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02x03 - The Mob: Drugs, Bugs and the Dapper Don

Episode transcripts for the TV show, "Narco Wars". Aired: December 9, 2020.*
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Explore how opportunistic smuggling networks in Latin America turned into powerful and ruthless drug cartels with unprecedented power.

02x03 - The Mob: Drugs, Bugs and the Dapper Don

Post by bunniefuu »

(siren)

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

(tapping)

MAN: Shake this square world

and blast off for Kicksville.

RICHARD NIXON: America's public

enemy number one is drug abuse.

NANCY REAGAN: Just say no.

MAN: The mafia is a major player

in the international

drug underworld.

MAN: At the end of the day,

it's all about the dollar.

It's all about the dollar.

RONALD REAGAN: American people

want the mob and its associates

brought to justice

and their power broken.

KAMALA HARRIS: There's now

an understanding

that the w*r on drugs

was an abject failure.

MAN: You have to stop and ask

yourself, how did we get here?

Brought to you by Sailor420

!!! Hope you enjoy the film !!!

♫ ♫

ANTHONY RUGGIANO, JR.:

I would go out in the morning,

I would sit down,

I would order an egg sandwich

and a cup of coffee,

and my friends would come,

and we planned the day.

How we're gonna pillage

and plunder New York City.

And that was our job.

My name is

Anthony Ruggiano, Junior.

I'm called Anthony or Ruge.

I was an associate of

the Gambino crime family.

♫ ♫

Listen, the mob,

we are self-centered people.

It's all about us.

You know what that means, right?

How much money's in it for me?

Let's k*ll our best friends.

Let's sell heroin.

Let's poison the city.

It don't matter.

John Gotti,

he was very impressive.

My father told me once when

I was about 18 years old,

only three things are gonna

happen to John Gotti.

He's either gonna become

the boss one day,

he's going to get

100 years in prison,

or he's gonna get

shot in the head.

That was my father's future

for John Gotti.

♫ ♫

So, my father,

his name was Fat Andy.

He met John when John was

a teenager in East New York.

He always knew John

was a tough kid,

and, you know,

it went from there.

John was charismatic,

like, you know, he had a flash

about him, you know?

He definitely had

a flash about him.

The had conversations,

John Gotti and my father

used to have conversations

with each other about

how many people they k*lled.

I actually had an argument

with my father

because he wanted me to k*ll

somebody, and I told him no,

and he got mad at me because

I didn't want to k*ll somebody.

That's how much they

believed in this life.

John Gotti and my father

believed that it was okay

to tell your son

to go k*ll somebody.

And then if he says no,

you get mad at him.

Ha. Let's talk about that.

(chuckles)

I mean, you know, right? Yeah.

♫ ♫

GEORGE GABRIEL: John Gotti was

one of the known heavies,

if you will,

in the Gambino crime family.

Somebody the family could

rely on for acts of violence,

for k*lling people.

He was a thug.

RUGGIANO: The Gambino family,

they ran the show.

I mean, they had

all the nightclubs,

they had all

the construction companies.

If you needed cement,

you had to go to them.

They had all the bookmaking.

They had the police

on the payroll.

When we went to prisons,

they had the COs on the take.

♫ ♫

The Gambino family,

and all the families,

had their hands in everything.

♫ ♫

MAN: Cut it out

and let us through.

Come on. Make a hole and

GEORGE ANASTASIA:

Paul Castellano, who's the boss,

has put out an edict:

nobody deals drugs.

It's verboten.

And if you deal drugs,

no appeal, we're gonna k*ll you.

And it wasn't that Castellano

thought drugs was a bad thing,

there wasn't a moral situation.

They didn't need the money,

they didn't want the aggravation

that came with dealing drugs.

They didn't want

the law enforcement pressure

that came with dealing drugs.

JOHNNY ALITE: We know the rules,

we know the regulations.

We don't discuss them.

But when Gotti Senior

steps into the Mafia,

he does Gotti's rules.

