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SAMMY: One by one, they called us down the basement.
Paul asked me, "Do you know that we're a brotherhood?
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
A secret society?"
He says, "If we ask you to kill for us, would you?"
I said, "Yes."
If you listen to the oath, there's honor, there's integrity, there's loyalty.
But unfortunately, none of it is true.
KAREN: I never seen the Sammy the Bull that the world knows.
To me, he was my father.
SAMMY: Why would I talk about what I do with a kid?
-(gun cocks) -(gunshot rings)
I'm doing murders.
What am I going to do, come home, sit down, and say,
"Hey, you know who I killed today?"
Break an arm here, break a leg there.
Hey, you were a tough guy.
TERENCE: They get to rationalize a lot of really bad behavior.
They're doing this as part of their job.
JOHN M.:To steal money through fear and intimidation.
KAREN: Each and every person that chose that world
knew what they were getting into.
Some women closed their eyes to things.
LINDA: For a lot of people, being wealthy and having whatever you want
is worth whatever it is that you don't want to know.
There was some dos and don'ts.
Don't kill anybody without permission. Don't rat. That's the big one.
Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
SAMMY: I lived a double life.
I live a family life, and I'm a gangster.
Once you go in, it's all in or nothing.
SAMMY: We shook the mafia.
We shook the state of New York.
We shook the whole world.
♪♪
DETECTIVE: About 5:30 this evening, right at this location,
46th Street east of 3rd Avenue,
two people were shot numerous times.
The only thing we can ascertain at this time
was that it was three males wearing trench coats.
Tentative identification is that it's Paul Castellano and Tom Bilotti.
Castellano was, until two hours ago,
the head of the largest organized crime family
in the United States of America.
He's gone now.
DETECTIVE: There is a prevailing wisdom that says
professional hitmen don't get caught.
That's simply not true.
SAMMY: I lowered the window, and I looked at Tommy.
He was laying in the street in a huge puddle of blood.
I couldn't see Paul.
I told him Tommy was gone, and we took off.
This is what the mob does. This is what we do.
This is how we live.
This is the true side of the mafia.
This isn't somebody talking about the mafia.
I am part of it.
DIANE: Did you say, "What have I become?
With that blood on my hands, what am I?"
I'm a gangster.
I mean, as far as being a hitman, I actually was good at it.
I got the job done. I shot him in the head. Twice.
And uh... this is part of the life.
I knew my father was a gangster.
I knew my father was involved in Paul Castellano's murder.
NARRATOR: (from "Wiseguy") "Murder was the only way everybody stayed in line.
It was the ultimate weapon.
Nobody was immune.
You got out of line, you got whacked.
Everybody knew the rules, but still, people got out of line,
and people still kept getting whacked."
SAMMY: New York in the '70s and '80s was like the wild west.
Bodies all over the place. It was insane.
The city was completely out of control. Anarchy prevailed.
MICHAEL: The mob was going through a very violent period.
It was a dangerous time in the mob's world.
Sammy the Bull is a serial murderer.
He's a psychopath and a sociopath
who killed as many people as Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy combined.
He's not a serial killer. He's not Jeffrey Dahmer.
That's not what he is. He was a gangster.
ED: Sammy the Bull was a street thug who grew up in Bensonhurst.
He gravitated towards the world of organized crime as a young boy.
-DIANE: Italian neighborhood? -SAMMY: Yeah.
DIANE: And your father had come over from Italy.
SAMMY: Yes.
-DIANE: Outside Palermo. -SAMMY: Right.
DIANE: Old school dad?
SAMMY: Old school, old thinking.
Totally legitimate.
What would your father have said if he had known
that you were underboss of the Gambino family?
I guess it would have broke his heart.
Just like it would break my heart if my son, or if my nephew,
or somebody went into the mob, because I know their destiny.
In our neighborhoods, you were a fireman, a cop, or a gangster.
I mean, that's how it went.
When we walked down the block, it was almost like that movie Goodfellas.
There was all guys out there with suits or sport jackets,
and hanging out, and shooting dice in the street.
It was a very protected neighborhood,
and I think a big part of that is the mob culture,
because they kind of protect their own.
Everybody knew everybody's business, but yet,
looked the other way when they had to.
Nobody knows nothing.
We got window shades on our eyes, cotton balls in our ears,
a zipper on our mouth.
So they were growing up in a neighborhood that's basically a campus
for future gangsters.
KAREN: My father could have been anything, but he chose the street life.
Because that's what he's seen, that was what was in his community,
that's what was looked up to.
You had no other choice.
You either got tough, or you fell to the wayside.
And that was it.
Growing up in the streets, you know,
there were guys, they were fighting all the time.
It's the neighborhood. It's how you grow up.
It was just the allure of being, you know, being bad.
DIANE: And who were you?
How did you introduce yourself, by the way?
Was it Sammy the Bull?
Not Sammy the Bull.
Sammy the Bull was a nickname that's made up by other people.
It started when I was a kid, actually.
A few kids robbed my bike.
And I start fighting like crazy to get it back.
And across the street there was our local mob,
mafia hangout, they broke it up.
And one of the guys, he said,
"What are you crying about? You won the fight."
He says, "Look at him, he's like a little bull.
Sammy the Bull."
And it stuck all my life.
They would give you a nickname at an early age,
and now, you felt it was incumbent upon you to earn that nickname.
Instead of realizing, that is nonsense.
NARRATOR: (from "Wiseguy") "The men at the cabstand were not like
anybody else from the neighborhood.
They wore silk suits in the morning.
They flashed wads of $20 bills as round as softballs.
And they sported diamond pinky rings the size of walnuts.
The sight of all that wealth, and power, and girth was intoxicating."
The people that get recruited are typically young men.
They like the cars. They like the girls. They like the money.
KAREN: You know, I mean, I probably grew up seeing everybody in my life
having at least, you know, $5,000, $6,000 cash on them.
That was, like, the thing back in the day, right?
DIANE: What was their presence in the neighborhood?
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was saturated with the mafia.
Every club, every bar, every place you went.
Probably every family had a social club.
The Genoveses had a social club, the Colombos, everybody had a social club.
So my father, he started taking me to all these social clubs
to introduce me to them, to tell them,
"This is my son, so, if you see him, look out for him," and all that.
And I was about 13.
The March of the Wooden Soldiers,
the March of the future gavones who want to be made men,
and will do anything. "Oh, we'll break into cars.
We'll boost products."
And they started out by just being errand boys.
"Hey, give me a cup of coffee, kid.
Get me the Daily News."
And then, all of a sudden, he'd spot him with a five,
an Abraham Lincoln, "Hey, you want the change?"
"Nah, kid, you did a good job."
But they'd start greasing 'em. It's all about money.
TOMMY: Back then, gangs were big.
You know, all ethnicities had gangs.
Neighborhoods had gangs.
Sammy was in a group called the Rampers.
I was doing loan sharking, stealing cars, doing burglaries.
Break an arm here, break a leg there.
He had all the attributes of being a gangster.
KAREN: Did he have options not to join the mob?
Absolutely.
But once you go in, it's all in or nothing.
And when I did finally go into the mob, it was for money.
It was for greed. It was for women. It was for fast cars.
It was being part of a society, part of a brotherhood.
He believed in it so deeply, you know, with everything inside of him.
He became loyal to Cosa Nostra, and that was his life.
And that's who he was, that's what he became.
He worked his way up.
He was a-- He became a made member of the Gambino crime family.
DIANE: 1970.
You're what, 24, 25 years old?
Yeah.
They tell you to kill someone. Did you think of saying no?
No. Not at all.
Yeah, but this is murder.
SAMMY: It's going to be murder.
I mean, everybody in this life, at one point or another,
does work, murders.
This is part of the life.
NARRATOR: (from "Wiseguy") "Life was lived without a safety net.
They wanted money. They wanted power.
And they were willing to do anything necessary to achieve their ends.
By birth, certainly, they were not prepared in any way
to achieve their desires.
