A new book reveals how — and why — mobster Sammy “the Bull” Gravano ratted out Gambino crime boss John Gotti.
It was the biggest gamble of John Gleeson’s life.
So the prosecutor arranged a secret pow-wow to see what Gravano had to say. They met privately in a jury room at the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn. After shaking hands, Gravano got right to the point:“I think if we manage to beat the case, John will try to kill me when we hit the street,” Gravano replied. “So if we do win, I’d have to kill him or be killed by him. If I kill him, I’ll have to kill his brothers Gene and Pete. And his kid, probably some others too.
The Bull also made it clear that he felt comfortable dealing with Gleeson, a Bronx native, and two of the G-men in the room, Frank Spiro and Matty Tricorico, trusting them not to “double-bang me.”Gleeson agreed he wouldn’t do that — even though he had no idea what Gravano meant by “double-bang.” Gotti had evaded conviction twice before prosecutors sought to try him again in 1987. Their deal with Gravano to turn against his former boss was unprecedented in terms of scope, access and betrayal.Writes Gleeson: “We all paused to reflect about the fact that he’d committed so many murders he needed a pencil and paper to do an exact tally.”“Debbie’s brother is on it,” Gravano replied matter-of-factly, referring to his wife’s younger sibling.
FBI Director William Sessions became an unlikely “landlord” of sorts during the process to bring Gotti to justice.This infuriated Gleeson, who was second chair during that trial, which ended in an across-the-board acquittal for Gotti. The perplexing thumbs-down verdict would be the first of three unsuccessful attempts to put Gotti away, leading to a new nickname for the slippery wiseguy: The Teflon Don.
Turning Gravano was a “seismic” moment in the annals of the American Mafia, Gleeson notes in the book. But to make it happen, he had to put his career in jeopardy.That was because he’d agreed to see Gravano without the mobster’s lawyer, going against laws and legal ethics for protecting the rights of defendants, and because he didn’t tell his own boss, then-US Attorney Andrew Maloney, what he was up to — including having met with Debbie Gravano to convince her husband to come forward.
“I kept this to myself because he sees those guys for drinks almost every night,” he told her, according to the book. “And I figured if I told you, you’d have to tell him.”Author John Gleeson helped lead anti-Mob efforts in Brooklyn during the height of the Gotti years. Gleeson worked with Gravano’s wife, Debbie, to secretly structure the deal that helped bring Gotti to justice.On the eve of the trial, the pressure to finally get a win was huge, Gleeson recalls in the book.
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