He breaks every Mafia protocol

and every rule.

And one of those rules

was selling drugs.

I'm Johnny Alite.

Enforcer, drug dealer,

and, uh, k*ller for John Gotti.

♫ ♫

So when I'm approached to get

involved in the heroin trade

with the Gotti family, I'm on

the bottom of that totem pole.

And when they ask me

to step into business,

obviously, when you're asked

a question like that,

it's not an ask,

it's telling you you're now

in the heroin business.

(screaming)

So I was in the heroin business.

♫ ♫

You got heroin coming in

back then from Turkey.

It was coming in from Spain

and the Sicilian faction.

So they had different routes

they were bringing heroin

and moving it

from every direction.

Every single guy

around the Gotti family,

anybody who was within our crew,

was moving heroin.

RUGGIANO: They were

a drug dealer's drug dealer.

They were wholesaling the drugs

to big time heroin dealers.

♫ ♫

ALITE: John Gotti doesn't want

to know about the drugs.

At the end of the week

or the end of the month,

he wants his envelopes.

He doesn't want to hear

where it comes from.

RUGGIANO:

When someone brings you

a shopping bag full of money,

you're not going to give

the guy the third degree.

Yeah, he broke the rules,

but, you know, I guess rules

are made to be broken.

Back then we thought

it was normal,

because that's how I was raised.

I was raised in that atmosphere,

and it was really a good time in

my life, to be honest with you.

So I would go out to Manhattan

and everybody was there

blowing coke,

and everybody was in the,

it was just a big party scene.

We always were well manicured.

You know, getting manicures

was classy.

I got a manicure yesterday

for this sh**t.

(laughs)

Yeah.

I even got my eyebrows waxed

for you the other day.

(laughs)

Today there's a zillion

different kinds of drugs,

but back then in the day,

it was coke, pot and heroin.

♫ ♫

I never saw John snort coke,

so I would say he never did.

ANASTASIA: You know the problem,

when you talk to people

around him at the time,

is John Gotti,

among other things,

was a degenerate gambler.

(bell rings)

(crowd cheering)

And apparently wasn't

a very good gambler.

ALITE: He wasn't an average guy

losing $50 a game,

he was a guy that's

losing 100,000 a game.

There's only one business

that could bring in

this kind of money,

and that's the drug business.

♫ ♫

GABRIEL: So, Paul Castellano

was a different style

than John Gotti was.

Old guy, old school,

very low key.

Paul kept hearing these

great things about this guy,

John Gotti.

He's guarded his family.

What a capable guy he's got.

What a powerful crew he's got.

Paul sees it as a threat.

Oh, everybody likes this guy.

Hey, no, the attention's

supposed to come to me,

not to this guy.

So, right there Paul's got

a problem with John Gotti.

RUGGIANO: When I was 16 years

old, my father looked at me

and he goes,

"You want to work for me?"

He said, "Going to jail was all

part of the job," he told me.

My life escalated from working

in a blackjack game

when I was 16, to a dice game,

to a number office,

to hijacking trucks,

to violence, to commit a m*rder.

I mean, that was

the progression of my life.

You know, listen,

when I was a kid,

my father's partner told me,

"Before you definitely

commit to this life,

go to Washington, D. C.,"

he told me, "and look at

the Justice Department building,

and look at that building,

and I want you to know

that that building is gonna

chase you and come after you

your whole life," he told me.

I didn't do it, but that's

what he told me to do.

Yeah.

♫ ♫

REAGAN: The time has come

to cr*pple the power

of the Mob in America.

Can we honestly say that America

is a land with justice for all

if we do not now exert

every effort

to eliminate this confederation

of professional criminals,

this dark, evil enemy within?

You know the answer

to that question.

The American people want the Mob

and its associates

brought to justice

and their power broken.

(siren)

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

BRUCE MOUW:

My name is Bruce Mouw.

I was the FBI Supervisor

for approximately 20 years,

responsible for

all investigations

involving the Gambino

crime family.

