebody died, everybody went to the funeral.
Hunter: Anyone who's seen the movie "Goodfellas,"
that will give you a pretty good idea of the world
that Sammy Gravano grew up in.
Where'd you get those cigarettes?
It's all right. Get him out of here.
It was the neighborhood in Brooklyn -- Italian,
working class, tight-knit, where everybody knew everybody,
and among the people that everybody knew
was mobsters in the neighborhood.
Sammy related that his early impression from his father
was that these were bad people
and that they were really to be avoided.
His father told him, "Look. There's these guys
in the neighborhood. They're bad guys,
but they're our bad guys."
Destefano: Of course, that created an extra aura
or attraction to a young guy growing up in Bensonhurst.
These were people who had some stature in the community.
They were powerful,
they had influence, and you didn't want to cross their path.
Hunter: Now, Sammy's parents, Kay and Gerry,
they were complete straight arrows.
They owned a dress factory,
and Sammy worked for them, and he adored them.
Destefano: Sammy had trouble in school
because it turned out he was dyslexic
and, at that point, wasn't diagnosed,
and he became the butt of jokes
because of his seemingly slow learning ability.
Hunter: He was treated like he was some kind of dummy,
and the other kids would laugh,
and he'd start hitting them outside in the school yard
because he was humiliated.
Destefano: So, at an early age, he was known to be able
to defend himself and wasn't shy
about getting into fist fights.
Papa: He was also smaller in stature.
And I think, to overcompensate,
he probably had to learn to be a tough guy.
Hunter: When he was 10 years old,
his parents got him a bike for his 10th birthday,
and these kids stole it,
and he eventually tracked them down.
They were a few years older. They were bigger.
And across from the local bar where a lot of these wise guys
hung out, he confronted these guys and he went wild.
He was getting beat up, but he kept on slugging at them.
Destefano: Sammy was quick with his fists
and was able to do a number on the thieves.
Hunter: Until the wise guys came over
and told these guys, "This is his bike.
You kids take off."
And one of the guys said, "Oh, look at Sammy.
What a little bull."
And that's how the name supposedly started.
♪♪
McShane: He couldn't find a home in the classroom,
but he found a home on the streets.
Hunter: Sammy saw the heft the local wise guys actually had --
that they could make problems go away.
A lot of people will tell you that in old New York,
you know, if you got a mob neighborhood,
you didn't have to worry about grandma
getting hit over the head getting off the bus.
It was a very ordered world.
Destefano: Sammy ultimately joined a group
called the Rampers.
They were low-level, unofficial wise guys in the neighborhood
who could carry out robberies, heists,
break-ins, among other things.
That made them an unofficial secondary farm team
for organized crime.
Hunter: The Rampers did spot talent.
If a kid kept his mouth shut, knew what he was doing,
showed a certain amount of respect,
there might be a chance to sort of move up to the bigs.
And Shorty Sparrow,
who is a member of the Colombo crime family, saw this in Sammy.
He says, "Listen. I hear a lot of good things about you.
I know a lot of things about you.
You're going to get killed." He said,
"You're too [bleep] tough. You don't want to listen.
You've got to hook up with people.
I would like you to be with me.
I will never lie to you.
I will never backstab.
Whatever I ask you to do, I already did."
It was music to my ear.
He was being recognized for something
that he could do and do well.
The attraction for Sammy Gravano was just the fact
that he wanted to make something of himself.
There was sort of power and swagger and money.
♪♪
Schumacher: Gravano, he's a young guy.
This is his first hit.
When Gravano woke up the next morning and he was
in an apartment and there was a lot of commotion
about the murder of Joe Colucci.
People coming in, girls, guys.
"Oh, my God. Joe Colucci was killed last night.
It's in the newspapers."
And I said, "Did they catch who did it?"
It was early morning, and I was feeding my daughter,
and the bell rang, and it was detectives to come and tell me
that they found my brother's body and that he was shot.
It was devastating.
It was horrible.
He was my big brother.
He was my best friend.
And then the next thing you know,
Tommy and Sammy showed up at our house
that day that the detectives came,
that they "found out that Joey got murdered."
