“John Gotti was the most famous gangster since Al Capone. His pictures on page one of newspapers, his name is all over TV. He’s a headline figure. He brutally murdered his way to become head of the most powerful crime family in America.”
“John Gotti took charge of what’s called the Gambino crime family shortly after his reputed predecessor was gunned down. Addicted to Fame, he adored the attention of the world’s media and became America’s most high-profile criminal. He was Mobby dick in the organized crime world. Everybody wanted to prosecute John Gotti in New York. The Gotti trial is the hottest show off Broadway. He made a mockery of the law time and again, walking free from court.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t do it, I simply had my doubts.”
“But overconfident and arrogant, he thought he could take on the might of the FBI.”
“Here was this guy, he had the ‘come and get me’ attitude to law enforcement. He made fun of that, but what he did didn’t just spell his end but the ruination of America’s most powerful crime family.”
“A Monday evening in December 1985 in central Manhattan, New York at Sparks Steakhouse. Paul Castellano, one of the most powerful Mobsters in New York, arrives for dinner accompanied by his driver Tommy Bilotti.”
“Four men are waiting for them.”
“Across the street two men watch the events from a parked car.”
“At least three gunmen in New York City tonight shot and killed a man identified by police as Paul Castellano, reputed chief of the Gambino Mafia family. That’s the nation’s most powerful organized crime organization. Well the king is dead. Paul Castellano, reputed boss of bosses, executed on a New York City street yesterday.”
“The assassination of Paul Castellano was one of the most dramatic hits in Mafia history. The murder of a family boss was a once in a generation event. Most surprising though was the man who masterminded the hit: John Gotti.”
“Gotti was just not a well-known or well-respected figure prior to the killing of Castellano. I mean his initial forte in organized crime was hijacking trucks and beating people up and killing people. He was a thug, in my view.”
“Gotti started his life in crime in the late 1950s as a low-level Street Thug but he had big Ambitions. He had his eye on joining the most profitable criminal organization in America.”
“Mob profits are going to top a hundred billion dollar this year. Add to that the inflated cost of consumer goods and services and the total bill is more than $77 for every American every year. And they’re into everything, from low-level Street crimes to sophisticated White Collar crime: garbage carting, the piers, the Garment industry, labor racketeering and of course murder.”
“In 1973 Gotti was given the opportunity to join the most powerful of the five mafia families in New York: the Gambinos. Conservative estimates indicate that the Gambino family was making easily 4 to $500 million a year. Head of the family was Don Carlo Gambino. His nephew had recently been kidnapped and murdered by members of the Irish mob. Gambino wanted revenge and he offered Gotti his chance to ‘make his bones’ in the mafia. Making your bones means you’ve proved your tutorship and that you are now ready for full-fledged membership as a made or soldier in the family.”
“Gotti was part of the team that killed James McBratney in Revenge for the kidnapping.”
“He was sentenced to 7 years but was out in less than two.”
“On his release Gotti was richly rewarded. He was initiated into the mafia and dramatically promoted straight to captain in charge of his own crew.”
“It’s one of the most violent and ruthless crews in the Gambino family and they’re engaged in everything from truck hijackings to murders and loan sharking.”
“They were really crazy people and hijackers are really very violent people, and that’s what Gotti was.”
“By 1976 Gotti was a rising star in New York’s most powerful crime organization. You know you can get pretty far in life if you’re willing to shoot somebody who doesn’t give you your way, right? That’s a pretty significant advantage.”
“Then a change in the head of the family would allow Gotti to aim for the highest prize of all.”
“After 20 years at the head of the Gambino family, Carlo Gambino died. His brother-in-law Paul Castellano took charge. Castellano saw himself as more of a businessman than a street mobster, something that riled a ruck like Gotti.”
“Paul was remote and sort of removed from the street people. He didn’t associate with his own members of organized crime. They felt he thought he was too important and too wealthy. They called him the ‘Pope’ sometimes or ‘the man on the Hill’ from his mansion on Staten Island.”
“Castellano took a dim view of street Crews like Gotti’s and was cutting them out of the most profitable deals.”
“It was a kind of crew that Paul Castellano didn’t really favor because they were looked upon as hard muscle guys, jaw breakers, knee breakers, but pea-brained. It was a family of ‘the Haves and the Have Nots’. Castellano and all his side made all the money. Gotti’s crew was all struggling, just trying to earn enough money to get by.”
“Gotti began to nurture a growing hatred of Paul Castellano. But this factionalism within the family was not the only problem that the Gambinos were facing. The government was getting its act together and was planning to wage war on the mafia. For years the mafia had prospered as only the low-level members would get convicted, whilst the top guys, the brains behind operations, always managed to keep their hands clean.”
“Very often in a Darwinian sense you took out the lame and the weak and you allowed the strong to survive. The bosses, the underbosses, the consiglieri, even the capos, the captains who ran the street units, they never pulled a trigger, they never really extorted money directly from anyone. They were on the receiving end, but they weren’t on the working end.”
“But now the FBI were going to Target the top ranking members and build new squads to take on each of the five New York families. Head of the Gambino Squad was Bruce Mouw.”
“When we started out in 1980, there’s very little intelligence in the Gambino family. So we basically started from scratch.”
“Mouw had to discover a way to break into an organization which operated by a strict Code of Silence.”
“If you investigate a crime family you always look for a weak link and try to find someplace where they’re vulnerable, where somebody’s talking. We like to find a gossip and one of the first cases we opened was targeting John Gotti.”
“John Gotti had a sidekick friend who went back to his teenage days, name is Fat Angie Angelo Ruggiero. Angie Ruggiero was intimately known as ‘Quack Quack’. He gossiped a lot, he liked to talk, he liked to blab.”
“In 1981 Mouw’s team got court permission to tap Angelo Ruggiero’s phone and then bug his home. It wasn’t long before the wires provided dramatic results.”
“During the Ruggiero wire we realized that these guys were involved in major heroin activity. They were pushing approximately 50 kilos of heroin in a 6-month period here in New York.”
“‘Don’t worry about nothing, all right. About our friend over there, what time you be?’”
“The FBI arrested Angelo Ruggiero in 1983 on drugs charges, but not Gotti. They had nothing to link him directly to the crime.”
“We know John Gotti knew about it, you know, we got a piece of it, but he wasn’t actually involved in the physical trafficking of the product itself.”
“But he wasn’t off the hook yet. Although the mafia profited from narcotics many bosses, including Paul Castellano, made a rule officially Banning their Crews from dealing drugs on pain of death.”
“He had this edict and it was very effective. He could use it whenever he wanted to get rid of somebody he didn’t like if they got mixed up in narcotics.”
“Castellano now had the perfect excuse to rid himself of Gotti.”
“Castellano wasn’t a big fan of John Gotti with Ruggiero and they weren’t like his fair-haired boys, so he definitely would have had him killed. And he had the manpower and the horsepower and the firepower to do it.”
“It was a kill or be killed situation. Gotti realized he had to strike first. But the killing of a mob boss was no ordinary hit. The mafia have strict rules. He would need permission from the heads of the other four New York families. But a lonely mafia captain could easily be killed just for suggesting that he wanted to take out his boss.”
“Now for the first time Gotti, and this was unforeseen, showed strategic sense, an unforeseen acumen.”
“Gotti gambled that the other bosses were tired of Castellano’s high-handed manner and would be happy to see the back of him. His gamble paid off. Amazingly three of the New York bosses gave the go-ahead for the upstart capo to take Castellano out. He now needed a hit team. In an audacious move he approached his most powerful Gambino rival, wealthy Castellano loyalist Sammy Gravano. He successfully enticed him to be his right-hand man. From his new recruits Gotti discovered some crucial inside information. Now Castellano had become so overconfident. He’d been a boss for 10 years, there had been no attempts against him, he felt immune and he rode around only with one lieutenant, the guy by the name of Bilotti, and he was unarmed, no bodyguards.”
“They learned that Castellano was supposed to have dinner at a restaurant called Sparks Steakhouse on the night of December 16th, 1985. They knew the hour, they knew how he was going to arrive there, and so they assembled their crew, their hit teams.”
“He devised a way of killing Castellano and it really was a brilliant coup that he engineered.”
“Gotti worked out he could use the crowded streets as cover for the hitmen.”
“We have everybody dress in white trench coats and also wear Russian fur hats. And the idea was that everybody would look the same so any any passersby on the street could not really make a solid identification.”
“In a final bold move Gotti would be only feet away to oversee the execution. His new right-hand man Sammy Gravano will be sat beside him. What happened next would change the mafia forever.”
“The four shooters were waiting for him and you’ve seen the pictures. They shot him dead right there as they got out of the car. You talk about ‘Shock and Awe’ in the past Iraqi Wars, this was shock and awe for the Gambino family.”
“Within a few days the whole Gambino family knew that John Gotti did this.”
“Now the scale of Gotti’s ambition finally became clear. In another show of clever strategy he packed a meeting of Gambino captains with his own supporters.”
“Frank DeCicco stands up and says ‘I nominate John Gotti to be the next boss of the Gambino family.’ Of course Gotti’s sitting there as one of the captains.”
“John was elected the under boss of the Gambino family. This is in January of 1986.”
“John Gotti took charge of what’s called the Gambino crime family shortly after his reputed predecessor was gunned down and the man that succeeded him, uh or is believed to have succeeded him, was a man by the name of John Gotti.”
“So you think he’s behind this?”
“Well, well I certainly, I would think he heads the enforcement arm of the Gambino family and certainly they’d have to consult with him.”
“Until now the mafia had been a secret society exerting its power from the Shadows. A traditional mob boss looked to be under the radar. They wanted to control their criminal activities through intermediaries. They did not want to be seen as a powerful individual who could be targeted by law enforcement. Gotti was precisely the opposite. Gotti attracted attention in a way no other boss had ever done. Immediately after becoming the boss of the Gambino family his whole exterior changed. Previously he wore windbreakers, black t-shirts, he had the jewelry of a two-bit mobster. Suddenly overnight he switches. He’s now wearing tailored suits, cashmere coats, even monogrammed socks. I mean he went to great lengths to have this appearance of being an emperor.”
“45 years old Gotti has become quickly recognizable if only for his custom-made suits and his frequent stops at the Sty-O-Rama hair salon.”
“He’s got very good tastes, he likes his hair extremely perfect. He’s such a gentleman that you know you really uh you can’t believe it.”
“He was also a big-time Gambler, sometimes flashing as much as $100,000 in a weekend. Gotti loved the Limelight. He talked about it all the time about how he had his public. He didn’t mind being stared at in restaurants. He boasted how important he was. He was a megalomaniac.”
“The Press nicknamed him ‘the Dapper Don’. But for all the fancy suits Gotti was a street mobster and he couldn’t shake free from his past. Even as he ascended to the throne of the Gambino family, Gotti was awaiting trial on an assault charge. In 1984, nearly 2 years earlier, he had attacked Romual Piecyk, a refrigerator salesman from Queens in an absurd incident. That was a traffic dispute. It was about a parking space and John Gotti slapped Romual Piecyk in the face and they also stole about $300 from him. Piecyk didn’t know who he was, went to the police. That’s all that case was, somebody who’s going to be in the Mob doesn’t put himself in the position where he can be arrested for what is essentially a meaningless incident. Then before it goes to trial all this Castellano stuff happens and all of a sudden poor Romual Piecyk is testifying against the number one criminal in the country.”
“Piecyk had good reason to fear him when a terrifying story from Gotti’s past surfaced in the press in 1980. Gotti’s 12-year-old son was killed when he ran out in front of a neighbor’s car.”
“His son ran out into the street. A next-door neighbor not seeing him and not having done anything wrong, clearly an accident, killed the young man.”
“Media stories told how the distraught driver, John Favara, was menaced by Gotti’s wife with a baseball bat when he tried to apologize. After that Favara tried to flee the neighborhood. He was selling his house and moving, and the day before he moved he was kidnapped and the story that was circulated was that Gotti himself cut him in half with a chainsaw.”
“When that story hit the media everybody was terrified of Gotti. And having heard what happened to Favara, Piecyk had a sudden change of heart about testifying.”
“If I did go stand there and say that this is Mr. Gotti and this is Mr. Ruggiero, they assaulted me and robbed me. I’m not sure.”
“Piecyk’s loss of memory spawned lurid headlines. The brake linings on his car had been cut and also he’d been threatened by people on the street. So you know, who’s to blame him for the Gotti stuff?”
“Gotti walked free from court for the first time. He had defeated New York’s combined forces of Law and Order. But less than two weeks later in April 1986 he was back on trial. This time it was the turn of the Federal prosecutors. There were much more serious charges and young assistant prosecutor John Gleeson hoped they would hit Gotti with a maximum sentence of 20 years.”