When I was first assigned

to our office in Queens,

and we started

hearing informants

reporting on this active crew

in Ozone Park

called

the Bergin Hunt and Fish Crew,

the captain being John Gotti.

♫ ♫

GABRIEL: That was his kind of

traditional, historic club.

When he was running his crew,

that was his headquarters.

MOUW: It was a very active crew.

There were a lot of K*llers

in the crew,

and so it was one of the biggest

targets for our squad.

When you target the crew

of a crime family,

you always look for weak links,

and our informants told us that

a very weak link in the family

was a guy named

Angelo "Quack Quack."

He had a big mouth, he talked

a lot and he was a gossip.

ALITE: Gotti's right-hand man,

best friend,

and known to be his cousin,

was Angelo.

He was Gotti's personal

strong arm, henchman,

intimidator, and moneymaker.

Along with his brother,

Genie Gotti,

these guys were the two biggest

earners for Gotti Senior

in the heroin trade.

MOUW: Our informants

told us that

he's having meetings

in his house.

The big house on Barnard Avenue,

Cedarhurst, Long Island.

There was a little dining area

right outside his kitchen,

and he's meeting other organized

crime members and associates.

So we put a bug

in the little dining area,

and we also put it

in the downstairs den.

And after a while we start

picking up Gene Gotti

showing up there,

and they were talking about

major multi-kilo heroin deals.

♫ ♫

RUGGIANO: Paul Castellano

was the boss at the time,

and he didn't react too well.

He wasn't happy.

He wanted the tapes.

He wanted the tapes, number one,

just to make sure that

his name wasn't involved,

that was the first thing,

and the second thing was

that he knew that was the way

to get rid of John and Genie,

because the rule was

you can't sell heroin,

and it still could be enforced

by a guy like Castellano.

♫ ♫

RUGGIANO: Once Paul started

sending for those tapes,

and they weren't gonna

give them up,

the (bleep) was gonna

hit the fan.

I heard rumors.

Somebody told me

on Mulberry Street

that Paul was going around

telling people

that he was gonna take care

of John after Christmas.

You don't say that

about a guy like John.

John didn't wait for Christmas,

because John didn't give

a (bleep) about Christmas!

♫ ♫

RUGGIANO: After them tapes,

after Paul wanted to listen

to them tapes,

John knew, at that point,

it was k*ll or be k*lled,

and basically we all knew that.

♫ ♫

KAREN GRAVANO: Sometimes I feel

like I talk too much,

but that's a good thing, right?

My name's Karen Gravano.

I'm the daughter of Salvatore

"Sammy the Bull" Gravano.

♫ ♫

I was about nine years old

when I started to realize

that my father had

a different type of lifestyle.

He was a gangster and,

you know, whatever that meant.

If you crossed him,

you had a problem.

When he came home,

he wasn't a gangster at home.

He was a father, he was

a friend, he was a protector.

There's this one time,

when we were kids,

like my father took us

to a duck pond,

and I think we had

a couple of my cousins.

So everybody was feeding the

duck, and the duck went crazy,

and I think it bit me

or my cousin,

and I remember my father

just, like,

grabbing the duck by its neck

and choking him.

Feathers were flying,

ducks, we're all screaming.

Everybody was running.

But, you know,

he was protective.

I mean, I would choke a duck

if they attacked my daughters.

And then it's just like

all of a sudden,

John Gotti appeared in my life.

He had come to my father

because John knew

that he couldn't

make a move on Paul

without including my father.

My father felt like Paul wasn't

kicking down to his own family,

he was making a lot of money,

and he really wasn't

spreading the wealth.

I don't want to sit here

and say, like,

my father loved to do m*rder,

because I don't think anybody

really likes that,

but he was actually good at it.

♫ ♫

RUGGIANO: It's snowing out,

a little snow, white Christmas.

♫ ♫

ALITE: I know it's

gonna happen any day now.

GABRIEL: So the plan

that they came up with

was rather ingenious.

