Valuetainment Exclusive: Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 20 minutes
Words per Minute
193.49725
Summary
Sammy "The Bull" Garvano is the former underboss to John Gotti. He served 22 years in prison for his part in the Gambino crime family, and is now serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit racketeering and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put em up, reach
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the sky, turn the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for the
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I'm Patrick Medebi, host of Alitim, and today's interview is one many of you have been requesting,
00:00:21.780
I'd say for the last probably 18 months, and that is with Sammy, the Bull, Garvano, the
00:00:26.860
underboss to John Gotti from the Gambino family, which is a very, very technical interview,
00:00:32.940
it's the longest sit-down podcast I've ever done in my career, so if you like any of the
00:00:37.980
mock interviews we've done, you're probably going to love this one.
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Sammy, thanks for making the time to do this interview.
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So Sam, a lot has changed since 1997, we now have social media, we now have smart phones,
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we now have everybody having a camera, a lot's changed in America, we have Donald Trump as
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a president, so America's changed, world's changed, has Sammy, the Bull, Garvano changed?
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To an extent, I mean, I didn't change much like people would think, I'm more coming out
00:01:06.480
into a legitimate business, going into Hollywood, into certain things that I'm doing with my
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I still have passion for the mafia, from where it came from, how it started, how it existed,
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it's part of my heritage, it's not just a gang to me.
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I was in a gang when I was young, but this isn't a gang, this was part of my heritage.
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It started in Sicily in the 12th century, it fled to the United States, now when I said
00:01:35.740
it fled, it didn't come here because they liked the United States, they were running away
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from Mussolini and fascism, and it made them come to the United States, and they landed in
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the United States, and everything that they were taught in Italy, they brought them here.
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So I have a different feel for it, that there's some stuff that's ugly, that we did, and I
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think I'm part of the good, the bad, and certainly the ugly, but I did this because of my belief
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I've changed my ways, and I've moved on with my life, and I'm going in a different direction.
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Even sitting here talking to you, that's something that you're not supposed to do, goes on Austria.
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When you flip, or cooperate, whatever you want to call it, you're allowed to do whatever
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you want, because you already broke the golden rule by cooperating.
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So, but if you didn't flip, then you're not allowed to do this, because giving up our secrecy,
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we're a secret society and a brotherhood, and if you give up the secrets, there's no different
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You can't give up the secrets of goes on Austria.
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Even some of the things that John Gotti did running as boss, and people share about what
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he was doing, he did more damage to goes on Austria with being out there and putting it
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on Front Street than 10 cooperating witnesses put together.
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Most of the real gangsters believe that and know that.
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And I bumped into people, and I said, listen, you were in a regular prison, now you're in
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You were with this guy and this guy and this guy.
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This guy, Bobby, he was the underboss in Boston.
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And he told me, Sammy, you want to know the truth?
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I hear more crying and complaints about John than you.
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The position he put you in, and he betrayed you.
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When he betrayed you like that, it was the same as a rat move.
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In other words, government is trying to put us away.
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And if that's the role you're going to take so you can get out and I can take the weight,
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What happened between me and John, so I did what I did.
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And now I'm going into a whole different thing.
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When I was in my time in the heydays, in the 70s and 80s, there was bodies all over the
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Does it work without violence and structure, though?
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Isn't it a part of the leverage to impose fear?
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But you're not too worried because I'm not going to kill you.
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So you lose your power and nobody will respect you.
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Sometimes in certain cases, it may even be better to be dead.
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When I was around, every family had a squad of FBI agents who worked on them.
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The squad consisted of 20-some-odd agents working on your family.
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They used all those extra agents to terrorists and 13, drug gangs, stuff that warrants it.
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So by them not killing, they don't have the pressure.
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And then the RICO law and the laws are crippling.
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So me, you, and another guy, we all trust each other and we go on a murder.
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Now, the way the law is set, you get convicted on a murder, there's life without parole.
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Every one of us have a get-out-of-jail card free.
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Well, I get pitched for drugs later and I'm facing 20 or 25 years.
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So I go to the government, me, you, and this other guy, we killed him.
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Because the sentences are so big in most cases that guys flip.
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You know, I've heard so many stories with guys, black guys, Hispanic guys, who stood up and got sentenced and were doing their time.
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Or you sold him out in some capacity and he flips.
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When John, John told me to my face at the end of the time, he said, Sammy, the tape's horrible.
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The lawyers are going to bring it out in court that you're a monster.
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You killed all these people, took over the unions.
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During the trial, the lawyers will say, you hear John complaining on the tapes.
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He lost control of this monster, Sammy the Bull.
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I said, are you sure that's what you want me to do?
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In other words, I worry about the feds trying to put me away.
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I never faced my friend, my co-defendant, wanting to put me away.
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And that sentence, when I started that sentence, I did 17 years, seven months on that sentence.
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The first six and a half years, I did in the hole.
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But going back, what I'd want to do is pre-even this, I'm curious to know about the Sammy growing up.
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Like, you growing up in a family in Brooklyn, your mom, your dad, two sisters.
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Even at 10 years old, 12 years old, I'm not even talking 16, in high school with the incident of you and your principal.
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Not with visual things or hearing things, but with books, stuff like that.
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So as soon as the teacher said, what number is that?
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Now, if it looked like an 8 to me, I would say 3.
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Not because I was right, but because I was wrong so many times.
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Then he got lead poisoning and he couldn't paint.
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So she was so good at it, she worked in a factory in New York for a Jewish contractor.
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She used to make the dresses for the models that they were going to show the thing and sell it.
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So the contractor told her, Katie, my name was Kay, and they called her Katie, why don't you open up a small little factory?
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So they opened up a small little factory together.
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They knew all the Italian people, all them ladies from Italy who was here.
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And then we used to go in and help from time to time.
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My brother died and one of my sisters died before I was even born.
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Did that feeling of you not getting A3, you know, I see this dyslexic, did that create any rage in you?
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I don't even know how old you're supposed to be in the fourth grade.
00:10:59.140
So now when I go forward, they're younger than me.
00:11:04.020
And the teacher would say a certain word, a big word, ask somebody to spell it.
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And another kid to spell another word, they would get to me and say,
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After school, I beat the shit out of everybody.
00:11:31.900
When I hit the seventh grade, I got left back again.
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And at that point, I said, school's not for me.
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And one day, that's how that thing started with the teacher.
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I got caught by troon officers who went around and caught kids playing hooky.
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I was sitting in the principal's office, and he was talking to the principal.
00:12:03.860
It's a slur, a race is slur against black people.
00:12:09.280
But when he was saying what kind of people these people are, this is a result.
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I said, this has nothing to do with my mother and father.
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Months later, in front of the Board of Education, I was transferred to another school.
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I was in a different neighborhood, mostly Irish, Polacks.
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The Irish and the Italian didn't get along at all.
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I did find a teacher in that school who really tried to help me, a Mr. Mandrake.
00:13:01.040
Matter of fact, he would even tell me, if you get frustrated, you want to walk out of the class, walk out.
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But I flunked that school and I was sent to 600 school.
00:13:19.680
I think it was the first week there was a guy sitting in front of me.
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And he tapped his book, his Bible, on my head, on my forehead.
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After about the third or fourth time he hit me on the head and when he was talking, I hit him and knocked his ass out.
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On a 16th birthday, you can come here and sign him out.
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And if you don't, we're going to put him in reform school.
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So my mother and father kept me out when I was 16.
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But what I felt, I felt and I saw the pain in their face.
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Like they want their son to be successful or do something.
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My mother hit me with brooms and mops and whatever.
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One of them is five years old and one is nine years older.
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A street gang, just like any other gang, I guess.
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We got together and fought and stole and did things.
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We were even helping our families who were broke.
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So typically, when somebody joins a gang, there's something missing in the house.
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Not a father figure or something like that, right?
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What could have been done to prevent Sammy Gravano from becoming underboss Sammy the Bull Gravano?
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Could the system or anything been done to prevent it and squashed it right there
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and Sammy goes a different direction with his life?
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After a while, they're my idols, especially at 17.
00:16:01.140
If you didn't look up to them or you went overboard in some way, you got killed in those days.
00:16:10.260
So, whether you liked the guy or didn't like the guy, you knew your place to get away from him.
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One time, my father tells me in the dress factory he's going to ship clothes tomorrow.
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He wants me to come in and help him clip some threads, put plastic over the dresses that they're going to ship tomorrow.