“It was a racketeering case with what we call predicate acts, particular crimes that they committed as part of their membership in the Gambino family. It should have been a humiliation for Gotti, but instead he turned it into a photo opportunity.”
“The supermodel of mobsters. Gotti on magazine covers, newspaper headlines. One New York tabloid even followed his court suit, the cut, not the criminal, in a daily fashion column called ‘Gotti’s Garb’. And every day at the courthouse the Dapper Don plays to a sellout crowd.”
“I’m interested in the case cuz Gotti’s kind of cool. Gotti has been a cover boy. He’s probably the first mob cover boy.”
“Gotti happily obliged his public with a stellar performance, nonchalant and apparently unconcerned by the trial going on around him.”
“Overnight it became a media sensation because of the attraction to John Gotti.”
“Gotti even tried to assiduously cultivate members of the press. He would have espresso with the thumb brandy that he would pour in or an anisette, and he often invited the women reporters, never the male reporters, to share these drinks with them. So he opened doors for the women. He considered himself a new element in organized crime, and it was somebody who was Untouchable.”
“Although he played the part of the Dapper Don when the trial started he fell back on the tactics of the street.”
“He was constantly berating me. I’d walk past him to go to sidebar and he would say, ‘Your mother’s a whore, you’re a junkie.’”
“Worse still, Gotti’s lawyers proceeded to lay into the prosecutor’s Witnesses. They were all ex-mobsters, their records were even worse than Gotti’s record, they were all murderers and horrendous violent criminals. And at the same time there was really no bugged evidence, there was no chronic eavesdropping, and lo and behold Gotti was acquitted.”
“When the verdict was read today, gasps were heard in the courtroom. Gotti smiled, then glared over at the prosecutors and shouted, ‘Shame on them.’”
“The jury’s job was to decide whether or not the defendants were guilty. They did their job and that is the end of that.”
“What nobody knew at the time was that Gotti’s Victory had always been guaranteed. Gotti had an insurance policy to get a ‘not guilty’ verdict. One of the jurors was bribed. Later juror George Pape would be found guilty of accepting $60,000 to withhold a guilty verdict. But at the time the case was a disaster for the government.”
“It was a prosecutor’s nightmare, it was a horror show and John Gotti loved it. He enjoyed every minute of it. He knew he wasn’t going to get convicted, he knew he had a free ride, he knew there was no downside for him in a trial, only an upside.”
“‘No problem, no problem.’”
“Gotti had made a mockery of the court again, but the attempt to try to convict him had a higher price. In the course of the trial the prosecution had called two of Gotti’s crew as Witnesses, and in doing so revealed them as FBI informants. Two years after the trial, Willie Boy Johnson, a childhood friend of Gotti’s, was found murdered. The other informant, Billy Batista, was never found.”
“Now this incensed the FBI because it was giving away what they considered too valuable informers, and in a essentially what they considered a weak case. And it caused a not just a dispute but a rift, as each law enforcement agency set their sights on Gotti. Rifts and rivalries grew up between them, seriously hampering efforts to convict him.”
“It really was an indictment of law enforcement that for so many years we allowed them to gain strength, um not cooperating with one another. You had the FBI investigating him, you had the Queens DA’s office investigating him, you had the Manhattan DA’s office investigating him, you had something called the State organized crime task force investigating him, and they were actually, it’s so comical, at one time three of them had separate bugs in Gotti’s Queens headquarters, the Bergen Fishing Hunt Club. I mean it was a joke.”
“Next to try and nail Gotti was the New York State organized crime task force. Its boss, Ronald Goldstock, believed that one of his bugs had recorded Gotti ordering a shooting, and so they became the third organization to take on the Dapper Don.”
“‘John Gotti, alleged the indictment to be the boss of the Gambino family, is now under indictment.’”
“This then is another in a long line of actions taken by state, local and federal officials which will inevitably change the face of organized crime in New York City. This morning the man police called the country’s most powerful Crime Boss faces the possibility of life in prison for allegedly ordering the shooting of a union official.”
“That union official, John O’Connor, had smashed up a restaurant owned by a friend of Gotti’s. In revenge, he was shot four times in the back but survived.”
“In the courtroom witnesses testified that Gotti had ordered the shootings and Goldstock was convinced that he had the evidence he needed on the tapes.”
“My sense was everybody in the courtroom who was watching the case and how it went in believed there was going to be a conviction.”
“But when the tapes were played in court the terrible quality of the recordings placed serious doubt on the solidity of the case.”
“A jury brought in its verdict today on the man called the Dapper Don. ‘How say you with respect to defendant John Gotti?’ ‘Find him not guilty.’”
“We were stunned by the acquittal of Gotti. We did not believe that that could have happened.”
“Gotti walked free from Court a third time.”
“There was nothing, there was nothing to connect Mr. Gotti from what happened in the shooting. I’m not saying he didn’t do it, I simply had my doubts. The government thinks you just say ‘Mafia’ and you sit down on your backside and that’s enough. It’s not enough in America to say ‘Mafia’ and sit down.”
“That night as Gotti celebrated his victory, the media bestowed on him a new title: the Teflon Don, because no charges ever stuck.”
“‘Where all, all happy. Got a good decision. The whole city should be happy.’”
“There was actually street parties, uh people came out and cheered him.”
“So here you have this cruel, vicious killer who’s looked upon in some way as a hero. It’s a terrifying and it’s a terrible indictment not just of the media, but also of this vicarious kick the public gets out of figures like John Gotti. They wanted to see something like Vito Corleone or Jesse James, and he saw that. He milked it for all he could milk it for. He was cast as this Dapper Don, this Teflon Don; it was a gloss on him he certainly didn’t deserve. He was just a thug.”
“Never before had a criminal appeared so powerful, so beyond the law. John Gotti had emerged triumphant from Court three times in just four years and the government were desperate that he be brought down.”
“A lot of people for the first time were saying, ‘You’ll never get him, he’s a Teflon Don, he’s Untouchable.’”
“But in 1989, after four years of painstaking surveillance work, the FBI were ready to make their move.”
“Our motto was patience and perseverance. Take all the time you want and just stick at it through thick or thin.”
“And their years of patience were beginning to pay off. Slowly Mouw’s team made contact with a wide range of people connected to the Gambino family.”
“There’s a lot of people out there that look like they were regular undiluted Wise Guys who were actually informants for the FBI.”
“The FBI learned that Gotti now liked to spend his time in the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street in New York’s Little Italy District. Mouw ordered 24-hour surveillance of the club.”
“This is Little Italy. It’s a very hard place to park cars, to conduct surveillance without being discovered.”
“The FBI covertly secured a lease of a building with a direct view to the door of the Ravenite. They installed thousands of dollars of camera equipment, and studying hours of footage they discovered something remarkable: Gotti was so overconfident that he was openly running his organization from the Ravenite Social Club.”
“He never seemed to understand he was running a secret organization, an underground criminal outfit. And he demands that at least once a week his soldiers or his capos have to show up and kiss his ring like he’s a Pope. They’re not supposed to meet in public; they’re supposed to be clandestine. They normally use safe houses. And from Monday through Friday John Gotti would hold court at this club five nights a week. And he gives Bruce Mouw and the FBI incredible opportunities to unearth evidence that only a fool would hand over to them.”
“They could photograph everybody going in and out of the Ravenite. They find out people they didn’t know were in any way connected: union leaders, politicians, mobsters that were not known as Gambino members. Gotti hands them a ‘who’s who’ in the mob.”
“Though the surveillance was good, photos and video from outside the club would not make a case against Gotti. They needed to be able to hear what was being said inside.”
“Mouw called in the FBI’s head of electronic surveillance, Jim Kallstrom, to get a device into the club.”
“I don’t know if you’ve driven down Mulberry Street in New York. Very close environment, a lot of mobsters living there, coming and going. So to make an entry into a building covertly, you know, it’s not simple, very complicated.”
“Kallstrom’s people are professional burglars or lockpicks. They can break through locks and go through alarms, they can break into safes. That’s what they do. At the risk of retribution; they could be shot or killed going in there, and there’s never a time when the risk is zero. Never, never a time.”
“Informants had told Mouw’s team that meetings took place at a table at the rear of the club.”
“They broke into the club, they got through the lock, they disabled the alarm system and they were able to install a bug in the club. With the bugs in place, the FBI thought that they were finally in a winning position, but they would discover it wasn’t that simple.”
“You couldn’t hear yourself talk in the Ravenite Social Club.”
“Extremely noisy music played all on purpose to to stop any microphone and the tech guys went in several times. Uh we put a bug below the table, we put a bug above the table in the wall. Had five bugs on this one table. We brought in Tech Guys from Washington to try to filter out all the background noise, but it just didn’t work out.”
“They couldn’t make out any words in the recordings, although it was possible to make out Gotti’s voice. But there was a puzzle: it disappeared for long periods of time.”
“So the team went back to the videotapes of the exterior of the club looking for any sort of lead. It was then that they made a dramatic Breakthrough by watching the door next to the club.”
“And it’s really the power of surveillance: all of a sudden we tried, we started to figure out that there was a certain woman who would leave almost like clockwork when certain events took place.”
“Mouw checked all their logs and realized that the woman left at the exact same time that Gotti’s voice disappeared from the audio recordings.”
“The FBI now discovered that there was an internal staircase leading from the club to the apartments above. And a background check on the tenants revealed why Gotti’s voice was disappearing from their recordings.”
“Apartment 10 was occupied by the Widow of a Gambino Soldier by name of Mike Scelli. Gotti’s minions would tell her, ‘Hey, we need to use your apartment for an hour or so.’ She go the neighbor, watch TV. Gotti and his minions to go up there and have their ministration meetings in her living room, so that was a break that we needed.”
“And I remember Bruce Mouw calling me and saying we had the ‘Eureka’ location.”
“But now they were faced with a new problem: how to get into an apartment where somebody lived. All another ball game to get in there, cuz you have a widow living there 24 hours 7 days a week and you have to get into your apartment.”
“Mouw’s team learned that Mrs Scelli will be going out of town for Thanksgiving. So in late November 1989, Kallstrom’s team returned to Mulberry Street and placed a bug in her apartment. And that’s when the waiting started.”
“As weeks passed without results, Mouw’s team began to fear the worst. If Gotti suspected he had been bugged, the entire operation would be over.”
“You always wonder, ‘Did they uh discover something? Did they make the tech guys? Did they leave a little piece of wire behind? You know, has it been compromised?’”
“Then on a late November evening the team observed Gotti and his henchmen enter the club, and they get ready to listen on the new bugs.”
“And sure enough they open the door for apartment number 10.”
“And one thing we didn’t know at the time was that John Gotti’s deaf in one ear, so they couldn’t whisper. They had to talk like we’re talking now, loud and clear, and right there is our microphone.”
“John Gotti’s voice was coming through loud and clear.”
“So here’s Gotti who warns everybody not to talk on the uh Peril of death if they’ve ever heard picked up on eavesdropping. He goes up there and he’s talking openly. He would go over stuff over and over again.”
“‘Listen to me now. Listen, you see.’”
“So it wasn’t like ‘What did he say?’ If you don’t, didn’t get the first time just wait a few minutes, you’d get it again.”
“John talks about whacking DB, Robert DeBernardo.”
“‘When D got whacked, they told me a story. I was in jail. I know why it was being done.’”
“And John’s classic line was, ‘We’re not sure he’s a rat, but when in doubt you kill him.’”
“It was a clear admission to a murder. It was what Mouw had been waiting for for several years and uh Gotti handed it to him on a silver platter.”
“‘Where we going?’”
“All told we monitored a total of five conversations, maybe 7 and a half hours of tape all told, but they were like uh the Top 40 hits. And we knew we were off to the races. We knew we were going to have a really good case.”
“From now, tonight.”
“On December the 11th 1990, the FBI arrested John Gotti for the murder he had spoken of on the tapes, along with his closest henchmen, under boss Sammy Gravano.”
“At the pre-trial hearing, Gotti, the seasoned Pro, was apparently unconcerned.”
“‘Good you know they’re going to try and keep you in jail. They say you’re in danger.’”
“At the time of rest, Gotti was a normal Gotti-esque self. He was cocky, confident, you know, smiling. He didn’t know what was coming, he didn’t know those tapes were coming.”
“And he sat down.”
“Played part of the tapes, and he knew right away what we already knew, which was we had a great case.”
“There was no longer a Mr. Cool sitting there. He was like a cornered animal and I enjoyed every moment of it.”
“But before the trial even started there would be one more twist. One of the FBI recordings that caught Gotti badmouthing his own under boss, Sammy Gravano, behind his back. Sammy knew there was something bad in those tapes, not just for them getting convicted, but something bad in terms of his relationship with John Gotti, but he didn’t know what it was.”
