Sammy “The Bull” Gravano built his reputation as the mob insider who turned on John Gotti and helped send the famed Mafia boss to prison for life. Yet as he looks back on that chapter, Gravano says his feelings toward Gotti were far more complicated than many might expect.
“I loved him,” Gravano said, reflecting on the bond they once shared.
In remarks to Fox Nation, Gravano described the closeness that grew between them during their rise in organized crime. “I got to like the guy. We fought a war. It was us against the world,” he said. That loyalty, he added, lasted until their arrests, when he came to believe Gotti was trying to protect himself at Gravano’s expense by relying on incriminating wiretap recordings made without his knowledge.
Gravano’s comments come as Fox Nation premieres “Gotti’s Guy,” a new documentary revisiting the years when Gotti stood at the top of the American Mafia.
His decision to cooperate with federal authorities in 1992 sent shockwaves through organized crime. Gravano ultimately became one of the most consequential turncoats in Mafia history, helping secure the conviction of the man once known as the Mob’s most powerful boss. After hearing secret FBI recordings in which Gotti spoke critically of him, Gravano said he believed he was being positioned to take the blame.
Under the terms of his cooperation agreement, Gravano pleaded guilty to racketeering and admitted involvement in 19 murders.
“I told him, John, is that what you want to do? The boss wants to go free, so you want me to go to prison for the rest of my life? I was in prison for 11 months before I flipped. I had no intention of flipping, but when he made up all of this crap, my relationship went from love to hate in prison.”
One former Gotti associate who still expresses his devotion to the Mob boss is Lewis Kasman, the subject of “Gotti’s Guy.” Kasman, who the media long dubbed Gotti’s “adopted son,” was a voracious defender and companion of the Mob boss, whom he called “Grandpa.”
“I’d say, ‘What’s up, Grandpa? Good morning.’ Back then, we only had beepers, so I would call “Fat Bob” and make sure he was ready. Jackie would have the car, Jojo would be ready. So, that’s how we would start our routine,” Kasman said.
Gravano said Gotti “used” Kasman for a lot of money, and it seems the amounts were indeed overflowing. Kasman said he hid millions of dollars in his house’s attic, part of the Gambino haul that was estimated to earn the crime family from $100 to $500 million a year in the late ‘80s and early ’90s.
“We’d pick up, let’s say $250,000. Then Joe Butch would bring, let’s say $100,000, Jimmy Brown from the garbage would bring in X amount of dollars, and each captain, depending on what industry they were extorting or what industry they were responsible for, and the unions, the various construction unions, the various labor unions, controlled by the Gambino family. And that’s how the money would roll in,” said Kasman.
Authorities said Joe “Butch” Corrao was a capo based in Manhattan’s Little Italy, and Jimmy “Brown” Faila was also a capo who served as head of the Trade Waste Association of Greater New York, an association of waste management garbage truck companies that prosecutors said filled the Gambino coffers with payoffs and kickbacks at the time.
Kasman said Gotti was confident in his role, what he stood for and that he made no apologies for it.
“You knew where John Gotti was, seven days a week. He wasn’t hiding from anybody, he wasn’t walking around in a bathrobe and a walker,” referring to the Genovese crime family boss, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, who famously feigned a crazy act to try and fool the FBI. Nicknamed “The Oddfella,” Gigante would wander around his Greenwich Village neighborhood in a bathrobe. In 2003, while serving time in prison, Gigante finally admitted that he had been faking being insane the whole time.
Kasman said one of his duties was also to serve as the Gambino de facto travel agent.
“We’d go on vacation. He didn’t have credit cards, so we’d check into whatever hotel we were checking in, and you couldn’t go and say ‘here’s $50,000’ to the front desk clerk. So, I used to put up my credit cards, and I got a lot of points. And we’d get a big bill, $60,000, $50,000, whatever it was.”
He said when they all returned home, Gotti would call him up and pay him immediately.
“He says, ‘Here’s the money I owe you.’ Take his money. I didn’t have to wait 20 hours if he owed me money. That’s the kind of man he was. And he could have said to me, ‘I’m not paying you.’ What was I gonna do? Put him in for collection? Call my lawyer? Who was I going to call?”
Kasman said he had no qualms at the time about dealing with Gotti or the many organized crime figures around him and harbored no illusions about how murderous and treacherous the underworld can be.
But he said his long association with organized crime eventually took a personal toll.
“I enjoyed it, and it was very good for business. But it did a lot of damage to my family, now 25 years later, to my wife and my three children and myself. I have PTSD. I still suffer. I have nightmares.”
Kasman got divorced and ran into various legal problems of his own, serving time in jail and facing charges from perjury to obstruction of justice and money laundering.
The Gotti family has called Kasman a habitual liar who cannot be trusted, who rode on the coattails of the family patriarch. Gotti died of neck and throat cancer behind bars in 2002 at the age of 61.
Despite the adversity and criticism, Kasman said John Gotti continues to loom largely in his life.
“I still think about him every day. I mourn him every day.”
As for Gravano, he went from helping run the Gambino crime family to running his own media company today. He said his podcasts and social media appearances have had more than 160 million views and that the interest in organized crime shows no signs of slowing down. He hosts live broadcasts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok on Mondays and Thursdays at 3 p.m. Eastern time, runs the podcast “Our Thing with Sammy The Bull” and has a website, Sammythebull.com.
He previously appeared on the debut of Fox Nation’s “Mob Mentality” series, that also featured former Genovese crime family member Anthony Arillotta and Gambino truck hijacker Louis Ferrante, who is now a best-selling author.
Watch “Gotti’s Guy,” now streaming on Fox Nation and available on Fox One.