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I see these two big guys come in and they're cursing at my father about the union.
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My father doesn't even look like it's phasing him, like nothing's happening.
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They said, they're going to come back tomorrow.
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And if you don't straighten this out, you don't have money.
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So I went back to the gang that night and told my friends.
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This guy, Jerry Pappa, was the head of our, the leader of the gang.
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When they come back, if they raise their hands, we're going to break every bone in their body.
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He says, if they raise their hands to your father, kill them.
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We'll come and get rid of the bodies and the gun and everything.
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If they raise their hands to my father, I'm going to kill them.
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They tell my father, why didn't you tell us that Suvido is your gumbara?
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If you have any problems with anybody, give us a call.
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Now, I knew the guy because he was my father's gumbara.
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He was smaller than my father and he was this big, this thin.
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What the hell are these big six, two, six, three guys?
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If we have trouble, we go to people like Suvido and they take care of these problems.
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And I opened up my shirt and I showed him the gun.
00:19:00.220
My father, it was the first time I thought he was going to hit me.
00:19:10.860
Like, you know, just because it's a dad doesn't mean one is a bigger alpha than the other one.
00:19:18.800
So let me ask you, how much of you becoming who you became has to do with your environment
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and how much of it has to do with your DNA and your wiring and the way you're born?
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Environment, experiences, teacher, 8-3, dyslexic, bullying, punching a principal versus your DNA, your wiring.
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I believe it's the neighborhood, the environment is one thing.
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If there was help in schools, I could have graduated.
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I ran unions and businesses all over New York and shocked the whole world what I did.
00:20:04.700
When I look at them, I say, my God, what do you have?
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In other words, you went to school, you passed some tests.
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I think I'm smarter than him, so I don't think I can't mind.
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I sit down and I've done businesses all day long.
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I'm working on a podcast, a lot of content about my life.
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I'm working on a book, a possible scripted show down the road.
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I sit down with guys, producers and heavyweights in Hollywood.
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You talk rough, but you're super fucking smart.
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And you're making moves and talking with people like you've been here 100 years.
00:21:05.320
So I told them, when your kids are born, make sure they're delixic.
00:21:14.520
I relate it to when I watch the news tonight all the time.
00:21:44.780
And if you were probably when you were younger, you heard the thing, a zip gun.
00:21:53.720
What it's going to do is a girl is home with her kids.
00:22:01.100
But he's always questioning, if I kick that door in to protect her kids and herself, she might have a gun and blow my head off.
00:22:12.340
What about how many times did people with legitimate guns save so many people or stop somebody who's completely out of their mind?
00:22:30.080
You know if the kid's a little weird or he's a little upset and he's not thinking right.
00:22:36.200
But nobody will ever call the cops or anybody on their kids.
00:22:53.200
But there's so many laws and rules if the teacher says I'm going to send Jimmy to psych.
00:23:07.060
So this kid just goes and goes and goes and goes.
00:23:10.240
By the time he goes out and shoots, God forbid, 14 people, there's always a line of people saying, yeah.
00:23:18.760
When you look back, I knew this kid would be the worst.
00:23:27.880
That's not a slow liner because the school system should never.
00:23:32.340
If I wouldn't have been called delexical, if they would have known how to treat it, I don't know what I would have been.
00:23:40.940
Oh, so you do believe you could have gone a different direction if somebody got a hold of you early.
00:23:49.400
But now you're saying if somebody worked with you, tutored you, developed you, maybe you would have gone a different direction.
00:23:57.280
I'm saying the same thing now about these kids who shoot people.
00:23:59.960
If you were to grab those people years ago and said, there's a problem with this kid, let's tutor him.
00:24:08.680
Maybe that kid, when he's 16, 18, 21, whatever the hell he is, he wouldn't be shooting all these people.
00:24:16.940
Now, if you took all the guns away and one of these kids run into a disco and he cuts loose with a bomb, instead of shooting 14 people,
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Even gangs, street gangs, the mafia, they don't run around shooting innocent people.
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People will tell you live in tough neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, years ago.
00:25:06.300
They didn't allow a rapist or a child molester.
00:25:10.920
I'm in front of my place, I hang out, and there's this beautiful woman.
00:25:22.380
We're sitting outside with beach chairs, talking.
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Maybe on a construction crew, but we don't do that.
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I tell my people, you do that, this is our people.
00:25:35.500
If I hear you doing something, no, Sam, we know, we ain't going to do that.
00:25:39.520
So you'd say to yourself, she knows she's drop dead gorgeous.
00:25:42.580
Why is she walking right past us on our side of the street?
00:25:50.620
She don't want to walk on the other side because people will not, who, now,
00:25:54.900
she's likely to get raped or robbed or something.
00:25:58.580
And when I say the other side, it could be around the block.
00:26:08.400
Stay by, because we wouldn't allow nothing to happen to her.
00:26:13.840
I mean, even though they're, you know, like people say, he's a killer.
00:26:27.380
But the reality is like, what do we do to stop this?
00:26:40.960
Years ago, there was, when I was a kid growing up, there was mental institutions.
00:26:49.080
I heard Trump saying, we better start building them again.
00:26:52.820
You bet your sweet ass you should start building them again.
00:26:56.280
Put people in there, not to do time, but to rehabilitate them, to help them.
00:27:02.760
We have zones where it's safe for people who are committing crimes.
00:27:06.860
There's so many stupid laws that it's pathetic.
00:27:11.000
It's tying the hands of everybody, and it's deteriorating the country.
00:27:19.280
And this is coming from a former underboss who, for the criminal, if they banned guns,
00:27:28.900
And you're saying to keep the guns is going to keep the citizens safer.
00:27:37.720
There's 300 and something million people in this country.
00:27:44.520
They say 200 million guns, so you had 30 shootings.
00:27:57.100
We're trying to control the person who's drinking and driving.
00:28:01.560
We have to control the people who are going to have guns.
00:28:07.520
But I do think, on the other hand, looking at it the other way, I used to go hunting.
00:28:20.720
They have guns now that shoot 100 bullets with a semi-automatic like a machine gun.
00:28:42.020
The thing you knock half of your body off when you get hit.
00:28:53.920
A gun with a bolt that only shoots one at a time.
00:29:04.980
And when you get a nut and you give him that much power, then you're waiting for something
00:29:12.580
So you leave 16, 17 years old and you go in the military.
00:29:18.360
I think you served two years, honorable discharge.
00:29:23.640
You're working as a, I think as a cook, was your MOS.
00:29:31.560
Well, I was introduced by, as soon as I got out of the Army at 21, I wasn't a cook.
00:29:39.520
I worked in a kitchen and had a problem in the kitchen one time.
00:30:00.440
So when he went to him, the black guy right in front of me, he's calling, boy this, boy that.
00:30:25.340
I'm filling the compartment with the beans or whatever it was.
00:30:30.620
And he looks at me and he says, he throws everything on the counter.
00:30:34.320
And he said, boy, when I tell you, whoop it on me, you whoop it on me.
00:30:39.720
And he's got an empty tray and he puts it back out.
00:30:47.420
But I wasn't all that smart because the next two guys were his friends.
00:30:58.680
He jumps over the thing and he starts throwing punches.
00:31:09.180
We're sitting on the floor, me and the black guy.
00:31:15.640
He's in charge of the MPs and he's a big black guy.
00:31:19.720
And he looks at me and he said, you like helping black people, boy?
00:31:54.940
I go to the family and I go right to the rampers.
00:31:58.780
And then at the age of 23, a friend of mine, Tommy Spiro, says his uncle, Shorty Spiro, his name was Tommy as well, wants to see me.
00:32:19.540
And he says, listen, I hear a lot of good things about you.
00:32:44.280
He says, in my crew, you're going to be part of my family.
00:33:01.200
Now, his brother, Ralph Sparrow, wanted to put his son in.
00:33:11.600
And he said, listen, bro, I don't bring him there.
00:33:25.340
And at one point, there was a guy with us, Ralph Iranga.
00:33:33.380
And he gets into a gun battle with three or four detectives.
00:33:40.720
I'm in Shipset Bay in a dark, dingy, bullshit bar.
00:33:45.460
Talking to the old man, Johnny Rizzo, who's a made guy.
00:33:48.500
And a couple of other people, Louie Melito, my guimbada alley boy.
00:33:56.480
And this beautiful-looking blonde comes in, short skirt, high heels, big blonde hair.
00:34:11.740
I mean, you've seen them, but you can't recognize who they are.
