Becoming the Boss (Full Episode) | Inside the American Mob Compilation

POLISI: I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I was introduced to the American mob through an uncle of mine. I go to Manhattan, I meet this guy, says, “listen, you know what? Johnny Dio says you owe him a favor. You gotta go to Miami. Here, here's an address and here's a name. And this is what he wants done.” And I look and I listen and I say, “Hey, no problem.” Couple days later I get on a plane, I fly down to Miami Beach. I meet another guy down there. Guy says, “come with me.” I drive over to a little garage, he says, “here's a key to that truck.” He says, “that's what you're gonna drive when you go to this house.” He opens up a drawer and says, “now take this with you.” I look down, and it's a Sheffield knife. He says, “and you know what you gotta do.” (knock) A girl opens the door. And I say, “take me to the back!” GIRL: Get off! Get off! POLISI: He's at the pool. He's a young guy, like 30-ish. “Okay, let's go get him.” She goes to the back of the house, opens the door, says, “John!” I tie him to the pool table, and I sit her down, I say, “you gotta watch this.” She said, “what are you gonna do?” (screaming). Took the Sheffield knife, stuck the knife under his testicles and sliced him. She screamed, he yelled. Went to back to New York and never talked about it. And that's how wild and crazy the mob was in the 70's. I'm laughing. I mean, I'm sure the guy didn't die, and I'm sure we didn't sever his testicles, but there was some blood on the pool table, and I left. And that was the story. REPORTER (over TV): In Brooklyn, a low-level mobster is put to rest, shot dead in broad daylight. Days later another reputed gangster snuffed out, execution style. MAN: Watch your head when you sit down. MAN 2: Roll sound! NARRATOR: It seems incredible, but many cities across America were built on a hidden empire of crime and in the 1970s, crime bosses ruled the streets with violence and money. These people are witnesses... MAN 2: Sound speed... NARRATOR: Stepping forward now to tell their story first hand. A few stay in the shadows for personal safety, fearful of an organization that most Americans know only as legend. It's true name... Cosa Nostra. MARKS: Lights. How would you describe the mafia? What is the mafia? FRANZESE: You know, what is the mafia, La Cosa Nostra as we call it here in America? FAT SAL: Cosa Nostra is a cult. KOSSLER: It's a secret society. FRANZESE: It's a brotherhood among men. MURPHY: The ultimate goal of the mafia was making money and, and lots of it. CALABRESE JR: We're master manipulators. We're going to find what you have and find a way to take it. WALDEN: The mafia is much more like a pack of rats that eat anything in their path, including each other. RAAB: It is the most enduring, powerful and venal organized criminal organization to exist and to continue in America. CHERTOFF: So in many ways, you almost had a shadow government that controlled huge amounts of economic activity in a totally unaccountable way. KALLSTROM: The golden age of the Mafia was the beginning of the ‘70s, when they had the strongest grip on legitimate business in the United States of America. NARRATOR: In the 1970s they controlled trucking, the ports, the garbage business, and a lot of the meat, produce and fish markets. Much of the building trade was in their hands. The carpenters and electrical unions. They had judges on their payroll and police in their pockets. GIULIANI: No criminal organization in the history of our country has ever infiltrated legitimate institutions of society the way the mafia was able to do. NARRATOR: And around the country, mob bosses seemed to always be a step ahead of the FBI. RAAB: The bosses, untouchable. They were sitting on thrones. No one could remove them. No one in law enforcement is gonna do anything to hurt them. KALLSTROM: The FBI did not have the tools to deal with a major criminal enterprise like that. NARRATOR: By 1970, law enforcement faced an overwhelming challenge. How do you take down a secret criminal organization with such deep roots, so much power, but so completely hidden from sight? KALLSTROM: We were faced with a mammoth challenge. And that was, how do you deal with this enterprise? How do you actually have an impact on it? NARRATOR: In New York that enterprise is divided into five families: Genovese, Lucchese, Gambino, Bonanno, and Colombo. INTERVIEWER: Mr. Colombo, are you a boss of the Mafia? COLOMBO: No, I am not. INTERVIEWER: Is there a Mafia? COLOMBO: No, there is not. NARRATOR: But Joe Colombo was lying with the confidence of a seemingly untouchable mob boss. There was a mafia in 1970, and he was the boss of the most violent of the five New York families, the Colombo's, and a vicious killer in his own right. DEVECCHIO: He was credited for at least 18 or more murders, so he did a lot of work for the family... A lot of work being killing people. NARRATOR: And Colombo oversaw an army of psychopathic killers. Chief among them, this man, one of his capos, Crazy Joe Gallo. RAAB: He was a predatory hood. He was good at breaking legs, shooting people. In the