"We're going to find out who did this to him,"
and hugging everybody,
and they're going to work along with the cops
and help them try to find out what happened to Joey.
Brevetti: And that takes a certain type of person
to do that, right?
So this is the warped mind of people who were in the life.
♪♪
Destefano: Cosa Nostra is the American version of the Mafia,
which is -- originates in Italy and Sicily.
To be considered for membership, you have to show
that you're capable of killing for the family
or making a lot of money for the family.
If you have either or both of those two things going for you
and politically, you know, you play the game,
you'll be considered for membership.
According to Sammy, they had a meeting with Carmine Persico,
and others in the Colombo crime family about
the Colucci homicide,
and they were questioned about how this went down.
And after they gave their summary,
Persico indicated that you know, Sammy had done a good job.
That put him on the radar of the top people
in the crime family in a big way.
Gabriel: As an associate, it's a good sign
because you've done the one thing
you need to convince everybody you could do to become a member,
so that elevates your status.
It engenders you with the boss.
It's not just how you did it,
but how you conducted yourself afterwards.
It all speaks to his mafia character,
and they see the kinda traits they really like in a guy.
Destefano: If you can kill, it takes a certain person
to do that, you know, dispassionately,
professionally, with no deep remorse.
That's a valuable commodity in organized crime.
♪♪
In the late '20s, early '30s, there was a big war in which,
when all was said and done, five families emerged,
and those are the five families that are still there today.
They were the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Banano,
and Colombo crime families.
♪♪
The Gambino family at the time was probably the most powerful
and largest organized crime family.
Destefano: After Carlo Gambino died in about 1976,
the leadership of the crime family went to Paul Castellano.
Castellano was of a different cut.
He was not a street gangster.
He was a businessman who had successful poultry businesses,
meat businesses.
So Sammy early on gets very tightly aligned
to Frankie DeCicco.
Brevetti: Frankie DeCicco was a capo -- a big earner.
Very, very influential.
Gabriel: Very close to Paul Castellano.
So, as Sammy is getting closer to Frankie,
he's brought into that circle.
Sammy also began to gravitate to the construction business.
Raab: And he was very good in drywall and excavation,
and he started his own companies.
Gabriel: Paul was earning a lot of money
through Sammy's involvement in the construction stuff,
and he kept Sammy close
because that was big dollars coming to Paul.
So Sammy had access to the boss, which not every soldier does.
♪♪
About 1976, Sammy is inducted in a very secret location,
and it's the proudest day of his life.
To be invited to be a member of the Mafia or Cosa Nostra
was really the pinnacle of achievement
for that kind of life.
Hunter: He went into a basement of a house
in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and he was called.
It was his turn.
Gabriel: So, guys like Sammy, from the minute
they start their criminal activity,
their goal, their aspiration --
it's more than a kid's dream
who wants to be an astronaut, right?
They just admire the life around the mobster
that they've grown up seeing on the street.
Papa: He's introduced to the various people sitting there.
At the head of the table was Gambino boss Paul Castellano.
Destefano: You're asked if you know why you're there,
and you have to lie and say "No, I don't know why I'm there."
Hunter: And he was told it was an honored society,
it was a secret society,
and that family came before his own family
and anything else in his life.
McShane: Castellano told him there is no God anymore for you.
We are your God. The family is your God.
Papa: And what they do is they bring a holy card.
They prick your finger, and you have to take an oath
that you swear to be loyal to the family.
The blood runs onto the holy card and you vow omertà,
which means that you will never speak
against anybody in the family.
You will not cooperate with law enforcement.
They burn a picture of a saint in your hands.
That signified that, if he betrayed the organization,
that the saint burning represented his soul burning.
And then you're given code of conduct.
You're told the rules.
Hunter: He took it very, very, very serious.
He believed 1,000% in La Casa Nostra.
♪♪
Sammy met, almost by happenstance,
Debbie Scibetta.
She was a sweet kid and really didn't know much
about the life on the street.
She wasn't connected to it in any way.
He clearly adores her. You get the sense
that he has always been able to rely upon her.