00:34:16.440
He says, Sammy, I think this girl is trying to make a play for you.
00:34:22.080
I think he's breaking my chops, because we always break each other's chops with things.
00:34:34.580
Louie Melito tells me, Sammy, I don't think he's breaking your chops.
00:34:39.500
He says, what are you, stupid, you don't see it?
00:34:47.580
All of a sudden, the guy gets up and goes to the bathroom.
00:35:06.560
I look at her, and she didn't have that hair like that.
00:35:23.500
She says, I see the way you used to look at me.
00:35:37.980
When the guy came out, we told him, he said, what's the matter?
00:35:44.640
The next day, she went to Ralph and told Ralph.
00:35:55.240
He's going to make up a story that I try to make her.
00:36:00.140
He calls my wife and tells my wife, Junior, Carmine Persico, he's going to kill your fucking
00:36:13.260
My wife really is not a typical gangster's wife.
00:36:24.620
And she says, you tried to make Ralph his wife.
00:36:29.540
Ralph called me and told me, and she told me everything he said.
00:36:38.020
Make sure that every word you tell me is exactly right.
00:36:54.300
I go to the door, and we were like good fellas.
00:37:08.100
As soon as he came to the door, I was going to kill him.
00:37:20.400
So when I went to turn to walk, she saw the gun.
00:37:26.220
And he came to the house with a gun to kill Ralph.
00:37:30.080
So there's, I'm only supposed to get a tremendous beating.
00:37:34.380
The old man Rizzo comes to me again, found out about it, and said, don't go to this meeting.
00:37:57.780
Shorty gets together and says, listen, John, this is none of your business.
00:38:02.140
But John tells him, listen, it's none of my business.
00:38:11.640
He said, Louie Melito, who's in the car, you want him to come here?
00:38:24.000
Shorty looks at me and says, I knew this fucking kid didn't do that, wouldn't do that.
00:38:31.240
He says, go home and don't come out until I let you know.
00:38:34.540
Now, unbeknownst to me, the head of the Columbo's, Carmine was in jail.
00:38:44.140
And this went to Johnny Rizzo's captain, who was a guy named Tato Arello, right up to Carlo Gambino.
00:39:01.920
I get in his car, and we go down to Carroll Street, downtown Brooklyn.
00:39:11.960
I should give you permission to kill Ralph, what he did.
00:39:18.280
If you would have got killed, your wife would have thought, my brother did it, or ordered it.
00:39:25.840
But what he did to you, he deserves to get killed.
00:39:29.060
But I can't tell you to kill him because he showed his brother.
00:39:34.200
So we're going to reach a conclusion here on what's going to happen.
00:39:43.140
Were you going to shoot him when you got to the door?
00:39:55.860
Because if we keep this together, it's going to explode.
00:40:02.120
We're going to release you to the Gambino family with no restrictions.
00:40:09.120
You've got to give me one promise that you won't hurt Ralph Spiello.
00:40:15.100
I turn around and get back in the car with Tato.
00:40:27.000
Do anything without my permission, you'll die in this family right away.
00:40:45.360
No matter what the fuck you do in life, I'm going to know.
00:40:49.060
I'm going to get to know you better than you know yourself.
00:40:58.660
People from the book and the podcast are going to go apeshit on me when they hear this.
00:41:03.380
I guess the part is, though, so now you get in.
00:41:06.980
And at what point do you get introduced to Gotti, where you and Gotti's relationship starts developing?
00:41:13.760
Gotti does something and goes to Jeff for a little while, a couple of years.
00:41:18.180
That guy they shot in the bar, he didn't even shoot him.
00:41:21.300
That's what was in the movie, but that's not true.
00:41:25.180
I've heard two stories that Gotti and Junior never killed anybody.
00:41:28.920
From your experiences, did you ever hear about them killing anybody themselves?
00:41:32.300
Not putting the hit in somebody else doing the work, them doing it themselves?
00:41:37.440
I don't remember if he pulled the trigger, if he didn't pull the trigger.
00:41:41.200
But I'll tell you right now, I would bank on him not being able to shoot you.
00:41:45.700
You wouldn't bank on him not being able to shoot you?
00:41:47.540
Yeah, he'd shoot you in a fucking hot minute like that.
00:41:49.900
I don't know about John Junior, but the father would kill you in a hot minute.
00:41:57.360
I was basically the guy who headed and planned the hit.
00:42:02.280
And let me tell you really quick how that happened.
00:42:07.540
Sammy, why are you always the front guy in when you go steal?
00:42:11.640
With your goombada alley boy, you go in, you're the first guy, stick him up, do this, do that.
00:42:17.860
So I said, I don't know, that's just the way we do it.
00:42:22.960
And alley boy, he's my goombada, he's got my back, he's a tough guy.
00:42:27.720
So he says, listen, I know he's a tough guy, but alley boy's not that smart.
00:42:35.020
Yeah, yeah, he's a little, he's dumb as wood sometimes.
00:42:47.580
Something happens, he has to rearrange everything and make things happen so you just get away.
00:42:56.700
Don't you think it should be the other way around?
00:43:06.740
And if he does react like that, it's always going to be something crazy.
00:43:11.900
And I love alley boy, I'm not knocking him, he's telling me.
00:43:27.980
He said, later on in life, when you're going to do a hit, it's not the guy who pulls the trigger you got to worry about.
00:43:36.100
The guy who plans that that guy can't get away.
00:44:00.800
But if you think that I would hesitate, I'm pulling the trigger because I'm the planner and not the actual shooter.
00:44:14.520
So how many of the 19 did you pull the trigger on?
00:44:17.480
I'm not even going to get into that because it doesn't matter.
00:44:20.400
And there's, by now I'm going to have problems with all kinds of victims saying all kinds of things.
00:44:26.340
So in your world, calling it means a hit on you, meaning you, that counts as one of your 19.
00:44:39.000
But any role you take in that murder, you're part of it.
00:44:52.580
This guy here, over here, he's going to pull the trigger and shoot him.
00:45:09.860
He gets up from there and walks over to get a glass of water or something.
00:45:14.080
But instead of getting a glass of water, he shoots him in the head.
00:45:24.900
Law enforcement don't give a shit what you did.
00:45:37.160
Tomorrow this guy might be sitting there and you're doing the hit.
00:45:45.720
How does it work where you're not just sloppy in the middle of the streets.
00:45:50.200
Where it's perfectly done and you get away with it.
00:45:55.660
So getting away with it 19 times if you want to.
00:46:00.420
But out of the 19, it's not necessarily that you pull the trigger.
00:46:04.360
I don't even think it's important who pulls the trigger.
00:46:08.960
Everybody in that room who's on this hit is capable of pulling that trigger.
00:46:23.320
But how do you choose one person over another person?
00:46:28.420
I'll give you an example with a guy named D.B. who got killed.
00:46:32.580
A quick example because I don't want to explain the whole thing.
00:46:38.340
So we're going to sit at a table just like me and you were saying.
00:46:44.360
Now what I do is I tell the old man Joe Peruta who's with me.
00:46:50.200
He walks over there, opens up the cabinet, takes a quick peek, takes out the gun with
00:46:56.740
the silencer, comes up behind you and hits you.
00:47:05.960
You think this is a less position or a lesser guy?
00:47:32.120
It's like getting a massive explosion in your body or your heart stops immediately and you're
00:47:43.300
And I'm immediately going to pick him up and put him in a body bag.
00:47:46.860
We're going to get rid of him so there's not stuff all over the place.
00:47:55.280
People would say on the street just before we got pitched practically, this fucking Samuel
00:48:14.120
I don't care about the people who are in this room if there was people.
00:48:17.360
I don't care about my family, my friends, my uncle, my aunt, money.
00:48:26.320
And I'm going to pick when you're going to die.
00:48:30.860
And not that cold and calculated because you'll come in here with your wife or your kid.
00:48:44.980
When you're making mistakes, I'm going to be the last face you see.
00:49:11.960
One time Paul Castellano in his house is sitting there and he's talking to us like,
00:49:15.700
he always did, all the heavyweights are at the table, all of them, John Gotti, Roy DeMayo,
00:49:22.780
And he says, you know, in our life, there's two kinds of guys.
00:49:26.940
There's gangsters who are thugs and there's racketeers who are more like business guys.
00:49:32.140
It's very, very rare will you find someone who is both.
00:49:42.480
He says, we have one in our family who should be fortunate.