basement he kept a chained cub lion. And the idea was he brought people down there to show them that if they got him angry he might feed them to the lions. NARRATOR: But Gallo answered to the boss and that boss made a big impression on everyone who met him. MARKS: How did you first meet Joe Colombo? FRANZESE: I met Joe Colombo as a kid. He had a farm upstate that we would go to, and I just knew him as Joey. People respected him, and he was just a nice guy. So I met him at an early age, you know, before I really realized who he was. COLOMBO: Let me tell you something... NARRATOR: Joe Colombo was a mixture of old world and new. Like other bosses of the five families, he was a master of murder and corruption. But unlike the rest, he's no immigrant. He's a second-generation Italian-American, born in the United States, and comfortable in the public eye. RAAB: He sees himself as a new generation of boss. And he believes he's being harassed unfairly because he's Italian American. And he also sees a great opportunity that he can become sort of a civil rights leader. COLOMBO (over PA): I thank God that I was born of Italian birth! (cheers) DEVECCHIO: In 1970, he started the Italian American League, which was supposed to be an organization that showed that Italians were being discriminated against. And in the temper of the time for 1970s, he was fairly successful at that. (crowd cheers) COLOMBO: Italian American Civil Rights League, only formulated because of the harassment that this organization, the Justice Department, were using against our people... Bothering pregnant women, breaking down doors, annoying people, intimidating people. RAAB: He begins attracting attention. TV interviews, magazine interviews. FRANZESE: I had just come home from school, and we got a phone call. Joe Colombo's son, Joey Junior, got arrested. We're gonna be picketing the FBI building. I said, “Great. I'll be there.” DEVECCHIO: Colombo, you know, was so incensed that his son had been arrested on a federal charge that they actually started picketing the FBI office at 69th and 3rd in Manhattan. We'd walk out of the office there and they'd call us names. I had a rock thrown at me, which just missed my head and bounced off a firebox. (crowd noise) NARRATOR: Colombo and his legions take the fight to the very doors of the enemy. FRANZESE: I start walking the line... Some guys drive by in a car, and they yell out to me, “you Ginny” whatever they said, you know, something. And a cop was standing there and he said, “hey, shut your mouth and get across the street.” And I got arrogant with him, before you know it, I've got a bunch of cops on top of me and they're hitting me with the sticks... (crowd yelling) They pick me up and put me in a paddy wagon. Joey, I remember, as I'm leaving, he puts his head in, and he says, “Don't worry about it. We got everything under control.” He said, “just go with them, we'll take care of it.” You know, it was a tremendous impression, ‘cause I saw the power that Joe Colombo had at that moment. It was a good moment for me. INTERVIEWER: You've had a number of successes, haven't you? For example, you've managed to get the Justice Department to drop the word ‘Mafia' entirely. Was that your doing? COLOMBO: It was the voice of all the Italian people. FRANZESE: Around that time, the producer of The Godfather came to visit Joe Colombo. He sent for him. And, uh, Joey actually looked at the script of The Godfather back then. And he took any reference to the word ‘Mafia,' he pulled it out of the script. GIULIANI: Getting the Justice Department of the United States to ban the use of the word mafia... that's pretty good political power. RAAB: The one thing that the bosses in the 70's did not want was publicity. NARRATOR: But against tradition, Colombo loved the attention and didn't seem to know when to stop. FRANZESE: Joey started to get a little bit too out of hand. RAAB: The old fashioned bosses don't like the spotlight. He's beginning to draw too much attention. These are people who like to be in the shadows. FRANZESE: I knew it was starting to become an issue. RAAB: All that meant was trouble. (crowd chanting) Well, the second Unity Rally in Columbus Circle. Somewhere around 50,000 people attended that rally. The usual hoopla, the vendors and people waving the banners and talking about how great it was to be an Italian. FRANZESE I had an argument with my mother that morning. She did not want me to go. She said she had a dream that something bad was gonna happen, and I said, “I'm going.” ANNOUNCER (over PA): I am heartened by the unity of purpose that has brought us together. FRANZESE: We arrive at Columbus Circle. The determination... FRANZESE: They had a big stage set up. RAAB: There's police protection. The TV cameras are there. Thousands of people are milling around. A wonderful lady! COFFEY: We're in a van with a periscope taking pictures to see who's who and what's what within the mob. DEVECCHIO: I was on my way back to the office. FRANZESE: I remember Joey calling me over. (crowd chanting). And um, I walk up the steps to the stage, he hands me some brochures, and he says, “Michael, I want you to give