December 2, 2008
Commentary
Gravano Left No Comrade Overlooked
Sept. 28, 1994 - John Gotti made Sammy Gravano his underboss in 1988; and in 1992, Sammy Gravano swore the oath that would make John Gotti a federal prisoner until they ship his body back to Queens.
Sammy Gravano has always lived by the gospel of service that makes special reference to the service of the self. No mafioso was ever so dedicated to satisfying his don's grudges or, for that matter, to inflaming them in the cause of his own. Louis DiBono, Robert DiBernardo and Liborio Milito were all partners in Gravano's construction enterprises; and Gravano had but to breathe to Gotti suspicions of their treason, be granted his license to murder them, and sweep their shares up for himself.
By 1990, he was sole owner of companies worth an estimated $3 million and unimpeachably legitimate, if we set aside the homicidal means of their acquisition. Gulled by the romance of the Mafia though Gotti incurably was, even he grew puzzled by the suspicious weight of Gravano's properties in comparison with his own and wondered if he could trust him. Then they were arrested together and Gotti found out that he couldn't.
Boss and underboss had shared pre-trial detention for three months when Gravano's thoughts turned to salvation, which, for natures as determined as his, is a blessing to be sought not for the soul's sake but for the neck's. He turned to the federal prosecutors and they agreed that, if he would bear witness, they would do him the kindness of a 20-year prison term, a $250,000 fine and, he had cause to fear, the forfeiture of an estate built up with so much labor for himself and pain to others.
And then he employed himself to gentle these severities by turning in everyone he knew in the life he had foresworn. As of Monday last, the Brooklyn United States attorney had assembled a roster of 35 bosses, underbosses, capos, consiglieres, soldiers, associated labor skates, and even a bribed juror and a rogue cop, all of whom Sammy Gravano had help send to prison.
"He has rendered extraordinary and even historic assistance to our efforts to dismantle the criminal empire he had helped maintain," the prosecutors attested. "Consistently patient and forthcoming . . . now seems generally disturbed (by his former) dedication to a criminal organization . . . so treacherous and so destructive of the personal families of its members . . . "
By universal consent, Sammy Gravano had earned himself a sentence of five years, most of them already served. There would be no fine and apparently no challenge to his title to the properties he had earned in blood. He had won by staying disciplinedly true to a nature whose hand is against every other man's. His genius had shown itself by recognizing that it had been easier to fool Gotti than it would be to fool the government and by determining to improve his bargain by doing more on his side than his prosecutors had remotely expected him to.
The best place to find the witness ideally equipped to swear with untroubled conscience against the murderer is to seek out the man seasoned in murder without remorse. No ties of friendship nor qualms of pity then and no more now. It is scarcely conceivable that there could be a human creature who might not think of one fellow being he would spare at the smallest detriment to his own convenience. And yet Sammy Gravano scoured his memory to make sure that he had not overlooked some old comrade in the sweep of disposing of each and all.
Sammy Gravano had lived dead to sentiment and on Monday his reward arrived in overflowings of sentimentality from U.S. Judge I. Leo Glasser. Glasser described this transient jailbird's conduct as " the bravest thing I have ever seen," and observed that Gravano had pulled the trigger in only one of the 19 murders he concedes. Judge Glasser was too moved to mention that Gravano had been executive director of most of the others and had collected all the profits from at least three.
He has eight months to wait in prison and is shriven in advance. For goodness's sake, even though, as Mae West once said for herself, goodness seems to have nothing to do with it.
Note: New York Newsday Columnist Murray Kempton died on May 5, 1997.
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