00:49:50.820
And he said, that guy, and he was, is that Sammy the Bull?
00:50:03.540
I couldn't believe that I'm being pulled out like that.
00:50:08.760
And when we're leaving, I'm hitting guys on the back.
00:50:36.780
Stone cold killer, you could call me, and a fucking great business guy who could run unions.
00:50:44.180
What I learned from my father, from my mother, from my family, I absorbed that.
00:50:57.620
I'm still mentioning his name fucking 50 years ago.
00:51:02.840
When I was in a gang, we didn't kill people like they do here.
00:51:09.060
When I go into the Colombo family, beat up that guy, robbed that, hijacked that, killed this guy, do this, do that.
00:51:15.760
And now I go into the Gambino family, I'm sitting with Tato, and I'm learning about business, unions, all kinds of things.
00:51:32.320
But every time my business didn't work, I don't even, never thought I failed in business.
00:51:39.260
I just looked at the business and said, what did I do wrong that other people could have businesses and succeed?
00:52:03.280
That's the highest level of compliment somebody like him can give you.
00:52:07.760
I think in front of 20 different guys, all captains and everything.
00:52:16.960
How are you and Gotti doing together coming up?
00:52:34.040
So they kept it open for how long did they keep it open for?
00:52:39.660
So why did they close in the first place for 19 years or 18 years?
00:52:49.820
They closed it because some people were charging money to get made.
00:52:54.360
Well, some people were putting their sons in there who didn't really belong.
00:52:59.180
I guess they got so frustrated with it, they closed it.
00:53:07.320
And then how does that relationship get started?
00:53:10.240
Frankie DiCicco, I was very close with all my life.
00:53:13.540
Every time he was a full-blown captain, I was made and I was an acting captain.
00:53:18.160
And Tato made me his acting captain almost immediately, a year later.
00:53:23.280
I would always patronize places that he would open.
00:53:26.360
An after-hour club, a crap game, and there's a gambling.
00:53:32.240
So I was there and his father, Frankie DiCicco's father's name was Boozy, was a made guy.
00:53:40.340
So I was standing at the bar with Boozy, Frankie DiCicco's father.
00:53:43.860
And the door opened and John Gotti and a few guys walked in his little entourage.
00:53:56.540
Matter of fact, he helped a friend of mine who was in jail.
00:54:01.620
He had a problem with black people and they were going to hurt him.
00:54:07.020
He intervened and straightened the whole thing out.
00:54:10.160
So, and I was telling Boozy, he did something like that.
00:54:12.140
I heard, and he says, yeah, there's a lot of good things with him.
00:54:18.960
But I know he's not a friend, but he's going to be.
00:54:33.020
And he says, oh, Sammy, I hear a lot of great things.
00:54:40.800
I said, I hear a lot of good things about you too, Bo.
00:54:44.700
A little while later, he went in the back where there was a crap game.
00:54:59.260
They have me that we don't, we have a long relationship.
00:55:20.400
You know, then he went to the camp for a while.
00:55:21.980
Was he overly ambitious on why he eventually became the boss?
00:55:25.620
Or was it something where everybody around said,
00:55:28.800
no, this is the guy that's got to be the boss eventually,
00:55:52.640
he knew eventually Spallatra wanted to be a boss.
00:55:57.860
Was Gotti so ambitious where he wanted to be a boss eventually?
00:56:00.920
Or was it something where people voted and said,
00:56:20.320
And he lost the respect that Frankie had for him.
00:56:27.380
rumbling and growling by us, the troops, whatever.
00:56:50.380
You know, we go out as men, which we're around.
00:56:55.560
We got testosterone popping out of our fucking church.
00:56:59.100
But me and Frankie are in his house talking with him.
00:57:13.600
Jerkoff over here turns around and I go like this.
00:57:17.280
I said, Paul, do you want me to take care of this problem?
00:57:32.480
And the veins in his neck, now I dealt with him.
00:57:47.220
I said, if you need me, am I saying something wrong?
00:57:59.940
One day he grabs me because we know where the cameras are.
00:58:02.300
We know he can't see us, so that's the way of hugging.
00:58:17.080
The fifth Cadillac in the garage is a big fucking garage.
00:58:31.220
You did a normal thing, but didn't you just see the reaction?
00:58:39.020
Now, he might have been fuming at me, but I lost a lot of respect for him.
00:58:43.820
Of course, I told Frankie, he's got a gazillion dollars.
00:58:47.400
He can get the most beautiful girl on the planet, buy her a fucking house, buy her a Cadillac,
00:58:53.400
make all the payments, go there every once in a while, do your little bullshit thing and
00:59:00.160
Well, she's bigger than two feet, but two feet, fat and ugly.
00:59:05.740
And you expose your wife and kids and everybody like that in the house?
00:59:18.700
Tato, who's my mentor, who talks to me and teaches me about Gozanostra, a different way
00:59:24.500
than the Columbo's, he says, one day, I'm in the restaurant, and it's a neighborhood
00:59:29.900
restaurant, and he says, I'm sitting with my gumata.
00:59:34.940
You got your wife and your gumata, your girlfriend.
00:59:41.800
He says, and the door opens up, and Carlo Gambino and four or five guys walk in.
00:59:46.400
They go to the other side, and they sit at a table.
00:59:48.540
Back then, you don't even reckon, you don't wave, hey, Carl, you don't do nothing like that.
00:59:59.740
You may have tilted your head like you just did, tilt your head a little bit, or look eye
01:00:07.460
You don't, this is a secret society and a brotherhood.
01:00:14.600
He may look back and give you a little head shake.
01:00:18.120
Now, there's a guy sitting there, there's five of them.
01:00:30.840
He says, go sit in the chair over there, an empty chair for a minute.
01:00:40.680
And he gets into a bullshit conversation to keep her occupied.
01:00:46.320
Carlo Gambino tells him, according to Tato, how you doing, Tato?
01:01:01.760
They say, you come to this restaurant all the time, right?
01:01:04.700
You come here with your wife once in a while, too, no?
01:01:10.780
What do you think these people think when they see you now at Chigumana?
01:01:29.220
What do you think they say when your wife comes in?
01:01:32.020
Tato's girlfriend is so much prettier than his wife.
01:01:34.980
Look at the difference in the bonnies, how gorgeous that one is.
01:01:37.960
You don't think they're going to talk like that?
01:01:41.420
I agree with you, but I didn't look at it that way.
01:01:57.860
I hope you don't love me like you love your wife.
01:02:02.420
Now, maybe a lot of people who hear this won't even understand what the fuck this is.
01:02:12.020
How do you think I felt knowing Paul is doing this with the maid?
01:02:17.900
He's maid in the house in front of his wife and kids and things.
01:02:21.180
Well, I mean, of course, he's not hugging her and kissing her, leaving that thing right
01:02:25.360
So when I look at it, when you get maid and you're a maid guy, we're brothers.
01:03:12.960
When I would go with my kid, put him on the thing, sit down, give him milk and cookies.
01:03:22.020
But she was my mother, according to Gozenostra.
01:03:27.740
But picture now your father, your father, not Paul, doing this to your mother.
01:03:43.380
I like to fuck just like you, but in the house like this, bro?
01:03:48.180
Mommy looks like a fucking rag, and other people know about it, too.
01:03:59.220
People think when you watch all these movies that we go out and we shoot people and we fucking
01:04:11.320
And it seems like we always talk about the worst.
01:04:14.520
You want to talk about the worst of me, the 19 murders.
01:04:21.480
How I felt maybe on some of those murders tore me the fuck apart.
01:04:32.580
So when I went to the funeral of the box and I didn't sign it across, of course, I said
01:04:47.640
Whether it's me or Tommy or Lenny, you knew this would happen.
01:05:00.620
You gave me this fucking scar in my heart, you fuck.
01:05:13.440
But people don't ever talk about that or think about that, I don't think.
01:05:18.740
Maybe if I do a scripted show, it'll be in my scripted show.
01:05:22.560
Maybe if I talk on my podcast or my book, things will happen and come out.
01:05:26.900
And I don't even do this podcast, book, interviews, or whatever.
01:05:47.680
I want to take care of my ex-wife, my son, my daughter.
01:05:54.700
And some people who stayed loyal to me throughout this miserable experience.
01:06:13.180
You think I would sit in here with you and these other people with the lights dim if I didn't think about you or trust you?
01:06:34.540
Sometimes my wife, she don't call me a hit guy, but she says, Sammy, every fucking thing you do, you think like a fucking gangster.
