Word: gambino
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...witness testified that Gotti ordered 10 of the killings in which Gravano admitted having a hand. "Sometimes I was the shooter," said Gravano. "Sometimes I was a backup guy. Sometimes I set the guy up. Sometimes I just talked about it." Foremost among these rubouts: the 1985 murder of Gambino boss Paul Castellano and his bodyguard Thomas Bilotti outside a New York City steak house -- an execution that put Gotti in the top job. Gravano says he and Gotti planned the killing because Castellano had got too greedy and "was selling out the family for his own basic businesses." According...
Gravano also spoke about the aggravations that went with being a Mafia headman -- including constant electronic FBI surveillance of the Gambino- family clubhouse in Little Italy. Whenever they wanted to talk business, Gotti and his pals were obliged to take walks or retire to another apartment upstairs. They felt it was safe, Gravano explained, "because an 80-year-old woman owned the apartment." That was a big mistake: the flat was bugged, and tapes made there provided key evidence against Gotti and his chums...
Even if Gotti is acquitted, law-enforcement officials say, his hold on the family leadership has been seriously weakened because the don has caused too many headaches for his Mob colleagues. "He's been a disaster for the Gambino family," says Ronald Goldstock, head of the New York task force. "Even though he knew that he was a target of law-enforcement and electronic surveillance, he was unable to avoid ((arrest))." Though the media have often portrayed Gotti as a new-style yuppie don with a penchant for smart suits, he is also a throwback to the gun-crazy gangland...
Goldstock says most of the Gambino crime operations could function even with a leadership vacuum at the top. The trouble will start if the family becomes involved in disputes with other Mob families about dividing the take in shared territory, such as construction or private trash carting. Some organized-crime experts predict that Gotti could meet the same fate as Castellano -- a Mob assassination -- if he ever goes free. The same goes for Gravano. By breaking the sacred code of omerta, or silence, he has committed a capital crime in the eyes of his Mafia brothers. "This...
Last week Gravano described his 1976 induction into the Gambino family, a solemn ceremony over which Castellano presided. The man whose murder Gravano would later help orchestrate pricked the novice's trigger finger and dripped blood onto the picture of a saint, which was then set on fire...