They were not the smartest kids in the neighborhood.
They weren't even the toughest.
In fact, they lacked almost all the necessary talents
that may have helped them satisfy the appetites of their dreams.
Except one: their talent for violence."
My name is Anthony Ruggiano, Junior.
I'm the son of Anthony "Fat Anthony" Ruggiano,
who became a made member of the American mafia in 1953.
In the mob they call murder, work.
My father used to tell me he did a piece of work.
I knew he'd committed a homicide.
So work was the key word.
Work just meant murder.
That's my father, Fat Anthony, with a drink in his hand.
He always had a drink in his hand.
My father would give you the shirt off his back,
and then hit you on the head with an axe, and go home and eat dinner.
DIANE: 1970. You're 24, 25 years old.
Yeah.
DIANE: They tell you to kill someone. Did you think of saying no?
No.
I knew sooner or later that question would come.
Joe Colucci was a friend of my father's.
He was also my father's first murder.
DIANE: What did you do in this case?
SAMMY: We were all out drinking together.
And on the way home,
(sighs) I got in the back of the car.
I shot him in the head.
Twice.
It sounded like a cannon that went off.
I felt a feeling of everything going into like a slow motion.
And I hit him again.
And then, his body shook, and he slumped down a little bit.
It was like there was nothing outside this car.
There was no people. There was no road. Nothing but me and him.
I took him to Far Rockaway, where we threw his body out of the car,
and I shot him three more times in the back.
I remember something that surprised me that I had no remorse at all.
It is horrible, and it is hideous, and there is hurt,
and there is pain, because I feel it.
But these men were gangsters.
And each and every person that chose that world
knew what they were getting into.
SAMMY: After that murder, they congratulated me on a job well done.
And then, at that point, I guess, my life changed.
I would go to the same club, and got on line, and before you know it,
the bouncers, the owners came out,
"Sammy, no, no, you don't have to wait on line.
You just come right in."
And everything started to change.
KAREN: I could see that my father was very powerful,
because the way people respected him, the handshake, the kiss on the cheek.
Everybody knew who Sammy was.
You got to the front of the line. Even in Manhattan, Studio 54.
CURTIS: It was the disco era, the silver ball, all of that.
You got to the club, naturally, you drink,
you do a few lines of cocaine in the bathroom,
and now you're feeling like a million bucks.
ANTHONY: I used to go to the Copa.
Just like in Goodfellas, in the movie.
I used to go in through the basement, up through the kitchen.
What do you do?
-What? -What do you do?
I'm in construction.
ANTHONY: And they panned the people in the Bamboo Lounge.
HENRY HILL (In Goodfellas): And then there was Mo Black's brother, Fat Andy.
How you doin'?
And they were naming the names.
And then they said Fat Andy, and all my friends at the same time said,
"That's your father?" And I said, "Oh! (bleep)"
That was like my life. That was like my life, that movie.
You know, sitting in the front, and how everything was given to us,
and the whole lifestyle.
Goodfellas was more real life,
especially talking about the effect that cocaine had.
White powder.
ANTHONY: Everybody was doing coke.
The money's pouring in, and you're hanging out with these people.
David Bowie.
My uncle Junior starts telling David Bowie dirty jokes.
He's hysterical laughing.
I'm there until 4:00 in the morning with them.
And that was my life.
And, you know, you just think it's never going to end.
The mafia, which was originally called mafioso,
was started in the Middle Ages as a secret society in Sicily.
And it was to combat the foreign invaders.
ANGEL: The Sicilian Mafia, they believed that
this is how you had to live Cosa Nostra.
Cosa Nostra is this thing of ours.
The way it was explained to me, was in Italy,
communities protected their own.
So it was like, this is ours. We protect.
When we take that oath, we are told straight out,
Cosa Nostra comes before anything in your life, anything.
They tell you, if your son is dying in bed with cancer,
and he's only got an hour left to live, if we call for you,
you come immediately and leave his side.
You don't go with anybody's wife.
Don't rat. That's the big one.
Don't cooperate with the government.
There's also no drug dealing.
Because it held a stiff sentence
it could possibly put you in a position to cooperate.
Many of them consider what they do almost military in nature.
They consider themselves soldiers.
So they believe when your boss tells you you have to kill somebody,
they feel they're doing the right thing.
That being the case, they get to rationalize
a lot of really bad behavior.
You wouldn't think of calling a soldier in war a murderer,
so therefore, if they're a soldier, and they're at war,
they're not murderers, either.
They're doing this as part of their job.
My father said, "When I took my oath to Cosa Nostra, I gave up everything."
SAMMY: At the ceremony, it was 14 guys.
And one by one, they called us down the basement.
Dim lights. Real smoky.
And when I walked down, there was Paul Castellano.
And Paul asked me, "Do you know that we're a brotherhood?
A secret society?"
He says, "Would you want to belong to this?"
I said yes.
He says, "If we ask you to kill for us, would you?"
I said yes.
And he asked me, "What finger would you pull the trigger?"
And I pointed to my index finger.
There was a picture of a saint on the table.
They pricked my finger to get blood out of it.
Put the blood on the saint.
They put it in my hand, and then they lit it.
And just said, "If you betray this brotherhood,
may your soul burn like this saint."
I really believed in it, with my heart and soul.
And if you listen to the oath, there's honor, there's respect,
there's integrity, there's loyalty.
There's a brotherhood, there's a secret society.
Uh...
And these are words that I wanted to hear.
And that I was totally loyal to.
But unfortunately, none of it is true.
DETECTIVE: Paul Castellano was, until two hours ago,
the head of the largest organized crime family
in the United States of America.
LINDA: New York in the '80s and '90s was a very, very interesting place.
Because, you know, New York was full of great New York characters then.
People that would make the headlines day after day.
I didn't think that somebody like Trump would turn out
to be the president of the United States,
nor did I think that John Gotti would rise to become such a prominent celebrity.
But they did, because New York loves a character.
My father was one of 13 children from the Bronx.
They moved to east New York, Brooklyn, where he set up his roots.
Dirt poor.
My father and his siblings always had to fight their way
to get anything in life.
They had nothing and he strived for great things.
He strived to be something more.
John, you either loved him or hated him.
He was that kind of a lightning rod.
The thing I find most interesting about John Gotti as a character
is that he is a pure gangster.
He strikes me as the type of guy
that there is nothing else he ever wanted to be.
When he decided to become a gangster, he went all the way.
It's almost as if, like, a kid wants to grow up to be president.
REPORTER: Of course, there were fireworks in Ozone Park tonight.
Lots of them. In the air and on the ground.
TERENCE: In Ozone Park, you know, which was in Queens
or right over the Brooklyn/Queens border where John Gotti lived, he was a hero.
CURTIS: On top of the roofs, they had crates of firecrackers,
cherry bombs, M-80s.
And they put on a celebration that almost equaled Macy's.
And everybody's, "Oh, what a great guy."
REPORTER: Your "Thanks, John" hat on. "Thanks, John," who?
-Gotti. Who else? -REPORTER: For what?
For having this big party.
REPORTER: Yeah? Do you know anything about John Gotti?
No. If I did, I wouldn't say anyway.
I think he developed this rep as a Robin Hood,
and a glamorous Robin Hood.
He wasn't living in the forest.
He was wearing, you know, $1,000 suits and getting his hair blown out every day.
And the media fed the beast.
He was a stone-cold killer.
And he attracted men who themselves had a lust for blood.
This guy would have you whacked because you showed up late
for a meeting at the Bergin Hunt, Fish, and Shoot Human Beings Club.
DIANE: Do you remember the first time you met John Gotti?
SAMMY: I was in an after-hour club which had gambling and stuff.
He seemed smart. He seemed nervy. He was a tough guy in the street.
Yeah. He impressed me a little bit.
He knew how to take a punch. He knew how to give a punch.
He wasn't afraid of the cops. He wasn't afraid of anybody.