“Gravano now broke with Omertà and approached the FBI without his boss’s permission, demanding to hear the tapes.”
“I’ll never forget as long as I live that the playing of the that December 12th tape in its entirety for Sammy.”
“Is true. You want to put your head on the focus.”
“Basically an hour tirade against Sammy, the Bullano. He calls him the greedy monster. How much he hates Sammy, he thinks he’s greedy, he talks about firing him.”
“I turn around.”
“More importantly, the recordings had Gotti accusing Gravano of several killings.”
“‘And every time we got a partner we killed.’”
“Just Gravano was just red. He just wanted to burst. He was ready to explode. He was so upset about his loyal, his wonderful boss just badmouthing behind his back.”
“Sammy’s looking down at the transcript, and he takes his headphones and throws them down on the table and says, ‘Don’t gloat, guys. Don’t gloat.’”
“Gravano realized, you know, ‘Why should I die in jail for a family I no longer believe in? I want to become a government witness.’”
“At that moment, Gravano decided to break the mafia’s Code of Silence, the Omertà, and turn against his boss and his entire Mafia family.”
“We never thought for a minute Sammy would flip. I thought John would flip before Sammy would flip, and I really didn’t think there was any chance in the world that John would even think about flipping.”
“He told us about a lot of murders that he committed which we didn’t know about. I think there were a total of 19.”
“He gave us more details as to the Castellano homicide, exactly, uh how the whole thing went down. He was in the car with Gotti.”
“With Gravano on side, what had already been a strong case was now airtight.”
“Outside the court it was a typical Gotti circus. He was still after all the Teflon Don.”
“‘It’s not just average guys caught up in the Gotti spectacle.’ A who’s who from Hollywood came to Brooklyn to take in the show.”
“This is one of the great uh dramas that’s going on there. The trial was really high drama because it was like the number one media event here in New York.”
“So the reporters every day filled up half the courtroom. We all sat with Gotti’s minions.”
“And the Highlight was when Gravano testified for nine days.”
“Today Gravano explained how the two men plotted the 1985 murder of then boss Paul Castellano and his driver Tommy Bilotti, how they watched the hit go down outside a New York City Steakhouse and then drove past the bullet-riddled body.”
“He didn’t diminish his own criminality. Admitted to 16 murders. He admitted what he had to admit. He was a lights-out witness. I’ve been doing this now 27 years as a prosecutor and a judge, there was no better witness than Sammy Gravano. He killed them.”
“And um everybody in the courtroom knew that John Gotti was going to be convicted once Sammy Gravano testified, including John Gotti.”
“When the jury announced their verdict Gotti’s crew incited a riot outside the court.”
“‘I’m ashamed to say I’m an American in this country. That’s what I’m ashamed of. This is wrong what happened, they kept him as a criminal.’”
“Gotti had been found guilty on all charges in June 1992: racketeering and five murders including the Castellano hit. It took the government 6 years to finally get the so-called Teflon Don, but this time it was the prosecution’s turn to gloat.”
“The legendary luck of John Gotti finally ran out. The Teflon is gone, the Don is covered with velcro and every charge in the indictment stuck.”
“It was uh quite an occasion. I still get emotional talking about it now.”
“For one member of the prosecution team in particular it was a moment to be savored.”
“‘You can imagine my feelings.’”
“‘How does it feel to be the man who got Gotti?’”
“‘Don’t get him nervous now.’”
“Well this was my second trial, you know. I worked long and hard in that first case for a couple of years with a 7-month trial only to have a juror get bought.”
“We couldn’t have been happier. We were pleased, we were happy. Are you smiling again?”
“Gotti was sentenced to life in jail, spending 23 hours of each day in solitary confinement. Gotti’s indiscretions incriminated an entire tier of Gambino captains.”
“The FBI itself could not have handpicked a better candidate to be the head of one of the major mob families in New York than John Gotti. Because of him, most of these captains were arrested, convicted, taken off the street, and they’d say, ‘John and his freaking big mouth.’ Here I am. They they hated this guy.”
“He was an absolute ruination for the mafia. He was so inept, unqualified and incompetent that he single-handedly wrecked the Gambino crime family.”
“John Gotti died in jail in 2002, age 61, after serving 10 years of his life sentence.”
“To some New Yorkers Gotti will always be a modern-day Robin Hood, but he was never anything more than a thug. His only Legacy was the destruction of the most powerful Mafia Family in history. His legacy: just another boss who killed the previous boss, gets arrested, dies in jail. No more, no less.”
“On the 2nd of May 1957, Frank Costello, head of the Luciano crime family, had enjoyed a dinner with friends in an Eastside restaurant. He took a cab to his apartment, The Majestic, on the fashionable Upper West Side of New York’s Central Park. As Costello entered the lobby a large man stepped out of the Shadows, raised his arm and said, ‘This is for you, Frank.’”
“This organized hit on a top mafia boss would signal the rise of the most dangerous gangster in America, Vito Genovese.”
“Vito Genovese was never anything but a homicidal maniac. Probably most despicable gangster ever to run the streets of this city.”
“But Genovese’s rise would also be a major turning point in the history of the mafia and his actions would bring down the full force of the FBI on the mom.”
“‘Are you going to have anything to say, Mr. Genovese? Is it true that you’re the head of the mafia in this country?’”
“‘There’s not.’”
“Vito Genovese arrived in New York from Naples when he was 15 years old and joined the thousands of other Italian immigrants to hit the city Shores at the turn of the century. Genovese grew up in the slums of New York. From the beginning he was involved in these terrifying Street games; violence ruled and he never changed.”
“Genovese was a product of the ghetto of New York City. He was constantly in conflict. Everything had to be out of the barrel of a gun.”
“Police records show that over the next 10 years Genovese was charged with shooting a man in Queens, running down and killing a man in Brooklyn, having a loaded revolver tucked into his belt on the Lower East Side, and murdering another hoodlum.”
“We Genovese, I’ll give you a great example of what he did. He fell in love with a woman named Anna who was married to someone else. Genovese and his thugs threw her husband off a roof so he could marry her and he married her.”
“Murder was just a ritual with him. He had no conscience.”
“This appetite for killing did not go unnoticed. By the mid-1920s Genovese was a hitman for the greatest mafia boss of them all: Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano.”
“Vito Genovese Rose to the Top by intimidation and the guy who allowed him to do that was Lucky Luciano. Lucky Luciano may have looked very cultivated, but he he needed Hitmen and when he needed Hitmen one of the first people he turned to was Vito Genovese.”
“By 1931 Genovese was acknowledged as Lucky Luciano’s right-hand man and underboss, and was one of the key Hitmen sent by Luciano to kill rival boss Joe Masseria.”
“Such was his reputation that Genovese was known as ‘Don Vito’, the great Vito. And in 1936 Genovese got the chance to take the top job when mafia boss Luciano was convicted on prostitution charges and sent to prison for 50 years.”
“When Lucky was convicted and sentenced to a long prison term, Vito considered himself to be the heir apparent, but things didn’t go to plan. Genovese now also found himself being pursued.”
“Vito Genovese had been involved in a murder in the early 1930s and somehow had managed to beat the rap. The victim had been one of Genovese’s gangsters who had demanded too big a share of a crooked card game.”
“Now an Informer came forward and pointed the finger at Genovese as the man who had ordered the hit.”
“He was now held in protective custody as Chief witness against Genovese.”
“The American authorities finally caught up with Genovese in Naples in August 1944. Genovese was brought back to New York to face the murder charge, but he had no intention of taking the rap.”
“On the 16th of January 1945, Lemper complained that he was suffering from a gallstone problem. He was given painkillers by his guards. 2 hours later he was dead.”
“A toxicologist who had examined his body reported that he had been given enough sedatives to kill eight horses.”
“With Lemper out of the way there was no case against Genovese. The judge told him, ‘I cannot speak for the jury, but I believe if there was a shred of corroborating evidence you would have been condemned to The Chair. By devious means you have thwarted Justice time and time again.’”
“Genovese was acquitted.”
“Vito Genovese was back on the streets, but he was not the boss. The Man In Charge was still his old rival Frank Costello, and he was thriving.”
“Frank Costello fashioned himself as a non-gangster. He fashioned himself as a businessman uh sometimes bordering on aristocracy. He mixed with politicians, congressmen, journalists, authors, judges, cops and city councilors. With his connections Costello developed a reputation as the boss who could Bridge the legitimate world and the mob.”
“The Salvation Army even made him their Vice chairman.”
“Genovese could only watch from the sidelines as Costello became a real New York player. Genovese was intimidated by Costello’s intelligence. He knew that Costello could get with words what he could only get out of a gun, and he was jealous of that.”
“Such was his power before a judge could be appointed, it had to be cleared by Frank Costello.”
“He didn’t just know judges and Das and politicians, he bought them. Potential male candidates in the Democratic party went to see him, hat in hand, asking for his blessings. He was an absolute corruptor.”
“When the mafia gets control of your political and judicial system, when they’re deciding uh what bills are passed, they’re deciding how Justice is meted out, then you’re in danger.”
“Frank Costello, even though he dressed well, looked civilized, looked cultivated, was one of the most dangerous mafiosi in American history.”
“Costello became known as the ‘Prime Minister’. That title was given to him by the media. They made Frank Costello the American Winston Churchill of the Underworld. That doesn’t mean he was boss of bosses; there was no such position. But as a prime minister is in most countries, he was the first among equals, and sometimes a little more equal than they were.”
“Genovese seemed to be out of it, but he realized that Costello was making a big mistake. He preferred to deal only with the big guys but ignored the little guys.”
“Frank Costello neglected the troops. Frank Costello only concerned himself with the capos and the captains, members of Crews that had been loyal complained they had been neglected, that Costello didn’t favor them.”
“Genovese saw this resentment as his opportunity to begin undermining Costello’s leadership.”
“The soldiers, the button men in the family, knew that Vito Genovese was the real deal whereas Costello was a a person who was a little out of touch. Vito Genovese never lost sight of the fact that he was a criminal and Frank Costello lost sight of that fact. Frank Costello started to believe his own imagery, his own myth.”
“Everybody knew the Genovese wanted Frank’s job, but he couldn’t take the job. The other bosses wouldn’t have allowed that. As long as Frank was riding high, Frank had the connections, Genovese did not have the connections. So what he does is he begins to make sure he’s strong, that his rackets are beginning to produce money, so he has both money and he has soldiers and he has hit men in case there’s a real Showdown.”
“Now Genovese was waiting and hoping Costello would make a wrong move. He wouldn’t have to wait long.”
“In 1950 an ambitious Democrat senator from Tennessee named Estes Kefauver headed a committee to investigate organized crime in America.”
“Here, Kefauver called on more than 600 gangsters, underworld figures, politicians and policemen to testify before them. The country was transfixed as the hearings hit the headlines and television channels.”
“I remember the Kefauver investigations. I was a very young lad and I remember actually watching those and and and it was a real Revelation.”
“I do, we began to see that there was these people among us, criminals who were very well organized and very deliberate in their activities and controlled a great deal of the criminal activity in this country.”
“Many of the witnesses refused to say anything, but not Frank Costello. He agreed to answer questions. He thought he could go on the witness stand and come out as a gentleman, as a real businessman, and that he had this kind of Outlook or outward appearance that he wouldn’t look like a ruffian like a hood.”
“And Costello, billed as the most influential underworld leader in America, became the star of action.”
“But then Costello made a miscalculation.”
“He surprised Everybody by insisting that his face shouldn’t be shown on television and the committee instructed the broadcasters to respect his request.”
“Television is not done any part of Mr. Costello.”
“The only option left open for the TV Crews was to film his hands, and the subsequent images of Costello’s testimony became known as the ‘hand ballet’. Whenever the questions about his criminal activities got too tough or too near the knuckle, Costello would rub his palms together, tighten his fingers, grip a glass of water, drum on the table in front of him, or crumple and tear pieces of paper.”
“And although the television cameras were not allowed to show Costello’s face, the newsreel cameras and press photographers had no such restrictions.”
“‘Mr Costello is willing to face the camera and let you have a good look at you…’”
“‘As the uh photographer says to the little boy, ‘Can you smile a little bit?’’”
“‘Has this country come up to your anticipations? What have you ever done for your country as a good citizen?’”
“‘Well, I don’t know what you claim what I what what you mean by that.’”
“‘Well you’re looking back over the years now at that time when you became a citizen and me now standing 20 odd years after that, you must have in your mind some things you’ve done that you can speak of to your credit as American citizen. If so, what are they?’”
“‘Paid my tax.’”
“‘I pay my taxes.’”
“That was his answer. Now in his mind he thought that was enough. He didn’t think that he had to join the army or the Marine Corps. ‘I pay my taxes.’ Everybody pays their taxes, they’re working for their country. But he was the original Superstar made by television.”