these out around Lincoln Center.” And I said, “Okay, Joey.” I turn around and walk away, and as I approach the steps... RAAB: Suddenly, one cameraman gets close to him, and instead of taking a photo, fires a gun. FRANZESE: I hear “Boom, Boom, Boom”! (crowd screams) The place went crazy. Please do not panic! Please, ladies and gentlemen! This is the type of thing you can't do! There's so much bad happened already. We plead with you! Stay back! NARRATOR: And all hell breaks loose. NARRATOR: Joe Colombo lies unconscious in the ambulance transporting him to the hospital while the big questions start to emerge. Who would dare to gun down one of the most powerful mafia bosses? INTERVIEWER: What kind of condition did he appear to be in? WOMAN: He looked pretty bad. I mean, I don't know. I've never seen anybody shot before, but he was down on the ground and there was a spot of red on his right cheek. In unity, we pray to our father that Joey Colombo makes it. Our father... NARRATOR: Joe Colombo isn't dead, but he's in a coma and shows no sign of waking up. DEVECCHIO: It didn't take us long to find out that a black man by the name of Jerome Johnson was the actual shooter. Do not move. DEVECCHIO: Who himself was killed there by members of the Colombo family. ANNOUNCER (over PA): Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses. WOMEN: As we forgive those who trespass against us. DEVECCHIO: And our biggest concern then was who did it? RAAB: Someone had to give the orders. ANNOUNCER (over PA): And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. RAAB: Joe Colombo's chief aids, they knew right away where the finger of suspicion pointed. It pointed to Crazy Joe Gallo. NARRATOR: Crazy Joe Gallo was a captain in the Colombo family with a knack for violence, and an ambition to be the boss. INTERVIEWER You know anything about a gang war? Are you trying to protect yourself? GALLO: Gabe, Gabe, what kinda gang war? There's no gangs, there's no wars, there's nothing. RAAB: Crazy Joe Gallo epitomized the predatory street thug of his era. He always shot for the top. FRANZESE: Joey Gallo was an enemy of Joe Colombo's, was resentful of the fact that Colombo was the boss and he wasn't. RAAB: Joey Gallo comes out of prison and he's like a lost soul. He has no real gang. He has no real income. Joe Colombo has ignored him. To his confidants he tells them, I'm going to get even. I'm more powerful than Joe Colombo is. I'll show him. He's going to kill him. What about the guns? GALLO (over TV): They're rifles, Gabe. We go hunting. I belong to a hunting lodge. We all go hunting for deer. You go hunting too, don't you? NARRATOR: Joe Colombo will lie in a coma for years and eventually die of his wounds. But in the meantime, Joe Gallo has his own problems. RAAB: Gallo had to clear it with the Commission. Because a cardinal rule, which is a self-protection rule, which you can't kill a boss. NARRATOR: To understand what happened next, you have to understand how the mafia began. The structure of the organization was the brainchild of this man, Charles “Lucky” Luciano. RAAB: He was a genius. He wrote the constitution for the American mafia; a Bible that still continues till today. FRANZESE: He had a vision of what this life should be, and he implemented that vision. KOSSLER: Luciano's idea was to set up a organization nationwide, not unlike the Roman legions of Italy. NARRATOR: In 1931, Lucky Luciano incorporated five New York City street gangs into a single unit. These gangs became the five families of the New York mafia we know today: Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno, Genovese, and Lucchese. They're governed by a gangster board of executives known as the Commission. The Commission, the mob families' board, gets to say who lives and who dies. And that's where Joey Gallo comes in. RAAB: No question about it. You don't kill a boss without permission and hope to get away with it. There's a contract out on Joe Gallo's life and he knows it. His forty-third birthday comes around only 10 months after Joe Colombo was shot and paralyzed. Its 4:00 am and they go in to Little Italy. KALLSTROM: There's a restaurant that's still there today called Umberto's Clam House. And, uh, “Crazy” Joe Gallo was sitting there having a spaghetti dinner... MAN: They were sitting at a rear table... when a, uh, a man walked in from the back door... and fired three shots. KALLSTROM: And his face fell into the spaghetti. RAAB: He manages to stagger out on the main street, falls on his face and is dead. Revenge has been done. NARRATOR: The shooting of mob boss Joe Colombo in 1971, and the murder of Joe Gallo in retaliation in 1972, mark the beginning of a new era for law enforcement and the American mob. A younger generation of federal agents and gangsters are about to go head to head. and around the U.S., mob bosses are growing bolder in their stranglehold on captive cities. In Boston, La Cosa Nostra faced competition from Irish gangsters. MURPHY: The Boston mob. You have different factions. We have the New England mafia, La Cosa Nostra. We also had another gang; they called the so-called Irish mob. Run by James "Whitey" Bulger. Which