They decide to take

Paul Castellano out

by luring him to one

of his favorite restaurants

with captains that

he absolutely trusted.

Their scheme was

all the shooters,

and they had many of them

because they wanted to be able

to pull this off,

were gonna be in trench coats,

Russian hats.

You see that a lot in New York,

and it's just so nothing.

No one's really going to

pay attention to anything.

If anything, they'll focus on,

"Well, there's a guy with

a trench coat and a Russian hat,

I can't tell you

anything else about him."

One of the busiest sections

of Midtown Manhattan,

four o'clock in the afternoon,

around the holidays.

RUGGIANO: So John Gotti was

in the car up the corner

with Sammy the Bull.

He hated Paul so much

that he wanted to see him

laying in the street.

♫ ♫

ALITE: I happen to be

at another guy,

I was at dinner at his house,

sitting at the kitchen table,

and he had a little television

on the table.

♫ ♫

And while we're sitting eating,

we get some 911 texts

on our beepers.

Back in those day,

it was beepers.

And I kept getting them,

911, 911.

(siren)

And behind the 911,

I'm getting 9-8.

That means come to the club

on 98th Street, the Bergin.

So I know something happened.

♫ ♫

It's all over the news.

It's flashed everywhere.

That Paul Castellano was hit

in front of Sparks Steakhouse.

REPORTER: Big Paul Castellano,

reputed Godfather

of the Gambino family,

was on his way to

a Manhattan steakhouse.

As he stepped from

his black Lincoln,

three men wearing fur hats and

trench coats suddenly appeared,

pulled g*ns, pumped six b*ll*ts

into Castellano

and six into his top capo,

Thomas Bilotti,

and then calmly walked away.

GRAVANO: I was upstairs in

my room, and all of a sudden

on the news, I'm hearing,

you know, Paul Castellano,

Mob boss, is k*lled

outside Sparks Steakhouse,

and I'm thinking, like,

"Wow, who could have done this?"

RUGGIANO: After the hit,

Sammy Gravano and John Gotti

drove the car down the street

and they slowed up and looked at

the bodies and kept on going.

♫ ♫

Because he was a gangster,

and he wanted to be there

and see it for his own eyes.

♫ ♫

And then John was the boss.

♫ ♫

ANASTASIA: The old-time

Mob bosses, you'd say, you know,

they ruled with an iron fist,

covered with a velvet glove.

Well, Gotti saw no need

for the glove,

that's what it came down to.

This was a hostile takeover

in every sense of the word.

RUGGIANO: After he was k*lled

and John became the boss,

all the heroin dealers

that were around John

all got straightened out.

♫ ♫

ANASTASIA: Gotti was a boss

who reflected the times.

He was always grabbing and

reaching for more and more.

♫ ♫

ALITE: So by the time that

we reach about 1986, 1987,

we expand the heroin business

into the cocaine business.

I have Colombian connections,

so we're coming in

from Colombia.

There's loads coming in

from Miami,

coming in from Detroit.

♫ ♫

GABRIEL: The allure was money,

and very easy money.

If you've got the connections,

it's about the logistics.

It was money.

ALITE: So we go out to

the Hamptons, Fire Island.

Party, drink, broads,

champagne flowing from

the morning till night.

Listen, when you have keys to

the city, like John Gotti did,

he was arrogant, he didn't care

that he broke every rule.

ANASTASIA: You know,

this was supposed to be

Cosa Nostra, "our thing."

When John Gotti took over,

it was no longer "our thing,"

it was "my thing."

RUGGIANO: His transformation

was like a caterpillar

turning into a butterfly.

All of a sudden,

he's wearing $3,000 ties,

and the cocoon opens

and out comes the Dapper Don.

ANASTASIA: He's out and about.

He's good with a quip

and a sound bite.

JOHN GOTTI: Why don't you

just behave yourself?

MAN: I'm behaving myself.

GOTTI:

You're not behaving yourself.

ANASTASIA: John Gotti changes

the whole dynamic

of organized crime.