“Ridiculed and humiliated, Costello finally refused to answer any further questions and produced a note from a doctor.”
“‘Certificate of a doctor who examined Mr Costello this morning. All right. I no condition to testify to be in until I’m well enough.’”
“‘Uh you refuse to testify further?’”
“‘Absolutely. When I testify, I want to testify truthfully and I can’t. My mind don’t function.’”
“Costello had been publicly destroyed by the exposure and he left the Kefauver committee hearings as the Justice Department’s number one target.”
“Once he failed at Kefauver, everybody went after him. He was indicted for tax evasion, he was convicted, he was indicted for lying to Congress. When you are the Prime Minister, the man who can work the Miracles, and all of a sudden you fall off your horse and fall in your face, you are not prime minister anymore.”
“Frank Costello paid the price of Television by him appearing in front of the Kefauver Committee hearing and it being televised. That was the beginning of the end of Frank Costello. In fact, that was the beginning of the end of the mob because it brought the attention of the general public to what the mob was actually doing.”
“But for one mobster, Costello’s failure was good news. Vito Genovese, and he was going to make the most of it.”
“One of the things he does, he starts bumping off killing Costello’s hit.”
“The First on his list was one of Costello’s top Hitman: William ‘Willie More’ Moretti.”
“Moretti had grown up with Costello in East Harlem and was now a feared New Jersey racketeer with his own Army of 60 soldiers. He was also one of Costello’s strongest supporters.”
“But this planned execution wasn’t just business; it was highly personal. Moretti had been promoted to Costello’s underboss, his second in command. This meant that Genovese had been bumped down to just the captain of his old crew.”
“Genovese had chosen his Target well. Moretti was suffering from Advanced syphilis which was spreading to his brain. This had the worrying effect of freeing up his speech and it was now feared that he would start talking to the press.”
“Genovese used this to his Advantage. Because of Moretti’s condition he approached the commission, the Mafia’s board of directors, and asked for their permission for a mercy killing.”
“The commission was set up by Lucky Luciano in 1931 as a democratic system for dealing with all the mob’s Affairs. It operated by strict rules: no boss could be hit without the commission’s permission. And they gave it to him.”
“The hit would take place on the morning of the 5th of October 1951 as ordinary New Yorkers went about their business.”
“Genovese had now made it quite clear to Costello that he was coming after him and Costello was in no position to fight back.”
“He was locked in continual combat with the US authorities over contempt of court and failure to pay his taxes. Over the next 6 years Costello was in and out of jail.”
“When he came out on bail in March 1957, Genovese finally decided to strike.”
“Genovese many many times tried to get the okay of the commission to kill Costello, but the commission wouldn’t give it. So Genovese decided to hit Costello anyway.”
“Genovese now studied Costello’s routine. The 66-year-old Costello took cabs or walked to his various meetings around the city like he’d always done without the aid of bodyguards or bulletproof cars.”
“It made him an easy target. Other bosses had a army of bodyguards around them. Costello said, ‘If they’re going to kill you, that’s the first ones they’ll blow.’”
“Genovese gave the contract to Vincent Gigante who was a former prize fighter who became Genovese’s chauffeur.”
“He was a real thug, tough guy. I mean, kill at the drop of a hat. He was the mirror image of a Genovese. Genovese liked him for that, he was just a ruthless killer.”
“On the evening of May the 2nd 1957, Frank Costello enjoyed a dinner with some friends in an Eastside restaurant. After the meal he took a cab to his apartment.”
“Now Costello lived in a very upscale apartment that overlooked Central Park. It was known as The Majestic Apartments. Costello was so sure of himself, even though he knew Genovese was around, he came home one night, walked into his Lobby and he was met by Gigante.”
“Gigante raised his gun and yelled, ‘This is for you, Frank!’”
“Costello was covered with blood when he reached the Roosevelt Hospital, but the bullet had only shaved his skull.”
“One of Genovese’s top soldiers, Joe Valachi, later observed that Gigante had wasted a whole month practicing.”
“There’s some debate on whether Gigante missed him on purpose or he just missed him out of ineptness. I choose the latter, he just missed him. But there’s a rule in a mob: if you try and you miss, you don’t try again.”
“The doorman of the Majestic identified Gigante as Costello’s Hitman. Gigante quickly gave himself up and was put on trial for attempted murder.”
“This was a very dangerous time for Genovese. If Costello confirmed it was Gigante, police would come after him.”
“But at the trial Costello observed the Mafia rule of Omertà, the Code of Silence, and told the jury that he didn’t recognize Gigante.”
“Gigante was acquitted, and as he left the court he walked over to Costello, held out his hand and said, ‘Thanks, Frank.’”
“Genovese knew that Costello alive posed a grave threat to him and he heard that he was secretly meeting with the Lord High executioner of Murder Incorporated, Albert Anastasia.”
“Guns, ice picks and strangling ropes were his stock in trade. He was a tough, ruthless man, not at all like Costello who was his good friend. If there had been a move against Costello with Anastasia still alive, there would have been a Counterattack by Anastasia.”
“Genovese decided to strike first.”
“The problem was getting to Anastasia.”
“He lived in a New Jersey Mansion guarded by ferocious dogs and barbed wire fences and always traveled with bodyguards. Genovese needed somebody on the inside and he approached Carlo Gambino, then an ambitious Anastasia Lieutenant, and convinced him they would both be better off with Anastasia dead.”
“On the morning of October 25th 1957, at 10:15 a.m., Albert Anastasia walked into a barber shop in Midtown Manhattan. His bodyguards parked the car in an underground garage and then took a walk.”
“Anastasia closed his eyes and relaxed into the barber’s chair. Two men in suits with scarves covering their lower faces walked up behind him.”
“Anastasia was literally blown out of the chair.”
“Genovese now sprang into action. He immediately announced that he was the head of the family and straight away he turned on his old adversary Frank Costello.”
“Costello knew what a mean his time was over. His Reign was complete, that if he didn’t surrender or abdicate he was going to be assassinated. Genovese stripped Costello of all his gambling assets and interests in Las Vegas, Florida, the Caribbean and New York. He only allowed Costello to live on the one condition that he get out and never be involved with the rackets again.”
“Costello said that message to uh Vito Genovese: ‘Don Vito, it’s yours, you’re in control.’”
“Genovese had done it. He was now the boss of the largest Mafia Family in New York.”
“But he was also in deep trouble. Blinded by ruthless ambition he had ordered two hits on two Mafia leaders without the okay from their governing body, the commission.”
“And he had done something else that some commission members found uncomfortable: Genovese had also moved big time into drug dealing.”
“Genovese always thought that narcotics was a good deal for the mob. Within the Luciano family he was in charge of drug trafficking.”
“But Congress had recently passed tough new drug laws and many Mafia bosses were worried about the consequences.”
“Drugs brought heat and what I mean by heat is that if you dealt drugs and you got bagged and you’re facing a lot of time in jail, you’re going to roll, you’re going to be a rat. Well, he could get up to 30 years in prison. They felt that if they kept their hand out of drugs they would be able to avoid that.”
“The mafia heads around the country now feared that Genovese was a loose cannon who didn’t play by the rules and his drug trafficking operations could bring the FBI down on them.”
“To save his skin Genovese requested a meeting of the commission to explain his recent actions in New York.”
“The commission was not supposed to call another National Convention, which will be held every 5 years, for four more years. But Genovese insisted that the bosses from all the other families and the New York families had to assemble because of these important developments in New York. And he wanted it known that he was a boss of a family. So they picked the same place they had met the previous year. There had been a National Convention in a small town in Upstate New York known as Appalachin.”
“It would prove to be the biggest mistake of Genovese’s Life.”
“On November the 14th 1957, more than 60 senior Mafia bosses with their advisers and bodyguards travel from Cuba, Italy and from all over the United States to a Hilltop estate in a small sleepy Hamlet called Appalachin, 180 miles Northwest of New York City and far from the prying eyes and surveillance of the city cops.”
“Appalachin was the home of mafia boss Joseph Barbara.”
“His guests would include all the most powerful members of the mafia like Joe Bonanno, Carmine Galante, Sam Giancana and Joe Profaci.”
“And at the head of the table Don Vito Genovese. Appalachian meeting was a meeting of mobsters from all over the country. Keep in mind that the mob as we know today and as it was formed in 1931, was 100% control by the five families in New York. All the other cities were ancillary that answered to the New York mobsters.”
“But local detective Sergeant Edgar Crosswell of the New York State Police had been watching the events. The local police noticed something strange: all these ‘Out of Towners’ and dozens of cars were pouring into one farmhouse in remote area.”
“Crosswell suspicions have been aroused when he noticed that Barbara was booking up the local hotel. It had also been tipped off by a local food supplier that Barbara had ordered 20 of steak, 20 lb of veal cutlets and 15 lb of cold cuts that day.”
“Crosswell had been keeping a close eye on the Barbara as he knew he had mob connections.”
“He called for backup.”
“Well we got the call, ‘Send as many people as you can to Appalachin, we have a thing going on.’”
“Crosswell ordered his Troopers to surround the house.”
“We had a lot of people that they was the underworld and that we were to pick them up.”
“And when the guests got the news there was ‘blind panic’.”
“Some rushed to their cars, others fled through the woods ripping their silk suits against the brambles as they ran.”
“Crosswell sent his Troopers in after them.”
“We saw one fell, he was standing on the back porch of a local house but he wore a nice Homburg hat and he had a nice Overcoat with a fur collar and we knew right away that he didn’t fit in. We went in and took control of him and put him in the troop car with us.”
“Crosswell and his men eventually managed to round up 60 mafia members including New York leaders Profaci, Bonanno, Galante and Gambino.”
“Everybody had the same excuse, that they heard Barbara was sick and they all dropped in to see them, pay their respects. Here you had this obvious Convention of Italian or Sicilian American mobsters and you couldn’t dismiss it just as a casual, and the claim by all of them that they went to visit a sick friend, I mean nobody could swallow that.”
“The justice department believed that at least 50 escaped, including Chicago boss Sam Giancana.”
“Appalachin was the largest Mafia meeting ever rumbled by American police and the mob would never hold one of this size again.”
“Far from Genovese’s triumphant moment announcing to the commission his Ascension to the head of the Luciano crime family, he had exposed them all to the authorities.”
“As a direct result of Appalachin, a Federal grand jury found 20 mafia members guilty of conspiracy to commit perjury and to obstruct Justice and imposed sentences of between 3 and 5 years.”
“Eventually these were overturned by the United States court of appeals on the basis of insufficient evidence. But the damage had been done. Genovese had awakened a sleeping giant.”
“This is the FBI. The house is surrounded. Back out that door with your hands up. Never mind.”
“And it hit them like a bombshell. I think the Appalachian organized crime meeting, the meeting of the bosses of America’s organized crime in one location, really brought home uh to the American public and to the FBI the magnitude of this problem.”
“Up to this point, the director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover have been reluctant to admit the existence of organized crime in America. He had even written there was no such thing as organized crime or the mafia, and the claim that there was a national crime syndicate was baloney.”
“All of a sudden, everything that they had been saying, that there was no National Organization, that crime was essentially local and it was for local law enforcement to deal with, became obviously incorrect.”
“They were so Brazen, they were so bold and so powerful that they would actually have a meeting much as any large legitimate American corporation would meet to decide internal issues, if you will, of their organization. Their Direction, what they wanted to do, in the way a legitimate company would do this. This really imprinted itself on the American public and certainly on the FBI.”
“That was it for the FBI. I mean there was a moment where it was absolutely patently clear that they had a role to do that they had not been performing. That was it.”
“All this changed after Appalachin. The FBI were galvanized into action.”
“Hoover immediately commissioned a special report to confirm whether the mafia actually existed. It declared: ‘The truth of the matter is the available evidence makes it impossible to deny logically the existence of a criminal organization known as the mafia, which for Generations has plagued the law-abiding citizens of Sicily, Italy and the United States.’”
“After the Appalachin meeting, the intelligence gathering about organized crime became very much institutionalized inside the FBI.”
“Most of the investigations were intelligence investigations where we gathered information about who they were and the kinds of activities they were involved with.”
“As a direct result of the Appalachin raid, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was instructed to Target Vito Genovese in their fight against drugs.”
“‘Open up.’”
“‘What about uh the government’s charge that you’re the right man, that you’re the number one man in this narcotics?’”
“‘Vito charges are fantastically ridiculous, what they are. And have you ever known anyone in the narcotics bracket? Have you known any?’”
“‘I never did.’”
“On April the 17th 1959, the man who had gotten away with murder for so long was finally nailed in a Manhattan federal court. Don Vito Genovese was fined $20,000 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for masterminding an international narcotics Syndicate that smuggled heroin and cocaine into the United States.”
