Guest Author - Vance Rowe

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, once a feared enforcer for the Gambino Crime Family under John Gotti, became Sammy “The Rat” Gravano when he turned states evidence and became an informant for the FBI. His testimonies were responsible for sending both John Gotti and Vincent “The Chin” Gigante to prison. He was also a major conspirer in the murder of crime boss, Paul Castellano.

He started out in the Colombo family as a wise guy and conspired with people like John Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero to kill Castellano, the boss of the Gambino family. This paved the way for him to become the underboss to Gotti when Gotti took over as boss for the Gambinos. Sammy Gravano had a propensity for violence and was allegedly a conspirator in nineteen murders as a mobster and admittedly pulled the trigger in only one of them. When he broke the code of omerta and helped put away Gotti and Gigante, he became the most infamous mob turncoat since Joe Valachi. In return for his testimony at the famed “Commission Trial”, he was put into the Federal Witness Protection program and was allowed to make money by selling his story and then owned a construction business. He also paved the way for more mob informants to come out of the woodwork.

His life of crime started at the age of thirteen when he joined a gang called the Rampers, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn in New York. In 1964, he was drafted into the Army and worked as a mess hall cook. After two years in the service, he was given an honorable discharge and was never deployed to Viet Nam. He apparently wished he was because during an interview he said, “I wish I went to Viet Nam. They give you medals for killing people there.” It was 1968 when he made his first foray into the Mafia when a friend of his, Tommy Spero, got him in through his uncle, Shorty, who was an associate in the Colombo Crime Family. He started out with petty crimes such as armed robbery and larceny but eventually moved up to racketeering, loansharking and ran a money-spinning poker game in the back room of a club in which he was part owner.

Then in 1970, Sammy Gravano committed his first murder; that of Joseph Colucci, a mobster, whose wife was having an affair with Tommy Spero. Colucci was planning on killing Gravano and the Speros. This murder won him the respect of future boss, Carmine Perscio. Ralph Spero, brother of Shorty and father of Tommy, became jealous of Gravano’s rapid rise and was afraid that Gravano would be made before his son, so he got him in with the Gambino family.


In 2000, Sammy Gravano was arrested for drug trafficking and was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 19 years in prison in Arizona State Prison. While in prison, he contracted Grave’s disease, a thyroid disease that causes fatigue, weight loss and hair loss and is reportedly looking very emaciated.