Who is John Gotti to me?
I knew him since I was a young kid.
He was a mentor.
He always looked out for me.
When I was 16 years old, I got thrown out of school.
I wanted to be a gangster.
And my father wouldn't talk to me.
So, I went to see John Gotti and Tony Lee, my father's partner.
He goes, "I'll get you in the bricklayers' union."
I said, "Bro, I don't want to be no fucking bricklayer."
He goes, "What do you wanna do?" I go, "I wanna work for you."
I'll never forget. He looked at me, leaned over,
and he goes, "You wanna work for me?"
"The government hates you."
"You're committing murders. You're selling drugs."
"You're fucking poisoning the city."
"So, before you get into this life,
go to Washington D.C.
and look at the Justice Department building."
He said, "And remember one thing."
"That fucking building is gonna chase you your whole life."
John Gotti, reputed head
of one of the nation's most powerful organized crime families,
was arraigned today.
Gotti is accused of ordering the 1986 shooting of John O'Connor,
a carpenters' union official.
Unlike past Gotti cases,
this time the Organized Crime Task Force believe John Gotti will have to deal with
the strongest case yet.
We charged ahead with the evidence we had
to bring a state prosecution against John Gotti.
The focal point of that investigation became the shooting of John O'Connor
that was ordered by John Gotti.
We were up for this challenge, and John Gotti was going down.
How do you plead to these charges? Guilty or not guilty?
Not guilty.
After his arraignment, Gotti was released on $100,000 bail.
So, the Manhattan DA will try to do what the Brooklyn Feds could not,
put John Gotti away.
As a repeat offender, if Gotti is found guilty,
he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Right now, it's almost a competition with the OCTF.
They were able to bring their case against John before us.
So, this was kind of a black eye to the Bureau.
We're getting beat up, right?
You know, it's, "You guys can't put this guy in jail."
As attorneys, we worked hand-in-hand with the FBI.
Even though the case of O'Connor's shooting was going on,
we weren't going to stop.
When Gotti was out on bail,
we're eight and ten months into bugging the Ravenite Club.
I wasn't getting the eureka conversations I needed.
We were getting snippets.
We're hearing John move away from the table,
a door opening and shutting.
We don't hear them anymore. What's going on?
Okay, we're rolling.
A lot of wise guys, but not John.
The FBI agents, they don't see Gotti leave,
but nobody hears his loud voice.
And if you knew Gotti, Gotti never shut up.
And we didn't know where he went.
Suddenly, 20 minutes later, we hear John's voice again.
What are we missing?
We had high-level informants, and one of them came back and said,
"Oh, by the way, I was in the club, and I saw John Gotti,
his underboss Frank LoCascio and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, consigliere,
they'd get up, walk through this back door,
and disappeared for an hour and fifteen."
We didn't know there was a back door.
Oh, there's an apartment upstairs that he's using.
Old lady, wife of a deceased Gambino soldier
that used to be the caretaker, lives in this apartment.
You're looking at this like, "You've got to be kidding me."
There was no doubt in my mind
that's the place I had to get a bug in.
We have to figure out the how.
Fuck.
What I start doing is I dial the phone on a Friday or Saturday night.
If she answered, obviously I'd know she was home.
The first time I do this, right? I wake up at 1:00 in the morning.
I get this poor 90-year-old lady getting on the phone,
and I'm like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I have the wrong number."
I mean, I felt terrible.
But I had to do it again the next week. And it was the same thing.
I was actually astonished the third time.
My heart started racing when she didn't answer the phone.
It was like, "All right, this is go time."
But it's equally as nerve-racking because, you know, a lot of risk to this.
On the night of the entry,
there was a high level of anxiety
to get the job done and get out undetected.
Surveillance watched the comings and goings in that building.
And just before we were going to do it,
you wanna double and triple-check everything.
So, a female surveillance agent went up to the third floor.
The damn apartment six feet behind us has a damn dog, and the dog goes crazy.
In New York, it's always a goddamn curveball.
We had to take the gamble, take the chance.
It's about two o'clock in the morning.
We get in that hallway,
and it was the quietest hallway I've ever been in in my life.