“Never underestimate the Menace that the Vito Genovese left with his even with his departure. It was he who was so instrumental, one of the key players in bringing in the scourge of heroin narcotics into America. Without him it might never have occurred. He opened up these opportunities that the mafia would use, widespread distribution into the inner cities of America. The biggest cities: New York, Chicago.”
“For the first time you had the Mass Appeal of a Narcotics contagion that enveloped the country and uh one person who has to bear some of that responsibility is Don Vito Genovese.”
“Vito Genovese continued to rule his organization unchallenged from his prison cell.”
“He died there on February the 14th 1969 of a heart attack.”
“His legacy was that he left behind the most powerful Mafia organization in America that bears his name to this day. The Vito Genovese family continues to make millions from its criminal activities.”
“But he left another more damaging Legacy to the Mob: Genovese had exposed the mafia to the FBI. The Appalachin disaster would signal the beginning of their Crackdown on organized crime in America.”
“This is the story of one family’s struggle against the mafia.”
“‘We just made a good good honest living and we we weren’t even allowed to do that.’”
“It’s a story of the power and arrogance of a hidden criminal Empire.”
“They were thought to be Invincible at that time. We never thought about realistically getting a mob boss.”
“The story of how the courage of two honest businessmen enabled police to listen in on the mafia’s darkest Secrets.”
“‘We’re killing right everybody comes near us you know we’ll kill them.’”
“How can you overcome your own voice on a tape? Can you deny what you said?”
“It’s the story of how the power of the mafia was finally broken and of the price paid by those who defied it.”
“Long Island just outside New York City. A world of neatly manicured Lawns and pristine family homes.”
“Plush Suburban. It epitomized the American dream of upward Mobility but beneath the surface was an American Nightmare.”
“I always knew there was something going on with the mafia, even as a child. My mom would drive me to school a lot, um piano lessons and everything. And um one day she said to me, ‘You know why I drive you all the time is because I need to look after you. I want you to you know look behind your back a little bit,’ um especially even at the bus stops, because your father’s in a business where we’re getting threats.”
“Keca’s father Jerry came from a family of Czech immigrants. Back in the 1950s it started a small garbage collection business.”
“Today the garbage trucks that Patrol the streets of Long Island belong to legitimate companies. But in Jerry Keca’s day it was very different.”
“That had been an intractable problem Going Back 40-50 years in the carting industry, the garbage collection industry. It had been run by the mob. It um everybody knew it was run by the mob. There was complete and utter price fixing, it was complete and utter control by uh a major family of the organized crime group.”
“Jerry Keca had done his best to adjust to reality joining the Mabrun garbage Association.”
“There was a gentleman’s agreement, so to speak, that one was not supposed to step out and solicit other business, you know beyond your territory.”
“Jerry’s problem was that unlike most of the other Long Island garbage collectors he was not Italian. Despite paying his dues to the Mob he found he was being squeezed out.”
“But in 1977 Jerry was weary of the struggle. He handed the business over to his son Robert and his son-in-law, Kathy’s husband Donald.”
“Robert and Donald were bright and ambitious. Robert had been to business school and he saw no reason to play by the mafia’s rules.”
“My brother wanted to be able to go out and make a living like any other person and do it fair and honestly. And he felt if he calculated bids and everything correctly and wanted it should be his and he didn’t like the dirty politics that were going on. It really upset him, it made him mad.”
“But Robert was playing with fire.”
“The 1970s saw the mafia at the peak of its power and influence in New York. Five mafia families dominated great sades of economic activity, from construction to the Waterfront to the Garment industry, as well as raking in vast profits from more traditional criminal activities.”
“Out on Long Island the garbage industry was run by the Lucchese family, an outfit originally set up in the 1930s and headed by an old style Mafia Don called Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo.”
“The head of the family, Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo, was an interesting person, um, uh Gruff, he was quiet, peaceable, uh interesting to spend time with.”
“Corallo was hired merely to walk into a location and stare at people to keep them in line. He knew a lot about New York City, knew a lot about a lot of things, unions, uh Union contracts, negotiations. His major area of concentration before had been labor racketeering.”
“Corallo was known as ‘Tony Ducks’ because of his skill in ducking subpoenas.”
“On Long Island the Lucchese family appeared to operate with impunity.”
“When the Keccas defied the mob run garbage cartel and began to compete openly for business, the Lucchese family took it as a direct challenge to their power and authority.”
“They were designated as being Rebels. They would show up to the bids and slap my brother’s eyeglasses off his face and threaten him, um threaten his life, threaten to beat him up. They would sugar the engines of our trucks. I remember one time they actually threw a firebomb into the cab of the truck that my husband was driving, uh right after he stepped out of it.”
“Finally, at the start of the 1980s, Robert turned to the authorities.”
“He had a relationship with one of our investigators and he explained the problems he was having, how they controlled him, um and indicated that there were telephone calls made to him by a particular individual.”
“Ron Goldstock was head of New York State’s organized crime task force, located in a small building just north of New York. The task force employed little more than 50 people. Like most of the law enforcement agencies charged with tackling the mafia at this time the task force had become demoralized.”
“I walked into the office the first day; there were people with their feet on the desk reading the newspaper, there were no active investigations. There were some indictments that had to be dismissed because of uh failings, um and so it was at once a problem because there was nothing going on, on the other hand it was an opportunity because you could start literally from scratch and build an organization.”
“Goldstock galvanized the task force, restructuring it and bringing in outside experts. But the Long Island garbage industry had so far proved a closed, impenetrable world, and so the appearance of Robert Kecca and his offer to help was a God’s end.”
“He was a Rebel, uh, he wanted to do something about it. He wanted his fair share and um he was thoughtful and he was very helpful.”
“Kecca agreed to wear a wire to meetings with other garbage collectors. It was the first step in a chain that would ultimately devastate the New York mafia.”
“The recordings served to confirm a sworn affidavit from the Kecca family detailing the harassment they had suffered and they led investigators to a man named Sal Avellino.”
“Sal Avellino was the industry specialist for the Lucchese crime family who controlled the uh private sanitation industry Association.”
“On the strength of the affidavit provided by the Keccas, the task force was able to obtain a court order to tap Avellino’s phone. They discovered that not only did he run the Long Island garbage racket, he also had a second even more important job: he was also the driver for Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo.”
“Avellino had a beautiful black Jaguar which he used to chauffeur uh Corallo.”
“Each morning Avellino would pick up the Lucchese family boss from his home on Long Island and drive him around to his various business assignments.”
“Ron Goldstock was fairly sure they discussed something more than the weather.”
“So our next step was to think about how to intercept the conversation he was having with Corallo in that car.”
“Agents obtained an identical Jaguar. For weeks they practiced to be able to place a bug beneath the dashboard as quickly as possible.”
“The chance to do it for real came in March 1983 when Sal Avellino attended the annual dinner and dance of the garbage collector Association and left car outside.”
“Torrential rain meant the car park was unattended. Three agents tailing Avellino seized the opportunity.”
“Big plastic sheets were put over the car. We were inside the car, the stopwatch went on, uh the bug was placed in, and then um we walked away with the bug car. And within 2 days the conversations came out clear and wonderful.”
“‘He picked up on one job well it seems that he don’t want he didn’t. He says it’s Gotti who is making a beef and complaining about that. Because was their let him go complain about. He says this was theirs. This is to let him go complain. The factor, listen to me, Bri.’ ‘I’m listening to you, I’m waiting. Go complain.’ ‘Of Fat Tony, what the hell got to do with competition?’”
“Fat Tony was Anthony Salerno, head of the powerful Genovese family.”
“Already Goldstock’s men were hearing the names of the mob’s top bosses.”
“If you listen to the tapes in the Jaguar which were collected over a period of months uh you hear a lot of profanity, but he in a funny way would sometimes get into uh ruminating about the life of a mobster with a driver that he was talking to.”
“Here the two men discuss whether to ‘make’ their sons, in other words to induct them into the mafia.”
“‘Kid, no, not now. I mean not not my my thinking right now is no. Might change 5 years from now, 10 years from now, but right now my thinking is no.’”
“Avellino then reflected. His attitude was hypocritical.”
“‘If the life was good enough for you and the life was good enough for you pointed there for me, if we really believe in it, why wouldn’t we want our son? If I were a doctor I would be saying to me to my son, since he’s a little kid, ‘You’re going to be a doctor.’ If I was a lawyer I would be looking for my son to be a lawyer. So they would feel that if this life was good enough for me I want to put my son also. Otherwise we’re really saying that this is not good, right?’”
“The organized crime task force was getting an unprecedented insight into the inner workings of a leading Mafia family, but they were not the only ones prying into the deepest secrets of the mob. In downtown Manhattan a Revolution was also underway, and what should have been the most important of the various agencies charged with tackling the Mafia: the FBI.”
“When I first came in the FBI in February 1970, the FBI was really not equipped to deal with organized crime in a in a way that could really impact the crime hold that they had on the United States. At that time we were a statistic-driven organization uh. As an agent you were rated based on how many cases you open, how many cases you close, how many indictments you got in a given year, how many arrests you made and so forth.”
“The bureau’s legendary director J. Edgar Hoover had originally denied even the existence of the mafia and always preferred his agents to focus on other easier targets. Now a new generation was forcing its way to the top. It was a generation whose attitudes have been forged in combat.”
“I was in Vietnam 1967 and 1968, spent most of my time up in the The militarized Zone. We sat in that DMZ uh basically lived in the ground taking incoming artillery and Rockets from North Vietnam almost on a daily basis. You know, in the feeling of not being able to respond adequately to the war that we were in, not being able to deploy our resources to stop that threat, really having boxes around our capability uh it was very, very frustrating. And yes, there were many many uh Veterans of Vietnam that were populated, you know, into the New York office and populated into other major field offices. And uh we didn’t want to see that all happen again.”
“Organized crime now became a priority for the New York FBI and it was restructured to mirror the structures of the mafia itself with its division into five families.”
“We reorganized squads along the lines of family and I basically said, ‘Okay now, this is what we know about this family that you are responsible for. What you need to do is to find out the things we don’t know: the hierarchy, the who managed things, what crimes they’re involved in, what industries they’re involved in, what unions they control.’”
“The strategy now was to focus not on the foot soldiers but the bosses. And like Ron Goldstock’s task force out on Long Island, the FBI knew the most powerful weapons at its disposal were the bug and the wiretap.”
“The bug becomes more important than anything. It was placed properly where these folks were meeting or planning their criminal activity. You could uncover the scope of the problem, you can find out who the actors were in in the whole activity um, and it was just the best evidence you can get.”
“I was honored to take over the technical Squad and try to build the resources. We had to have experts in locks and alarms, we had to have experts in Communications, telephone systems, you know, we had to have all kinds of expertise. We had to fit in as anybody, as a delivery man, as a Milkman, as a florist. We had to play all those roles because I told Mouw, ‘If somebody’s price is the same as someone’s price, you use a body, you got the garbage, the Garment Center unions and construction and construction.’”
“And by the end of 1983 the FBI was listed in in on the conversations of the heads of most of the New York families.”
“‘Look at it as a big Corporation, we in a big corporation.’”
“Like the organized crime task force out on Long Island, they were getting an unprecedented insight into the culture of the mafia. Here an unnamed mafiosi berates an underling for failing to attend a meeting.”
“‘My wife just called me.’ ‘Your wife just called you? I called you for two days. She said she told you yesterday.’ ‘I need an example. Don’t you be the example, you understand me? Listen, I call you five times yesterday now if your wife thinks you a dummy, or she’s a dummy, and you’re going to disregard my phone calls, I’ll blow you in the house up.’ ‘I never disregard anything.’ ‘And you get your ass down to see me tomorrow.’ ‘I’m going to be there all day tomorrow.’ ‘Yeah, never mind, you be there all day tomorrow, and then me have to do this again, cuz if I hear anybody else call you can respond within 5 days, I’ll kill you.’”
“Among the most important of the FBI’s targets was Fat Tony Salerno, boss of the Genovese family. The FBI had succeeded in placing a bug in the East Harlem Social Club Salerno used as an HQ. It would prove second only in importance to the Jaguar bug. On it agents were astonished to hear Fat Tony dictating who would be the next boss of the powerful Teamsters Trade union, which represented almost 2 million Americans including truck drivers and garbage workers.”
“I would get the transcripts of things and when I read it I said, ‘These bastards are taking over, they’re they’re deciding who’s going to run the Teamsters Nationwide.’ I mean I couldn’t believe it. We had we knew that they they had infiltrated it but not to the point where they controlled who could become the president. But to actually hear that discussion, that type of decision that would impact on all trucking in the United States of America would be made by these mopes, these criminals, you know, these blokes in in my view, was just sort of shocking.”