had grown to be quite formidable to rival the mafia locally. Those were the two biggest groups in this region. NARRATOR: Whitey Bulger started his life of crime as a bank robber and small- time street criminal. But by 1972 Whitey was moving up in the ranks. MURPHY: He was involved in loan sharking and gambling and shaking people down. He was involved in a lot of things. And he was involved in murders. And yet, um, he was unscathed. NARRATOR: Whitey's proven murders began in 1974, with the killing of rival mobster Paul McGonagle. A year after McGonagle disappeared, Whitey phoned his home to tell his 12 year-old son that his father wouldn't be home for Christmas. When the boy asked who's calling, Whitey replied, “Santa Claus.” By 1979 Whitey became boss of the Winter Hill Gang, and seemed almost bulletproof. MURPHY: There's one incident where a young couple decided to open a liquor store in South Boston in Whitey's neighborhood. And they bought this old, dilapidated gas station. They converted it into a liquor store. And, they were told, "This isn't your liquor store anymore. Whitey wants to buy it." And they said, "Well, we don't want to sell." And Whitey paid a visit to the house. He put a gun on the table, and said, "No, we own this liquor store now." And gave them you know $67,000 cash and said, "Go away." So the wife had a, uh, father who was a Boston police detective. And so she told him what had happened. NARRATOR: The woman's father went to an FBI agent he knew, named John Connolly, to ask for help. MURPHY: And then a couple days later, the couple was paid a visit by Whitey who said, "Hey. Heard you went to the FBI." You better shut up. And so, word spread pretty quickly that Whitey Bulger, not only was he a menace on the streets, but that he had friends within the FBI. NARRATOR: FBI agent John Connolly was an old school buddy of Whitey Bulger's; a connection Connolly was happy to use for his own goals. MURPHY: John Connolly was telling Whitey, "as long as you give me information, you know, you'll be protecting yourself. you won't be targeted." NARRATOR: Connolly hoped Whitey could help him take down Whitey's rival Patriarca family, which had ties to La Cosa Nostra, but still had adversaries in Whitey's Irish mob. MURPHY: Because it, it was at a time when the FBI was paying a lot of attention, you know, to the New England Mafia here. But As the FBI was targeting the mafia Whitey Bulger was becoming more and more powerful here in New England. NARRATOR: It's a relationship of convenience for Whitey and John Connolly. Connolly got inside information on the mob, and Whitey got a free pass from the FBI to continue his life of crime in Boston. NARRATOR: Whitey Bulger was part of a new generation of gangsters rising up through the ranks of the American mob in the late 1970s. Another one was a guy named John Gotti, a small time hood from Queens looking to make a name for himself. COFFEY: I was involved in various investigations of John Gotti through the years, from the time when he was a nothing guy. POLISI: in the ‘70s, we were all wannabes, even John Gotti was a wannabe in the ‘70s. NARRATOR: Between scores, Gotti killed time with other mob wannabes... Smoking, drinking, playing cards. POLISI: We would be playing poker, his cigar would be down, he would just hold his cards, and he wanted to play. And every once in a while when he got a good hand, this long De Nobili cigar would go up in the air, and I would notice! And no one spotted it! And the minute we saw that cigar go up, we were out the door! We threw our hand in! And he could never figure out what he did. He was, he had a tell. And he was a wild gambler. And he would just lose every night! NARRATOR: Rumors started to spread of an outsized personality in Queens. FAT SAL: And all of a sudden you started hearing this John Gotti. John Gotti. John Gotti this, John Gotti that. We used to say who the (bleep) is this John Gotti? I ain't never heard of him. POLISI: He was a wild and crazy flamboyant personality, high energy, charismatic... COFFEY: He had a two-prong attack to become a made guy. In the mafia you're made either one of two ways: you're an earner or you do hits for them. If you do both, you're a huge made guy. He was. hijacking trailer trucks coming out of the airport, plus he wouldn't hesitate to kill somebody. FRANZESE: I had my first business encounter with John Gotti. It wasn't a very pleasant experience. Two brothers came to me and they had a guy that had a flea market in Brooklyn. This guy's partner was dealing drugs and it was disruptive to the market. So I intercede, I go meet with him, and we make a, an arrangement and I chase his partner out. Two weeks later, uh John calls me up, John Gotti. (phone ringing) FRANZESE: Yeah, hello? He says, “Mike, I need to see you.” I said Okay. I go meet him and he says, “that flea market in Brooklyn.” “Yeah?” He says, “the guy you chased out.” “Yeah?” I said. “He's with me.” I say, “John, come on you know he just ran to you.” “No, no, I know the guy a long time.” John wasn't pulling out, and I wasn't gonna give up. There's no way John Gotti would walk away from an argument