GEORGE: He was a mobster's mobster.
There was no other career that John Gotti was going to pursue,
and the same could be said for Sammy.
I think that they were both very dangerous men.
I think they were both very tough men.
GEORGE: Sammy's got a strong reputation, known to be reliable,
to get things done.
He was a professional killer, and he caught the eye of John Gotti
right around the same time Gotti was rising up
and assassinated Paul Castellano,
who had been the boss of the Gambino family.
SAMMY: Paul Castellano wasn't a gangster.
He was a racketeer. Brilliant man.
He used to sit in that house in Staten Island
-reading The WSJ and The Times. -DIANE: Big house.
ANTHONY: You know, John Gotti, Sammy, they were street guys.
So they were a different breed than him. He wasn't a gangster.
JOHN M.: Gotti didn't like the way the family was being run by Castellano.
And he also thought, if you kill the boss,
you could take over the family, and then, you could be the boss.
LARRY: When Paul got hit, it was such a shock
to people that are in the inner circle.
Taboo.
A boss was just gunned down in the middle of the street.
I think the Castellano hit, for me, was the first time I realized
how dangerous my father's life was outside the home.
GEORGE: There's an organization within the mob that manages all
of the mob families in the country.
And it was known as "The Commission."
And the five bosses
of the New York families sit on The Commission.
So you'd need the approval of all five, you know, bosses,
would have to agree on something like that.
So they say, "We go to The Commission."
They all sit down. They take a vote.
And then, even if they say no to me, I put my tail between my legs,
and I accept it because it's the dons.
Such nonsense.
Gotti sent his right-hand man, Angelo.
He says, "Sammy", he says, "We're going to take out Paul."
We sent word to John that we were not only going to permit it to happen,
but we were going to join it. We were taking Paul down.
ANTHONY: So John Gotti, he didn't have permission to do that,
but he did it anyway, because he knew, the bottom line was nobody liked Paul.
TOMMY: So they form a crew together that's going to set up the meeting at Sparks.
SAMMY: The next day when we met, they were told, "Don't back off.
Don't run, even if there's cops. Kill them.
And if you-- if it means you have to die there,
then die there with them. Do not back off of this hit."
There were four shooters that actually pulled the trigger.
There were three more backup shooters out on the street.
I got this little map in front of me of Sparks Steak House and the hit.
I planned this hit, now I'm going to tell you how it came down.
Outside of Sparks Steak House, there's two shooters.
They're ready. There's a shooter here. Shooter here.
A shooter here. A shooter here.
The hit guys were all dressed in, like, a white, short trench coat
and black Russian hats.
TOMMY: It was December 16th, 1985.
LINDA: That's when everything changed. In 1985.
SAMMY: Me and John Gotti are parked in the car right here
waiting for them to show up.
This car pulls up right next to me.
It was a Lincoln.
And... I turned around to my right.
The dome light was on, the tinted windows, and Paul was in there.
I leaned down in my chair, and I told John,
I said, "John, they're right next to us."
I pulled out the-- my gun, and I told John,
"If he turns in our direction, I'm going to start shooting,
right here and now."
They never turned. The light changed. They pulled in front of Sparks.
They parked the car. As soon as Paul opened up the door--
These two shooters take out Paul Castellano.
Tommy Bilotti gets out of the car.
These two shooters converge on him.
We pulled next to them. I put the window down slightly.
I looked at Tommy-- he was stretched out in a huge puddle of blood.
I told John, "He's gone."
And even before we got back to my office, it was on the news.
After the shooting, the three gunmen ran that way
towards second avenue and a waiting car.
Police say that Paul Castellano, the reputed head of the Gambino crime family,
and another man were shot and killed.
TOMMY: John Gotti committed the cardinal sin.
He killed the boss without a Commission ruling.
That's like an earthquake in the world of the mob.
Who did it? Why? Who authorized it?
Was it not authorized? And then, who will pay for it?
My mind was going over what happened, what was about to come.
We knew when we did this, we were at war.
We shook the mafia. We shook the state of New York.
We shook the whole world.
REPORTER: They said it was for family only.
The wake tonight for big Paul Castellano.
REPORTER 2: Gotti allegedly wanted to show his respects by coming here,
but instead, preferred to stay away, because of all the undercover cops
in the area who would like to talk to him about the murder of Paul Castellano.
TOMMY: Before the killing of Paul Castellano in 1985, I mean,
no one in New York City knew who John Gotti was.
ANTHONY: John Gotti takes the throne when they kill Paul Castellano.
TOMMY: Eight days later, on Christmas Eve,
more than 200 wise guys or would-be wise guys,
showed up to pay homage to John Gotti at the Ravenite Social Club.
And that was the end of Paul Castellano
and the beginning of John Gotti's reign as boss of the Gambino crime family.
John Gotti was the poster child for organized crime.
He put his face out there.
He drew people into a world that you only seen in movies.
It was as if you called central casting
and said, "Send me a mob boss. I want the modern version of Capone."
He was flashy, and he was always well-groomed, and he like, sported around.
And it was like everything that we learned in The Godfather
that a mafia guy would never do.
I want reliable people,
people that aren't going to be carried away.
My father was probably the most charismatic, intelligent,
handsome tough guy that you'll ever come across in your life.
KAREN: You see him on TV, and he just has this swagger about him.
He almost commanded respect.
JOHN JR: He was, he was over the top.
LINDA: And he was taking full advantage of his celebrity.
MICHAEL: He was dapper. He looked the part.
I mean, if you wanted to hold the mob up and say,
"Hey, this is what we look like," you'd hold up John Gotti.
I think his problem was that he fell in love with himself.
He saw himself on television, in the newspapers,
and he lost touch with what he was, that he's a gangster, not an actor.
At one point I know back in New York City,
John Gotti was posing for pictures with tourists.
He said, "This is my public. My public."
From my teaching and my understanding of Cosa Nostra, it's a secret society.
We have no public.
DIANE: What about his life, the way he lived?
SAMMY: He used to leave his house about 11:00, 12:00 in the afternoon.
REPORTER: Good morning, Mr. Gotti.
SAMMY: He had somebody picking out his shirt and his tie and his shoes.
He used to have a barber come every single day
and give him a haircut.
You guys and Giuliani should be in church.
SAMMY: ...and cut the hairs in his nose.
It was a performance for the media, or people who were going to see him.
GEORGE: So John Gotti was a guy, when he was done with his business,
he'd go out gallivanting all night long
into the early hours of every night during the week.
Sammy Gravano's going back home to his family.
The personalities were a little bit different.
John's first care was the Gambino family, not the John Gotti personal family.
Sammy kind of split it.
He was very, very loyal to the Gambino family,
but his personal family was equally important to him.
SAMMY: This is me and my wife.
And here's a picture of me, my wife, and my son on our farm.
This farm was gorgeous.
This was something that I literally got away from the mob
and went to this farm and chilled out with my family.
It was like really living, uh... two lives.
About a year or after we were married, we had my daughter, Karen.
A couple of years after that, we had my son, Gerard.
I knew my father was respected, and a lot of people looked up to him
but he never came home and spoke about what he used to do on the streets.
Growing up, all my memories were great.
I had a great life.
You know, I grew up very family oriented.
There was parties. There was a lot of family around me.
GERARD: Growing up, I feel like he was home most of the times,
5:00, 6:00 for dinner.
We'd all sit down. Dinner would be ready. My mother was there. My sister was there.
It was really just a normal life for me.
KAREN: I'd never seen the Sammy the Bull that the world knows.
I'd never seen the dangerous side or, you know, him being so powerful.
To me, he was my father.
I think I'm two people sometimes. I live a family life, and I'm a gangster.
KAREN: I know my mother's experience.
She wanted the white picket fence, and the house,
and the backyard with the dogs running around.
But she loved her husband.
And she loved him for the way he loved us, her kids.
ANGEL: The wives took care of the family. Okay?
They took care of everything and anything to do with the home.