01:06:54.500
I analyze everything that's said or done or anybody I do business with.
01:06:58.640
And there's people who do business with me now who are as legitimate as it comes.
01:07:13.620
A woman rang my fucking bell because I was home alone.
01:07:28.560
And I get along all over the place with everybody, just about.
01:07:42.080
What were the biggest differences between you and Gotti, personality-wise?
01:07:53.380
I didn't want to be noticed and saw and go around with a $3,000 Brioni suit and a hand-painted tie and telling everybody,
01:08:03.540
I'm Sammy the Bull, one of the biggest gangsters in the world.
01:08:11.200
We were in a club one night and one of the, John, John had two bodyguards.
01:08:16.680
And Bobby Boriello whispers in my ear and says, Sammy, there's two people at the other end of the bar and they're watching you guys real close.
01:08:27.100
Do you want me to go and rouse them up and see what's going on?
01:08:31.820
I said, John, Bobby noticed there's two people at the other end of the bar.
01:08:40.060
Bobby wants to know, should he go over there and, you know, push it around a little bit?
01:08:54.060
Now, I didn't say this, but my mind said, we're gangsters.
01:09:36.820
You go in prison and after you cooperate, it's a tough place to do time.
01:09:45.760
There even, though there's not that many Asians, but different gangs.
01:10:14.320
So when I first get into that unit, this big unit, and I said, this is an MCC.
01:10:42.660
So how long do we have to wait to make a phone call?
01:11:20.360
More than likely, the way you look, more than likely you will.
01:11:38.560
You can give me a beating if you want right now.
01:11:40.560
You can't even use this fucking phone no more unless you ask my permission.
01:11:46.040
If none of us on my tier is using it, I don't give a fuck using it.
01:11:50.820
I stood my ground, but I didn't play games like John, racist shit.
01:11:55.140
And I didn't even say the guy was a black guy, but he was.
01:12:16.240
And people knew that more than likely, if we're going to do something, let's kill him.
01:12:21.920
Because he's not going to just ignore it or walk away or accept the beating.
01:12:31.400
The part earlier when he was talking about you and Gotti are speaking.
01:12:43.700
What is the process from there to Frank coming up to you saying he's extremely paranoid in prison.
01:12:49.260
He's out of control with the words of what he's saying.
01:12:55.460
If we get out of this and we leave, we got to take him out.
01:13:04.880
So the question I have for you is the following.
01:13:09.320
When that conversation happened, I'm already in prison 11 months with him in MCC.
01:13:25.480
This is the worst 11 months I did in all my prisons.
01:13:28.840
And I did rotten fucking time in some hell holes.
01:13:47.760
When we first get in, a little time has passed.
01:13:55.620
And she's saying, Sammy, you're in so much trouble.
01:14:18.160
And I lean over so he could say something to my ear.
01:14:22.240
He tells me, tell your wife to stop rubbing your hand.
01:14:31.500
I don't even actually realize she's rubbing my hand.
01:14:36.820
And he points, not with his finger, but with his head.
01:14:43.120
John has his hands crossed his chest with a smirk and a nod.
01:14:55.460
Because if the guards see it, they might take it as a contact visit,
01:15:00.080
Because you're not supposed to have a contact visit.
01:15:09.960
I'm standing in the back with all of us, and we're getting out dressed nude.
01:15:14.980
I said, John, what the fuck was that all about?
01:15:27.500
Who the fuck do you think you're talking to like that?
01:15:30.600
And I basically bend over, look up my ass, and we start getting dressed and go back in.
01:15:41.380
When you say in the Diane Sawyer interview, I knew if Frank came, he's going to deny that
01:15:46.520
he never said he wants to be the one that take the hit.
01:15:50.640
But then you said you had 10, 12, 14 names that you had to take out.
01:16:02.860
How were you processing that decision in that moment?
01:16:07.360
In other words, once Franky tells me that I'm processing, when we kill him, again, I don't
01:16:20.320
And I start thinking, where are we going to kill him?
01:16:27.260
His brother, son, this one, that one, Genie Gotti.
01:16:34.120
At one point, it was 14, 15 people on a piece of paper.
01:17:03.160
She's extremely loyal to you in every possible way imaginable.
01:17:08.540
Suppose she turns on you like a fucking beast tomorrow.
01:17:14.100
I was betrayed by somebody who's a brother, a father.
01:17:18.440
Somebody that you gave your whole life to betrays you.
01:17:22.120
Not some fucking guy who just pointed you out of a mug book or a cop.
01:17:33.540
And now when the rubber meets the road, he's throwing you to the wolves.
01:17:41.700
Wouldn't that be a bigger reason to make the move, though?
01:17:43.900
If you think about it, what happened with Paul?
01:17:50.140
The fuck when Frankie tells me we're going to go to a victory party?
01:17:57.840
Normal Sammy the Bull would immediately have plotted and killed him in prison.
01:18:03.700
If he died in prison, their case, I'm not even on the tapes.
01:18:22.040
Down in the fucking case, he actually talks good.
01:18:34.220
And there was a guy, Sammy Cash, who died not long before that.
01:18:38.280
I could have turned around and said, he's not talking about me.
01:18:53.800
He would have thought, just like I thought about coming here to talk to you.
01:18:58.140
I think about every fucking thing all the time.
01:19:05.900
Because your methodical way of making decisions, if you would have gone the same way you have,
01:19:12.220
that position, you would have gone a different direction with your trends.
01:19:17.600
I'm not asking a question to say, it's the better decision or not the better decision.
01:19:22.360
If a person is always making a decision a certain way, all of a sudden there's a change.
01:19:33.580
Everything I ever believed in, I give it up, bro.
01:19:40.380
I don't give a fuck if I get killed, because that's the rules.
01:19:47.180
Now, normally I should have just killed him right in the fucking joint.
01:20:00.240
When you're going to say these things on the stand, my daughter or my wife could at least
01:20:17.980
That's what my wife and daughter and son are going to have for the rest of their life.
01:20:26.380
He didn't say he fucking sat there like a fucking potted plant and let all these things be said.
01:20:36.560
You know, it's interesting you say that because you said once that John doesn't want anybody
01:20:45.380
And when you talk to a lot of people in the world, they'll say, Sammy had more relationship
01:20:50.740
with the people in the streets because John would give the order to you.
01:20:53.760
And then as the underboss, you would go execute it.
01:20:55.680
But you were the one that was still in the streets doing business, the construction, all this
01:21:01.500
Do you think in the back of his mind when he's by himself, he's sitting there saying,
01:21:05.740
the way I became a boss as we took out Paul, doesn't history repeat itself?
01:21:19.540
Here's a couple of things I'll tell you that I know for sure.
01:21:22.280
There's a guy, I think it was in the Genovese family, went to John in the club, meaning well.
01:21:27.640
He said, John, you really know how to pick him?
01:21:38.760
You can't get a fucking job unless you get a wink and a nod from him.
01:21:53.840
I had 200 carpenters working for me in these partitions.
01:22:20.740
John had fucking money coming in up the fucking wazoo.
01:22:23.680
And he's complaining about the guy disrespected him.
01:22:42.780
And another guy comes in from the Colombo family.
01:23:59.740
John had an ego like the Empire State Building.
01:24:02.500
If you ever see me walking with him, I'm holding the umbrella while it's raining.
01:24:39.420
Underboss to me, at that time, of the most powerful organized crime family in the country, was
01:24:46.460
In other words, I never thought I'd reach that height.
01:24:51.260
I didn't have no brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, nobody in the mob.
01:24:54.800
Because you know a lot of times, great empires that fall, it's typically internal flattery,
01:25:00.920
who gets credit, who's getting attention, who's outshining who.
01:25:04.020
How much were you having other peers coming up to you saying, hey, Sammy, look, man, amongst
01:25:13.620
Was there anybody playing that game in your ear or no?
01:25:18.280
The only guy who ever did that to me was Nicky Scarfo.
01:25:56.360
He wasn't allowed in casinos, but he was in the hotel part.
01:26:20.080
And he always comes into the family through me, whether it's in my house, somebody else's
01:26:29.360
So he says, you having any trouble with this fucking bum?
01:26:51.700
He wanted me to come in through somebody else, through Joe Butch.
01:27:10.420
But please don't put me on the street that we're going to talk.
01:27:29.120
If you have a problem, keep your eyes open, bro.
01:27:47.180
I walked out and said, I thank you so much, Nicky.