Destefano: Sammy ultimately proposed
and they marry in April of 1971.
Sammy and Debbie had two kids.
There was Karen and Gerard.
And Debbie was very devout and devoted to the family,
and Sammy was out there earning money any way he could.
Hunter: She has understood his life,
which isn't always easiest thing to understand.
I think that he has also drew two lines between his life.
There was the life as a gangster,
and then there was the life as daddy and hubby.
Brevetti: Sammy's ability to compartmentalize
and rationalize has no limit.
He was a master of deception.
He was very good at it.
♪♪
Brevetti: Sammy took an oath that said,
"Our family comes before your family."
♪♪
And he swore to that.
And, of course, that became the conundrum
or the problem that Gravano faced.
Nick Scibetta was his wife's brother.
Gabriel: He was probably a half of an associate.
He actually hung around, thanks to the reputation
of his brother-in-law, Sammy, and enjoyed privileges
that he otherwise would not have enjoyed.
So Scibetta's around a lot of wise guys,
and he becomes a drug addict.
He becomes a cocaine head.
And he was becoming a nuisance -- flamboyant,
bringing attention to himself.
Grabiel: And word makes it to Paul's ears,
which is never a good thing.
The concern obviously is he's been around so many guys
and conversations potentially -- he gets pinched
and is strung out, he could say stupid things.
They were worried he could be talking or leaking
or that he'd be vulnerable to an investigation.
So Castellano authorized the hit on Nicholas Scibetta.
And so Sammy can't do anything about it.
He knew that if he had warned Nick Scibetta
what was about to happen,
it would end up with a bullet behind the ear
for Sammy as well.
And so he understood that this kid had to go.
Destefano: He made that choice and that became his code,
and he was gonna live it.
In the end, he went with the mob family over his wife's family.
And they take Nick Scibetta for a ride, and he is murdered.
Sammy says that his involvement
was that he allowed it to happen.
Gabriel: And to make matters worse,
the guys chopped up his body, put it in garbage bags,
and scattered it in different garbage disposals
around Brooklyn.
A dog was being walked
and came across one of the body parts,
pulled it out of the garbage,
and they eventually identify him as Nick Scibetta.
The only thing that was recovered was his hand,
and they knew from a ring on his hand that it was him.
Gabriel: News gets out, obviously, to Debbie.
She's distraught as all can be,
and, of course, now Sammy's got to play the loving husband.
"We're going to look into this. We'll get whoever did this.
Can't imagine what happened."
Sammy Gravano knew how to play the part.
So you go to the wake.
You go to the funeral, and you play the part.
And Sammy Gravano knew how to do that job.
♪♪
Brevetti: Organized crime, its purpose was only one,
and that was to make money --
to make money in the easiest possible way.
Papa: La Cosa Nostra was big business in New York City.
You were doing it illegally, but it was big business.
The Concrete Club is probably the best example of that.
Gabriel: The Gambino family as well as the Genovese
and Colombo family collectively controlled
just about every union in New York.
So, in essence, they earned off of every yard of cement
that got poured in Manhattan.
And for those who have been to Manhattan, it's a lot of cement.
McShane: The mob families were all getting a piece
of every concrete-pouring contract over $2 million.
I believe they got 2% of that.
That's a lot of money.
Bottom line is, the economy of Manhattan
was controlled by the mob.
Papa: Sammy Gravano on his own was making a lot of money
in the construction industry.
He actually amassed many companies,
and he was friendly with people.
He would, you know, befriend somebody.
They went into business together.
Destefano: He was a guy who was, to some extent,
reasonable to talk to,
so he had the best of both worlds.
He could be a diplomat.
He could also be a tough guy and a killer.
Gravano: I was making $45,000 a week in cash
plus these legitimate businesses.
So my money was astronomical, myself.
I could only imagine what Paul Castellano were making.
The money was enormous.
♪♪
Welcome back to "Very Scary People."
By the mid-1970s, Sammy Gravano
became a made man in La Cosa Nostra
and pledged loyalty to the crime family above all else.