Most men were married, had a wife, family,
and then they also had the girlfriend, the goumada.
I was a girlfriend.
I had said once, "Where families are involved, you have to become a liar.
You have to."
ANGEL: They were off doing all this illegal stuff,
and the wife just thought, you know, he was just off doing his thing.
KAREN: I think-- I would be a liar if I said she didn't know.
She just knew not to ask questions, because his life was so,
you know, separate outside.
He never dumped his lifestyle on us, so she was able to look away.
Some women close their eyes to things.
They don't want to hear it. They don't want to know.
I think a lot of it was, "Oh, look at this beautiful ring I got.
Oh, I'm getting a fur coat."
And for a lot of people, being wealthy and having whatever you want
is worth whatever it is that you don't want to know.
I didn't even realize my father was in the mafia until probably 1990.
As far as I was concerned,
my father was in the construction business.
Why would I talk about what I do with a kid?
I'm doing murders.
What am I going to do, come home, sit down at the table,
"Hey, you know who I killed today? Joe Blow. You won't see him no more."
(laughs) I mean, I can't do that. Right?
As my father rose in the mob, you know, he wanted to try out,
I guess, bigger and better things.
And he wanted to move to Todt Hill. He found a beautiful home.
I hated Todt Hill. I hated living there.
We grew up in Bulls Head, in Staten Island.
KAREN: Todt Hill was very different than Bulls Head,
and one of the kids told my brother that we weren't allowed to come in the house
because of who my father was.
They didn't want my kids playing with their kids because I was a gangster.
I walked right down the block to the house, and I rang the bell.
And I said, "Is your husband home?" "Who are you?"
"I'm Sammy the Bull.
I'm the guy that your (bleep) kids are not allowed to play with."
A guy came to the door. "I never said that. I never did that."
"Bro, are you a good dad to your kids?"
"Yeah, yeah." "What if they didn't have a dad?
You think this is going to end good for you?"
He was, I think, petrified.
And it woke me up because I said, "What the (bleep) are you doing?"
They're legitimate people.
This guy is (bleep) in his pants right now.
And I left.
KAREN: My father halted construction on the house.
He sold it and we moved right back to Bulls Head.
He wanted us to be around people that we're used to,
that we're you know, we're like them.
Even though I had a lot of friends there, we were still different in their eyes.
My father was a gangster.
There is a lot of collateral damage.
You have to live it, and see it,
and maybe take the step to talk about it.
There's a message. There's a message.
I forget how big of a deal John Gotti is to people.
My relationship with him was, like, you know, he was the boss.
I knew him when he was just a young guy.
Before you were born, I would take your brother
to the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, and he would jump on John,
and pull his tie and everything.
And John used to laugh and, you know, because you knew him.
So, you know, people ask me, "Oh, he was a killer, and he was this,
and he was that." Yeah, they were all that.
But you know what? They loved me. And I loved them.
ED: The press was totally fascinated by Gotti after he took over the family.
So many times, you'd see Gotti walking down Mulberry Street
to the Ravenite Club, which was their headquarters.
And Sammy the Bull would be, invariably, with him.
And John Gotti was so enamored of Sammy the Bull
that he made him his underboss.
Me and John ran the family.
It was me and him against the world.
So you would go to shake Sammy's hand, and he would go like this.
And he wouldn't.
Because you had to shake John's hand first because John was the boss.
You could tell by the body language that they were very close.
They spoke with their heads close together.
They whispered to each other.
John Gotti trusted him implicitly.
John had Sammy to make sure
that what John wanted done in the family got done.
He would deal with the other families, and manage or negotiate disputes.
He would oversee the hits that had to be ordered.
Within the Gambino crime family, Sammy was looked at as smart
because he had companies, and legitimate businesses,
and he made money.
ANTHONY: Sammy had all the construction, state contracts, city contracts.
I mean, they were making money on a scale like millions upon millions of dollars.
SAMMY: I literally marvel at the sight of Manhattan when I see it,
because I controlled it. I literally controlled Manhattan.
When I see it at night, those lights, and everything about it,
I think of Donald Trump, and everybody else who couldn't
build a building if I didn't want them to build it.
That got me off.
Plus I made a lot of money with it.
I think the most fascinating thing about Sammy the Bull, to me,
is that if he had not become a gangster, I think he would have been
an incredibly successful businessman.
He could spot something that was making money.
He could spot the vulnerability where the threat of force,
and the hand of the mob could reach in there and exploit that.
He had a pretty good way of instilling fear in people.
He has 19 murders chalked up to his record.
How far did your tentacles reach in the businesses?
Everything. Everything. You name it, we did it.
The garment industry, what you pay for your clothes,
there's a tack on for us.
An extra dollar on a window, gas a penny a gallon.
I remember hearing $4 put on for every pair of jeans.
MICHAEL: Garbage, we controlled it.
Restaurants, bartenders, and waitresses, we controlled it.
The unions, the teamsters.
Transportation, trucking industry. The waterfront.
KAREN: Whatever it was in buildings that were being built
in New York City and the surrounding areas,
the mob had some sort of involvement.
And my father was the go-to guy.
How much money was the Gambino family taking in?
I couldn't even imagine it.
I was making a couple of million a year.
I had a house on Staten Island worth about a half a mil.
I had a 30-acre horse farm in New Jersey.
I had a little 560SEL Mercedes. So I was living pretty decent.
Were there signs?
Yeah, my father would come home, like, I would help him count the cash.
Like, he had wads of cash.
He would empty them out on the kitchen table, and I would help him.
That would be like my job.
SAMMY: John was making, uh...
I would say anywhere between $5 and $20 million a year.
We raped the community on a constant basis
in every way, shape, or form.
What did you say to yourselves? When you're doing this to other people?
What do we say to ourselves while we're at the table
cutting up the money?
We didn't say too much. We'd just cut up the money.
It was-- it was for greed.
There's no honor in a lot of things that we do.
NARRATOR: (from "Wiseguy") "Violence was natural to them. It fueled them.
The common knowledge that they would unquestionably take a life
ironically gave them life.
If they were crossed, denied, offended, thwarted in any way,
or even mildly annoyed, retribution was demanded.
And violence was their answer."
We killed amongst ourselves in-- according to our rules.
I never killed a legitimate person.
I never woke up one morning saying, "I'd like to go kill somebody."
It was for what you did.
And most of the times, you did something that you deserve to die for.
So I don't have no mercy for you, really.
CURTIS: Most times they end up shooting their own
because who are you hanging out with most of the time?
You're in the social club with your own guys.
You hear all the gossip.
This guy did this, this guy didn't--
Then all of a sudden you want to go out and settle all scores.
You think, hey, you're a tough guy.
Very often in the mob, murder is very personal.
It's people you know.
I mean, they always say, the guy who will get you
is your best friend, because that's the person who can make you
comfortable enough to show up at that meeting where you'll get killed.
So, Louis Milito was actually Gravano's best childhood friend.
KAREN: Not only someone that I considered my father's friend,
but he was an uncle to me.
I was around him a lot as a child growing up.
His family-- he was Cosa Nostra, like my father.
DEENA: I said, "Uncle Sammy, I haven't talked to my father in two days,
and he didn't go to work. Is something wrong?"
He said, "Oh, princess, he's fine. He's fine."
I said, "I don't know where he is, and it's just strange."
And her mother said, when Sammy walked out,
"He killed your father." Her mother knew.
DIANE: And you felt nothing then either?
Oh, I absolutely felt something. Tore me up.
I knew the wife. I knew the children. It killed me inside.
DEENA: My father was a wonderful man.
Just the way he used to hold me, and the way we'd laugh together.
Just his smile.
There was nothing I could do to stop the hit.
It was done quick. It was over, and it killed me.
You cannot possibly expect me to believe
that killing my father was one of the hardest things he had to do.
I don't buy it for a day.
But this is the life.
He betrayed us, and he was caught at it, and he was killed.
