Mugshots: John Gotti - End of the Sicilians | Forensic Files

[Music] Sicily moments after a bomb killed an Italian anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone and his wife the murder sent
thousands of people into the streets demanding The Conspirator be caught and arrested it was devastating immediately
we contacted the Italian authorities and offered our services we sent a team of Agents over there for that to to look at
the bomb site and help them develop the evidence the police struck back with a wave of
arrests in depth Falcone turned out to be a formidable foe at his funeral the public reaction to his assassination was
overwhelming The Ordinary People of palmo the women of Sicily in particular had had enough familiar with Mafia
violence having buried their sons killed by Mafia gunman these people now rose up
horrified by Falcone's death they demanded something be done I love palmo very much but I don't
think anybody can destroy the mafia they're too strong the state is powerless the state hasn't done enough
the state is not doing enough soon the American FBI joined the Italians along with police from across the world to
attack convict and crush the Sicilian Mafia [Music] [Music] for much of the 20th century this is the
way it looked Wise Guy gangsters presiding over an Empire of crime an Empire shaped by ancient codes secret
Oaths and murderous penalties born in the hard Mountain Villages of Sicily this honored Society was Americanized
and then exported around the globe by men named luchano and Lansky bonano and Bruno this was their dream to build an
organization that would control crime completely an organization so hidden that its very existence would be denied
by government officials George Anastasia has been covering organized crime for the Philadelphia Inquirer for two
decades part of the problem was Jed gaho would not even acknowledge the existence
of the mafia he was more interested in bank robbers and car thieves so there was no agenda there was no concerted
effort to attack the organization if it didn't exist there was no nothing to attack and and that created a situation
where the mob was able to flourish crime it seemed did pay and pay big in places like Chicago under the
city's notorious Crime Boss Al Capone and in Angelo Bruno's Philadelphia where Bruno the so-called gentle Don presided
over a gambling and lone shark operation worth millions while in New York the legendary five families presided over
everything as a ruling body called the commission [Music] as their crime empire grew meetings
would be called to settle disputes plan for the future or just to relax this period of mob Tranquility would be
shattered forever One Day in 1957 police acting on a tip raided a house in a small town in Upstate New
York where all the major mob figures from around the world had gathered for a sit down after the Summit AT Appalachia
as it would be called nothing would be the same the nation's underworld gets the
unwelcome Spotlight of publicity as the Senate's investigation subcommittee begins new hearings on crime these
hearings always attract a large number of Spectators this one is particularly crowded awaiting the first public
appearance of Joseph vaki the convicted hoodlum whose confessions to the FBI have reportedly put a price of $100,000
on his head by the infuriated Mafia the Congressional investigations that followed the raid at Appalachia
would produce a man named Joe vachi vachi a mob foot soldier said the meeting was a family gathering a family
he identified as kostra our thing for the first time the public would learn of the criminal
Society by testifying before Bobby Kennedy and breaking the Family Code of Silence vachi have become a marked man
this is what I'm telling you what I'm exposing to you and the press and everybody this is my Doom that was kind
of the beginning of the end I mean up until that point Omer to the Cod of silence had been the shield around which
behind which the mob operated vachi was the first one to mention the phrase kostra before that everybody talked
about the mafia and vachi went all the way back to luchano to Lansky he knew the whole story and it was a real catch
for the government at that point it was a stunner and it set things in motion for Kennedy and and it changed the
agenda of the government now there was an organization they knew about it and now they were ready to attack it once
you have organized crime recognized uh by uh by the leaders the political leaders of the country then what's going
to flow from that uh will be resources uh and that's what happened here in 1970 Congress authorized the hiring of a
thousand FBI agents to work organized crime and I'm one of those agents uh once we went through our
training period they started assigning us to the major office offes and I got assigned to New York and I've got to say
at that time the New York kind of helped put all this together there were a bunch
of us thrown together in a New York office on the organized crime division uh almost without exception all
of us were combat veterans and all of us were self-motivated self-starters a different type of person
and also a type of person that had a hard time working within strict Bureau structures the strike force now took aim
in their crosshairs they would Target the powerful so-called Don of organized crime men named Gotti gigantti and
Scarfo these new crime Fighters employed new tactics and new laws in the end the