Now he had his own crew, a team of men who helped him
carry out whatever the boss demanded,
without question or hesitation,
even if it meant killing family and friends.
Sammy would often leave the actual killing to others,
but he was the one to plan it with ruthless precision.
♪♪
McShane: In 1980, the head of the Philadelphia mob,
Angelo Bruno, who was known as The Docile Don,
is executed -- shotgun -- outside his home.
And this sets off a huge shockwave
that went all the way up to the five families in New York.
Hunter: Philadelphia splits into two factions.
One is Nicky Scarfo, one of the underbosses,
and the other is by Johnny Keys.
Gabriel: Johnny "Keys" Simone was a prominent member
in the Philadelphia family
that's looking to get control of the family.
Hunter: So they're fighting in Philadelphia
and Commission, the ruling body of organized crime,
decides that Johnny Keys has to go.
They're going to back Nicky Scarfo
as the new boss in Philly.
Gabriel: So Paul calls Sammy in and gives him the hit.
This, for Paul Castellano, is a high-visibility hit
because they're taking out
a significant person of another family,
and other bosses know this is all happening,
so it can't go wrong.
So the fact that they give that to Sammy says something.
It shows you how much you respected this guy,
trusted this guy.
Hunter: Now, Johnny Keys is a very smart man,
longtime mobster, and very cautious.
Gabriel: Basically, Paul was going to have Sammy
send word down to say, "Hey, listen.
Paul's willing to back you.
He thinks you're the right guy."
Hunter: He's telling Johnny Keys that Castellano
is going to back him for leadership in Philly.
That's not the case.
He's being set up to be murdered.
♪♪
Sammy's telling Johnny Keys
that he's going to meet Castellano,
but at a place that Johnny Keys wants to go
because, that way, he will be safe.
So they agree that they can meet at a country club
that Johnny Keys belongs to.
Raab: Gravano was persuasive enough
that Johnny Keys agrees to go into a car with him.
Hunter: When they get to the country club,
Johnny Keys sees a van running,
and he makes note of it the Sammy,
and that's when Sammy grabbed him from behind,
and he was taken into the van.
Raab: Three other hoods jump in.
They grab Johnny Keys.
They disarm him.
Keys knew when he got picked up what was coming.
Hunter: They drive him to a remote corner of Staten Island.
But they had to wait some time before they could kill this guy.
McShane: They were waiting like 10 or 12 hours for a phone call
from somebody to tell them what to do.
Gabriel: So while Sammy and his crew are waiting for word back,
they kept filling Johnny Keys' head with,
"Hey, you know what? There's meetings going on.
The decision hasn't really been made
with what's gonna happen to you."
So, Keys knew that he's probably getting killed,
was hopeful it wasn't gonna happen,
but Sammy knew all along it was going to.
But the more he gets to know Johnny Keys,
the more he likes him.
Gabriel: So the guy, as an extremely stand-up guy,
very La Cosa Nostra, and that kind of respect
means more than anything else in their world.
McShane: In Gravano's view, he took it like a man.
He took it like a believer in their life,
and he never whimpered or whined.
Gabriel: When Sammy felt comfortable,
he gave the words, "Alright. It's going to go."
"John, I just -- on the call, you lost the decision, bro."
I got to take you out. I'm going to treat you right,
like a man, right up until the last second.
There'll be no pain. There'll be no suffering.
I have the utmost respect for you.
McShane: Gravano just was so impressed by the way
this guy just accepted his death and just made two requests.
One was that he could die with his shoes off
because he had always promised his wife
that that's how he would go.
In other words, that he would presumably live a long life
and die in the comfort of his home.
And the second was that he insisted he be killed
by a made man.
And Louie Milito was that man.
Gravano: Louie Milito with a .357 Magnum,
he hit him in the head.
Everybody gets in the van.
We're all sick.
We killed the epitome of our life.
Gabriel: Sammy had remorse after this hit.
Johnny Keys wasn't a Gambino guy --
not part of a Gambino beef, right?
And then spending hours, literally, with the guy
before they killed him and seeing how the guy behaved,
the kind of wise guy he really was,
it bothered Sammy that they had to take this guy out.