No longer the old

Sicilian-style,

"make money not headlines,

stay in the shadows."

The idea was, what's the point

of being a gangster

if nobody knows who you are?

REPORTER: Every Fourth of July

he throws a free fireworks bash

for the neighborhood.

When police had

tried to stop it,

the crowds have

driven them back.

Gotti is somewhat

of a local hero here.

GABRIEL: Ironically,

the neighborhood thinks

John Gotti's keeping

the drug dealers out of here.

Yet John Gotti's a drug dealer,

but he's not the guy pedaling it

on the street, right?

So it's the perception.

He's saving us

from drug dealers.

No, he's not.

ANASTASIA: Gotti was every day,

in your face, look at me,

I'm a gangster doing this,

and that drives law enforcement.

You're in my face,

you're doing this?

I'm coming to get you.

♫ ♫

RUGGIANO: He was such the boss.

He says, "And the worst

I'll ever wind up with,"

he said, "is a hung jury,

because the public loves me."

And he was convinced

that the public loved him,

that they would never

convict him at a trial.

♫ ♫

ALITE: Every time there was a

trial against John Gotti Senior,

we were ordered to intimidate,

hurt, or bribe the juries.

Get them not to give

a guilty plea,

and we'll take care of you

and a family member.

If you can't get to them,

tell them we'll take of you's

a different way.

In other words,

we'll hurt you or k*ll you.

JUROR: We find him not guilty.

(cheering)

REPORTER: Are you happy?

MAN: Well, for sure.

MAN: We're all happy.

MAN: We're all happy.

MAN: We got a good decision.

MAN: The whole city

should be happy.

♫ ♫

GABRIEL: By the time

he beats the third one,

the public is convinced,

the media's convinced,

law enforcement

can't put him in jail.

The charges just don't stick.

He starts developing

the nickname the Teflon Don.

♫ ♫

ALITE: Brooklyn, Queens,

Bushwick, East New York,

South Jamaica, jails.

If we seen a business that

we like, we'd step into it,

and there was nobody

was gonna stop us.

RUGGIANO: Well, without a doubt

he felt invincible,

and he put it in their faces.

And plus, he was an egomaniac.

So, yeah, it was unheard of.

It was unprecedented.

Everybody knew in their heart

that we were headed for trouble.

(train horn blows)

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

ALITE: We're moving it

through Rikers Island,

through guards that are

giving it to inmates.

The easy connection is they're

from our neighborhoods.

These guys grew up

in our neighborhoods,

they grew up in poverty.

We have connections to them

through people, family members.

So one of the guys that I was

doing business with in heroin,

he was a sergeant

at Rikers Island.

His brother actually worked

for me in the cocaine business.

We use him to get me the other

connections of the other guards,

guys that he trusts,

guys that he knows for years.

You just had to have a half of

a brain, a little bit of ba*ls,

and with the power structure

behind me and other guys,

the city was ours, and the way

we made money was ours.

GABRIEL: John's style was

completely different

than Paul's.

Paul ran the Gambino family

within La Cosa Nostra rules,

like a business.

There were protocols to how you,

to how things are gonna happen.

ANASTASIA: Gotti ran the

organization like it was a g*ng.

I mean, that's what he knew,

that's what he came up with.

You had guys dealing drugs,

you had guys doing scams,

you had guys out doing this,

that and the other thing,

and so he brought that same g*ng

mentality to his leadership.

(siren)

♫ ♫

GRAVANO: I believe it was 1986

my father became the underboss.

My father was basically

his pit bull, his friend,

his confidant, and someone

that Gotti can trust.

♫ ♫

John's motto was,

"Let's put it out there, Sammy.

Let's put it on Front Street."

RUGGIANO: He was the boss.

He had everybody

standing at attention.

He had everybody

coming to see him.

GRAVANO:

Like, he would basically

call meetings every night

that they had to be

on Mulberry Street

at the Ravenite Social Club

at 6:00 PM,

and that's not

what gangsters do.