bad guys would discover this thing of theirs this kosan norra and they would find it would be no match for the strike
force what happened was that you had in the investigative agencies particularly the FBI uh devoted agents to doing
nothing but organized crime and on the prosecutorial side of it you had the development of strike forces uh and
their sole mandate was to be prosecuting organized crimes Associates and members
so you had this Cadre of both agents and prosecutors whose mandate was to go in there and prosecute organized
crime the band of new Turks Within and the FBI had a new philosophy they were more interested in results in what they
had learned in Vietnam a kind of hand toand combat we had some tremendous disagreements within the organization we
had individuals who believe that intelligence was the main thing we should be after and the rest of us
saying no intelligence is smart but putting these people in jail is the main thing we should be after we developed
this theory that we wanted to penetrate the organization we wanted to identify the lines of communication we wanted to
put in electronic surveillance and we wanted to hear the organizational structure the
individual illegal activities coordinated and we wanted to follow everything going right back to the boss
and we wanted to start taking out the boss using every technique at their disposal wir Taps electronic
surveillance undercover agents the strike force slowly began to put together the pieces of the puzzle what
are emerged was the shape of worldwide organized crime they had quit making members for a number of years but then
they started making new members but the dynamicism of the organization was there
so you if if we figured if we continued to cut off the head he would be replaced
but the replacement would not have the historical knowledge or the relationships with everybody else so we
wanted to go after the head of the organization repeatedly and that that's was the theory of Investigation we
started using John Gotti was the American Godfather not since Al Capone had one man dominated organized crime the Dapper
Dawn man of Honor tradition and murder never one to shun the spotlight Gotti moved through New York with all
the bravado of celebrity trailing reporters in his wake and attracting adoring fans give you some
money as ruthless as he was stylish got he had risen to the top of the gambino crime family by ordering the murder of
his boss big Paul calano the dramatic Midtown Manhattan hit caused the sensation and launched
the career of a man who seemed beyond the reach of even the strike force each courtroom victory was celebrated by
Gotti's fans and would ultimately earn him the name the Teflon Dawn he seemed more movie star than assassin
Gotti you know had become kind of a hero and that he was the Teflon Dawn and stuff like
this Gotti was vulnerable as is all bosses of organized crime they cannot stop conducting illegal activities if
they do they lose their position so all we need is is Manpower and time and we can successfully prosecute any of them
botti's mouth would prove his downfall when he spoke the strike force was listening this is going to be our I die
an hour from now tonight or 100 years from now I'm in jail be the Gambino family at that time
probably had around 350 identified members as I recall and probably close to 30 Crews now after we were through
with them in that initial round of prosecution and Gotti was just one of them they were probably down to about 10
or 12 maybe 15 Crews and majority of the family the members were in jail what Gotti couldn't know was that
the walls had ears ears put there by the strike force electronic listening devices that brought the government
inside the mob secret councils and worst of all for Gotti was the decision of his
right hand Man Sammy the bull gravano to begin cooperating with the strike force
the bull would betray his boss in order to save his own skin in January of 1990 I accepted the
position of official underboss which I held until I began to cooperate with the government in
1991 to understand how he ended up in court you have to return to to his roots in Bensonhurst
Brooklyn Salvatore gravano was born in 1945 he was raised in this house he used to walk past this corner on the way to
church it was a corner where mob guys hung out when Sammy was 10 he desperately fought two older boys to
retrieve his stolen bike one of the mob guys watched it happen and said you see that Sammy he's like a bull the Nick
name stuck Benson Hurst was Italian you know you walk through the streets today it's
different back then if you didn't speak Italian you had to point at things in the store CU you know you you weren't
going to get what you needed Michelle Mc covers the mob for the New York daily news as the paper police bureau chief
she's the author of mob over Miami and is currently at work on a book about the mob in New
York the mob was seen as a way to keep the neighborhood safe it kept the druggies and the thieves and the
undesirables out of the neighborhood Brooklyn like other parts of New York City was controlled by various organized
crime groups Outsiders referred to them as mafia families insiders used the Italian phrase Laos norra our thing and
there was a brutal and deadly side to these mafia families they controlled gambling lone sharking prostitution and
extortion and when someone crossed them their response was often Swift and lethal when Sammy was growing up the