with anybody including himself thinking that he lost. So I said “John there's no way I wanna; this guy's a drug addict, I don't want to be around him.” I said “I'm gonna buy you guys out, name your price.” And it's like I knew it. He said, “you don't buy me out, I buy you out.” And that's what happened. He bought me out, gave me the money. So that was my first business encounter with Gotti. COFFEY: John Gotti was a thug. IQ of maybe a mothball, but a thug. NARRATOR: In Boston, another thug did a brisk street business, with the confidence that the law was on his side. MURPHY: Well. So, Whitey was viewed as one of the most vicious gangsters in the region. He was not someone that you messed with. But on the other hand, you know, he was meeting with John Connolly This FBI agent. One day, he would be killing someone. And then that night, he would be out to dinner with FBI agents. NARRATOR: Whitey didn't work alone. His friend, Stephen Flemmi, an Italian-American with ties to the New England Cosa Nostra, was Whitey's partner in crime and a fellow FBI informant. MURPHY: So, Stephen Flemmi he was sort of the liaison between the New England Mafia and Whitey Bulger. Whitey, and Steve Flemmi, form a partnership. And it's the FBI that really brings them all together and suggests to Flemmi, "You, you want to start, you know, cultivating Whitey?" These two are out killing people, committing all sorts of crimes, and really getting away with murder. So now they're sort of drifting between both worlds. NARRATOR: While the FBI cultivated Stephen Flemmi and Whitey Bulger, other government agencies were working to take Whitey and his loan-sharking and drug rackets down. MURPHY: At the height of this, you know, while the DEA and the Boston Police were targeting uh, these cocaine rings that they believed paid tribute to Whitey, they did a raid at Bulger's liquor store. The one he had taken over from this young couple years earlier. And when they did the raid, they found a slip. like a receipt that indicated that an FBI agent had gone in there and bought liquor. And it turned out that when the FBI was shopping for liquor for its Christmas party, they bought it from Whitey's store. NARRATOR: In addition to alcohol, the FBI was getting information from Whitey. and Whitey got to do whatever he wanted. MURPHY: this is the beginning of an investigation that ends uh, really exploding the myth of Whitey Bulger, and exposing all of the corruption that was happening, beneath the surface here in Boston. NARRATOR: In New York, the murders and violence continued as the ‘80s ushered in a new era. John Gotti is now a captain in the Gambino family with a reputation for unbridled violence and a vaulting ambition to become the boss. POLISI: He was sort of an unknown wise guy. But Gotti would walk around with his chest out saying, “one day I'm gonna be the boss.” Of course we thought it was ridiculous. NARRATOR: Gotti wanted to bring back the glory days to New York's five Cosa Nostra families. The most successful of those families was Gotti's Gambino family; a criminal powerhouse in the 80s. MARKS: Tell us about the Gambino family at this point. CHERTOFF: The Gambino family was the largest family and historically probably had been the most powerful family. It gets its name from Carlo Gambino, who was a boss of the family back in the 1950's. And it was probably the family that had the greatest wealth. RAAB: They were into everything. DEVECCHIO: Loan sharking, gambling... the Gambino's had a lot of influence in the garment industry, with the unions. NARRATOR: In 1982, the Gambino boss was a guy named Big Paul Castellano. MCDONALD: Paul Castellano ran the family in a very different way from the way other bosses ran their families. He was a very sophisticated, almost business-like boss. MOUW: Paul's mansion was called the "White House" and he had like a small dining room adjacent to the kitchen, and he would sit there and hold court... And he tried to run the family from the house. NARRATOR: Captains trekked from Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan to the "White House" in Staten Island to discuss business, and business was booming. Castellano controlled much of everyday life in the city, and got a piece of the action whenever a New Yorker bought a chicken or rented an apartment. He had rules. One of them: No one in the Gambino family was allowed to sell drugs, and that was a serious problem for John Gotti. MOUW: 1985, Gotti had most of his crew under indictment for narcotics trafficking. These guys were distributing 50 kilos of heroin in a 6-month period. KOSSLER: Under the rules of the La Cosa Nostra, you are not permitted to engage in narcotics trafficking. NARRATOR: But Gotti was flagrantly breaking that rule, and other bosses wanted Castellano to take action. KOSSLER: At that time Chin Gigante of the Genovese family was putting pressure on Castellano. Gigante was telling Castellano that you're gonna have to kill these guys. NARRATOR: Then in 1985, Paul Castellano was indicted on charges of conspiracy and murder. Gotti saw a one of a kind chance to get rid of Big Paul and take over the Gambino family. MOUW: Their