Word: gambino
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...around lately, a member of the Mafia is turning around: testifying at a trial, wearing a bug, writing a book. Whatever life omerta had left in its blood-drained body ebbed away last week with the stunning disclosure that Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, the most trusted adviser to reputed Gambino boss John Gotti, has become the Federal Government's latest protected flipster. If juries find him believable, Gravano could obliterate the entire hierarchy of the Gambinos, New York City's largest crime family with more than 400 members and thousands of associates. "I think that in all likelihood...
...Gambino crime family is not usually known for good works. Its deeds are more likely to be chronicled in FBI reports about the Mob. There is one place, however, where the surname Gambino gets respect: Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y., which has received a $2 million gift from Thomas and Joseph Gambino in memory of their late father Carlo. The money is funding a + pediatric bone-marrow-transplant unit, the only such facility in the state. When it opens, it will bear the Gambino name...
That could pose an image problem for the hospital. After all, Carlo Gambino was the last of the old-style Godfathers, and his two sons were indicted for racketeering last year. In accepting the donation, however, Schneider officials take a practical view. "Our mission," says a spokeswoman, "is to save lives." The father of a future patient puts the issue more starkly: "I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I have a daughter who will die if she doesn't get a transplant...
Such is the peculiar intimacy that develops between hunters and quarry. Big Paul Castellano, as the admiring authors describe him, had a certain gritty grandeur. There was one unshakable rule for his boys in the Gambino family: no dealing in drugs. He accepted fiscal tribute from his capos with the lofty dignity of an Indian raja being given his weight in gold by his subjects. And he could discuss, with almost Socratic detachment, the subtleties of when or whether to "whack" a customer who had fallen behind in paying the vig on an extortionate loan...
...four, Gotti alone is charged with masterminding the most sensational rubout in recent Mob history: the slaying of Paul Castellano, then head of the Gambino family, by three gunmen as Castellano left a Manhattan restaurant on Dec. 16, 1985. Gotti has long been suspected of having arranged the hit so he could take over the family. Police contend that Castellano did not trust Gotti and was grooming Thomas Bilotti, his bodyguard, as the next head of the family. (Bilotti too was killed in the ambush.) While Gotti is not accused of pulling a trigger, investigators say they have a witness...