DEENA: My father's remains have never been found.
DIANE: You are the single most important witness ever to testify against the mob.
I think I am.
This guy was a greedy, green-eyed little monster.
John is a double crosser. I'm a master double crosser.
We played chess, and he lost.
He's a rat.
He ate the Parmesan cheese.
SAMMY: This is the true side of the mafia.
This isn't somebody talking about the mafia.
I am part of it.
♪♪
KAREN: "Oh, my God, your father's 'Sammy the Bull,'
can we get an autograph?"
GERARD: He didn't come home and tell me the details.
I knew he killed a few people.
KAREN: He's like, "19."
I'm like, okay, I didn't think it was-- you know, that was lot.
My father was the 19th victim of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
DIANE: You got it done.
Oh, I got the job done.
ED: He was a professional killer
and he caught the eye of John Gotti.
KAREN: It's clear that John was setting my father up.
SAMMY: I look at it as, I was betrayed,
I betrayed him.
He just looked at me and he said, "I'm gonna cooperate with the government."
That was everything that I was taught never to do.
♪♪
He's a rat!
He ate the Parmesan cheese.
Whoa!
JOHN M.: He became the most famous mob witness in history.
♪♪
SAMMY: They could hug you, they could kiss you,
they could smile, and they could shoot you in the (bleep) head.
(gunshot)
He's got 19 murders, but at least nine lives.
♪♪
LAURA: Is he sorry?
Is he remorseful?
Where are his amends?
I've experienced everything that that lifestyle has brought upon my family,
whether it's heartache, happiness, betrayal,
I've experienced it all.
♪ Happy birthday ♪
For my Sweet 16, my father had it at a very well-known "gangster" hangout.
And when I was first introduced to John Gotti,
I walked over and my father said, "Say hello to Uncle John."
And I said hello to Uncle John, and he gave me an envelope
and in the envelope was, you know, ten $100 bills.
My father chose an untraditional path.
He chose a career that, you know, most people don't choose
but, you know, I wish that we could have had different.
But we don't.
A lot of families, they said were affected by the mafia, and they were.
I don't think we were.
We became-- we were in a way, in one way.
KAREN: Right.
In another way, it made us tighter
and that you guys understood me and what was going on.
I mean, I don't-- I don't--
I do disagree with you with that
because I think that every family was affected in a way.
Um, we were definitely affected but it's how people deal with the effect,
how people deal with the aftermath.
I've come to understand fully that there's two sides to people.
So they think that the mafia, you look at them, they're all animals.
No, it's not so.
KAREN: The men that were involved in my father's lives,
they weren't gangsters to me.
They were my uncles, they were people I loved.
People that I felt would take care of me and protect me.
Cosa Nostra is our thing.
It's everything you've seen in The Godfather.
It's-- It's all true.
You spend time with your family?
Sure, I do.
Good.
Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
It's about family, but it's also about control and power.
All male dominated.
There's no-- there's nobody female in the mafia.
Never was-- Not in the Italian one, anyway.
Never will be.
There's no doubt The Godfather was the greatest mob movie of all time.
It elevated the status of that life.
I mean, look, Don Corleone, the way he carried himself,
guys on the street started to carry themselves differently
because of The Godfather.
KAREN: You see a lot of family culture when they have the big Italian weddings.
♪♪
I mean, it was just-- everything was over the top
and everything centered around food and family
and music at that time.
You know, Frank Sinatra was very big.
♪♪
Well, I think that The Godfather changed everybody's perception of the mafia.
Before that, they were just considered low-life thugs
and Italians in general were looked down upon.
Then The Godfather told a different story and glamorized it.
Here was this saint-like figure, Marlon Brando,
the head of the Corleone family.
He was like ready for beatification.
"Hey, Pope, you forgot this guy, you know,
He's entitled to sainthood."
When they were all what we would call "un animales,"
although that's really not saying much about the animal world that we live in.
They're sub animales, the worst.
ANTHONY: That's the first time I went to prison.
I'm Toni Lee Ruggiano, I'm the daughter of Anthony Ruggiano Jr.
and the granddaughter of "Fat Andy" Ruggiano.
When I was little, I knew my dad as an inmate.
I knew that he loved me, and like,
I knew that he cared about us as a family, like, I knew him in pieces.
Look at this picture... who's that?
What does that bring back?
This was my favorite video to watch when I was little.
I used to watch it on repeat.
I used to be obsessed with my parents' wedding video.
I literally would watch it multiple times a day.
I had it memorized, every single song that played in it,
how his face looked when he walked down the aisle,
um, the way he looked at my mom.
Like, it was just-- looked like such a happy celebration.
Brother was there dancing and like, you know, being goofy.
-ANTHONY: You were there, too. [laughs]
Yes, mom was pregnant with me.
And I think it was just a way for me to see you as well,
outside of like, in a different--
Like, I would have watched any video with you in it
to see like, how you interact with other people,
how you interact outside of jail, you know?
This Cosa Nostra, this whole life, affects the kids,
the parents, the wives.
It's-- It's far-reaching, the effects.
Every day of your life when you're in that life,
you're violating the laws of man and the laws of God.
That's it.
That's it, and anybody that tries to sugarcoat it
is just not telling the truth.
He didn't come home and tell me the details.
I knew he killed a few people.
As far as I'm concerned, they deserved it.
I would have done anything for him and my family.
I'm just always fascinated by the ability of people to--
to completely divorce themselves from the dark reality
of the consequences of their actions.
If you're in the mob and you're a killer, you actually desensitize yourself
to even who the victim was, because often they're very close to you.
When I hear the story of Sammy and his brother-in-law,
you know, a family member?
Listen, I can tell you this, if I was put in that position,
I couldn't do it-- I wouldn't do it.
When you talk about killing a best friend or a brother-in-law like Sammy had to do,
I don't know that the reasons are there to justify it,
but in that life,
there's been how many murders over the years and none of them were right.
-Nick Scibetta. -That was my wife's brother.
That was another one that killed me.
For 14 years, I mean, going back-- or whatever time passed--
I mean, to see my wife, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, people...
It just tore me up.
Did you tell them, did they know?
No, what do you want me to do?
Go home and tell them, "I just killed your son?"
Or your brother?
No, of course not.
-They didn't suspect? -SAMMY: No.
Your wife didn't suspect? No.
When did she find out?
When I told the government of everything I've done.
Did she say something?
I think she was in a little bit of shock over it
but she really didn't say too much about it.
DIANE: A little bit of shock?
Sammy rationalized those 19 murders irrespective of who the victim was.
They were in the mob, they knew what they were doing when they broke the rules,
they knew what the penalty was, I just happened to enforce the penalty.
They committed suicide.
Would I be willing right now to say I wouldn't do that,
even though it would cost me my life back then?
No, (bleep) no.
No.
What you do-- I'm not giving up my life that easy, because of what you did.
So I'm gonna break the golden rule
and I'm gonna get whacked for what you did?
Why?
You did it.
You deserve to die, not me.
I didn't do it.
I'm not in his head and his heart and his mind,
but, uh, you got to have something, man, inside of you
to be able to do something like that, and it's not a good thing.
John barked, I bit.
And a lot of people knew that.
DIANE: You got it done?
I got the job done.
And if he'd said...
"Kill your son."
My son?
I probably would've fought on that one.
There's no way I would've killed my son.
I would've died with him or I would've died trying or--
There's no way.
PRESIDENT REAGAN: For many years, we have tolerated in America,
a syndicate of organized criminals
whose power is now reaching unparalleled heights.
WOMAN: The government says John Gotti is a cold-blooded killer.
Perhaps the most ruthless and powerful mob boss in America.
This guy was the absolute worst guy to take over organized crime
because he talked like a yenta.
You guys and Giuliani should be in church.
Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
Gossip, gossip, gossip.
Thank you.
Gotti took the underworld and put it out for the world.
CURTIS: Meantime, the FBI is following him.
SAMMY: They had surveillance.