01:28:00.720
But it made me think, why is a boss of another family out of state saying this?
01:28:07.880
And Nicky wouldn't say that to me if he doesn't feel something's right.
01:28:17.620
But I still wouldn't go against my better judgment than to be loyal to John like a dog.
01:28:24.880
You ever get a dog and you can beat him up sometimes?
01:28:29.120
Three seconds later, he's wagging his tail at you?
01:28:33.480
Unless you fuck with me or betray me or do something crazy, then I could become your worst nightmare.
01:28:43.640
He hears these things and he's catching delusions.
01:28:47.460
And he's now trying to move guys who are coming through me, very happily coming through me, pushing them in another direction.
01:28:56.000
You mentioned a lot of businesses that you did.
01:28:58.300
And when you read about it, you got a lot of things that comes up.
01:29:00.980
I mean, construction, plumbing, the list is a long list, right?
01:29:12.220
They're legit to the point that they're legitimate business.
01:29:16.160
But I have control to push it in another direction.
01:29:24.120
Through unions, through jobs, through this, through that.
01:29:28.300
And I'm bringing it to people who are around me.
01:29:32.580
People talk about how you ran businesses, whether it's the children of the deceased fathers or whatever it may be.
01:29:39.360
Based on what they say, you can agree or disagree with this.
01:29:43.600
So a lot of times there's investment companies where they go in and their specialty is buying businesses and they're not doing good and they build them up and then they keep and they take revenues.
01:29:57.080
I'm curious to know what you're going to say to this.
01:29:59.900
Step number one, find a local profitable business.
01:30:14.780
I'm curious to hear about it because that's been said by others.
01:30:16.820
I never killed a partner or a business associate.
01:30:20.680
I never went into a profitable company and said, give me a piece and I'm going to give you a potato.
01:30:27.820
The government, after I cooperated, said, how come nobody ever fucking ratted on you?
01:30:32.620
So it's the same question you're asking me in a different way.
01:30:42.900
Everybody I did business with was extremely successful with it.
01:31:05.820
Unless your kids have problems and want to come to me, then I'll talk to them.
01:31:12.780
When I had the drywall company, I had over 200 carpenters working for me.
01:31:23.420
No matter who he calls, he can't get 30 guys overnight.
01:31:29.540
We could shut down this and we could pull some from here and we could...
01:31:40.000
I was partners with a Jewish contract, a verbal.
01:31:47.800
The job is what they call construction a bastard.
01:31:53.540
No matter what happens, they order nuts and bolts.
01:32:00.100
Every little fucking thing that could go wrong went wrong.
01:32:08.200
I mean, I know the job's a bastard, but how deep are we in the hole?
01:32:25.940
Now, back then, $250,000 is $250,000 is a lot of money.
01:32:32.080
Let's finish up the job and see where it goes and how it goes.
01:32:35.120
My bundle-in-law, as soon as I hang up, you don't have to pay that.
01:32:47.940
But who the fuck is going to ever do business with me again after I do this to this guy?
01:33:04.780
Another fucking guy calls me up, another Jewish guy.
01:33:14.160
The fucking job, nothing went right, no matter what.
01:33:31.920
He says, that is so fucking honorable for a street guy.
01:33:38.920
I want you to protect me with unions and this and that.
01:33:41.000
And the other thing, you know, you can come in with the drywall and this and that thing.
01:33:45.260
Here's a guy in these stories that I go raping fucking people left and right, and I don't do that.
01:33:51.380
That's why nobody ever ratted it on me, except for John with his fucking big mouth.
01:34:02.000
I don't back up like when I told you how I shared the fucking money.
01:34:07.980
The union delegate, the president, the vice president, the union delegate, the shop steward.
01:34:14.400
How many people did you have control of at your peak outside of union?
01:34:23.860
I mean, there was cops, a couple of cops working that were, but I didn't have cops and judges.
01:34:31.260
I didn't want to get involved with people like that.
01:34:42.240
Every trial he had, I even threatened jurors or paid jurors or bribed jurors.
01:34:48.080
The $60,000 was the head of the Westies, a guy named Bosco, comes to me and says,
01:34:55.500
Sammy, the head guy on the jury panel for John's trial, he's facing life.
01:35:06.900
I work out an agreement that I will give him $60,000.
01:35:11.380
$20,000 up front, $20,000 in the middle of the trial, and $20,000 at the end.
01:35:17.460
And after the trial, I'll get him a job as a teamster foreman, and he'll be making $65,000
01:35:22.380
to $75,000 in a fucking year because he was unemployed.
01:35:25.420
I'll do all those things, and he'll become our friend.
01:35:30.280
Well, if he reneges in any way, shape, or form, and he can go to the feds with this,
01:35:35.920
Once he takes that $20,000, he's got to be committed.
01:35:50.480
So that's what we did in that particular trial.
01:35:55.080
He had a trial where there was a guy in the Carpenters Union, and he busted up a joint.
01:36:05.160
John sent a few of the Westies down to give him a beating.
01:36:08.920
Instead of giving him a beating, the Irish kid, he shot him in his ass.
01:36:22.580
But now, the guy was going to maybe be a witness in the case of what happened.
01:36:41.940
You're going to go in, and you're going to say this had nothing to do with John.
01:36:45.720
And I give him a whole legal argument of what to do.
01:37:03.580
I'll always be your friend if you do this in the trial.
01:37:09.260
John wants to sell me out after doing 11 months.
01:37:16.380
So I've heard a lot of different things you say about fear.
01:37:18.440
I've heard you talking to Diane Sawyer about what does fear really mean.
01:37:23.540
You know, you're explaining from a different standpoint.
01:37:30.620
Fear to me is that when I was young, I mean, I was doing a robbery and I got shot and all
01:37:38.760
All my life, I was in conflict of different things.
01:37:43.380
By the time I got out of the military, even when I was in the military, there's a fear
01:37:49.740
They were bringing on body bags left and right.
01:37:52.040
So I was surrounded with violence and this and that.
01:37:57.100
When I finally hook up with the mafia and I'm 23, when I went home, I said to myself,
01:38:05.080
There's no fucking way you're going to live till 40.
01:38:10.320
So you'll either be dead before 40 or you will be doing life in prison.
01:38:17.180
Because you got no fucking, you would do all this weird shit.
01:38:24.860
When I'm 40 or 45 and I'm doing things, I have no fucking fear.
01:38:32.720
The first one in the Colombo family was the second part of the Gallo war.
01:38:51.560
He says, we're going to eat, sleep and shit together 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
01:38:59.200
We're going to try and kill the Gallos and they're going to try and kill us.
01:39:03.220
I said, okay, I got a couple of loans, a couple of, I must have had two, three thousand, five
01:39:08.460
I said, I just got to get the loans and I'll make some pickups in between.
01:39:15.880
What do you mean you don't talk to me about money?
01:40:02.040
I've been in gangs, and I'm tough, and I'm this, and I'm that.
01:40:19.260
When we were going to take out Paul, Frank and Chico when he was alive, and John, and we
01:40:27.760
John with the tapes, and Paul got killed, and John got, he became the boss.
01:40:41.420
Nobody asked the question of, you're sitting in the car.
01:40:44.300
At 5.30 at night in Manhattan, right before Christmas, there's tens of thousands of people
01:40:53.920
They're waiting for their families who meet them.
01:41:10.060
So when we're talking about the hit, let me get back to that.
01:41:13.080
John says, we could do this, and we could do that.
01:41:18.740
So Frank and Chico says, oh, Frank and Chico knows I was involved in two wars already with
01:41:23.880
the Columbos, and then with Nicky Scaffo in Philadelphia.
01:41:32.320
I'm the guy in the car with a walkie talkie, with a gun.
01:41:41.340
So there's crash car, backup shooters, the four guys who are going to shoot.
01:41:52.760
While I'm sitting in the car, it's packed, and my eyes are all over the place.
01:42:01.180
And that's only a couple hundred feet away from me.
01:42:05.900
These cops are going to pull out their guns and make a move.
01:42:08.840
My job now, the guy who's not pulling the trigger, is to go there and kill them so that
01:42:16.140
So when you say, well, you weren't the shooter, my job now is to kill them.
01:42:21.760
I don't want to kill these two cops, but I know what my job is.
01:42:24.560
Thank God, just before they came, they turned around and started walking up the avenue chatting
01:42:33.460
But there's actually a cop, from what I know and the government knew, who saw it.