♪♪
These are very, very dangerous people --
some of the most dangerous people
we've ever encountered in law enforcement.
The FBI really got serious about cracking down
on the Mafia in the '70s and '80s.
It was a very aggressive effort on the part of the FBI
using surveillance techniques, wiretaps, bugs.
McShane: The FBI decided to create five squads,
one for each of the five families,
to follow them and see what they could do
as far as putting together prosecutions against them.
The FBI's embrace of technology,
combined with its formation of these specific squads,
was a real two-fisted shot at the mob.
Brevetti: I didn't know the kind of impact
it would have in Costa Nostra circles.
I knew it'd be a problem for them,
but I didn't realize how big of a problem it was.
♪♪
Gabriel: Sammy had ownership of a very successful disco
in Brooklyn, and this guy, Frank Fiala
comes out of nowhere.
He was Eastern European, a lot of money,
in the drug business.
Frank Fiala had rented out Sammy's club, The Plaza Suite.
They clash a bit.
Sammy finds the guy to be a bit of a pain in the neck.
In Sammy's world, it's respect, right?
And when you don't show that respect,
that's a very personal affront.
And this guy Fiala didn't get that or didn't care.
Hunter: Fiala decides he likes The Plaza Suite so much
that he wants to buy it.
He offers Sammy a million bucks for it.
Gabriel: So they negotiate the deal.
McShane: But Sammy is just getting more and more aggravated
by this guy, and, finally --
this is before the club has been sold --
Sammy shows up and Fiala's sitting in his office.
He's acting like he owns the place.
He's mistreating people, his feet up on Sammy's desk,
and acting like, "This is mine. What are you doing here?
Get out."
And this just enrages Sammy.
Not only that, he opens an attaché case.
Inside the attaché case is a submachine gun.
Hunter: Fiala starts pointing an Uzi submachine gun at Gravano.
Now, this sends Sammy through the roof.
Sammy leaves and basically, at that point,
decided this guy is going.
♪♪
Hunter: Sammy calls out, "Frank, turn around,"
out on the street outside of The Plaza.
That's when Louie Milito shoots him once in each eye.
[ Gunshots ]
And Sammy spits on his body for good measure.
Reporter: The shooting took place outside a disco
at 86th Street and McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn.
McShane: It was an unsanctioned hit,
which is a violation of mob policy.
Gabriel: If you're going to kill somebody,
the boss has got to know what's happening,
but Sammy never went to the boss to get permission.
Word kind of gets back to Paul Castellano what happened,
and Sammy's petrified because, by rights,
Paul should take him out.
Hunter: But Sammy, ever the smooth talker and mob politician
that he is, talks himself out of trouble.
♪♪
Gabriel: So the Gambino family, from the day Paul Castellano
was given the position of boss,
there were a lot of disgruntled people.
Paul was considered a white collar wise guy.
Paul dressed in a suit to go to work and portray himself
as a businessman.
But Paul was respected because, as the boss,
he had to be respected, not because they liked them.
Paul Castellano was called the Pope.
He had a regal bearing.
He lived in this huge house on Staten Island.
They called it the White House.
He's got a legitimate business, the poultry business.
And there's a feeling among the rank and file
that he's kind of out of touch with them.
Destefano: He looked down upon the blue collar members
of the family.
He was above the fray.
Castellano not only was wealthy from his legitimate businesses,
but also was getting hand over fist money from the rackets.
Even members of the other crime families
would complain about his greediness.
Gabriel: Paul was all about the money for himself.
So, people weren't satisfied with that.
♪♪
Mouw: In the summer of 1985,
there's a big dispute in the Gambino family.
Gabriel: It involved the capo by the name of John Gotti.
McShane: Castellano, the boss, suspected Gotti's crew
of dealing narcotics, particularly heroin trafficking.
With Castellano, that was supposed to be
a death penalty event
if you were caught dealing drugs.
Schumacher: That wasn't some kind of moral decision that,
oh, drugs are wrong.
It was that drugs opened up
the possibility of getting caught.