break came when they found out Castellano was having dinner on December 16th at Spark's Steakhouse in Manhattan. So the hit team gets assembled and Gotti's on the scene with Gravano. Gravano's driving. They have 4 shooters on the street. They have a couple crash cars, they have a couple getaway cars. There's probably 15 guys on the street. Bilotti and Castellano drive by. The car pulls in front of Sparks, the four shooters converge on them. And they assassinate Castellano and Bilotti. BROKAW (over TV): The dead godfather, Paul Castellano, and his bodyguard, were gunned down as they stepped from their limousine outside a popular New York steakhouse. Not for 50 years has New York seen a mob murder of this great a magnitude. SHEER (over TV): I think we're witnessing at least part of the changing of the guard. I think we're witnessing a convolution within La Cosa Nostra that hasn't been seen since its beginnings. NARRATOR: At first it's not entirely clear who pulled off the monster hit. REPORTER (over TV): Are there any eyewitnesses? COMMISSIONER (over TV): Well, we haven't come up with anybody that is volunteering anything at this point. MOUW: I think 3 or 4 saw something substantive. But everybody else knew it's a mob hit, “I didn't see nothing, I don't want to get involved.” NARRATOR: But some within Cosa Nostra make an educated guess. Gotti. FAT SAL: Gotti knew if he didn't kill them that he would be killed. And he knew that after killing them he would take over the family. MOUW: About a month later they had what they called a captain's meeting for the Gambino family. At which time the captains elect the new boss of the family. And Frank DeCicco says, “I nominate John Gotti.” Everybody in favor raises their hand, says “ay,” he's elected boss of the family. John says, “I nominate Frank DeCicco to be the underboss.” And we have a new administration in the family. NARRATOR: By taking out Paul Castellano, Gotti established himself as the brashest, boldest captain ever. POLISI: He just went and did it, openly and audaciously. And went to all the other captains and said hey I'm the boss now and that was it. CUTLER: He had a, a particular magnetic personality, that I hadn't encountered before in my life. POLISI: He went from a wannabe wise guy to a superstar within the mob, a mob star. GOTTI: Tell me about it. POLISI: Instantly he became a media sensation. MOUW: John was really the first boss to actually court reporters and court publicity. FAT SAL: All of the sudden you start seeing his pictures... $3,000 suits... And walking around smiling for the cameras and y'know, we know, we've been in this life since we were kids, we know we supposed to stay low. Not smile for the cameras and say, “Hey, how you doin?” MCDONALD: He was very fashionable. He wore tailored suits and tailored overcoats, and you know, fancy scarf, and y'know, he walked with a swagger, and so he took on the name Dapper Don... And I'm sure he relished in that. GIULIANI: I always thought the Dapper Don was a basic moron. This guy who you know likes to show up to watch murders. Last thing in the world you do is show up to watch a murder. The last thing in the world you want to do is bring attention to yourself. POLISI: I think a lot of people resented Gotti of who he was, he was just so out there. He'll do the unexpected and doesn't care. CUTLER: He was always on. He was bullet on. POLISI: John Gotti was the type of guy that was very, very in tuned, perceptive, intuitive on the street. NARRATOR: After several attempts on his life in retaliation for Castellano's murder, Gotti managed to save his own skin. But law enforcement was still gunning for him. KALLSTROM: John Gotti was a particularly slippery guy. He beat a lot of raps, a lot of state court indictments and challenges. Hung juries, things like that. POLISI: He always found a way to intimidate witnesses, somebody disappeared, it was reasonable doubt, you know, this kinda thing. MAN: Hey John, are you gonna beat it this time? MAN 2: That'a boy, Gotti! NARRATOR: One such case is a conspiracy indictment including racketeering and murder, pulled together with flimsy evidence and testimony from known mob associates, like Sal Polisi. MARKS: What was it like to testify against Gotti? POLISI: Oh my gosh! I was a junky for excitement. It was another rush. He was sitting 20 feet away from me! He took his hand, he put it under the table and made like a gun, said, “I'm gonna get you.” And I waved at him and I said, “yeah, okay, right.” And after about 2 days then I start to get cross-examined by all these attorneys like Bruce Cutler. CUTLER: Sal Polisi was a low-life, a miscreant criminal. POLISI: And he was a pugnacious type of a guy. CULTER: This is not the KGB. This is America! POLISI: He was real physical, energetic, loud. He was an actor. CUTLER: When you build cases on rotten scoundrels you expose these low-life witnesses for who they are! POLISI: And of course he tore me up for days. And he said, “How do you describe yourself, Mr. Polisi?” I says, “I lived an un-American life. But I've decided to completely change my life.” And he looked at me and said, “That's never gonna happen. Once