Word: gravano
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Both "ecstasy" and "Sammy the Bull" Gravano came to Phoenix the same way: by stealth. But when they met, in the darker corners of this sprawling, newly built city, the result was explosive. Gravano arrived under the pseudonym Jimmy Moran, placed in secrecy by the federal witness-protection program. The former underboss of New York City's Gambino crime family and a hit man responsible for 19 murders, Gravano became the government's most important witness against the Mob. His testimony put 37 top-level mobsters behind bars and earned him a $1 million price on his head. Flush with...
Last year Gravano's life in the slow lane sputtered. His identity, never a big secret, was disclosed by a local paper. The construction business, according to police, was far less successful than Gravano had hoped. But as Gravano whiled away the hours in the small brown office of Marathon Development--the same name he once used for a front company in New York--a new opportunity presented itself. Among the employees he had hired was an old acquaintance from New York, Michael Papa, a close friend of Gravano's son Gerard. By this time, Gravano was no longer trying...
...acolytes, Papa, 23, was the most like Sammy the Bull. Like Gravano, Papa was the swaggering leader of his own gang of young Arizona toughs. According to police, Papa was one of the founding members of a group that went by various names-- Hitler's Youth, White Power or Devil Dogs--purportedly a racist high school gang that terrorized the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert. In truth, police sources say, the gang was really a steroid-laced football team that went bad from lack of direction. "They were bad, but they weren't racist. Hell, there were even black members," says...
Since testifying against former employer and Mob boss John Gotti, SALVATORE (Sammy the Bull) GRAVANO has been organized crime's No. 1 pariah. But turning state's evidence looks like petty theft when compared with the sins Gravano may have committed against Mafia style. Last week the former hit man, 54, was arrested with his wife, 24-year-old son and 27-year-old daughter and charged with financing an interstate drug ring that specialized in selling tabs of the rave drug Ecstasy to teenagers. Teenagers! Even worse, Gravano's alleged pushers were members of a white-supremacist youth gang...
SAMMY (THE BULL) GRAVANO Famed stoolie nabbed on drug charges. "Hey, Gotti, meet your new roomie...