Cosa Nostra is a secret society,

you're not supposed to show

people what you are,

and that became a strain

between my father and John.

♫ ♫

GABRIEL: I mean,

we could never figure out

who these guys were

under Paul Castellano.

There were 250 members

in this family.

John made 60%, 70% of them

at some point

show up at the Ravenite Club

to pay homage to him.

♫ ♫

We were able to identify

a huge number of members

of that family, associate them

with their vehicles,

associate them with their crews.

That's important

and vital information.

John handed it to us.

♫ ♫

So the strategy was

we got to bug this guy

anyplace he's potentially

doing business.

The trick was finding

the right places to put bugs.

So the first place we knew

John was going every day

was back to

the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club,

which was in Queens.

♫ ♫

Then we knew every night

he was going to the Ravenite,

so that would be the next place

to try and bug.

And sources tell us that

he's now using this apartment

two stories up to have

his very important meetings.

MOUW: We had a widow

living there.

Our tech guys went in, they put

the bug into her apartment.

GABRIEL: We're all excited.

So we're sitting there waiting

for that first conversation

and, you know,

day one goes, nothing.

Day two, nothing.

Day three, nothing.

MOUW: But a few days later

we hear the back door open.

We heard him walking

through the hallway,

going up these wooden steps

upstairs.

We activated the apartment mic,

and we also hear

the apartment open up,

and we hear three guys come in.

GABRIEL: And I'm home, you know,

and I get a phone call,

and all they told me was,

"He's in the apartment.

He's been up here

for an hour plus.

We could hear everything great.

I think you're

going to be happy.

It sounds like they were

talking about m*rder."

GABRIEL: I can't wait to get

in the office the next day,

because I have

to listen to this.

We put the tape on to review it,

and not only is it

great conversation,

and it's John and Sammy,

and the first

conversation we get,

in the one place we were hopeful

to get good conversations,

is on why they k*lled

Paul Castellano.

I mean, you couldn't have

scripted that for Hollywood,

to make stuff like that

fall out.

It was incredible.

The plan was we wanted the

impact of arresting all of them

at the Ravenite together.

We're just waiting

for Sammy, number two.

So once Bruce told me

we had them,

I just had to get down there

as fast as I could.

(siren)

I'm the lead car.

We go, I mean, I'm, once I'm

going, nothing is stopping me.

Bust through traffic, go up

Mulberry Street the wrong way,

block off the street.

Jump out of the car.

Run into the Ravenite.

You know, kind of make

my entrance,

say, "Alright, everybody,

know who I am.

You know why I'm here.

I want you to be cooperative.

The guys behind me are

gonna deal with you."

And one of the guys

looks at me and says,

"What guys behind you?" (laughs)

And I turn around

and I was like,

"Well, there will be guys

behind me any minute now.

I'm not sure where

the heck they are."

John was drinking coffee.

You know, and John, you know,

typical arrogant self,

"I knew you were coming."

"Well, I'm glad you knew

I was coming."

Says, "Oh, let me just

finish my coffee."

ALITE: The one thing about John,

he didn't buckle under, under

the pressure of the FBI or Mob.

REPORTER: Mr. Gotti. Thank you.

REPORTER: Mr. Gotti, please.

MAN: That stuff's in the way.

MAN: I know.

♫ ♫

GRAVANO: Everything started

going fast, you know?

It just all started to

come together in my head.

So I realized that

my father's in trouble.

Like this is something big.

♫ ♫

MOUW: A few days after that

we had the remand hearing

where the judge decides

whether they're going to be

released on bail or not.

GABRIEL: I'm sitting opposite

the three defendants,

and it was going to be

the first time

they were going to hear

a little bit of what we had.

GABRIEL: As this was all being

played, I'm looking at John,

like, I told you it was good,

and he's just kind of staring,

like, yeah, I don't know what

I'm going to do about this.