All they had to do was sit across the street, set up some cameras
and just video this thing nonstop.
GEORGE: John, especially once he ascended to being the boss,
he made everybody come and really kind of kowtowed to him.
That made the Ravenite Social Club a key target
for me as the investigator in that case.
The Ravenite had been a well-known Gambino social club in Mulberry street.
The Ravenite club was an exclusive club,
and guys would play cards and drink coffee.
It was like being allowed into the, you know,
one of the private clubs in New York City, except this was a club of mobsters.
MICHAEL: Their social clubs were really our headquarters.
They were our safe havens, the place we hung out,
the place we held court.
GEORGE: The whole family had to show up at the Ravenite on a weekly basis.
John, he was there five nights a week.
He brought captains and made guys down there,
told them how to dress and how to act.
He would tell you how to dress?
Yes.
Basically, he would tell guys to wear suits and shirts and ties,
and this and that.
You know, walking into a restaurant,
John Gotti with 14 guys all dressed to the hilt is what he wanted.
CURTIS: There were so many things that you had to do
to show you were one of them.
But if you wanted to hang with them, you had to look like them.
LARRY: This is my good luck pinky ring.
They would have their drink, and they would be sipping it like that,
so their pinky would be out.
It was all show, all a look.
Gangsters made double-breasted pinstriped suits popular.
We wore expensive watches.
It's a Rolex, it's a Presidential.
And naturally, you had to have the chains.
You know, like, 52 crucifixes
which probably represented all the people you killed.
Burgundy... matches the burgundy tux.
Every culture has their thing,
and I think in the Italian mob culture, they exuded power.
SAMMY: I don't think any of the old timers would believe that Cosa Nostra
was to be run like this in any way, shape or form.
You know, power has a way where you can believe, after awhile,
you can walk on water.
TOMMY: Sammy told them, "tone it down, don't have everybody coming here"
It was supposed to be a secret thing, you know.
Guys go meet-- you know, go meet on the "B" train somewhere
or the "R" train and talk.
That's the way you're supposed to do it.
SAMMY: I would tell him, John, there's the whole government sitting outside the club.
There's news people wandering around outside.
What are we doing here?
He would just shut you up and say, "No, no, no.
I'll show you, watch.
I'll show you how to beat cases."
He showed us real good.
When you're the boss of a crime family
and you're on the cover of Time Magazine
in a caricature painted by Andy Warhol, you're bringing heat on yourself.
That's a given.
But by extension, you're bringing heat on the other families, too.
You're supposed to be invisible.
He made my job easier.
He introduced me to that whole family.
KAREN: Was he supposed to be out there like that?
Was he supposed to give the whole mob
on a silver platter to the FBI?
WOMAN: The FBI and New York State's organized crime task force
set a trap for Gotti.
GEORGE: So the whole strategy was to put bugs where John was having
his most secret conversations,
where he was gonna talk the most about the criminal conduct.
The best places wound up being the Ravenite,
and then the apartment above the Ravenite.
JOHN M.: That bug is the mother lode.
Because now you have the boss, the underboss, and the senior advisor.
Basically the administration of the Gambino crime family,
having a board meeting about what to do about various problems.
Everybody would warn him, "Hey, don't have a sit-down in that room.
It's wired up like a Christmas tree."
"Yeah, I'm impervious, they can't touch me.
Like MC Hammer, 'You Can't Touch This'."
ED: We're able to pick up conversations about labor racketeering, it turned out.
But invariably, when you're in the inner sanctums of the mafia dons,
the mafia bosses, they were talking about murders.
This was John.
He thinks he could say anything he wants.
And you start talking about murders on the phone.
GEORGE: He was the best witness I ever had,
and he couldn't dispute anything, because it was his voice coming off the tapes.
Listening to the Gotti tapes, it's clear John was setting my father up.
In other words, poor John Gotti.
He lost control of Sammy "The Bull."
He's killing people.
He wasn't gonna take the fall for John.
And I guess his other option was to kill him.
How would you have done it? How could you?
Me and Frankie would've just went in, started stabbing to the body,
and I would've cut his throat.
And, uh, it would've been over.
The reputed mob leader John Gotti was acquitted on assault charges.
WOMAN: Extortion, loan sharking, racketeering, bribing witnesses.
MAN: We find him not guilty.
CROWD: Yay!
MAN: John Gotti walked out of court today still a free man.
Three times police have brought charges against Gotti
and three times he has beaten the rap.
Well, John was known as the "Teflon Don" because the cases that he beat.
I mean, he was indicted several times, but nothing stuck to him.
Every charge that the government charged him with wouldn't stick--
Teflon-- so "Teflon Don."
MAN: Hey, John, you gonna beat it?
No, no.
He never beat the system.
Sammy "The Bull" was fixing the trial.
I was reaching jurors...
and bribing them.
And he didn't win the trial fair and square.
I rigged the whole trial.
TERENCE: I think the dynamic between John Gotti and Sammy "The Bull"
was always interesting to me because I think it was
a begrudging respect that Sammy seemed to have for John Gotti.
He respected the rules, respected the fact that John Gotti was the boss,
but I suspect that Sammy thought he probably could have done that job better.
GEORGE: John starts recognizing that everybody knows and respects Sammy.
He's the guy interacting with everybody.
That becomes a threat to the boss because now all of a sudden,
I can be replaced by this guy and we don't miss a beat, right?
KAREN: So, that's when my father and John started to really fall out on the street.
You can't be jealous of your own teammate or it's gonna crumble.
And that's exactly what happened, it crumbled.
JOHN JR.: I believe it was December 11, 1990.
We just left the Ravenite,
It was all over the radio that John Gotti was just indicted.
I remember it very vividly.
I was watching the news and there he and Gotti
were on TV being arrested. (laughs)
I was like, "Whoa!"
Wow!
I said, you know, it may be a matter of time
when this all goes down badly.
I think the demise between them came at the first day of arraignments
when they played the tapes and Sammy heard all the diverse things
that John was saying about him.
He was trying to convince people that my father was a loose cannon.
ANTHONY: On the tapes, John was making all kinds of derogatory comments about Sammy.
That every time he kills somebody, he takes over their business.
He wants to kill this guy, he wants to kill that guy.
So John, more or less, was throwing Sammy under the bus.
In case he ever got arrested, Sammy would, you know, take the weight.
JOHN JR.: That was the Gravano conversation.
That was the worst of all the tapes.
My father tells him, "Look, if I have any more complaints about you,
I'm gonna have to deal with it."
From that moment on, Sammy walked with two feet in one shoe.
That was the reason for that conversation, in all fairness to my father,
that was the reason for that conversation.
And I realized that John, probably eventually, would take me out
for no other reason but he wants one show, one boss-- John Gotti.
He don't want anybody to be his equal.
He don't want anybody in any way, shape or form, to shine.
And I guess I was shining too much.
You make it sound like high school.
Yeah, but the only thing is that in high school,
you could throw a spit ball at somebody.
We use bullets.
Sammy thought at first, "Well, I'll just kill him in prison."
But then he said, "Well, but then I'll be spending the rest of my life in prison.
So killing him is not gonna bring me any satisfaction."
How would you have done it? How could you?
We could have got some, what they call shanks,
knives in prison, homemade knives.
Me and Frankie would've just went in,
Frankie would've started stabbing to the body and I would've cut his throat.
And, uh, it would've been over.
ANGEL: He thought about his family and he said,
"The only thing I can do is give the government what they really want,
give him John Gotti on a silver platter."
So that's what he did.
GEORGE: Within a year of them being in jail,
we get word that Sammy wants to cooperate.
It was November 8, 1991-- he flipped.
And the day Gravano became a rat, it changed our lives.
Because he's been around a lot of years
and he knew a lot of secrets about a lot of different people.
Sammy had the business mind.
"There is an opportunity here for me to continue living a life
a little more normal than spending it behind jail for the rest of my life."
JOHN JR: Gravano never did one day in jail in his life.