a criminal, always a criminal.” CUTLER: You are the people, and it's gonna be now your turn to see through the poison and come back with the right decision. Something you can live with. POLISI: Well when you put mobsters and con artists and crooks and thieves on the stand, you know, it doesn't take a genius to discredit. JURY: We find him not guilty. MAN: AY! Johnny! After the verdict, Jon Gotti drove to his Mulberry Street headquarters, The Ravenite Social Club. He was greeted with cheers and hugs. POLISI: Everybody loved him! You know, all the people in New York loved him. They figured he was an underdog, and he was this great gregarious gangster. Teflon Don. NARRATOR: When Gotti wasn't beating cases, he was holding court very publicly at his social club, the Ravenite. CUTLER: The Ravenite, when I used to go, was chock full of activity. POLISI: All the made guys would walk up and down the street there, and uh, sort of hold court. CUTLER: And John loved it. NARRATOR: But the feds weren't just watching, they were listening as well. They planted a bug inside the Ravenite club where Gotti did all his wheeling and dealing, but there's a hitch. KALLSTROM: It was much too noisy, too many people, a jukebox playing, and it was really a bad environment. MOUW: We just couldn't pick up these conversations, so based on that we had to shut down our electronic surveillance in um late 1988. KALLSTROM: As you look back over the surveillance records, something jumped out at us and that was that on a certain night and like clockwork, over the course of a couple of months, a little old Italian lady would come out the side door next to the Ravenite social club and she'd come back two hours later, at the pretty much the same time. So we said you know, what is this? MOUW: We learned from a high level informant that there's an apartment up there, number 10, occupied by a widow. And they'd go up there and use her apartment for high-level meetings. NARRATOR: It's the break they'd been waiting for. KALLSTROM: The case agents got a new court order and uh we made another entry and went upstairs, and found this beautiful little apartment with a living room where they would have had to sit. We knew that this was gonna be a quiet environment. There was no radio in there. There was a television but, ya know, I think they felt extremely safe in there. It wasn't long after that that I got this call from Kossler and then Bruce Mouw jumping up and down in excitement because, uh, it was a goldmine. The first night that they got them, Gotti talked about pretty much everything that he was doing. He kinda reviewed all the different criminal activity going on in the family. and who needed to be killed and what he thought of his lawyer and a whole host of things. KALLSTROM: It was just some of the best we ever had. NARRATOR: It's a treasure trove of information in the FBI's effort to take down Gotti. For the first time, the Dapper Don was in real trouble. MOUW: On December 12, '89, we had what we call our smoking gun. Gotti was at a meeting earlier that day where some of the guys who were with him were complaining that they'd lost a big construction job to Sammy the Bull's company... So John was steamin'. When he's steamin he's... Doesn't care what he says. ANASTASIA: Too often these guys, they're not smart enough to realize they shouldn't be talkin, they shouldn't be sayin stuff. They think they're in a secure area and they're not... The old-time guys wouldn't even talk on the phone. MOUW: So John goes on a long tirade why they have to kill Louie DeBono, why they killed Robert Dibernardo, why they killed Louie Malito. He blames Sammy ‘The Bull' Gravano for all three. Just that tape alone we knew we had John. On the night of December 11th, 1990, we arrested all these guys. John Gotti, Frank LoCascio, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, and Tommy Gambino, at the Ravenite social club. COFFEY: I was part of the task force that took em down. And we take em down on the street and we throw him up against the plate glass window and I put my hand around him to toss him and he's got a, what I thought was a gun. I said, “Are you packin?” And it turns out it was a big belt buckle that I thought was a gun. So I put him in the car and he's going into the car, and he turns to me and goes, “I give you 3 to 1 I beat this.” MOUW: After we made the arrests we had what they called a detention hearing to prove these guys are a danger to the community. And so we played that 12/12/89 tape as one of the first ones. ANASTASIA: The beauty of tapes is you can use them not only to make cases but to turn guys. Or you can go to a guy and say, “Listen to what your boss is saying about you.” MOUW: And I'm watching Gotti sit next to Gravano and Lucascio at the defense table. Of course Gravano's never heard this before, and we start playin the tape and ya hear Gotti callin' Sammy a green-eyed little monster. BLAKEY: And Gotti begins... Musing over the fact that he doesn't trust Gravano. Maybe he should take him out. MOUW: Sammy's ready to explode, John's about to dive under the table, he's so embarrassed, and Sammy's... He just planted