01:42:40.040
And the FBI asked them, why the fuck didn't you pull out your gun?
01:42:44.400
He said, this was so fucking professionally done.
01:42:51.020
This guy was 100 feet, maybe 75 feet ahead of me.
01:42:55.140
If he would have pulled out a gun, he was right.
01:43:00.460
I would have jumped out the fucking door and killed him.
01:43:02.320
So he was right, this poor bastard, whoever he was.
01:43:12.860
Teddy Atlas said you went up to him to want to train with him boxing.
01:43:51.960
You'd have to go there and hit him for him to fight.
01:44:02.700
If you argue too much and you get stupid, he'll walk away from you.
01:44:11.280
So, Teddy Atlas said to me one day, are you afraid?
01:44:21.440
In other words, the reason I said no is when I go in the ring and I did fighting a little
01:44:28.800
Not professionally, but in the ring, in the clubhouse, in the whatever.
01:44:46.240
Now, if I was afraid, what am I doing in the ring if I'm afraid?
01:44:49.520
But he took it to a different level, meaning that's cowardice.
01:44:58.180
So it was a whole creative thing, which there was a whole entourage of people who wanted to
01:45:04.860
make me look bad and say things like he's an animal, he did this and that.
01:45:10.140
So if he's listening to this fucking thing, he's a tremendous trainer.
01:45:17.740
75, Teddy, come down and put the fucking gloves on with me.
01:45:31.660
Then he said, and I was putting on weight, that I went to a hypnotist.
01:45:36.380
He tells me about a hypnotist all these fighters are going to.
01:45:51.660
And I want to, you know, keep me away from doing certain things.
01:46:00.480
I love, so that's what I'm telling my fucking guy who's a, who's a.
01:46:04.480
And they make a big deal out of it, like what I was doing.
01:46:08.980
But you punk ass bitch, you haven't done a fraction of anything I've done.
01:46:17.260
You look like a fighter, but you ain't a fucking fighter.
01:46:22.440
The reason why I'm asking this question, Sammy, is because, so in your, in your twenties, you
01:46:28.820
know, our brain is still not fully put together.
01:46:32.440
So in our twenties, we're a little bit more aggressive.
01:46:37.180
Then we go into our thirties and we got a kid, you know, Gerard, you know, Karen, like,
01:46:41.640
oh my God, you know, I don't want to make anything.
01:46:47.540
You got all this imagination taking over your brain.
01:46:55.460
So are there fears, concerns, things that keep you up at night right now?
01:46:59.440
Like your imagination sometimes probably takes off going back.
01:47:02.040
Does it ever, or do you have a hold of it today?
01:47:08.940
Maybe I, you know, I, I think it's the best way to go.
01:47:12.560
If you shoot good and you shoot in the head, you're instantly gone.
01:47:20.900
I can't fear these things more than anything else.
01:47:28.740
But at this age, I understand if it ain't here now.
01:47:39.900
I see rich people who take care of themselves, highly take care of themselves with doctors.
01:47:56.740
I don't want it because I'd rather die quick than die of cancer because I've seen people die.
01:48:02.140
My friend Joe Peruta died and killed me to watch him die like that.
01:48:11.780
When I was in jail the second time around, I'm in MCC in the hole.
01:48:15.240
So I'm in bed and the four or five guards come to my cell.
01:48:28.840
God forbid, my son, my daughter, my ex-wife, whoever.
01:48:44.940
You don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.
01:48:58.460
I don't want to see nobody die like a fucking dog in prison with cancer.
01:49:04.860
Why should I be happy to watch somebody die like that?
01:49:17.980
Some guy in one of the prisons, a black guy, came to me with a picture.
01:49:41.640
Before he died, they must have taken a picture of him.
01:49:48.040
And it made me think, what a fucking rotten way he died.
01:49:53.720
But it also makes me think of the whole fucking goddamn judicial system and how many guys are going to die like that.
01:50:03.820
Every place I went, who's got life, who's got 50 years, who's got 30 years.
01:50:10.260
All they care about is open the borders and let them in.
01:50:13.520
How about the people who are in prisons in this thing?
01:50:17.540
I love to go into prison reform and everything like that.
01:50:21.560
I've been with so many different black guys who were friends in prison.
01:50:25.780
And the prisons, the whole system, the judicial system is so rigged.
01:50:30.460
I would talk to them and maybe some guys would ask me a question.
01:50:42.460
Or he gets a cheap ass bullshit lawyer who's really not even a lawyer.
01:51:06.920
Against that one guy who don't even know what planet is on.
01:51:18.320
And I don't want to say the younger agents I knew,
01:51:24.280
How they get things that they could go after Trump.
01:51:30.360
So how does this guy stand their fucking chance?
01:51:32.840
This poor bastard, and I got an eighth grade education,
01:52:09.940
you're going to lose the case and get 35 years.
01:52:15.980
because they knew I cooperated with the government.
01:52:28.940
What do I give a fuck about Ethiopia's legal system?
01:52:50.080
Because Sammy got a lenient sentence the first time.
01:53:30.180
I wasn't going to go to clubs and hang out with them.
01:54:21.900
And I'm not worried about going to prison for two years.
01:54:26.500
You immediately go to the worst case scenario, right?
01:54:31.020
and the government's going to have some kind of a punishment for you,
01:54:43.280
What punishment could there be for you to not even think about committing that crime?
01:54:51.420
Is there any punishment that would have prevented Sammy the Bull from committing the crime?
01:56:20.280
I understand the government better than anybody.
01:59:03.560
Sometimes, I think the conservatives are right.
01:59:14.140
I'm sitting in there for my fucking raggedy-ass bones.
01:59:21.460
He's sitting up on top with his feet in the fucking thing.
01:59:25.660
And they're talking about letting illegal aliens in.
01:59:45.540
I said, do you people mind if I injected myself into your conversation for two or three minutes?
01:59:53.420
I said, you're really, really good people, both of you.
02:00:02.560
The only thing is that you're racist, both of you.
02:00:15.240
You didn't say one word about helping black people in our country.
02:00:20.500
Their forefathers came here like fucking slaves.
02:00:31.200
Just Hispanic people running across the border.
02:00:39.040
Maybe not by their own will, but they belong here.
02:00:42.980
And I'm going to go because I've been in this thing for 15 minutes.
02:00:53.280
Look at what the fuck is going on in the country.
02:00:55.420
You can't ask me, how would you think, or this is too much, or this is this, when all
02:01:01.560
If you want to point out all of my wrongs, and I agree with you, I would say, like I told
02:01:07.620
you from the beginning, I wish I had a different opportunity when I was born and raised.
02:01:15.740
Only God knows what I would have done, that my parents would have been proud of me, would
02:01:24.420
I don't enjoy, this is going to sound hypocritical too, I don't like killing or enjoy it.
02:01:30.240
I just do it like a soldier would do it for the military, like I was going to do in Vietnam
02:01:38.740
The only Vietnamese people I know do my fingernails or my toenails, and they're great people.
02:01:43.680
And when I look at it sometimes, they're so nice, I say, what the fuck were we doing
02:01:53.500
The whole country from the beginning, it was a great country.
02:02:01.080
I agree with them, the legal system, there's nothing like it.
02:02:04.600
But you've got to make it fair all the way around.
02:02:10.340
Maybe you don't have that many people shooting each other in Chicago.
02:02:25.000
I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this interview.
02:02:28.860
I'm not going to give you no more interviews, but...
02:02:32.940
Honestly, though, I'm asking the question because for me, it goes back to how do we prevent the
02:02:45.100
And then from there, how do we make the 22-year-old Sammy who is about to commit something to say,
02:02:52.520
I don't know if I'm willing to face that crime.
02:03:00.300
Every fucking kid in this country, God made them.
02:03:11.440
That's why child molestation and these degenerates, you got to kill them.
02:03:19.180
Her great little woman, she's just walking to work.
02:03:32.320
Put back people who understand psych, learning disabilities.
02:03:38.580
I see from the kids, my grandchildren, they go to school.
02:03:55.960
And they're always going to do something weird.
02:03:57.660
If they don't use a gun, they'll use a knife or they'll use a bomb.
02:04:05.960
Sammy, when you went to a prison, you know, a lot of people go to prison.
02:04:15.440
And Jesus wasn't in any of the prisons I was in.
02:04:19.240
And I already knew Machiavelli, so I didn't find him in prison.
02:04:47.000
So I went and asked them if I could join their group.
02:04:49.680
And they said, you've got to check with the counselor and the chaplain.