“It was a dramatic illustration of the degree to which New York’s five families had penetrated legitimate economic activity. But both the FBI and the organized crime task force were beginning to notice something even more intriguing.”
“You came to realize that these folks were working together. They were might have been individual families that, you know, for work purposes and for power purposes, but in the scheme of things they were working together, sharing these criminal activities.”
“Out on Long Island, Ron Goldstock’s organized crime task force was starting to notice the same thing in the garbage industry. While the Lucchese family controlled the employers Association, it was the Gambino family who controlled the garbage Workers Union.”
“Anybody who was a rebel who wanted to take away a customer by either um offering a lower price or better service, actual competition, their workers wouldn’t show up the next day.”
“Between them the two families had the garbage industry sewn up.”
“Just Long Island itself probably provided um a minimum of a half a million dollars each to uh the heads of the Gambino and the Lucchese crime families.”
“But the bugs were picking up an even more dramatic example of cooperation. For the first time on tape agents began to hear references to what mafiosi called ‘the Commission’.”
“‘Now, I call, I must have… very, very.’”
“The commission had originally been established in 1931 by the legendary Sicilian gangster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano. It was effectively the mafia’s board of directors.”
“The commission is essentially the heads of the five families meeting together to resolve problems. Was kind of modeled on Ancient Rome. They would vote to resolve disputes, they would make decisions about who could be admitted to the mafia and who would not be admitted, and they would serve as a kind of a court of last resort to avoid disputes over territory. And that actually turned out to be a brilliant conception because based on that vision and that architecture the mafia was able for decades to expand its influence and to avoid the kind of internal bloodletting which had been a problem in the 1920s. They were the bosses and you know we started to realize we’re getting the information about the the ruling body here.”
“Law enforcers now took an extraordinary decision to prosecute not an individual or even a whole family, but the entire New York mafia by targeting the members of the commission. This would mean putting aside inter-agency rivalry and taking the historic decision to pull the two separate investigations of the FBI and the organized crime task force up. It would also mean making use of a groundbreaking but largely untested piece of legislation called the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.”
“What RICO allowed you to do was to take anybody in a large organization that had the objective of committing at least two crimes and to charge them as part of a single conspiracy if you will.”
“RICO made membership of the mafia a crime in itself.”
“Prior to RICO there was a war of attrition, a war which law enforcement was not winning. And very often in a Darwinian sense you took out the lame and the weak and you allowed the strong to survive.”
“Under RICO the target was the bosses, even if they had not directly carried out a crime themselves. It gave you the ability to take everybody in the organization including the leaders and hold them accountable for the crimes that had been committed under their Authority. And that gave us a lot more scope for bringing large-scale cases directed at very senior members of organized crime.”
“But first investigators needed a crime that would implicate members of the mafia commission. Surveillance tapes had laid bare a system whereby the five families as a group took a cut of every concrete deal done in New York. This massively inflated construction costs across the city.”
“Cement in those days, a cost of a yard of cement, $42 a yard in New York at the time. To purchase the same amount in New Jersey across the river was $16.”
“The so-called ‘concrete club’ would form a key part of the prosecution. But to ensure the maximum possible sentences they needed a second charge, that of murder.”
“They turned to the unsolved 1979 killing of a man called Carmine Galante. Galante had been the boss of the Bonanno family, which was the fifth family of the major New York families and the one that had gotten involved in drug trafficking. He was known to be dealing narcotics, which was prohibited by the families, and he was uh considered to be a person who was ‘out of control’.”
“A decision was taken to resolve the problem in the additional way.”
“Galante is in the back of a restaurant called Joe and Mary’s restaurant with a couple of other people and some bodyguards. A car drives up, uh there are four masked men. One stays behind the wheel, the others go into the restaurant. They go through the restaurant right to the back, and they kill Galante and two of the other people who were with him.”
“Just a few hours after Galante’s murder a Hitman from one Mafia family was filmed being congratulated by a boss from another. For the FBI, this made it very likely the hit had been sanctioned by the commission.”
“Through 1984 investigators continued to gather evidence.”
“On May the 15th, for the first time, they successfully photographed mob leaders attending a commission meeting on Staten Island in New York.”
“Out on Long Island meanwhile, Tony Corallo and Sal Avellino were continuing their daily seminars on Mob etiquette.”
“‘Anybody with us, anybody comes near us you know we’ll kill them.’”
“By now the bug placed as a result of the cooperation of the Kecca family was yielding chapter and verse on the mob’s control of the garbage industry.”
“‘Right now we as the association are, we control the B, right? Right now when we control the men we even control the bosses, even better now because now it’s even more, right?’”
“‘A strong union makes money for everybody including the Wise Guys. The Wise Guys even make more money with a strong union. Everybody’s doing good.’”
“‘Can’t keep it going for the next 15-20 years.’”
“In fact time was running out, not just for Tony Corallo and Sal Avellino, but the entire hierarchy of the New York mafia.”
“On February the 25th 1985 police swooped. They’re calling it the biggest sweep of Underworld leadership in nearly 30 years. Five reputed Godfathers arrested and indicted in New York. They are said to run the five most powerful crime families and make up the so-called ‘Commission’ which governs the city’s organized crime. This is a great day for law enforcement, but this is a bad day, probably the worst, for the mafia. This case charges more Mafia bosses in one indictment than any ever before.”
“In all, nine of New York’s most powerful Mobsters were arrested including Big Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family; Fat Tony Salerno, head of the Genovese family; Carmine ‘The Snake’ Persico, head of the Colombo family; and Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo, head of the Lucchese family.”
“The New York mafia was being shaken to its foundations and top Mobsters were soon turning on each other.”
“On December the 16th 1985, Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family, arrived at a steakhouse in mid-Manhattan. Out on bail while awaiting the start of the trial, he was accompanied by a single bodyguard.”
“The hit was ordered by a rival within the same family, sensing weakness and moving to take control himself.”
“But for the prosecution in the commission trial it simply meant one less body in the dock.”
“By the time the remaining eight defendants were hauled into court 9 months later, they were facing a whole range of charges from extortion through Labor racketeering to murder for hire. The tapes made from the Jaguar bug would now form a key part of the prosecution.”
“The conversations that were obtained as a result of that that uh bug were enormously important, because they chatted not just about payments that were being made, although they talked about that too, but they talked about the structure of organized crime. They talked about where their Associates were and what particular jobs they had, what they did, is describe in detail an organization and Enterprise.”
“Tony Corallo was in trouble and his lawyer knew it.”
“It’s one thing to overcome a witness testifying against you, but how can you overcome your own voice on a tape? Can you deny what you said?”
“The trial began in September 1986 and the defense immediately made a startling concession.”
“The Bold move that was made and it was made unanimously by all of the defendants was the admission of the commission admitting that the commission actually existed, because it would it was almost foolhardy to deny it because the tapes established it.”
“To admit the existence of the commission was to admit the existence of the Mafia. The defendants had effectively broken the code of Omertà, or silence. A defense lawyer now put forward a novel line of argument: that the mafia was not a criminal organization.”
“In the opening statement he admitted that there was such a thing as a mafia, but you know ‘so what?’ ‘So what’s wrong with that?’ And that was his defense, and you had to know that there wasn’t getting getting any better than that.”
“The defendants denied involvement in the Galante murder and claimed the concrete racket was a voluntary Arrangement. But they were confronted with a mountain of evidence to the country, including testimony from Mafia turncoats and police spies, surveillance footage and above all hour after hour of secretly recorded conversations. Tony Corallo appeared resigned to his fate.”
“Corallo just sat stoically like a man taking his punishment. And I think in many ways that was his attitude. I mean he obviously, by speaking as um openly as he did in the car, it was a major embarrassment and I think he kind of viewed this as part of his punishment.”
“‘Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, just do the best job you can.’”
“‘He said because this is just a question of time.’”
“The trial lasted just 10 weeks. The verdicts were returned on November the 19th 1986.”
“‘Guilty verdicts today in the federal trial of a group of mobsters accused of being the top bosses of organized crime in the United States.’”
“We went through the first set charges, everybody was convicted of something. At that point we knew that we had won. Um what wasn’t clear until we got, you know, 15 or 20 minutes into the verdict because there were a lot of charges, is that we had won everything, that every count was a conviction.”
“‘Um, at at one point one of the um defendants was overheard saying to the lawyer, ‘Doesn’t this, you know, ever stop?’’”
“The government called Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, Carmine Jr. Persico, and Anthony ‘Tony Ducks’ Corallo the board of directors of the mafia. And today, after 6 days of deliberation, a New York jury agreed, finding them and five of their Associates all guilty of running a racketeering and extortion Enterprise.”
“I think it’s going to take a long time to replace the kind of of the network that these men put together.”
“The judge now made full use of the RICO act’s ruthless sentencing Provisions. Judge Owen sentenced every one of them to 100 years in jail.”
“I mean he really sent a message to to whoever wanted to become the next boss of those families that you know, this is what you’re facing. 100 years in jail.”
“‘Punishment for publicity. It has nothing to do with the public good.’”
“‘Uh and I think the penalty was absolutely excessive.’”
“That was the thing that told the world ‘You don’t have to be afraid of these guys anymore.’”
“For over 50 years the mafia had prospered in New York and much of America. Not it had become woven into the fabric of American Life.”
“The mafia had infiltrated legitimate economic activity and even acquired a certain Glamour and Mystique.”
“But it would never be the same again.”
“I think it was one of the great turning points in the history of organized crime because at that point everybody within the mob understood that everybody was vulnerable, including each of the bosses.”
“The leadership of the organization was demolished, sent to jail, all of its secrets were revealed and much of the accumulated wisdom and experience of Decades of criminal Behavior was lost to the Mob.”
“If anything makes organized crime organized it’s organization. The ability to communicate with one another. And when you demonstrate dramatically that communication is dangerous, it radically affects the ability of the mob to operate.”
“But there had been one curious emission from the charge sheet: the place it all started, the Long Island garbage industry.”
“Left out because prosecutors felt it would make the trial too unwieldy. Instead Sal Avellino and his cronies were tried separately before a rather more lenient judge. The judge decided to give Avellino community service and then he allowed somebody else to serve that community service for Avellino.”
“I thought it was an outrageous um um sentence. It was a joke. It was such a farce.”
“But the fact the case had come to court had one disastrous consequence: Robert Kecca’s role as an informant was now public knowledge.”
“Robert became infuriated because his name was never supposed to be disclosed, and he felt like, ‘You know, I put myself out on the limb for you guys, and and my name is being disclosed now,’ and then you’re slapping Avellino’s hand.”
“The mafia remained in control of the Long Island garbage Racket and their intimidation of the Keccas continued. From 1986 until 1989 the threats continued, the damage to the business continued, the damage to the equipment continued, the threats to the customers continued. Nothing had changed.”
“Furious, far from backing off, Robert and Donald stepped up their collaboration with the authorities, cooperating with a number of Investigations.”
“It was a dangerous strategy. On August the 9th 1989 Robert Kecca received a series of phone calls.”
“There were three, uh, two were just kind of veiled threats and the final was a threat to his life.”
“They informed the police but when Donald went home to his wife that night he appeared unconcerned.”
“Donald said, ‘No Kathy, don’t worry about it. We’ve we’ve made our phone calls and contacts to everybody as usual that we’ve done throughout the years, and they’ve told us there’s no concerns, that we’re okay, and I’m going to work in the morning.’”
“Much to my dismay he went.”
“The two men were in the office as usual at dawn the next morning.”
“Robert was shot three times and left for dead. Somehow he managed to call for an ambulance, but he died later that day. Donald had been killed immediately.”
“Kathy was told only that there had been an incident involving her husband and her brother. She rushed to the office.”
“It was a police officer who um approached me and um actually took me into his car and and let me know what happened. And um asked my opinion of who I thought it was. I said, ‘There was only one name I always heard about through the years that was a great threat to the family and that was Avellino.’ I said it had to be him.”
“With Robert and Donald out of the way the Mafia showed no mercy, muscling in on what was left of the family firm.”
“Once they died, we the women in the family, um we had to deal with trying to save the business and then we had to watch the the mafia come in like vultures and just eat us Alive business-wise. I mean we practically had nothing to sell by you know after a couple of months.”
“The Keccas successfully sued the organized crime task force for failing to protect Robert and Donald.”
“But the authorities did now finally begin an all-out assault on the power of the mafia in Long Island. In 1993, Anthony ‘Gaspipe’ Casso, Tony Corallo’s successor as boss of the Lucchese family, was arrested. To reduce his sentence Casso agreed to cooperate with the police and admitted the family’s role in the Kecca killings.”
“The guy was an Informer. Casso said, ‘There’s only one way you deal with informers: you kill them.’”