neighborhood Mobsters fascinated him Sammy the bull would go to church on Sundays with his family and look at
these Dapper guys on the corner and you know everybody would seem to pay them a lot of respect and when Sammy the bull
asked his dad like who are they his dad would say there're are people but those are not people that you want to be
around and um of course that just intrigued him all the more and those were the very men that he wanted to be
like sami's parents wanted their son to stay in school they saw education as a key to success but Samy was determined
to make a name for himself on the tough streets of Brooklyn it was there that gave him the respect and the power he
craved it was in this neighborhood on Corners like this that Sammy the bull first got a start as a tough guy uh he
was a member of a gang called the rampers and the rampers functioned solely to sort of protect this turf and
uh this is really Where it All Began for him by now Samy was at new utri high school in Brooklyn he landed here as a
teenager and um didn't last long he got into battles and beefs and fights and pretty soon was kicked right out of
school semi never graduated from high school from 1964 until 1966 Samy was in the Army when he
returned home to Bensonhurst he began working with members of organized crime during this same period of time time
John Gotti was making a name for himself as an associate of the gambino crime family Samy the bull became close
friends of John Gotti so these were two young guys that that had already proven themselves to be not only tough but able
to keep their mouth shut and those were the exactly the kind of recruits that the Gambino family was looking for and
and these guys became a crew by 1977 both GTI and gravano were made men official members in the Gambino family
one of the most powerful Mafia or organizations in the nation their boss was Paul Castellano Paul castalano was a
very old school Dawn this guy hailed from the mob back in Sicily and one of his rules was no drugs castalano knew
the drugs would be the downfall of the mafia as he knew it but now one of John God's underlings had been caught moving
weights of heroin they were in trouble his crew was in bad right now with Paul Castellano and they knew it and they
decided to do the unthinkable they were going to rub out Paul talano one of the biggest most powerful bosses in New York
City on December 16 1985 Guardian gravano made their move to kill their boss the place they picked was spark
Steakhouse on West 46th Street in the heart of Manhattan John Gotti I along with some
others murdered Paul Castellano we took over the family John Gotti became the boss in January of 1990 I accepted the
position of official on the boss John GTI was the boss he was the faan for the family well Sammy the bull he
was the guy who carried out the orders and if the boss's orders called for murder Sammy the Bull made sure it
was done Eddie garolo the groom in this home movie fathered three children he had his
own construction company in order to operate his business in New York he had to kick back a percentage of his profits
to the Gambino family which controlled much of the construction industry a dispute between gravano and garolo over
money led to his murder I did know there was tension between uh gravano and my father he did
feel that my father should be making payoffs to him for any construction work he did in the area Laura garolo is
Eddie's youngest daughter she cannot forget her father's murder and the man who did it I was completely in shock my
mother and my sister came running down and it was just complete pandemonium when it came time to bury her dad Laura
said the family made the funeral a closed affair because they believed gravano was going to attend his basic
routine was to kill someone and then show up at the funeral and give a cash gift and stand over the family and say
if you need anything I'm here for you another victim was Roseanne masa's brother Michael debat who worked for the
gambino crime family his suspected drug use made made him a threat to the organization there was concern he would
become an informant gravano got rid of him he took people's lives he became God he became a judge he became a jury maybe
I'll kill this guy today maybe I'll kill this guy next week it was always for his
own gain they put five bullets in the back of his head but we had to be thankful for that too because they
didn't put it in his face we were able to have a open casket by 1990 Sammy the bull had been involved in 19 murders
that was no secret to the FBI in fact there was an FBI Strike Force specifically assigned to take down
the leaders of laosan Nostra families in New York and at the top of their list was John Gotti and his under boss Sammy
thul gravano former FBI special agent James Moody was part of that Strike Force The
Gambino family probably had around 350 identified members as I recall and probably close to 30
Crews so when we started looking at him we wanted to go after the hierarchy of the families in 1990 while the FBI was
closing in on Gotti and gravano Sammy the bull was taking boxing lessons from Teddy Atlas a trainer of world Champs
what surprised Atlas was what Sammy the bull revealed to him he made a comment that he wasn't afraid and that told me
volumes I didn't have to see him hand a punch that told me that this guy was very afraid so I wound up saying listen
all I know is that everyone's afraid and a person who says they're not afraid is one of two things they either