Nobody had a television on, a radio on.
Nothing.
It was eerie.
And we figured when we get up to that door,
that dog is going to be all over us.
But we knew there was no turning back.
There I am, it's November, and I'm walking around with my socks on.
That would have probably been a clue that I was a burglar.
My partner started picking.
And I could hear the pins going up and down, it was that quiet.
The lock is giving us a little bit of a hard time.
A little bit of jiggling and rattling.
Sure as hell it was gonna wake that damn dog up.
We were just holding our breath all the time.
About ten minutes later, we were in.
The dog must have been put in the back room.
That's the only way he could've not heard us.
The acoustics of her apartment were excellent.
It wasn't big. There were no echoes.
There was no background noise.
And within 15 minutes, they had that bug up and running,
and we really feel that, "Boy, if they're talking up here,
this is it, we've done it."
It was a home run.
I get the call the next morning, the bug's in,
so it's like, "All right, this should be it."
Well, first night,
nothing.
Next night, I get a message.
"No principals in the location, no pertinent conversation."
I know he's in the club.
Third night.
"No principals in the location, no pertinent conversation."
So, I'm up at least three days, and I'm getting nothing.
That was a concern.
Did they get made? Did somebody find the bug?
Loose piece of wire? Did they make a mistake? You never know.
Once I had the bug in, you're not allowed to keep it up forever.
Every 30 days, I had to go back to the judge and report,
"Here's what I'm getting. It's fruitful. I'm getting criminal conversations."
So, if I don't, I jeopardize my wire. A judge could throw the whole thing out.
We've gotta do something about that and quick.
One of the techniques when you do an eavesdropping is,
sometimes you want him to talk about a certain subject,
so you say, "Let's tickle the wire."
You want things that will tickle conversations.
Tickling meaning something happened, they're gonna come back and talk about it.
We even went as far as to arrange that America's Most Wanted
would do a special on the Paul Castellano homicide case.
We were that desperate.
It was here that the most powerful crime figure in America
was gunned down four years ago.
Who really killed Paul Castellano?
The cops and the FBI say that John Gotti orchestrated the killing.
I was on my honeymoon.
When I got a phone call from the FBI to tell me…
They're in the apartment, we can hear everything clear,
and they're even talking about Paul. We gotta go.
I didn't think I could be any happier on my honeymoon,
but I was definitely happier.
We hear them walk into the apartment, and there they are.
And it's kinda like The Godfather music in the background.
And I'm like, "No one's gonna believe I didn't plant this music."
It's just too good to be true.
So, I'm hearing John Gotti. I'm hearing Sammy Gravano.
I'm hearing Frank LoCascio.
Gotti and these guys start talking about Castellano and Tommy Bilotti
and how much they hated them.
Without saying, "We killed Paul," John outlines why he was killed.
We were ecstatic with it, um.
Quality, content, everything was there.
And so, what that conversation told me was I finally was in the right place.
To put a RICO case against John and the Gambino family,
I need three elements.
I need to prove the existence of the criminal enterprise.
I need to prove that he's a member.
And then I need two criminal acts.
If I have all of those elements, I could charge RICO.
But by the time we get the bug conversations up,
John's got another trial he's gonna face.
This is the O'Connor case with the Organized Crime Task Force.
After a year out on bail,
the alleged Godfather arrives for his first day in state court.
We were really emboldened. We were roused up.
We thought we had the evidence that we would convict John Gotti
in a state case.
Gotti made the trip to the court
through the logjam of cameras and hangers-on.
Prosecutors are aware of Gotti's celebrity, his folk hero status.
This larger-than-life guy, smiling, walks out, not a care in the world.
Everybody wanted a piece of him,
to get him on camera, to get that one word,
or that smile, or that look.
The John O'Connor trial was a gift.
I'm Eric Shawn, Fox News New York.
Because it's in the state trial,
and unlike the federal court, you can have a camera.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
All right, be seated, please.
From day one, the proceedings were spiked with bitter salvos.
They never once, and I'll prove that to you,
ever saw him commit a crime.
We had one president that was taped for about a week. He got fired.
The star was unquestionably John Gotti himself,
sitting smugly in his silk suits.