Gabriel: John Gotti at this point was a captain in Queens,
and his buddy, Angelo Ruggiero,
had taken over his brother's heroin operations.
Though Ruggiero's nickname was Quack Quack,
and part of the reason was because
the guy could never shut up.
And the FBI got in, and they bugged this house,
and all this information was coming out on the tapes.
I didn't indict John, but I did indict his crew members.
A portion of the indictment was regular organized crime stuff,
but, more importantly, a larger portion of it was narcotics.
And so now they have a real problem.
McShane: The FBI was able to use the information gleaned
from the Ruggiero bug
to bug Paul Castellano's house on Staten Island.
And so this is kind of a double faux pas by the Gotti crew
because, one, one of their guys has been caught discussing
this business that they are not allowed to conduct;
and, two, it allowed the prosecutors
to get inside the house on Staten Island and bug that too.
Paul had an interest in those tapes, personally,
because he was being prosecuted in multiple cases.
Castellano was asking repeatedly for the tapes,
and if he heard the tapes,
it would have been perfectly clear
that his orders had been violated.
Raab: And the one person that Castellano would go after
and probably kill was John Gotti.
But, instead, Gotti made the first move.
♪♪
Hunter: So they decide that they're going to take out
Paul Castellano,
but things have to be in place for this to happen.
Gabriel: John knows, if he tries to do this by himself,
he's dead.
So John cleverly understood that,
if there was that much dissatisfaction in the family
and he can get the key people,
getting them means you got a lot less to worry about.
The first person they approach is Sammy Gravano.
Gabriel: John's a Queens guy,
Sammy is a Brooklyn guy, Staten Island guy.
These guys don't go that far outside of their territories.
But Sammy knows John's reputation.
And Sammy's got a reputation.
McShane: Sammy is known in the family for two things --
he makes money and he murders people,
and he's very good at both.
Gabriel: Sammy was skeptical --
Why should we risk our lives for this John Gotti?
He's got his problems.
We may not be happy, but Sammy's not stupid.
This is a big chance we're taking.
You're breaking one of the most sacred rules, taking out a boss.
He said, "Look. I'm going to go talk to Frank DeCicco."
Papa: Frankie DeCicco was a good friend of Sammy
and a good friend of Gotti.
Gabriel: Sammy really respects Frankie,
much more than Paul Castellano.
So if Frankie ever turned his back on Paul,
Sammy would be like, "Okay. I'm with you. Forget this guy."
Sammy Gravano, he went to talk to DeCicco at DeCicco's house.
I said, if we do this,
John doesn't deserve to be the boss.
I think you should be the boss.
♪♪
You deserve it.
You did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong.
He did everything wrong.
Gabriel: And Frankie understood things well.
His retort to Sammy was, "I can be his number two,
he can never be mine."
Understanding that Gotti's ego could never be number two.
And Frankie was, he says,
"We could accomplish what we want to accomplish."
Me and you will be the power behind the throne.
And I give you my word.
If he doesn't pay attention and act the fool, like he does,
we'll kill him.
The two of them decide
that they're going to go forward with this.
Hunter: Gotti was called to defer to Sammy in the plotting
because he had done this sort of work before.
This was an extremely risky endeavor.
For starters, they hadn't gone to the Commission,
the ruling body of organized crime,
to get the okay to hit him.
Destefano: It was done in a way that was outside
the rules of organized crime.
That's why it was a very big deal.
And there were going to be consequences.
There was going to be some blow-back.
♪♪
Cardinale: On December 16, 1985, Paul Castellano,
having left his attorney's office in midtown Manhattan,
he and Tommy Bilotti, his driver,
drove to 46th between First and Second
to a place called Sparks Steakhouse.
Destefano: Frank DeCicco told people
where Castellano was going to be
at a certain time on that December day
and who he was going to have dinner with.
Hunter: Sammy planned it.
He figured that the streets would be crowded
with Christmas shoppers,
and the chaos would make it impossible for the police
to get on their tail.
We implemented the plan.
We took 11 people on the hit.
Every one of them was a real pro.
Many of the shooters didn't even know
they were there to kill Paul.