That was his first time being incarcerated.
He didn't like it.
My father was disappointed in himself.
He knew he should have never brought that guy into the inner circle.
At that point it became a reality, that he made a horrible mistake.
The day my father told me that he was gonna cooperate
probably was the worst day of my life.
That was everything that I was taught never to do.
It was almost like as if he'd just stabbed me in the heart.
I felt betrayed.
And she ran out, crying.
I came close to not doing it.
It killed me to see her that way.
After he did cooperate, I just-- I didn't want no part of him.
Because my own people that I grew up with, that I trusted, that I loved,
they were told that they couldn't hang out with me anymore.
That's the one time that I can honestly say
that I ever felt rejection and it affected me.
GEORGE: He contacted me and said, you know,
"I think I'm gonna have to pull the deal."
And I looked at him and said, "What are you talking about?"
He goes, "I have a problem with my daughter.
She's adamantly opposed to me taking this deal.
If she can't go along with this, this isn't happening."
KAREN: When we had that meeting in Quantico
and we sat down and I came out there, I didn't know anything.
-Not one thing. -SAMMY: Right.
Well, then I was forced to.
Now we're dealing with a situation where there's a life or death situation now.
-Right. -SAMMY: This isn't a game.
When you cooperate, there can be people getting killed
and all kinds of (bleep) going on.
Some of the people you're gonna be dealing with,
they could hug you, they could kiss you, they could smile,
and they could shoot you in the (bleep) head.
I had already known, a week before my father told me he was gonna cooperate
but it didn't break to the world yet.
So I got on the plane with them and they took us to Virginia,
which is FBI headquarters.
And he sat there and told me, "You know, things are gonna come out."
And I'm like, okay.
He's like, "About murder."
Okay.
He's like, 19.
I'm like, okay, I didn't think it was-- you know, that was lot.
But, um, I didn't question him, I just listened.
And when I left the room that day, I still wasn't on board.
I told him I will never be on board with this.
GEORGE: We had to have a couple of conversations to convince her,
to be able make that deal go through.
So that left a real impression on me, just how important his family was.
MAN: Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
For years, he claims he was John Gotti's hitman.
But now his Target is John Gotti himself.
LARRY: When it hit the papers that Sammy flipped,
there wasn't a person in that life that wasn't totally shocked by it.
He's a rat!
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
Sammy Gravano has killed 19 people.
His five-page government agreement calls for him to testify
in exchange for a 20-year prison term.
DEENA: This man took away our fathers.
There's so many things that I've missed
about my dad through the years.
My father won't be at my daughter's wedding.
My father can't come over my house for Sunday dinner.
There's so much I miss about my father not being here.
I'm Laura Garofalo, my father was Eddie Garofalo,
the 19th victim of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
He was in construction, demolition, excavation.
In the course of doing business in New York in the construction world,
there was that underworld element.
It was very hard for my father to function because
so much of the construction industry had a stranglehold from the mob
and so much of it then was controlled by Gravano.
So because my father wouldn't comply, he paid with his life.
He was crossing the street to walk to his car
and two cars full of guys opened fire on him and killed him.
TOMMY: The only way organized crime exists---
there's only one reason it exists-- and that's on intimidation.
Because if you tell me to do something and I'm not intimidated or afraid of you,
then what's the repercussions of me not doing what you're asking me to do?
REPORTER: Mr. Gotti, what do you think about the Times' report
that they're preparing new charges against you?
My father's prosecution was a win-at-all-costs prosecution.
He was facing five murders.
All in all, it was 13 counts.
The prosecutors in the Eastern district wanted the head of Gotti so badly
that they made a deal with Gravano.
He was Gotti's right hand.
He was the underboss of the Gambino crime family.
This is the United States Department of Justice and the rule of law
against the most famous gangster in America and the mob.
The deal he got was a maximum penalty of 20 years,
which he got five years sentenced.
JOHN M.: Sammy's a survivor.
He's got, like, 19 murders, but at least nine lives.
LAURA: I mean, it was shocking, it was absolutely shocking.
People do more time for one murder-- this is 19.
It was one more scam.
It was one more scheme.
He knew that there was nobody else in the world
that the government wanted more than John Joseph Gotti.
JOHN M.: Why did Sammy flip?
Well, Sammy's a hustler.
While everybody was looking at one angle, he was looking at three other angles.
Sammy Gravano flipped because Sammy Gravano is a self-centered man.
And when he got to prison, the reality, his needs became far greater.
He couldn't do not one more day in prison and he wasn't going to.
DIANE: So there's a word that you use for people who turn, right?
Mm-hmm.
-Who cooperate. -DIANE: Yeah.
Are you trying to goat me into the word?
-"Rat," is that the word? -DIANE: That's the word.
Are you a rat?
If that's the term you'd like to use.
I don't look at myself as that.
I look at it as-- I was betrayed, I betrayed him.
That's what the mob is.
DIANE: Double-crosser?
SAMMY: John's the double-crosser.
I'm a master double-crosser.
We played chess, and he lost.
MAN: Here in New York, the government's top mob witness
has begun testifying in the trial of reputed crime boss John Gotti.
Everybody in that room is waiting for one witness and one witness only.
SAMMY: I was real nervous about testifying.
I'll never forget walking through the door,
when the door opened and then I came out,
you couldn't hear anything.
I mean, the only thing I heard was my own heart pumping away.
JOHN M.: He proved to be an outstanding witness.
"Who was the boss of that family?" "It was John Gotti."
"Do you see John Gotti in this courtroom?"
"Yes, he's right there."
And, you know, eye contact is made.
It's like there's laser beams that go across between the two.
He had this icy glare...
that he was staring at me, to try to, I guess, intimidate me with.
It didn't work.
JOHN M.: I think he must have been on the stand for nine days, direct testimony,
and then brutal cross-examination, which he was unflappable for.
There was more to come, but you also knew the case was over.
MAN: It took six years and four trials, but today,
federal prosecutors got a guilty verdict against John Gotti.
My father, John Gotti, was found guilty on all counts.
I wasn't shocked by the outcome of the case,
but the reality now set in that he wasn't invincible.
The Teflon is gone, The Don is covered with Velcro
and every charge in the indictment stuck.
MAN: In New York today, the crime boss, John Gotti,
has been sentenced to life in prison with no parole.
When the word comes out that Gotti's been sentenced to life without parole...
(crowd chanting)
...the crowd storms the front of the courthouse.
JOHN JR: It was supposed to be a peaceful rally and it turned into a riot.
JOHN M.: They're rocking the U.S. Marshals' cars in front,
smashing the roofs and kicking in the windshields.
And there's literally a riot going on about the outrage
that he should be sent to jail.
And you start to realize just how upside down the world had become.
LAWYER: I said it in the court, I say it here:
our country is sick to the core
if it is willing to pay for testimony, by literally,
absolving a person of 19 confessed murders.
My father is the last of the Mohicans.
They don't make men like him anymore, and they never will.
JOHN M.: We live in a society that romanticizes those loners
who go up against authority.
DIANE: They have said you are the single most important witness
ever to testify against the mob.
I think I am.
An underboss is the highest position who's ever cooperated.
But I think I'm in a position of being
the most knowledgeable underboss who's cooperated.
Sammy helped me shut out the rest of the family,
and bosses and underbosses of the other families.
I think we totaled over 38 convictions.
He arguably led to the demise of organized crime in New York.
JOHN M: Making the deal with Gravano did not come without criticism.
There was blow back from the family members of people that he killed.
LAURA: The feeling was us against the behemoth.
What do we do? We have no recourse.
They said this was okay.
They wrapped him in the American flag and they sent him off.
SAMMY: It was a great deal.
Five years for 19 murders, can't beat that.
DEENA: And from that day forward,
he continues to be pardoned for the things that he has done.
JOHN M.: When he got out in the witness protection program
under his new identity,
he's living in a town outside of Phoenix.
He's got a book out.