♫ ♫

ANASTASIA: Sammy Gravano's

a very shrewd guy

and a very intelligent guy,

and Sammy Gravano looks

at the lay of the land,

and on some of the tapes,

Gotti is not saying very nice

things about Gravano.

GABRIEL: He implicates Sammy

in a bunch of murders

that are going to put Sammy

in jail for life.

ANASTASIA: I mean, somebody

described it as

Gotti was being what they call

a dry snitch.

He's talking about murders

and blaming Gravano

in case anybody's listening,

and Gravano interprets

all of that

as this guy was ready

to throw me under the bus,

or this guy is throwing me

under the bus.

GRAVANO: He felt betrayed,

and the Feds were

actually smart enough,

because they used this tape

as the wedge between

my father and Gotti.

GABRIEL: It's the old saying,

there's no loyalty

amongst thieves.

You do what you got to do.

It's the name of the game.

♫ ♫

GRAVANO: This particular time

when I went on a visit,

I could tell that

something was different.

And he came over, he sat down,

he was like, "I'm going

to tell you something

that goes against

everything I believe in,

and everything I've ever

taught you to believe in."

"I'm going to cooperate

with the government."

And it was like, I couldn't

even believe that those words

came out of his mouth.

Like I never could

imagine him doing that.

Everything that he ever

taught me as a kid,

like, he was so against that.

That he's actually saying this

to me right now,

it just broke my heart.

GABRIEL: So when we were

making the decision

whether or not to make

the deal with Sammy,

with that came concerns

as to how he could adversely

affect our trial.

I now had somebody

the defense could beat up,

they could cross examine.

The jury can hate this guy.

That's all a problem to my case.

It was a risk.

♫ ♫

REPORTER:

The guy dressed like Fonzi

is the prosecutor's

star witness.

He was Gotti's number two man.

"Sammy the Bull" Gravano

was Gotti's underboss,

and now he's going to tell

the jury all about it.

EDWARD MCDONALD: I'd have to say

that he's the most significant

organized crime figure ever to

cooperate with the government.

GABRIEL: On the witness stand,

I mean, even the first time

he came out having to face

and square off against John,

and the two of them lock eyes,

and John's kind of giving him

that stare-down,

and Sammy's like, I'm here

because of this (bleep).

Once that moment ended, it's

like, under control, got this.

Not a problem.

They couldn't get

under his skin.

They played the rat card.

They did everything.

This guy was one

of the best witnesses

I've ever seen testify.

Better than some cops

I've ever seen testify.

He was unflappable.

♫ ♫

JAMES FOX: The Teflon is gone.

The Don is covered with Velcro,

and every charge

in the indictment stuck.

MOUW: That's when it finally

hit me, I almost teared up,

knowing all this hard work

for years and years

had finally come to fruition.

GABRIEL: We did something

that nobody thought

was gonna happen, right?

Nobody thought this guy

was gonna go to jail,

and we slammed the doors on him.

REPORTER: Gotti's friends had

organized a rally of supporters

from Gotti's neighborhood

to come and protest the trial,

which they claim was unfair.

The swelled to the front

of the courthouse,

overturned U. S. Marshals' cars

and clashed with police.

ANASTASIA: Gotti was a boss,

the celebrity gangster.

Gotti was the boss who grabbed

with both fists

his whole way up the Mob ladder.

There was a lot of money

to be made dealing drugs,

whether it's coke, marijuana,

heroin, meth, whatever,

but reality was the way

he managed this organization

drove it into the ground.

RUGGIANO: He felt

the public loved him,

and those were his words:

"They love me and the worst

I'll ever get is a hung jury."

And that's what he thought.

And that's what he believed.

But at the end of the day,

he was wrong.

♫ ♫

I don't hurt nobody.

I don't rob nobody.

I don't lie to nobody,

but sometimes I miss the action.

I miss the money.

My life was all about greed.

I never had enough.

You know, greed is the gasoline

that feeds the engine

in the Mob.

At the end of the day,

it's all about the dollar.

It's all about the dollar.