They were just told we're going to hit somebody.
They're going to come out, and you're going to shoot.
It was a very tightly-held conspiracy, no doubt.
There was a great attention to detail.
The four shooters all wore matching trench coats
and Russian fur hats.
So if anybody was going to try to be identified,
there are about four of them that dressed the same.
Sammy was sort of like the floor manager for the assassination.
Hunter: Sammy watched the whole thing go down
from a Lincoln Continental across the street from Sparks.
Destefano: He was there in a car with John Gotti.
He tipped off the assassins at the very moment
that Castellano pulled up to the restaurant.
I tell the team "The light just turned green.
The first car out is them.
They're going to pull right in front of Sparks.
Get ready."
Destefano: If anybody got in the way,
they were prepared to start shooting people.
♪♪
Hunter: The guys came up wearing their Russian fur hats
and their white trench coats, and bang, bang, bang.
[ Gunfire ]
Papa: I don't think Paul Castellano even made it
to stepping up to the curb onto the sidewalk.
♪♪
...This evening, right at this location,
two people were shot numerous times.
Tentative identification is that
it's Paul Castellano and Tom Bilotti.
Reporter: Mafia kingpin "Big" Paul Castellano
was gunned down gangland style in midtown Manhattan.
The 70-year-old reputed head of the largest
and most powerful crime family in the country
was killed along with his driver and friend, Thomas Bilotti.
McShane: It really went off without a hitch.
They got out before anybody really knew what had happened.
Papa: Amidst the chaos, they were going to disappear,
and that's exactly what happened.
After the shooting, the three men, dressed in trench coats
and hats, made their way through the rush hour crowd
to the end of the block.
There, a dark automobile met them, and they sped off.
A movie script couldn't have been written better,
and it was mind boggling.
It was shocking.
It was how did this happen? Who did it?
Who was behind it?
Man: Where were they hit?
They were hit in the head and in the body.
♪♪
Destefano: The murder of Castellano and his driver,
Tommy Bilotti, was one of the signature moments
in the history of organized crime.
Hunter: The media reaction to Christmas hit
on Paul Castellano was spectacular.
It was front page in the papers for days.
♪♪
Everybody was taken off guard by this.
The Mafia has a flair for the dramatic,
and this certainly was dramatic.
You're now thinking, "This is war.
There are going to be other people that will be dead.
There will be other prices to pay."
Gabriel: We were expecting a shooting war
right after the hit,
thinking the Frankie DeCiccos and the Sammy Gravanos
are going to be looking for whoever the heck did this.
Hunter: Even to the FBI, Sammy was,
you know, a figure on the peripheral.
They didn't understand how much respect, power,
or juice he actually had.
So he had done a very good job his whole life,
playing it quiet,
which is very much according to the rules.
That is how you're supposed to live your life as a gangster.
♪♪
Papa: Sammy Gravano moved up the ranks.
He became a member of the inner sanctum of the family.
Raab: Gravano thought Gotti was such an egomaniac.
He was attracting so much attention.
He's waving red flags screaming,
"Catch me, catch me, catch me."
And that's eventually what they did.
Reporter: This night, federal FBI agents
arrested the leadership of the Gambino crime family.
Sammy knew that Gotti was going to be asking him
to take the fall for John Gotti.
He saw the writing on the wall.
Now there's bad blood.
Reporter: But it is Gravano who is poised
to have the last laugh at Gotti's expense.
He betrayed everybody.
We didn't know how many murders he was responsible for
till he told us.
Everybody sat in that courtroom holding their breath.
Colucci: To get John Gotti, they had to make a deal
with the devil.
I couldn't believe it.
I still can't believe it.
♪♪
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano had participated
in at least eight murders by the time Paul Castellano
and Tommy Bilotti were gunned down in Manhattan.
While the FBI knew he was a member
of the Gambino crime family,
they had no idea how lethal he was.
Sammy continued to operate in the shadows,
but it wouldn't be long before history would know his name,
and the Mafia as we know it would never be the same,
in Part 2 of "Sammy the Bull."
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
Thanks for watching.
Good night.