Alongside alleged Gambino soldier, Tony Lee Guerrieri.
This trial was different than the Diane Giacalone trial.
The Diane Giacalone trial was primarily based all on informant testimony.
All on people who were terrible people in their own right.
Who were pleading guilty and testifying against John Gotti.
But in this case, John Gotti himself was intercepted on our bug.
Today, the prosecution will lead with its strongest evidence.
Secretly recorded tapes,
supposedly connecting Gotti to the O'Connor hit.
We had Gotti on tape
saying what he wanted done to John O'Connor.
Now please play the tape.
John Gotti was talking to Anthony Guerrieri,
also known as Tony Lee, about busting him up.
John Gotti knew, "Yeah, that's what I said."
Of course, he wasn't going to confess, but he knew that we got the tape.
There's nothing better than a tape.
You can't cross-examine a tape, totally reliable,
jurors can listen to it and decide for themselves
what it says and who said it.
So, having the tape in evidence in this case,
as opposed to the previous RICO case,
was a great advantage.
Channel 2's Mary Murphy is covering the trial
and joins us now live with an update.
Every single person in the courtroom, they were all wearing headphones.
The defense attorneys, the prosecutors, the judge, the jury.
John Gotti refused to wear the headphones.
Outside of court, I asked him, "Mr. Gotti…
How come you don't listen to the tapes?
- How come you don't put the earphones on? - I like Julio Iglesias.
"I'd rather listen to Julio Iglesias, the singer."
And Gotti just seemed amused by the whole thing.
One of the good things about the trial, with the O'Connor case,
was it happened while the bug was up in the apartment above the Ravenite.
And so, we would wait after the trial
to see if Gotti was gonna mention something in the trial.
Maybe admit something, something that we could use in our case.
During the trial,
John walked around with that arrogance, that "we are the best."
Despite that, John is keenly aware of the stakes with this OCTF trial.
So, you got great conversations.
He's bothered by the fact that they were able to record him,
and he's bemoaning all of this while we're capturing it on tape.
Telling these guys what should not happen while it's happening.
He laid it out. I mean, John just saying,
"I'll deal with somebody if they even say 'La' from 'La Cosa Nostra,'"
you just told me it exists.
That conversation, it gives me enterprise. He just handed it to me.
John Gotti has a way of walking into a courthouse like he owns the place.
A man whose suits are made of silk, but whose legal armor is made of Teflon.
We had heard that the defense attorneys were gonna try to challenge
whether John Gotti actually said, "Bust him up."
Both sides argued over the meaning of words
caught by a government bug.
They were the three words prosecutors thought
would bring down John Gotti.
Bust him up.
The defense attorney was gaslighting
everything that was on these tapes
Do different people hear different things when they listen to this tape?
Yes.
It's so clear. This is ridiculous. He clearly says, "Bust him up."
We didn't even pay attention. We were all laughing at it
that they're gonna make that as part of their defense.
Those three words were the key words in the whole trial.
Did John Gotti say…
Bust him up.
Their so-called bust…
"Bust him up" phrase,
do you know what was meant by that?
Do you know what was in Mr. Gotti's mind when he said that?
Yes, sir.
You read his mind?
What was so brilliant and devious at the same time
is all you have to do is put some doubt in one juror's mind.
That was Bruce Cutler's job.
- I think it's fairly obvious from his- - Do you know what's in his mind, now?
I wish I knew.
One of the days during the trial,
we're listening to John when he's coming back,
and he's still concerned about the case.
During his trial, he was worried about being convicted,
and rightly so.
On one of the tapes, he has a conversation with Sammy "The Bull" Gravano,
where he wants to make Sammy the underboss of the family
to run the family, in case he has to go away.
It showed how much respect he had for Sammy,
the confidence he had in Sammy, in being able to run the family,
and to keep things going, while John's in jail.
Sammy wasn't a guy like John Gotti that came out at night.
He was more low-key.
Sammy had respect for Gotti,
and he was Cosa Nostra.
Sammy really was loyal to Gotti, he really was.
This was the first time we've gotten
a mob boss
explaining, literally, how it all works, who everybody is.
It's a guy tutoring you on how the mob works.