liar or there's something wrong with him knowing who Sammy the bull was from the
very beginning Teddy Atlas felt uncomfortable being around him I knew that this guy you know obviously uh put
people under the ground but what Atlas says worried him the most was what Sammy the bull was telling him about his boss
John Gotti this the last time I saw him he he came in the gym and he said he said you know B he used to call people
sometimes B he said uh the word is the government's going to be coming down after me with an indictment he said they
invade countries he said they're coming after me he said that could make you Shak in your boots a little and he said
to me they want me to betray my friend and nobody can make you give up your dignity
as a man except yourself obviously you shouldn't have been talking to me about that but it's like he was trying to get
me to help him convince himself that or convince me really that he wouldn't do this in December 1990 the FBI arrested
John Gotti Sammy the bull and other Gambino crime family members the electronic surveillance that had gone on
for years had finally paid off the FBI now had recordings that revealed the innermost secrets of the Gambino family
and the person revealing them was none other than the boss himself John Gotti even though they had hundreds of hours
of incriminating surveillance tapes the government still needed someone close to
Gotti to testify against him the last person the FBI expected to turn on Gotti was Sammy the bull I think Sammy turned
because Sam's a very smart guy and he was sitting there watching what was going on and it dawned on him that John
Gotti was going to blame him for everything and Gotti was going to walk and Samy decided that wasn't going
to happen ironically it was John Gotti's own words that turned Sammy the bull into the most famous government witness
against scti and the mob well the way Sammy the bull tells the story is that here he is they have solid evidence they
have these tapes the tapes are going to sink them and what he had on John GTI was his ticket out of jail it was it was
a get out of jail free card and he knew it my name is Salvatore gravano early in
my life I was given the nickname Sam to B I became a maid member of The Gambino family in
1976 as part of my cooperation I told the government about my life of crimes including the fact that I participated
in 19 murders Sammy the bull Grano then published a best-selling book under boss
about his Killing Spree he went on television to promote it Laura garafola's father Eddie was mentioned in
Samy's book well I read it from beginning to end when he does talk about my father in the book he
says we had to kill him and that was it it was a very brief mention but he does talk excessively about this farm he had
taken from my father and how the happiest moments of his life was this Farm Laura garola cannot forget that
farm it was gut-wrenching for me because this Farm was our farm and in sami's book he talks about this farm and I'd
sit on the porch and I'd look down the Rolling Hills with grass and and these are my memories despite gano's admission
to 19 murders the federal government locked him away for less than a year as part of his deal with the government
Sammy the bull was taken into the witness protection program after promising never to violate the law again
he was given a new identity and was resettled with his family in a secret location some prosecutors called gano's
deal the deal of a lifetime at the end of the day John Gotti would be unable to just slip away
from the charges against him betrayed by his man gravano this time the so-called
Teflon Don would see his troubles stick Like Glue to those $2,000 suits this time would be different Landing Gotti
here at the federal correctional facility at Maran [Music] Illinois Justice and the strike force
had won but Gotti remained a hero to some including his daughter Victoria my father is the last of meagans they don't
make men like him anymore and they never will meanwhile in Sicily Another War raged on led by two Fearless magistrates
Giovani Falcone and poola Bolino judge Falcone had managed what some thought Impossible The Turning of a
maid Mafia member Falcone had found thomaso bueta hiding in South America busa's testimony would help Falcone jail
hundreds of mafia members on both sides of the Atlantic jar Falcone I would say would you'd have to
be he's the leader he was a judge magistrate investigative magistrate so all Italian investigations fall under
[Music] him these guys really wanted to do something about Sicilian Mafia but they're they they were hamstrung with
Italian law they weren't allowed to do electronic surveillance they weren't allowed to do many of the investigative
techniques that we use for their the Enterprise Theory here in the United States but we needed them to develop
evidence over there for us to use here and at the same time we develop evidence here for them to use there but what I
think is more important than anything in this is that the Italians saw the laws that we had and the
investigative techniques that we had and Giovani Falcon at that time started an intensive lobbying effort in Italy to
get the same authorities I had the uh the honor of of meeting Falcone when uh he came to the United States he came to
Philadelphia uh example of the cooperation that was going on between the the two countries between the
investigative agencies uh in order to share information uh and it was uh it was really an honor to be able to meet