“In 1994, Sal Avellino was sentenced to 10 years for helping plan the Kecca murders.”
“Today Long Island’s garbage companies are free of mob influence.”
“More broadly the mafia is now a shadow of its former self. The commission trial that the Keccas helped Kickstart proved the first in a series of RICO-based investigations that would devastate the organization.”
“You know these guys are like a they’re like a street gang now, you know. I mean they they’ve been reduced to that.”
“‘Up shit. Wish you kill them, all right? Everybody comes near us, you know, will kill them.’”
“More importantly, the insights gained during the commission and other inquiries helped destroy the Glamour and Mystique of the mob.”
“These were not Geniuses, these were not people who were strategists. These were people who could hardly understand each other. They were uh incredibly unsophisticated and incredibly parochial.”
“‘Listen to me, police.’ ‘I’m listening to you.’ ‘I’m a fat…’”
“‘What the hell got to do with competition?’”
“It was, as you listen to their intercepted conversation, unbelievable that people with so little understanding could control so much and make so much money.”
“But the story of the Kecca family is a reminder of the power the mob once wielded and of the cynicism, greed and sordid brutality that was the reality of the mafia.”
“What the mafia has done to me is just teared apart my life. They’re run by power greed and violence. They’re bloodthirsty, power-hungry people. They’re monsters.”
“I lost both my my my husband and my brother um to men. I mean my my brother was everything to me.”
“We just made a good honest living and we we weren’t even allowed to do that.”
“Sam Giancana was the most flamboyant gangster of them all when organized crime was at its most extravagant.”
“I say he was far more powerful than Al Capone. And he was a giant. He had a beautiful showgirl girlfriend. He was Pals with Frank Sinatra. Sam Giancana didn’t like to keep a low profile; he liked the big life. He liked to be seen with the Stars. He was worth millions and had the power of life or death. He killed a lot of people, had a lot of people killed.”
“One cold stare from you could cause you to become very concerned. If you crossed him you were in deep trouble.”
“But in helping elect a ‘clean’ young president and assisting in the CIA’s murkiest operations, his career sees the mafia and politics mix into a deadly cocktail.”
“The pursuit of Sam Giancana is the ultimate story of the State versus the mob and the final chapter is one of the most notorious Mafia hits of all.”
“Sam Giancana had learned his gangster trade from Al Capone’s top enforcers. He excelled as a driver, delivering Killers to murder their victims and evade the cops. He learned how to lend money and collect the interest.”
“‘How are you? Blow me a five, I got to go get something.’”
“He said, um ‘What did it take for security?’ And Sam said, ‘How about Al?’”
“His Furious outbursts were so Savage that people around him wondered about his mental stability.”
“He was violent, but the people in the Chicago outfit almost are all violent. They kill people with the drop of a hat. He was a killer.”
“And aged just 18, Giancana was charged with murder, but escaped conviction.”
“When I first saw Sam Giancana, I thought: ‘There is the arrogance, the hatred, the violence, the viciousness that I’ve dedicated my career to fighting.’”
“For the mob, Giancana’s greatest strength was not his violent nature but his gift for making money. It was Giancana who struck fear into the electricians union so that every slot machine in Chicago paid the mob. It was Giancana who muscled the black gambling Kings out of Chicago with threats and murder. Under his watchful eye millions of dollars poured in from casinos in Las Vegas and Cuba. And by 1957, aged 49, Sam ‘Moneys’ Giancana was boss of the Chicago outfit.”
“Sam Giancana was the most powerful criminal Chief in the history of the United States. He had his tentacles into the police, to the courts, to the the business world around Chicago.”
“But just as Giancana reached the top, the government turned on organized crime. An eager young lawyer began fighting to see him and his kind fall: Robert Kennedy.”
“The nation’s underworld gets the unwelcome Spotlight of publicity as the Senate’s investigation subcommittee begins new hearings on crime.”
“Arkansas Senator McClellan. The Senate labor rackets committee was investigating Mafia Corruption of the trade unions. Robert Kennedy, as Chief legal council, made a name for himself by questioning witness after witness about their mob connections.”
“‘Did you say that? So I’ll break his back.’ ‘Who did you make it about?’ ‘I don’t know, I may have been discussing somebody in a figure speech.’ ‘Well who did you make the statement? Whose back? You…’”
“‘I don’t remember.’”
“‘But whose back were you going to break, Mr. Hoffa?’”
“‘Can’t give your speech.’”
“‘I don’t even know who I was talking about.’”
“‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
“I mean it was real-life drama and uh it was exciting to watch.”
“On the 9th of June 1959, the witness was Sam Giancana.”
“‘You tell us uh whether if you have opposition from anybody that you dispose of them by having them stuffed in a trunk? Is that what you do, Mr. Giancana?’”
“‘Uh would you tell us that?’”
“Giancana refused to answer Kennedy’s questions by taking what is known in America as the Fifth Amendment.”
“When you take the fifth you say essentially, ‘I respectfully decline to answer on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me,’ and nobody can touch you for it.”
“Sam Giancana asserted his Fifth Amendment rights over 30 times.”
“‘The kind answer because I honestly believe my answer might incriminate me.’”
“Chief Council Robert Kennedy seemed frustrated and goaded the gangster.”
“‘You tell us anything about any of your operations or just a giggle every time I ask you a question?’”
“‘Declined to answer because I always believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.’”
“‘I thought only little girls giggled, Mr. Giancana.’”
“Bobby Kennedy’s theatrics were perhaps intended to light Giancana’s famously short fuse.”
“I think he was hoping that Giancana would explode, but you know, I never thought he really gave a damn.”
“Round one in this long bitter Feud went to Sam Giancana. Kennedy could get nothing on him. And there was a reason why the Chicago boss felt Untouchable: he was well connected to the Kennedys.”
“Robert Kennedy’s Big Brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, had set his sights on the White House.”
“But just to become the Democrat presidential candidate was a battle.”
“A Boston Irish Catholic couldn’t get elected to anything in staunchly Protestant States of ’60s America like Wisconsin and West Virginia. The wealthy Kennedy Clan would have to buy support in these key primary elections, so they reached out to an influential family friend for help: Frank Sinatra.”
“Sinatra was a friend of the the Kennedy family, the family and Jack Kennedy in in particular. Frank in his turn had a friend and business partner who knew all about getting his way in politics: Sam Giancana.”
“I have every reason to believe that there was mob money in in the West Virginia election. The person who handled the money was Frank Sinatra.”
“Before voters went to the polls Giancana sent one of his men to spread $50,000 around West Virginia. He sweetened local politicians with new office furniture and paid bar owners to keep Sinatra’s campaign song ‘High Hopes’ playing on Jukeboxes across the state.”
“Giancana’s efforts seem to help get the Kennedys over the first hurdle. John F. Kennedy became the Democrat candidate to run for president.”
“But an even bigger challenge lay ahead.”
“In November 1960 John Kennedy faced the sitting vice president Richard Nixon in the race for the White House. The election was too close to call. Pundits were saying that whoever won the state of Illinois would win the presidency, and the key to Illinois was Sam Giancana’s backyard: Chicago.”
“Giancana, Chicago outfit, knew all about how to swing votes in their City. They’d been doing it for Generations. In this city no criminal Enterprise is going to work until they’ve got the politicians in their pocket. He had the politicians, and I mean all of them.”
“One ruse was to send scores of people from Precinct to Precinct illegally, voting in each one. Another well-worn trick was ‘Ghost voting’: impersonating deceased residents of a Precinct.”
“Mob controlled unions were prevailed upon to vote Kennedy to a man. There were even claims that Giancana’s hoods intimidated voters at the polling stations.”
“Listening to the radio, listening to the returns coming in, it was obvious that there was a theft underway.”
“Not since 1916 had the presidential election result been so close. Kennedy beat Nixon by just 1/10th of 1%. Somewhat afternoon on the day after the election Senator Kennedy received a telegram from the vice president congratulating him on his victory. With this, his Sam Giancana was quick to claim that it was he who had elected Kennedy to the White House.”
“While most dispute this, Giancana certainly expected payback.”
“Giancana legitimately can think that he had done his work and that he had tipped it and that he could expect some result.”
“Giancana expected the new Kennedy Administration to get Bobby off his back. He told an associate, ‘Bobby will just be another goddamn lawyer soon. They promised me they’ll take care of him.’”
“I am in my mind convinced that there was a deal cut that uh if Giancana would get Illinois for the Democrats that he would be given free hand.”
“Giancana prophesied to the outfit a lessening of government harassment in Chicago and Las Vegas. He couldn’t have been more mistaken.”
“New president John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Bobby to the government post of Attorney General.”
“I have felt that we should secure the best talent we could get for every position regardless of uh party regardless of uh any other Factor. This test has been applied, it’s been implied in this case.”
“Far from being just another lawyer, as attorney general the fanatical mob-chasing Robert Kennedy was now the country’s top law enforcement officer. It was a shock for Giancana and the Chicago outfit. The last thing they thought was they would get Robert Kennedy as the Attorney General. Anybody but Robert Kennedy. That was a surprise.”
“Bobby Kennedy now in charge of the Department of Justice and the FBI declared war on the mafia.”
“I think that in the field of organized crime I think it’s in a very serious situation that’s facing the country at the present time. I think a lot of steps can be taken in order to deal with the problem. I think it’s gotten much more serious over the period of the last 10 years.”
“Giancana cursed at the sight of the Attorney General and fumed at the very mention of the Kennedy name. To him Bobby Kennedy’s war on organized crime was a betrayal.”
“But as the justice department went to war, Sam Giancana fell in love.”
“Phyllis Maguire was the lead singer of the headlining Trio, the McGuire Sisters. She was 29, Giancana was 52.”
“It seems violent, Moe Giancana could be charming and he wasn’t flashy. It was just direct, and it was uh strength. And his eyes were, it’s like they looked through you.”
“She was a big star, stunningly beautiful, and he loved to be seen out with her on his arm.”
“Giancana began to flood her with gifts of Furs, cars and jewelry. Cash had always bought him the most beautiful escorts, but this was different.”
“He began to neglect business in Chicago to follow Phyllis’s performances all over the US. He even accompanied her on a two-week European tour.”
“The tough mob boss had a chink in his armor, a weak spot the government would later use to help bring him down.”
“They watched Sam and Phyllis closely, very closely.”
“They took photos and shot moving footage of them together when they went out.”
“With wiretaps and bugs, they also listened when they stayed in, even recording their conversation in their bedrooms, whether in Las Vegas or Maryland, Pittsburgh or Atlantic City.”
“The pressure of tight surveillance got to Sam Giancana. His acid anger was fired at the g-men whenever he saw them.”
“‘Uh Roma, he spots us. He says ‘Hello, Moe,’ and he walks away. Then we move out of there, into the other room and walked him. But that Hill.’”
“Giancana started to lose control. He antagonized the agents and hissed obscenities.”
“Retired boss Accardo was concerned that Giancana would do something stupid.”
“‘Don’t call them dirty words or anything. Don’t pay attention. Just walk away from them, let them talk, you guys. I got themselves and this and that, they’re just like us, they got a job to do. We know what to do and we do it.’”
“‘I know.’”
“Bobby Kennedy was tightening the Noose, but one government agency had jeopardized all his work by secretly seeking Giancana’s help: the CIA.”
“The consequences for the agency and for Giancana would eventually be dire.”
“Giancana and many other gangsters had once had vast lucrative business interests on the island of Cuba, just a short hop from Miami.”
“In exotic and poverty-stricken Cuba white tourists with green dollars could live like royalty and lose money in the carpet of the mob-owned casino hotels. Cuba was a gold mine for the mob.”
“It’s a lot of money made down there in the casinos and the joints and Castro took it away completely.”
“On New Year’s Day 1959, Fidel Castro’s Rebel forces swept into Havana and with popular support supplanted the old mob-friendly regime of President Batista.”
“Castro swiftly nationalized land and American Business. It cost the mob and the US government Untold millions of dollars.”
“The mob, they were running this Cuba, they were running amok down there under Batista, and when Castro came in he threw them all out, so they were not happy with him. If they could get rid of Castro they could move back in.”
“It wasn’t just the mob who wanted Castro gone. The CIA saw Castro as a dangerous communist on America’s doorstep and they wanted him Swept Away. So who would you go to? You go to mob guys who had good Connections in Cuba, they operated there for years and are pretty good at killing people.”
“On the basis that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, the CIA met Giancana and Associates to try to arrange a Gangland hit on Cuba’s president Fidel Castro.”
“They’re certainly naive about the organized crime. They’re not a hit squad, you can’t buy them kill people, they thought they could.”
“At a clandestine meeting at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.”
“The CIA wanted a Capone-style attack with Castro going down in public in a hail of bullets.”