So, he's breaking all the rules and he's making all the money.
There were laws in the place, the "Son of Sam" law,
which protected us from him profiting from his life of crime.
How could a guy who admitted to killing 19 people profit from that?
How can he write a book?
And we went ahead, filed in Arizona.
So, you know, we were vindicated.
It's funny, because in the end, Sammy's always Sammy.
CURTIS: His son comes home one day and says, "Dad, dad,
these kids, they're buying this Molly and Ecstasy like no tomorrow."
And what does he do?
Rather than go back a changed man to say,
"Hey, I'm a different guy... I found the Lord..."
he goes back and he schemes all over again.
Former mafia hitman, Salvatore "Sammy The Bull" Gravano
has been arrested in Phoenix, Arizona.
Police say Gravano financed a statewide narcotics ring.
GERARD: Growing up, people expected me to be violent.
People expected me to live up to my father's reputation.
I got arrested once or twice growing up.
I wanted to do certain things and go out and make him proud.
It was just the allure of being, you know, of being bad.
-I never wanted that life for you. - And I know that.
You didn't come home and talk about what you did on the streets--
And there's a reason for that.
I didn't want to inspire you to the life, make you look up to the life.
Yeah, but you knew I wasn't gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or something like that.
We don't have to be doctors and we don't have to be lawyers.
We could be anything.
I think, in an Italian people,
we always want our kids to be better than us and do more than us.
Famously in The Godfather,
Don Corleone was very upset when Michael came home from the army
and then ultimately ended up in the family business.
What's bothering you?
I told you I can handle it, I'll handle it.
I never wanted this for you.
When you have a famous parent, you become a part of that famous parent
Doors open to you everywhere.
But the stress is tremendous because
there's only one person like your father.
You're living under that shadow from the time you're born.
KAREN: After my father cooperated,
my mother moved to Arizona with my brother and I later followed.
CURTIS: The guy ended up going into the witness protection program.
He's out in North Phoenix,
he's installing pools out in the open, his family has a restaurant.
I was still angry.
Me and my father weren't in a good place.
Everything that happened in Arizona, it was like I was hung up on a lifestyle
that I couldn't let go because I didn't understand.
I was hurt at the time and I was confused.
My kids were devastated by my cooperation.
They had to leave, they were belittled,
They were just-- they shrunk to nothing.
KAREN: At the time, he had wrote a book.
His book was a New York Times bestseller and everybody became interested.
I land in Arizona and these people are like,
"Oh, my God, your father's 'Sammy the Bull,'
can we get an autograph?"
We kind of let the wrong people around us.
And I wanted to join them
because I felt like being bad is when you gain respect.
He was already a very well-known gangster and, of course, they sought him out
and got to him through his son.
I just made poor decisions, my brother made poor decisions.
And, um, at the time, we were involved in some Ecstasy deals.
GERARD: Everybody I was running around with
was telling everyone that had two ears,
that this was Sammy "The Bull's" Ecstasy ring.
That's all it took.
Former mafia hitman, Salvatore "Sammy The Bull" Gravano
has been arrested in Phoenix, Arizona.
Police say Gravano financed a statewide narcotics ring that sold the drug Ecstasy.
Sammy "The Bull" always with his beak in the trough said,
"Hey, what are these-- what do these kids out here know?"
I'm caught.
My son's in it, my daughter's in it.
I become the focus of the thing and it doubles and quadruples
in stature and everything.
So... I'm an Ecstasy King.
Sammy's explanation was that he was actually trying to help them,
extricate themselves from that.
You got to say, well, was he really trying to help his family
or is this the Sammy Gravano story, which is,
"It wasn't me, it was my children.
I was just trying to be the good guy."
It's kind of what he said about Gotti.
GEORGE: He was able to make a deal to save them
and take the brunt of the punishment.
JOHN M.: His son gets sentenced to nine years.
His daughter and his wife are sentenced to probation.
He did 20 years for trying to save my life.
Most fathers, I think-- I hope-- would do that for their son.
But that's a heavy burden I live with, even though--
Don't let it be a heavy burden.
I did what I'm supposed to do as a man.
Don't carry no burden.
But realize how much I love you.
Let's not make mistakes no more, they're done.
The life is done.
I got to take that responsibility that it did trickle down,
what I did hurt them.
So we all (bleep) up, don't live with guilt.
We're going forward.
You made mistakes, I made mistakes.
Everybody makes mistakes.
And I'm proud of you.
You're a man's man.
You've got four kids, and, uh, and you're a man.
I just hope I can leave the same impression on my kids.
You will.
SAMMY: I was the underboss of the most powerful crime family in American history.
I was respected, loved, dedicated, and feared.
Now look at Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, he has a podcast,
he's battling with Michael Franzese, the son of Sonny Franzese,
the stone-cold killer in the Colombo family.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
No, yeah-- no, do you?
So instead of shooting at one another, they battle on podcasts.
Stop, your-- you're talking like a clown right now.
It's crazy!
I'm retired now, I'm 76, March I'll be 77.
The podcast is going good, we just put out a few more episodes.
JOHN JR.: Anyone saying anything in New York?
KAREN: They watch it, they see it.
I mean, listen, one thing about daddy,
whether people like him or they don't like him,
they know what he's saying is truthful.
DEENA: If I can have a voice 35 years later,
I can tell his subscribers and people who listen to his podcasts,
not to glorify this man.
He is not noble, He is not a hero.
He's nothing but a sociopath.
It took me 20-something years to get to this point,
to have a full understanding and to actually sit back and go...
"I understand it all,
I respect the lifestyle you chose, I understand why."
But I also knew you as a father and a friend.
So that's, you know, how I choose my relationship with you.
The podcast is actually something that he monetizes from.
And, um, it's a subscriber service.
SAMMY: When I think back about my past, I feel like I've lived three lifetimes.
He has this arena, he has this forum where he's talking about it,
but what is the other side for him?
Is he sorry? Is he remorseful?
Because I don't see that.
Where are his amends?
He is still glorifying this life.
When does he let it go?
SAMMY: Is there anything that I feel I regret
and that I would do differently?
Of course.
At what point do you take accountability for the lives that you destroyed?
No matter how I feel now, I couldn't change what happened.
It was ugly, but I know what people want me to say.
It was so ugly, would you change it?
Yes, the way I feel now.
But even looking now, I couldn't.
Sammy is, "I'm Cosa Nostra until I die.
Cosa Nostra's still part of me."
And I said, "No, Sammy, that's not true.
We're not Cosa Nostra anymore.
We might have believed in it at one time.
But you can't say that, you violated omertà, so did I."
I betrayed my oath.
I'm not in that life anymore and neither are you.
DIANE: Did you love The Godfather?
I loved The Godfather.
Is there part of you that misses it?
If it was what it is in that movie,
if it was total honor and total respect...
possibly.
But not what I've come to learn what it was, what it is.
It's not what this is, it's not the respect.
In this picture, that's what it was supposed to be,
that's what it was supposed to mean.
ANTHONY: Sometimes I wish I was still in that life.
I loved the, you know, the respect I got,
I loved sitting in the front row.
I can't afford the front row anymore.
-Grandpa. -You're right, there's grandpa.
"Fat Andy."
I know you always get mad when I say sometimes I miss the life.
You go, "What do you miss about it?"
TONI: You know, I look at these pictures and--
Here, look at this picture, this is when I used to take you and your brother
every year to see Santa Claus.
Well, not every year, unfortunately, I only took you three times.
That's the life that I wish that we could have continued living.
And it just wasn't--
It wasn't meant to be.
GEORGE: I think a lot of them wondered to this day what it was all about
and was it really as worthwhile as they thought.
Because the fabric just disintegrated.
There really was never this loyalty, there really was never this ethos.
It was really all about the individual.
DIANE: Are you a good man?
I think I'm a decent man.
DIANE:You don't worry about a final judgment?
SAMMY: I'll worry about that, that day.
And we'll see what happens.
♪♪