with him and be able to to work with him he was here in the United States and he had the new minister of interior from
Italy there and uh he met with the director of the FBI and we all had lunch together and we were discussing
organized crime and I explained to the new Minister how we went about investigations of course yavan knew
exactly how we did it and he was lobbying at that time for legislation but for Falcone time had run out within
weeks of his FBI visit Giovanni Falcone's sworn enemy of kostra would be targeted for death as he continued his
unprecedented assault on the mob Falcone was focused on a criminal conspiracy linking the cilian American and
Colombian crime families Pablo Escobar was sending cocaine from Colombia to Miami and
eventually into Europe uh we certainly didn't know that that photograph of Pablo Escobar taken
in front of the White House had existed but we always knew that ES Kar told people uh he had the capability of
getting in and out of the United States with false passports those were the kinds of things that uh were U
infuriating to a large degree and to his followers of course it uh showed his invincibility this Miami based drug
dealer did business with the Medan cartel for years he explains how Escobar was able to flood the US with his
product it could be brought in by plane it could be air dropped it could have been brought in through the port in the
crates uh basically any any way you think that you could bring it in you know they would bring it in you know uh
sometimes they put decoys since there was so much you know available they'd like let the government catch so much
and while they were you know occupied doing that it would come in through other you know means at the same time so
if you know they thought they had caught let's say 1,500 kilos there was 5,000 coming in you know where they weren't
looking you know so sometimes you have to give them some bait and then when they take the bait the stuff comes in as
with any big business the key to success is organization and like any major multinational CEO Escobar knew he needed
to cut distribution deals in major US cities at some point he had to have had a uh a
sit down with the local organized crime people um the word in the street uh again unfounded I mean you know un
unverified but the word in the street was that for every kilo that was moved there was a $5,000 kick pack that was
made to uh One V one organized crime family or another for those who tried to cheat him Escobar turned to the one
thing that always had worked for him Terror in the US he did this on a level that never been seen
before Arthur Valero who worked undercover narcotics for the NYPD saw firsthand how Escobar's harsh yet simple
code of conduct worked the people who were successful in his organization followed very very basic rules um simple
uh what it was was simply was uh this is my cocaine and this is my money and I'm
going to allow you into the drug trade with me okay okay do not steal any of my money do not steal one gram of my
cocaine okay just do what you're supposed to do move it along sell it and bring the exact profits back to
your Handler uh if you do that um you will live a very good life as long as you walk a straight line in any business
or as long as you you just focus yourself on doing right there was no reason to fear on the other hand if you
violate that basic basic tenant um the violence that will Beall you um your wife your children your
parents uh your parents' pets will you know will will will ring across the country I mean everybody that
dealt with paabo Escobar who did the wrong thing was made to be an example to everyone else Escobar's cartel
distributed with impunity throughout the US it was New York and particular or Miami his major points of Entry where
the cocaine King reigned strongest giving those cities their welld deserved reputations for drug fueled
violence well look uh Pablo Escobar and his crew had a they had an intention they had a game plan they had a they had
a business plan uh I would say before uh before they started moving pow into the
country I'm sure that he had people come in uh test the waters uh develop uh uh safe houses to store cocaine uh
developed a network of distribution here in the country um uh got the price where
he wanted it a test test marketed the thing the business plan was fairly basic mov cocaine safely from point A to point
B but the potential for profit was all inspiring a kilo of 90% pure cocaine was priced at about
$99,000 when it left the air strip in Colombia by the time it reached Miami the kilo was worth
$330,000 after it was cut to 30% Purity its value had risen to $300,000 so from the streets of median
to the streets of Miami the value of that single kilo had risen 30 fold Escobar was uh very active in Miami and
South Florida in general uh this is an international City eventually Escobar died in a police shootout much of the
information leading to Escobar's death came from informers was developed by Falcone it was to be his last
success on the 23rd of May 1992 Falcone his wife and their security Force were driving along a coastal
highway just outside of poo he was leaving Sicily forever having been transferred to Rome but the mafia had
other plans for Falcone 22,000 lb of dynamite was loaded under the highway a single assassin tracked
the motorcade a squad of gunmen waited on an overpass the gunman never had to fire a shot because at the exact moment
