Word: underboss
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...credit, Carey has made some big strides since taking office. When turncoat Gambino underboss Sammy Gravano testified recently about his ties to a concrete-hauling Teamsters local, Carey slapped a trusteeship on the unit to shape it up. Last week, he says, he launched a probe of Teamsters links to the Mob in the movie industry. Carey also instituted budgets for the union, a previously unheard-of practice. He personally negotiated a contract for car haulers, one of the union's biggest accords, and he stopped a revolt by Northwest Airlines flight attendants who nearly quit the union to join...
...Each time the elusive leader of the nation's most powerful crime family persuaded the jury he was nothing more than a misunderstood plumbing salesman. But this time the government's case looked perfect. The witnesses did not lose their memories on the stand. The tapes were clear. The underboss spilled the grim details. The jury was protected. "The Don is covered with Velcro," said the assistant director of the FBI's New York office, James Fox, "and every charge stuck...
...whatever the outcome, John Gotti is now an unmade man. Many lower-rung mobsters did not like his high-profile strutting for the media; they were especially outraged that it was his right-hand man, Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano, who delivered up his old mentor, as well as underboss Frank Locascio. "The safest place for John Gotti is in jail," observes Michael Cherkasky, head of investigations for the Manhattan district attorney. Gotti may hope to run the Gambino operation from prison, as Colombo boss Carmine Persico, serving 100 years, is trying to do with his family, but dissension...
...gravelly voice, Salvatore Gravano lives up to his nickname, "Sammy the Bull." But as he said on the witness stand last week, his enemies are more likely to start calling him by a new moniker, "Sammy the Rat." In five days of often chilling testimony, the former Gambino family underboss calmly described the secret inner workings and rituals of La Cosa Nostra and provided gory details of the 19 killings he admitted taking part in. Most of all, he tried to hammer nails into the legal coffin of John Gotti, the head of the Gambino crime family...
Gravano is just one of a number of high-ranking mobsters who have turned state's evidence recently, including Philadelphia underboss Philip Leonetti and Lucchese family boss Alphonse D'Arco. One reason for the rash of defections may be that prison conditions are getting less congenial these days for the Mafia. "There was a time when Mafia guys ran the jails," says Joseph Coffey, a top investigator with the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. "They were like country clubs. Now the blacks run the jails, and mobsters are second-class citizens...