02:04:53.820
I said, I want to change my religion to Indian.
02:05:11.400
When you have the pipe, you pray for everybody else but you.
02:05:16.200
I pray for Patrick that this interview is great.
02:05:20.300
I pray that he becomes greater than he is already.
02:05:24.000
And if you have problems, you have problems with your wife or something,
02:05:30.740
And so I got to understand the religion a little bit.
02:05:37.240
One of the guys in there said, Sammy, can I talk to you a minute?
02:05:50.140
Why don't you join us and pray with us a little bit to the goddess and the god.
02:05:59.640
So when I really, really found out, even a Muslim guy came to me and wanted to become Muslim.
02:06:06.780
So I turned around, and what I understood is this.
02:06:10.800
Everybody believes in God in one form or another.
02:06:14.100
All the religions is nothing more than a road to God.
02:06:29.520
The road is different, and we start arguing and fighting over it, but we all have the God.
02:06:35.660
If you believe in God, it doesn't matter whether you believe a monkey.
02:06:39.880
The guys I saw that found Jesus in prison, I've seen guys who found him, and they're usually
02:06:45.760
crying and whining and asking him for less time and want to get out and do this, that,
02:06:50.540
and the other thing, or it's an excuse for something else.
02:06:56.860
I mean, I would love, you know, this is what they would say if they were me.
02:07:01.580
I found Jesus in prison, and I became a holy roller, and that's it.
02:07:06.180
No, I would be lying through my teeth, and one thing God's going to do with me, I always
02:07:11.620
said this, when I get up there, if I get up there, he's going to say one thing about
02:07:16.600
you, Sammy, you're not a fucking phony or a liar.
02:07:20.880
You did what you did, and whatever's going to be, is going to be.
02:07:24.460
But to start lying and crying, how are they going to face God?
02:07:36.140
You, go on the express on that train over there.
02:07:41.460
I mean, it's your testimony, but are you following any of the Epstein stuff?
02:07:45.300
Because I know he was in the same section as you and Suicide Watch.
02:08:00.900
But he had another celly at one point, so I don't think he was in 10th South.
02:08:06.120
When they give you your food, the guards can't feed you.
02:08:10.700
A lieutenant's got to come up and open the slide.
02:08:12.820
If he's up there, I don't know how the fuck they would have killed him.
02:08:15.460
And there's only one bunk, so I don't know how he would even hang himself.
02:08:22.000
I mean, if he hung himself, I don't believe anybody killed him.
02:08:27.740
And he was going to be tortured for his family and whatever, and he took himself out.
02:08:36.520
Now, a lot of people, like Clinton, was with him.
02:08:51.380
You know, I'll take a personal, Clinton, wherever you are, that I'm calling you a degenerate.
02:08:57.560
But when you hit a certain point, you got to keep your zipper closed.
02:09:03.000
She's old enough to know better, and I give you that.
02:09:04.920
But still, you're in a tremendous position of power.
02:09:11.140
Boxing, gambling, did you guys ever do anything with Don King?
02:09:17.640
I was subpoenaed in front of a grand jury for boxing.
02:09:21.520
When I was out with John Gotti, Mike Tyson was the shit.
02:09:26.980
Now, I had another guy, and I can't think of his name.
02:09:32.480
I was training in the gym with him occasionally.
02:09:35.620
He was a tough fighter, and he was a little bit over the hill.
02:09:49.820
The champ in Italy was with two brothers who were both made guys in the mob.
02:09:55.880
So I'm reaching them through to the Italian people.
02:09:58.700
I want this guy to come in and fight my guy, the black guy.
02:10:06.880
So if he wins and he has your belt, I want to hook up a fight with Mike Tyson,
02:10:21.800
Now, if the people around Mike want to make him duck a fight,
02:10:30.320
The Italian guy had to come here and fight a lesser opponent first before he fought my guy.
02:10:41.900
But in the process of all of this, John knows what's going on.
02:10:45.700
I have a guy, a street guy, can't even think of his name.
02:10:49.020
But he's going to Don King, talking about a potential fight.
02:11:27.580
Tell the kid to go back, make another appointment, and kill him.
02:11:34.640
You want me to tell this kid to go back and kill Don King?
02:11:50.820
Listen, you're going to go, you're going to hit him with this proposal.
02:11:53.940
If he says no and gives you that shit, I'm a tough guy, take the gun out and shoot him.
02:12:15.980
So we never went after Don King because I didn't want him.
02:12:20.360
I'm definitely not going after him because this is insane now.
02:12:23.480
We're hitting the guy because you don't want to do a deal.
02:12:32.780
Sammy, I've heard a lot of stories with, you know, what happened with John F. Kennedy and
02:12:37.120
the involvement of mafia, you know, and I've heard so many different stories.
02:12:41.400
What do you know about what happened with John F. Kennedy?
02:12:44.920
There's so many people who were possible candidates for that.
02:12:49.220
But to make it into a shorter story, the FBI, when I had cooperated, came to me and one
02:12:54.440
of them, I was in Quantico, and they said, this guy's going to come down to you and ask
02:13:02.040
They came down, a bunch of guys in suits, and they said, the same thing you said, what
02:13:25.820
He did everything he was asked to, and then some.
02:13:33.560
Bobby Kennedy couldn't stand the fact that the mafia helped make him win the election.
02:13:43.300
He went to war with the head of the FBI, Hoover.
02:13:48.420
He made so many enemies from a guy that was loved, John Kennedy, and the father who was
02:13:53.700
respected was a bootlegger, and they were living up to their word.
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Rumor has it that there's a whole concoction mixed with them all, but I don't know.
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Just what I hear from rumors and stuff like that.
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Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.
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One word is not even fair, because the only word I could actually think of, he has so many
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things on both sides, but he's the president of the United States, period.
02:15:02.340
As a reward for finding me guilty and going for this upward departure, they offered her a
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That's all she needed, and she probably ate everything.
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There isn't even a word for this piece of shit.
02:15:20.800
I would like to go to wherever he's buried, dig him up, and shoot him right in his fucking
02:15:36.520
Sammy, final thoughts here with what you're working on right now with the book and the
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But it's going to be me talking to people, other ex-gangsters, Asians, and myself talking
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about my life from soup to nuts, including this conversation now.
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This is you talking with other people as guests as well on the show.
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You haven't done this for quite some time since April 16th, you know, 20-some years ago.
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This is going to create a lot of conversations.
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After every negative thing that was said about me and all the lies, I'm amazed how many good
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people talk to me, deal with me, trust me from different businesses.
02:16:39.460
I know that they're a little afraid when they first start, but once they get to know me like
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my neighbors and people I'm doing business with all over the place, I have a tremendous,
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And it amazes me, after all the bullshit I went through, there's a world full of real
02:17:08.900
She's not my wife anymore, but she's my soulmate.
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If you could find something really pleasant after all of this shit, which I don't know,
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I did, and I still do every day, and if I die tomorrow, this fulfilled me for all the
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pain and suffering I went through, and for everything I did and went through, this made
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me whole again, made me feel good about myself and about everybody around me.
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And I know there's people who will call themselves victims and say something, all you so-called
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You weren't a victim when your father or your brother or whoever was around and he was running
02:17:56.120
What bothers you is that I was part of killing them.
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Now, there could be a situation and I tell my daughter and my ex-wife and my son, if I
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Don't be mad at the person who comes, if they ever come.
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I mean, of course, like a human being, everybody who wants to play Monday quarterback, is there
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I think that the people of the left that are around now, that are in Goza Nostra, the
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They're curving themselves and curving their appetite.
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They're using their head and they're acting like Goza Nostra should have acted, maybe in
02:18:55.120
And the eras before that, it was like the Jesse James days.
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It was a user in your head and you're a tremendous example of quality goes in Australia.
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Stay away from killing, from all of that bullshit.
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Do your little bullshit petty crimes, there's not 50 million agents on your back.
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As soon as you start killing and doing stupid shit, then you're going to wear these people
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And I can guarantee you, I've been with them for a while.
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I already met a lot, a lot of agents that are really, really good people.
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I know we went back and forth talking about trying to make this work.
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You know, thank you for making this work and being willing to.
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We pretty much went through every question that we had.
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I mean, there was no holding back on the question.
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So, you were willing to be asked any of the questions.
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Sammy, again, thank you for making the time to come out and be a guest on Valuetainment.
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And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
02:20:21.120
And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
02:20:29.120
And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.