Consigliere, underboss,
I'm still the boss.
This was great for us.
John's basically saying, "I'm a member of the Gambino family."
That's another one of the pieces that I need to prove a RICO case.
During the course of the trial,
one of my investigators was at a bar one night
with a bunch of FBI agents.
And they said to him,
"We're just salivating waiting for you to lose this case,
so we can bring a case against them and show who can really convict him."
Sounded like the FBI.
You know, at that time, all the law enforcement agencies
suspected, I'm sure, that the FBI had some bugs,
but nobody knew. We didn't share that with anybody.
Bruce Mouw drilled into all of our heads, "You don't tell anybody anything."
We had to really be discreet
and very careful as to who knows about the tapes
because John Gotti may find out and will jeopardize the wire.
There's not a lot of secrets among law enforcement people,
and I know we did go to the FBI and say, "Listen,
if you get anything on jury tampering,
we will go into the judge privately and ask for a mistrial."
So, we made the FBI aware that "If you hear something, please tell us."
While John's on trial with the state,
I'm acutely listening,
and we started hearing conversation about jurors, and it's not clear.
There's no doubt in my mind,
they were gonna try and get to a jury if they could
because they had done that before.
Clearly, to be safe, we could have disclosed that.
We went back and forth with it, wrestled with the whole thing.
The decision was we don't have proof that anybody got compromised.
We'll just live with that and not expose the wire to help them.
A New York City jury is expected to begin deliberations today
in the trial of John Gotti.
I was convinced having known what the evidence was,
and I think everybody in the courthouse, from what I heard,
expected there to be a conviction.
I'm just concerned that
I'm gonna be able to keep this bug up a little bit longer
till I can finish my case.
Jurors asked to have one tape replayed nine times.
For the first time, the ever-confident Gotti
looked somewhat concerned.
They brought their appeals attorney in,
and he sat at the defense desk
with his law books open ready to make an appeal on bail.
John Gotti's physical posture indicated that he had a problem.
I was living with Tony Lee, I was with him when he left to go to court.
When waiting for the verdict to come in, John and Tony Lee made a pact
that if they got convicted or got found not guilty,
they weren't going to give the government any satisfaction and not make no gestures.
As to the defendant John Gotti, do you find the defendant
guilty or not guilty of the first count of the indictment,
charging him with the crime of conspiracy in the fourth degree?
We had a close-up of John Gotti's face
with the camera in the courtroom, and you can see the tension there.
We find him…
not guilty.
And John went like this anyway. He still made a gesture.
I think everybody in the room, including John Gotti, was surprised.
My first assistant shows up at my door, and he said,
"He's acquitted on all counts."
And both of our faces just dropped.
The verdict was broadcast live,
and that just increased the celebrity status of John Gotti.
He ran from the courthouse pumping his fist, waving in the air.
It was like, here is the conquering hero, here's the victor.
John Gotti is home free once more.
He had a victory party inside the Ravenite Club,
and that was an all-day and all-night party.
Later that day, fireworks start going off.
The door opens and John Gotti comes out,
with Sammy "The Bull," looking up at the fireworks.
On the night of his acquittal, our city's reputed Godfather
stepped out of his lair to savor a celebration.
I rush over there to talk to John Gotti,
and there's everybody in the world.
Now the press corps has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
Mr. Gotti.
- How do you feel? - You happy?
- Are you happy? - We're happy if you're happy.
We're all happy!
- What do you think? - A good decision.
And John Gotti's brother, Peter,
comes to the door of the social club and says…
- Do you want to come inside? - Yes. Oh, just me?
"Only Barbara, come in. "
- Just you. - Okay.
Barbara, ask them about…
John Gotti and Frank LoCascio
are sitting at a huge round table,
and Gotti says, "We're drinking Cristal,
but we only have plastic cups, is that okay?"
And I raise my glass and say, "Just remember one thing, gentlemen."
The good news is he's on the street, my wire gets to survive.
The bad news is this guy just became even bigger, right?
It emboldened this guy that much more
and made, again, law enforcement look incompetent.
Good evening. His name is John Gotti,
and tonight he's becoming known as the Teflon Don.