the seed for that guy. And that was the impetus later for him to cooperate and become a witness for us. POLISI: When I flipped in 84 they treated us like we was movie stars, the FBI. Guys didn't flip. That was like, “Oh my gosh. You got a guy to come over.” That was like rare back then. But around 85, 86, 87 guys were flippin every other day. NARRATOR: Among them Phil Leonetti, a leading figure in the Philadelphia mob and the first underboss in the history of organized crime to cooperate with the United States government. He's the first of many dominoes to fall. LEONETTI: I cooperated. I ratted on everybody. That's something that I grew up not believing in and something that I wasn't supposed to do. But it was a decision I wanted to make. PICHINI: Leonetti was really, at that point, the highest-ranking mob member ever to turn to become a government witness. ANASTASIA: A lotta people say Gravano saw what happened to Leonetti, the kind of deal he got, and he decided that's the route he was gonna take as well. In fact, Leonetti at one point was going to be a witness against Gotti, but once Gravano flipped they didn't need him. SAMMY: As part of my cooperation I told the government about my life of crimes, including the fact that I participated in 19 murders. As a member of our family's administration, I helped John Gotti run the family. MOUW: The case went to a jury on April 1 and April 2nd they came back and he was convicted on all but 1 count, and that was a magnificent day for law enforcement. REPORTER (over TV): After four tries the mighty mob boss has been found guilty by a Brooklyn jury. He now faces life in prison. FOX (over TV): The Teflon is gone, the Don is covered with Velcro, and every charge in the indictment stuck. CUTLER: He represented a rebel figure for people. He was a hoodlum's hoodlum, but he chose that life. Or the life, as he said, chose him. And, uh, he seemed to be enjoying the show. MCDONALD: The conviction of John Gotti was very significant because it disrupted the Gambino crime family, but even more important than the conviction of Gotti, the investigation of Gotti really lead to the demise of the Gambino crime family. It enabled the FBI to gather evidence against the whole leadership of the family, all the powerful people in the family and indeed other families. NARRATOR: Cooperating witness Sammy “The Bull” Gravano was the lynchpin of the case. His testimony not only helped bring down Gotti of the Gambino's, but later Genovese family boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante in 1997. REPORTER (over TV): Gravano identified him as the head of the Genovese crime family. He testified Gigante wore the familiar pajamas and a bathrobe at their first mob meeting, but there was nothing unusual about his behavior. NARRATOR: For the first time in its 60-year history, the American mob was on the ropes. As high-ranking gangsters cooperated with the government, and wise guys killed each other in the streets. It's also crumbling in Boston, where Irish mob boss Whitey Bulger's long-time partnership with the FBI is about to come to an abrupt end. MURPHY: Because what happened in 1995 is there was this huge racketeering indictment charging the head of the New England Mafia at the time, the boss, Frank Salemme. Steve Flemmi, Whitey Bulger, and others with making lots of money off of gambling, extortion, loan sharking. NARRATOR: Whitey's old school buddy, FBI agent John Connolly, tipped Whitey off that he's about to be indicted and Whitey vanishes. MURPHY: Whitey takes off. Flemmi gets caught. And Flemmi launches this unusual defense. And what he says is, I couldn't possibly be part of this big racketeering enterprise because I, along with Whitey, I'm a long time FBI informant, and we were providing information against the mafia. We were working with the FBI. So, Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi's corrupt relationship with the FBI was exposed. There were investigations launched. There were congressional hearings looking at how the FBI handled its informants. NARRATOR: Whitey Bulger goes deep underground, while the government offers rewards for his capture. Even listing him on the top-ten most wanted criminals list, second only to Osama bin Laden. In 2011, after 16 years on the run, Whitey's time finally runs out when he's found living in Santa Monica with his longtime girlfriend. For sixteen years and across two continents the FBI chased one of its most wanted men. Now 81, Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was finally arrested on Wednesday, marking the end to one of the biggest manhunts in US history. MURPHY: people couldn't believe that they had actually found him. There had been so many, you know, false tips over the years. NARRATOR: He's found guilty and he's given a double life sentence... Plus five years. In 2018, Whitey Bulger was beaten and killed in prison by fellow inmates. MURPHY: it was a stunning end. He, he died very much like, you know, the, the, the awful, brutal kind of death that he inflicted on many of his victims, it was a horrible death. NARRATOR: Ending a legendary lifetime of crime inside the American mob.