his car passed over the planted Dynamite the Executioner pressed the button that
ended Falcone's courageous Crusade against the mafia in depth Falcone turned out to be
a formidable foe at his funeral the public reaction to his assassination was overwhelming The Ordinary People of
palmo the women of Sicily in particular had had enough familiar with Mafia violence having buried their sons killed
by Mafia gunman these people now rose up horrified by Falcone's death they demanded something be
done but before their demand could be heard the mafia would strike again the target this time Palo bolini Falcone's
fellow anti-mafia fighter now the Italian Army began to move troops were called in security
tightened while in America the FBI Strike Force offered to help in finding the killers of Falcone and Bolino it was
devastating I don't know whether you know this but immediately we contacted the attack Ian authorities and offered
our services and uh uh with the approval of the director of the FBI and the Italian authorities requested that we
sent a team of Agents over there for that to to look at the bomb site and help them develop the evidence out of
the bomb site we had lost to combat R an arm there's no question about it we had been
working with him since 1981 uh and then when they turned right back around and killed Paulo borsellino
right after that that was another you know you know it hurt here in the United States but I think they made a huge
mistake you know Bonito melini in the second world war prior to the second world war tried to destroy the Sicilian
Mafia I mean he just basically going in and killing them and it was unsuccessful
because the people didn't support it whereas Giovanni Falcone and Paulo bellino using the rule of law was going
in after these guys and showing everybody what the problem was there and today the FBI still uses on an
international scale what we call the Italian model if ever there was a hero If Ever I had a hero Falcone was the is
is my hero uh because whatever danger you talk about uh whatever it exists if it exists at all with respect to uh
Federal prosecutors in America uh uh it is nothing like being a organized prosecutor in Italy uh and uh
unfortunately the dramatic evidence of that is what the mob did with with Falcone and how that galvanized the
whole country in its fight against organized crime now there would be no place to hide as Italian authorities
with help from America began rounding up mafiosa all over Sicily in raid after raid kostra would be hunted down and
brought to Justice after a time even the Assassins of Falcone would be captured the pressure was ormous and the
successes began to [Music] mount in fighting John Gotti traditional law enforcement techniques informats
undercover agents and electronic surveillence would only take the strike force so far what was needed was a way
to strike at the heart of the organization a new federal law that law would be called Rico
the government had come a long way from the days when FBI director Hoover claimed there was no such thing as
organized crime uh and one of the other thing that that has helped the federal government is the use of things like the
RICO statute because when you're talking about bringing in evidence that's going
to be able to corroborate your mob mobster turn cooperating witness something like the RICO statute is of
immeasurable importance and the reason for that is that a critical element of that statute is proving that the mob
exists that's the Enterprise in the RICO racketeer influenced corrupt organization that's the organization and
once you prove the mob exists I mean the argument by the prosecutors these individuals don't join this organization
in order to do anything else but commit crime so when we started looking at them
we wanted to go after the hierarchy of the families and a theory that we developed is that you know you take
structure of loosen ustr built like a pyramid you have the boss up here who's insulated himself from all the illegal
activities all the illegal activities occur at the bottom of the organization he orders them to conduct illegal
activities or he approves their illegal activities and they in turn conduct the illegal activities and the money flows
back up to him so he's isolated and insulated and this was just the beginning in courtrooms around the
country the FBI Strike Force using r began to work their way up through the organization keeping their eye on the
Ultimate Prize the man at the top the mob [Music] boss the government would soon begin to
expose the inner workings of organized crime if there were no secrets the theory was there could be no secret
society one of the secrets uncovered involved the ceremony the actual making of an an assassin now for the first time
the outside world got a Peak at the secret rights and blood Oaths of a kostra induction ceremony it's
impossible to describe the feeling that I had finally hearing this induction ceremony recognizing that we had it now
and that forever more we could put to rest uh this myth that the government created laosan ostra
separate in apart from kostra the Sicilia Mafia was operating in in America and primarily it operated a
network uh that established itself with in legitimate businesses restaurants bars pizzerias and the Pizza Connection
came out of that was a primarily Gambino run organization uh these guys were Zips
they were maid guys they came from Sicily and they operated in the shadows I mean they they ran a pizza poar they