When Gotti beat the case a third time,
that's when he really got the name, the Teflon Don,
which the government hated, by the way.
Nothing sticked to him.
And he had the media in his palm.
Anything he said, they would follow up on and report.
You look at it and, you know, you wonder what's happening.
There were serious doubts they'd ever be able to pin anything on him
and finally bring him to justice.
I remember thinking that was a terrible thing for our society,
that a person who was a killer and a criminal
was getting all this notoriety.
But I was an eternal optimist that we could still make another case.
Later on, we learned that the FBI had their own bug up during the trial.
We had heard that John Gotti was trying to get to the jury in our trial.
When I found out, I was upset. There is no question about it.
I know that had we found out about it in the bug that we had,
we would've said something. Um…
I don't know how I would have lived with myself if I had not.
Um…
You don't do that in law enforcement.
As he would beat these cases, John changed.
He definitely changed. He was more arrogant.
He was more flamboyant. He was more outgoing.
He thought he was a movie star. He really did.
He was romantically involved with his own image.
He was vainglorious. He was like, "Look, I'm John Gotti."
"This is who I am, and I'll put it in your face."
Strangers were coming up to him.
Everybody, like, "Can I have your autograph?" I've witnessed that.
Today, they would have said, "Can we take a selfie?"
So, he gives them the autograph.
We get in the car. Tony Lee goes, "Is he fucking kidding?"
"How could he do that? What's wrong with him?"
He actually said, "I have a public out there. They want to see me."
We're mob guys.
We're not supposed to have a public. We're not supposed to have fans.
You know if you're street smart, this is just not gonna end well.
You're not a movie star.
You're a fucking boss of the Gambino Crime Family.
Act like one.
The government has an ego too.
They're saying, "These fucking guys, are they kidding me?"
He was abusing them. Like, "I dare you to come get me."
It came to a point where we were just red-hot.
The feds were all over the place.
They were on everybody, especially guys that were close to John.
Twenty-eight, you see a vehicle?
Yet none of us stopped doing what we were doing.
It's like smoking. I'm not gonna get lung cancer.
The guy behind me is gonna get it.
Yeah.
There was a lot of pressure for somebody
to be the one that puts this guy in jail.
We can't afford a defeat.
Because then if we go down, who's left?
I mean, all the other agencies took their swing.
We're getting incredible information from the apartment tapes.
They're eye-opening, but they're not enough.
We have the enterprise clear as a bell.
The problem is we need predicate acts.
So, we need to have tapes where he discusses homicides,
gambling, loan-sharking, labor racketeering.
We're listening to all these conversations.
It's a lot of work.
And sometimes it can be defeating.
You wonder if you're ever gonna succeed.
Oh God, it's 24/7.
And then, lo and behold,
John Gotti was intercepted talking to Frank LoCascio.
And during that time, he was ranting and raving about Sammy Gravano.
He's highlighting the different construction entities
that Sammy's running.
He explains labor unions.
He explains all this criminal conversation.
Labor racketeering is the first out of all predicate acts.
It was clear as a bell.
And then it goes on.
It's John on a diatribe talking to Frankie LoCascio,
explaining why he had people killed.
Robert DiBernardo, they call him "DiB."
DiB had one of the biggest porn operations
in the United States of America.
We're not talking about New York City.
We're talking about the whole fucking country.
I mean, he was big.
I always wanted him to take me to the studios in Jersey
where they filmed the porn movies.
I was a kid, like 20 years old.
"DiB, when you gonna take me to them fucking studios?"
So, he was very rich. Very, very, very wealthy.
1986, DiB disappears,
while John's in jail, on Diane Giacalone's case, pending trial.
Just, one day he's here, one day he's not.
At the time, we didn't know why he was killed.
We suspected it was the Gambino family.
But John laid it out that he was the one behind it.
Whether he was talking bad about John, I don't know for sure,
but he was definitely a threat.
He signed his own death warrant, and that was the end of DiB.
There's always a method behind the madness.
There's always a dollar sign somewhere in the scenario.
Because now DiB is out of the picture.
When the wise guy goes, the family gets the spoils.