“The real life gangsters demurred, wanting to keep things nice and clean. Giancana suggested something much more CIA: using pills to poison Castro’s food and drink. The CIA took his advice. But when a US government agency secretly commissioned murder from gangsters, they should have seen trouble coming.”
“And once you’ve dealt with them and they’ve given you something then they have a right to ask for something back and you don’t want a reciprocal relationship with them. You’re compromised.”
“Master manipulator Giancana soon turned the situation to his Advantage. First he’s working for the CIA and then somehow they find themselves working for him.”
“Giancana suspected Phyllis McGuire of having an affair in Las Vegas with top show’s comedian Dan Rowan.”
“He talked his CIA contact into arranging to plant a microphone in Rowan’s hotel room.”
“But the operation went terribly wrong. The installation Engineers were discovered by Hotel staff and arrested by police.”
“The CIA feared the mob connection and Castro assassination plot would get out.”
“The agency did not want that plotting to come public and they were afraid to death of any public examination of Giancana.”
“To avoid a public trial, a deeply embarrassed CIA director of security Sheffield Edwards had to confess in a memo to the FBI the whole sordid Affair. When he found out the Attorney General Bobby Kennedy was Furious, and he called Sheffield Edwards in to his offices and what he said was, ‘The next time you do something like that you talk to me first.’”
“One day all this would come back to haunt both the CIA and Sam Giancana.”
“FBI agents Roma and Rutland, watching and being verbally abused by Giancana in Chicago, now put even more pressure on the board outfit boss.”
“Determined to drive him over the edge, the agents implemented what they called ‘lockstep surveillance’.”
“Every day, Round the Clock, they were with him. Following in cars, when he got out they got out, when he walked they walked within feet of him.”
“They followed him on his golf round, rushing his game, jeering from the edge of the greens.”
“They were like this, he played golf, they were behind him just everywhere he went and it sent him off like a Roman Candle.”
“They even followed him into restaurants. If he went to the restroom an agent would also go and stand at the next urinal, which made it difficult for him to do what he had gone there to do. It was pure simple harassment.”
“They weren’t getting anything out of that. Roma and Rutland were right about one thing: it drove Giancana mad.”
“An electronic surveillance recording made in June 1963 reveals that his mob Associates thought he was becoming dangerously irrational.”
“‘That kind wait till you hear what he’s done now. He’s now making good decisions.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Charlie McCarthy told Roma that Moe told him to tell Kennedy to talk to him through Sinatra for Christ’s sake, that’s a goddamn rule. We don’t give up a legitimate guy.’”
“He tells Roma that Sinatra is our guy to Kennedy. More or less, I’m so I could jump out your window. Who we got to do something about the is driving this man goofy.”
“A Madden Giancana lashed out in a way the mob would never understand. He sued the FBI saying their lockstep operation violated his civil rights. Giancana’s lawyer hired a film crew to shoot the FBI lockstep in action.”
“In a darkened courtroom the judge was also shown Giancana’s respectable lifestyle: playing a round of golf, going to church and visiting his father’s grave.”
“An injunction against lockstep surveillance was granted. The FBI agents would have to keep their distance.”
“Sam Giancana had for the moment beaten the FBI.”
“But Giancana’s Victory soon evaporated, and to escape the continual scrutiny he and Phyllis holidayed at Sinatra’s home in Palm Beach and then in Las Vegas.”
“Meanwhile the FBI was recording some disturbing mobster conversations.”
“‘Kennedy, the guy should take a knife and stab and kill that. I mean, this is true.’ ‘The God right in the White House.’”
“‘Good about the Kennedy’s war against organized crime was fueling a dark mood among gangsters all over the United States.’”
“‘They should kill the whole family, the mother and father too.’”
“Just a few months later, on November the 22nd 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated during a Dallas motorcade.”
“The Killing spawned a rash of conspiracy theories about who might be responsible.”
“There was always a strong rumor that the mob had something to do with the assassination of of John Kennedy.”
“The rumors of Mafia involvement were fed when it was revealed that the man who gunned down Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was mob fixer Jack Ruby.”
“It didn’t go unnoticed that Sam Giancana had sought Ruby’s help from time to time.”
“But despite the rumors there has never been anything to substantiate claims that the mob had any part in it.”
“President Kennedy’s death did however give the mob what it wanted: the immobilization of his gang-busting brother.”
“I think he was simply crushed and shocked by it.”
“An FBI informant heard Giancana’s reaction. What he said was chilling: ‘Attorney General Robert Kennedy will not have the power that he did.’”
“Within a year the new president appointed a different Attorney General and Robert Kennedy was gone.”
“Giancana thought the pressure was off, but Bobby Kennedy had rebuilt the justice department to smash organized crime. Even without him, the Machinery worked on.”
“Crucially Kennedy had inspired a generation of investigative lawyers who would not give up the fight. One of ‘Bobby’s boys’ was a young lawyer in the Department of Justice Strike Force, David Schippers.”
“Always there was a Sam Giancana hanging out there, the one guy that nobody seemed to be able to touch. All all he had to do was surface once and we’d be able to put him into a conspiracy of some kind. Couldn’t find anything.”
“Schippers’ problem was a lack of Hard Evidence.”
“The FBI agent years of electronic surveillance put Giancana at the center of extortion, illegal gambling and murder. But as the bugs were installed under presidential prerogative and not by a judicial warrant, the thousands of hours of incriminating recordings were not admissible as evidence in court.”
“But determined to put Giancana behind bars, Schippers meticulously constructed a cunning legal snare.”
“First to question Giancana about his criminal career, Schippers awoke the dormant power of an investigative grand jury.”
“Without the grand jury we were dead in the water, we couldn’t do a thing because we had no personal subpoena power. It was a grand jury that had the subpoena power. If you’re subpoenaed to the grand jury, you got no choice, you got to show up. You may take the Fifth Amendment, but you’re going to get dragged in there.”
“Second, Schippers had to stop Giancana hiding behind the fifth amendment by removing any possibility that he could incriminate himself.”
“If what you’re saying can never be used against you then the Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply. That’s where the use of immunity came in.”
“Granting immunity from prosecution to a top mafia boss was a bold step and a Hard Sell to Schippers’ boss, the US attorney.”
“The US attorney looked at me, he said, ‘Are you nuts? Are you crazy?’ They said, ‘Well, you don’t really think he would talk?’ ‘We wouldn’t immunize him if we didn’t think he’d talk. If he doesn’t talk we’ll put him in jail. If he does talk we’re going to have one heck of a great case. We’ll break the whole stupid Mafia.’”
“At last the Trap was set, but would Giancana take the bait?”
“In December 1964, the Federal grand jury investigation began to soften Giancana up. Schippers summoned his mob Associates to question them in secret. Giancana feared they might be spilling their guts, but he couldn’t be sure.”
“Then to play even more on Giancana’s increasing paranoia, Schippers exploited his weak spot: he subpoenaed Phyllis McGuire.”
“So here comes Phyllis McGuire. We’re going to put her in the grand jury. I just assumed she’s going to come in and answer our questions. And the questions were essentially have been about her Association. Nothing embarrassing. She was the key to this whole thing.”
“Phyllis seemed shaken by the experience.”
“Whether she actually testified or asserted her Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer is still secret. But the thought that Phyllis had told them anything sent the paranoid Giancana crazy.”
“‘You know he said over the weekend that he was pretty angry with you, talked to him about it?’”
“‘No comment.’”
“Well, the word came back to us that Sam Giancana was ready to kill himself.”
“‘Is this an indication do you think that your relationship is all over?’”
“‘No comment.’”
“Because he thought if she talked, I’m in trouble.”
“David Schippers scheduled Giancana straight after Phyllis and made sure he reinforced Sam’s fears when they met just before questioning.”
“I had a transcript of another individual’s testimony in some case, it was about a half-inch thick, and we had the court reporter put a page on top that said ‘Testimony of Phyllis McGuire’. And I know Sam saw it.”
“Schippers had Giancana right where he wanted him: on the witness stand.”
“The Chicago boss thought he knew the rules of this game. He’d plead the Fifth Amendment to each question and go home as usual. But he didn’t realize David Schippers had changed the rules.”
“I remember the judge saying to him, ‘Mr. Giancana, if you received a traffic ticket on the way in here today, nobody can touch you. You are immune from any prosecution for any crime as of this moment.’”
“Immunity effectively stripped Giancana of Fifth Amendment protection.”
“And then it really hit him. When the judge told him he was immune and he had a talk.”
“It hit him.”
“The single-minded purpose of David Schippers seemed to remind Giancana of an old adversary. He turned to me and he said, ‘You’re one of Bobby’s boys, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir, I am.’”
“Giancana had no choice. If he talked and lied he was certain to perjure himself. If he talked and told the truth the mob would kill him.”
“Giancana gave his name and address, invoked the fifth, and the trap was sprung.”
“Sam Giancana, boss of the Chicago outfit, by refusing to answer questions was in contempt of court and taken straight to jail.”
“Sam Giancana was totally rattled. He couldn’t understand how this could happen.”
“The judge commented that Giancana had the key to his own cell. He would be released when he decided to answer the grand jury’s questions.”
“But in the outfit you don’t talk. Giancana kept his mouth shut. This was a government victory of sorts, as it was the first time he’d been in prison for over 20 years.”
“That rocked the whole organized crime around the country.”
“But was it such a great Victory? Giancana could only be held in jail until the grand jury folded a year later.”
“On the night Giancana was released in May 1966 there was a party at his home in Oak Park, but senior Mobsters found nothing to celebrate.”
“The outfit Old Guard decided Moe Giancana’s high-profile and volatile temper was bad for business. They gave the FBI a belated Victory by stripping Sam Giancana of his rank of boss and throwing him out of Chicago for good.”
“Giancana left the US to live in Cuernavaca, Mexico.”
“Over the years he built a new life for himself. No g-men dogged his steps or monitors his phone calls. And Giancana returned to what he did best: making money.”
“In the mid-60s as NASA prepared to put a man on the moon, Giancana was launching a gambling operation on cruise ships in the Caribbean.”
“While the US tore itself apart over the Vietnam War, Giancana’s International Ambitions met with success in Guatemala and with the Shah of Iran. In 1968 his old adversary Robert Kennedy ran for president, but on the campaign Trail he was gunned down and killed. And although the 70s saw an aging Giancana undergo abdominal surgery, he enjoyed a quiet, wealthy life.”
“Then suddenly, a dark episode from his Past cast a chill Shadow over Sam Giancana: his connection to the CIA.”
“In January 1975, a Senate select committee began investigating illegal CIA operations, specifically CIA involvement in plans to assassinate Castro.”
“Its findings would shock chairman Senator Church.”
“It is simply intolerable that any agency of the government of the United States May engage in murder.”
“The committee was very interested in hearing from any Mobsters consulted by the CIA in their Castro assassination plots.”
“Although lying low in Mexico, Giancana had been snatched from his Hideaway and suddenly found himself deported back into the United States.”
“The Press were waiting.”
“‘Giancana, why did you have to leave Mexico, sir? Why? I don’t know Mr. Giancana. What are your future plans?’”
“The future plans of onetime Boss Giancana were to reestablish his cut of Chicago outfit operations.”
“Once he arrived in Chicago he announced to the entity organization that he was back and he was the man.”
“But a new generation ran the Chicago outfit; they had no room for the Aging Giancana.”
“By that time a lot of his Rivals were in the penitentiary or dead because of what we’d been doing to them.”
“Knocked out of action in Chicago, Giancana received a subpoena that ordered him to appear before the senate committee without fail on June the 24th 1975.”
“But Sam Giancana never made it.”
“On June the 19th 1975, 4 days after celebrating his 67th birthday, Sam Giancana was at home in Oak Park Chicago. He was cooking in his basement kitchen. Routine police patrols noticed nothing unusual.”
“Health problems meant he could not eat spicy foods, so it seems the sausage and peppers was a late-night snack for a friend.”
“A friend Giancana liked and trusted. A close friend.”
“But the mafia hadn’t quite finished with Sam Giancana.”
“The way he was killed showed that the mob no longer trusted him to keep quiet. He was shot in the mouth so that you might draw the conclusion that somebody was leaving a message, ‘Don’t talk.’”
“It was somewhat interesting that somebody that powerful uh was killed. So there had to be a major major decision among the the powers to be in the Mob.”
“Sam Giancana’s extraordinary career had lasted over 50 years, spanning the Hayday of organized crime in America.”
“In the years after Giancana, show business Stars began to shun any mob connection. The Glamorous image of gangsters became tarnished. People realized they were just Killers.”
“Never again would a Mafia Boss be so closely associated with the bright stars of show business or the dark underbelly of Politics. The FBI and the justice department had struck the first serious blows aimed at breaking the mafia.”