sold you czone you know they sold you strb and they also would sell you heroin we in Philadelphia through the
investigative agencies actually it was DEA actually purchased uh two and a half kilos from a fellow by the name of
Bonito Zito and what happened in that investigation was that while there was charged like over I think $1.6 billion
doar in heroin that the Sicilian mob imported from uh in into America from Italy and then laundered just incredible
amount of money through brokerage houses and through smuggling out of the country
Pizza Connection case is we knew we had a problem in the United States and the problem was Sicilian Mafia bringing in
uh all the heroin in the United States we saw the money but we didn't know how the money was being generated so we had
to work it backwards we work backwards from the money back to the violation and the money basically was being generated
by the Sicilian crew of the bonano family well I think there always was a supposition that there were these
connections I think is the first time they saw some serious business being conducted and people making a lot of
money and and the mob functioning as an organization a multi- tentacled organization the only heroin that was
ever confiscated in the Pizza Connection investigation was down here in Philadelphia Where Da undercover agent
made a purchase made a buy but the the operation grew out of uh Angelo Bruno connections to the gambino crime family
Bruno was the boss here and he allowed these guys to operate in his territory and they had set up pizza poers and
restaurants in Cherry Hill and in Suburban Philadelphia and they were running a network that stretched all
over the country in the Pizza Connection case of my recollection Serv me right I
think there were something like 47 uh uh telephones that were wiretapped and I saw the court authorized wire
interceptions and the affidavits they really looked like the telephone book when you took a look at all the evidence
that was presented to the court for authorizing those wire interceptions it goes back to Rico a racketeer influenced
and corrupt organizations act and it was a the way the government was able to attack an Enterprise rather than an
individual without Rico you don't have the tool to go after the organization you go after the players and this was a
way for the government to set its sights on the mafia kostra organization that was running this Pizza Connection and
attack it as an Enterprise and that's what R was all about and it was in a lot of ways signal the beginning of the end
for organized crime because now it's the organization that's the target rather than the soldier the cppo the street
boss and the other thing about that which is interesting because you know part of the
success against organized crime is the ability for inter agency cooperation and here what you had in that case was the
FBI cooperating with DEA uh working together in order to collect this evidence and that was really and has
been a key they were being assaulted by the government with much stronger um resources and much heavier sentencing
and more Zeal uh in the end of the day um and that began to have its toll and the the
weaknesses within the mafia then started to crack the basic underlying uh principles that always hid
behind the facade of honor and uh omerta were selfishness and greed and essentially individual coward in a lot
of cases you know these were tough guys when they were in a group or tough guys when they had a lot of guys behind them
but one-on-one a lot of them were punks and when they were confronted with these
enormous jail sentences 60 years 90 years and you know were weren were no longer confronting doing a 2-year skid
bit where you kept your mouth shut but doing the rest of their life in jail then they started thinking twice
about ratting out and um once they began to rat out and the code of omerta and silence
was broken it became easier for the next guy to do it and then easier for the next guy to do it and then when there
were dozens of them it became routine it became expected hey I'm just you know another another rat On The Bus by 2009
anti-mafia judges Pier Bolino and Giovanni Falcone had broken omerta and the American FBI's Relentless use of
anti-mafia laws have brought about the end of the Sicilian mafia's Empire [Music]

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Brief Summary

The episode covers Giovanni Falcone's assassination, organized crime's history, and the FBI's fight against the mafia in America.

Key points

The Assassination of Giovanni Falcone. The murder of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone sparked public outrage in Sicily.
The Rise of John Gotti. John Gotti, the 'Teflon Don,' became a celebrity in the crime world.
Sammy the Bull's Betrayal. Sammy the Bull turned against John Gotti, becoming a key government witness.
The Deal of a Lifetime. Sammy Gravano's plea deal allowed him to escape serious punishment for his crimes.
The Rise of Escobar. Pablo Escobar's drug empire flooded the US with cocaine, showcasing his ruthless tactics.
Giovanni Falcone's Legacy. Falcone's efforts led to significant breakthroughs in fighting organized crime, but at a great cost.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is my doom.

Sammy the Bull's realization of his fate.

5:04WatchJul 29, 2014

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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