Who benefited from it? John Gotti benefited from it
because he's inherited the porn business.
Today's market with the Internet?
Forget it, the money he was making.
When you play the tape, it's a great predicate for why they killed this guy.
That's our most powerful tape from a criminal conduct perspective.
For me, it was a smoking gun.
Now, we have all three elements, I can charge RICO.
And that was kind of a big moment for us.
Our plan was to arrest them all at the Ravenite in one time.
We go into the club.
We walk into the back room
and engage John, Sammy, and Frankie who are sitting at the table.
I said, "Yeah, John, you know why I'm here."
And John's like, "Oh, your timing is bad, we just ordered coffee."
We had a little conversation because that's John, right?
It was one of these, "You know I'm gonna beat this rap, right?"
"I know you're gonna try."
"I'm not sure you're gonna beat it."
"You know, your mother's probably on my side."
"You don't know my mother."
Then I said, "If I were you, I'd worry about what you said up in the apartment."
And all of a sudden, he just shut up.
And that was it.
The reputed head of the nation's most powerful mafia family
is behind bars this morning.
Gotti is accused of several acts of racketeering, including
the 1985 rub out of Gambino family boss, Paul Castellano.
Similar charges were brought against Frank LoCascio
and the underboss of the Gambino clan, Sal "Sammy Bull" Gravano.
We all knew that getting arrested was part of the job.
We never… You don't think about it.
When he got arrested, you know, that was just the game.
That was the life.
Gotti faces multiple life sentences,
and up to 105 years in prison, if convicted on all charges.
But if he's not convicted,
this will be Gotti's fourth victory over the government.
People in the media, they're building up this aura of he's invincible,
nobody can put this guy in jail,
and we couldn't afford to lose.
We reviewed everything that we had had,
and we realized that we had to bring on other law enforcement agencies,
which were… We were not prone to playing nice together.
OCTF had bugged the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club
before John made himself the boss of the Gambino family.
It was crucial to see if there's anything of value there.
One day, we get a call from the lead prosecutor
that he wanted to go over our tapes in case he wanted to use 'em in his trial.
We knew that we had extraordinary evidence for a RICO case.
My concern is the Organized Crime Task Force
was still upset that the Bureau ruined their case, right?
So, it's all a problem.
There are some people within the Bureau,
they believe that their case is the single most important,
and they're the only ones capable of doing it,
and to a large extent, they want the credit for doing it.
Um, I tend not to think that way.
If the use of our evidence helped, that's great.
The critical thing was the conviction of the head of a family.
In this trial, for the first time,
the Organized Crime Task Force and the FBI
have declared a truce on fighting over who gets the glory.
Everybody came together,
it's, "What can I do? When do you want it? Where should I bring it?"
The prosecutor says, "I love these tapes,
just as much as I love the FBI tapes."
Because our tapes happened in 1986,
whereas, the FBI Ravenite tapes happened in, like, 1990 and 1989.
So, for example, our tapes occur before Robert DiBernardo was killed.
Conversations where they're questioning Robert DiBernardo's loyalty.
And then you had the FBI tapes in 1990
with Gotti saying it was okay to whack DiBernardo.
Our tapes also concern Gotti still hating Paul Castellano.
And our tapes had tremendous enterprise conversations,
when John Gotti becomes boss.
So, what ends up happening
is our tapes were woven in with the FBI tapes.
Now, all those conversations we had
showing all their crimes they had committed, become very relevant
to make a real winnable case.
The stage is set for an epic showdown
between the Teflon Don and the U.S. government.
A convoy of vans, driven by heavily armed federal marshals,
had John Gotti moved out towards Brooklyn Federal Court.
So, we knew this would be the battle royale
of the United States government versus John Gotti.
In the opposite corner, some members of the FBI's Gambino Squad.
Many of whom have spent a career dogging Gotti
and the largest of New York's five organized crime families.
The scene outside the courthouse where the cameras were all assembled
was just percolating with excitement.
People wanted to know will the government get him this time?
And then it became the parade of Hollywood stars to support him.
The Gotti trial is the hottest show off-Broadway,
with spectators lining up as early as 2:00 in the morning
for a chance to get inside the courtroom.
Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rourke.
There was the TV star, John Amos.
He thought John Gotti was a winner.
I think he's a fascinating man.
What is it about him that strikes you?
I just like the way he carries himself.
The first day of the trial was nerve-racking.
We walked to the courtroom, and the halls were filled with wise guys,
news media, people from the public trying to get seats.
I had never tried a case that was standing-room only.
We knew that John Gotti and Sammy and Frankie
were going to get to hear
just how good and how strong these tapes were.
What brought this trial alive were the tapes,
were the Ravenite tapes.
We had a tape about loan-sharking.
We had tapes about gambling.
We had tapes about murder.
We had tapes about conspiring to murder.
We had tapes about union organizations.
We had tapes about labor racketeering.
Every crime that we charged we had a tape that would cover that crime.
And it was Gotti's mouth
and Gotti's words that set forth the crime.
The tapes were exceptionally clear.
There was no doubt about what he was saying.
He was exposed as a vulgar thug with all of his cursing.
And I don't think people had ever really heard that to that extent.
Now, we're hearing that he's ruthless, and he's ordering people killed,
and there's this whole other side to John Gotti
than the persona that we sort of helped create making him a celebrity.
The media wrote about the $2000 Baroni suits,
but we really didn't write about where the $2000 came from.
We played that tape
where John just bad-mouths Sammy "The Bull" for an hour straight.
When he says, "People think these are my green eyes,"
John's angry that he's being blamed, that he's the greedy guy
and he's looking bad, and that's all John really cares about.
And what we're hearing is Gotti ranting and raving about Sammy Gravano.
What we're not hearing is what Sammy Gravano is hearing, which is…
"This guy is going to kill me."
I'm at home, and I get a call from the office.
Sammy Gravano was interested in talking to us.
He wanted to cooperate.
And that actually concerned me.
Because…
You cannot cross-examine tapes, but you can cross-examine Sammy.
All of a sudden going through my mind was,
"Well, they can blame everything on Sammy."
But you can't ignore something like that.
As we were debriefing Sammy,
not only did he give us even more insights into the conversations we had.
You know, we talk about all of John's trials before
and how John beat the government in that Diane Giacalone case,
and Sammy proudly spoke about,
"John didn't win that trial. I fixed it for him."
"What do you mean?" He says, "I'm the one who paid the juror the $60,000."
I was literally astonished by this. I mean, I'm almost in disbelief.
He brought greater detail and expanded our evidence, if you will,
because he could fill in so many blanks.
You had to give it a shot.
Unprecedented, the highest ranking admitted member
of the Gambino Crime Family to turn state's evidence
ever in the history of New York State.
People immediately started calling Sammy a rat
and started putting posters up of a rat with Sammy's head on top of it.
Oh God. Sammy Gravano?
It just was like so shocking. Sammy?
When I heard Sammy flipped, I thought he was a scumbag. It was a scumbag move.
He was the underboss.
Sammy was a die-hard street guy.
Never in a million years would I think Sammy Gravano
was going to inform on John Gotti.
How could a guy in that position cooperate with the government?
One of the days I remember the clearest
is the first day that Gravano took the stand.
There were these huge FBI and SWAT teams.
Stand back! Stand back!
You've seen it in the movies, but this is real life.
In a Brooklyn courtroom, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
is violating the blood oath he took when he joined the mob,
testifying against his boss,
the so-called Teflon Don, John Gotti.
The government dances with the devil,
you know, they use bad guys to get other bad guys.
In the first federal trial against John Gotti,
they used a string of bad guys,
whom the jury didn't, apparently, deem credible.
He beat the federal government.
He's a winner.
Now, they're using Sammy "The Bull" Gravano,
a guy with a hateful record,
a guy who is a stone-cold killer,
a guy who is an enforcer, killed his own brother-in-law.
This is a bad human being. So, why would they take the risk?
In a flat, chilling tone, Gravano detailed seven murders
he either took part in directly or helped set up.
All with the assistance or approval, he said, of John Gotti.
Gravano was basically looking over us to Gotti and Gotti looking back.
And you could feel the daggers flying back and forth.
It was absolutely silent in the courtroom.
At that moment, if the courtroom could've been cleared,
Gotti and Gravano might have gone right at each other.
None of the jurors look at this guy because this is a mass murderer.
This is the guy they've been waiting to hear from, but nobody looks at him.
The jury saw FBI surveillance video tapes,
taken outside Gotti's Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy,
which showed Sammy "The Bull" Gravano they saw on the witness stand
in scene after scene as a close associate of John Gotti.
One of the best things that Sammy Gravano was able to tell us
was exactly how the hit for Castellano and Bilotti was executed.
Sammy was able to give the jury the blow-by-blow
of how the details went down.
Who were the shooters? Who was at the scene?
That he and John were in the car together. Who shot.
Gravano and Gotti actually drove by the scene,
looked down to make sure that they were dead.
And they all then left the scene. So, he…
He gave all of that, and that was detail we just didn't have.
The Gotti trial is drawing to a dramatic close.
The jury begins deliberations tomorrow and the outcome is anyone's guess.
We didn't know how long they were going to be out.
It's nerve-racking for everybody.
They came back with a note saying
that they had reached a verdict after about a day and a half.
When the jury came back sooner than we expected,
it put a little bit of a pit in the stomach. I mean, it's…
You know, you hear it's not a good sign if they come back quickly.
I was nervous. I mean, I wasn't sure which way this was going to go.
It's still a jury.
There's still people who like John Gotti throughout the city.
I was scared I wouldn't be able to stand up when the jury walked in
because my knees were shaking so much.
My heart was pounding. I let my news desk know,
"There's a verdict. Get ready. Get in the control room. We're coming on."
At 1:19 p.m., the jury forewoman stood
and read the verdict.
Gotti sat there smirking in his impeccably tailored black suit.
The jurors were anonymous. They were given a number, not a name.
There was no real identification.
But I was watching to see how nervous and scared they were, looking at Gotti.
I felt, "Oh my God. No one would have the strength to convict him."
And it was actually one juror, she was tearing up,
and I wasn't sure how to read that.
And you hear…
…"Guilty, guilty, proven, proven, proven, proven, guilty, guilty."
And I was going, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you."
Tonight, the Dapper Don trades his pinstripes for prison stripes.
John Gotti is convicted of all charges and faces life behind bars.
The Teflon is gone.
The Don is covered with Velcro and every charge in the indictment stuck.
The mob as we have known it
in New York City and in the United States is on the way out.
I had a hard time not crying, I was so broken up about it.
It was a good day.
I was just really, really happy. It was a relief.
This is over, and we did it.
And that took a little bit of time to really kind of sink in.
It was a great moment.
It was a terrific moment for the whole OCTF,
because everybody had worked so well together.
And, finally, we were working with the FBI again.
If we had been this way before, the mob would not have survived.
Flip it over!
The voices of triumph and of defeat reverberated in the air.
John Gotti's supporters were left with a bitter taste.
The judge, the jury, they're all feds, every one of them. They're rats.
I lost a good friend.
You know, I lost a mentor. I lost someone that I knew had my back.
I knew I would never see him again. I was sad.
So, now the party's over.
It was a sickening feeling because life, never seeing daylight, you know?
But that's the life they choose.
People blame John Gotti for being on the cover of Time Magazine,
John Gotti for being in the media,
Sammy Gravano, he brought down organized crime because he ratted.
That's not true.
I have to give law enforcement the credit for that.
These guys worked diligently,
watching them and taping them and following them,
sometimes a year, 18 months,
until they actually get them, arrest them, and put them behind bars.
They did their job, and they did a damn good job at it.
You have to be honest about that,
whether you're from the streets or not, they brought it down.
Nobody else should get that credit of bringing it down. They did it.
John Gotti was whisked to federal prison
just over the Brooklyn Bridge next to City Hall,
that's been his home since his arrest.
Now that Gotti's gone, it's clear
the infrastructure of the mob here in New York is weakening.
John Gotti and his big mouth, and his use of the media,
turned a secret society into a national spectacle.
So, I think that if anybody is responsible for the downfall of the mob,
it's not me, it's not the FBI,
it's not the other prosecutors, it's…
John Gotti.