01x03 - Judgment Day

[bunniefuu]

What a difference a decade makes.

Ten years ago,

New York was nearly flat broke

and very close to not being able to pay

its bills and loans.

Well, now the city is prospering.

[man 1]

The $42 million, 38-story Harley Hotel

is being built

by developer Harry Helmsley on 42nd.

[man 2] American Telephone and Telegraph

is putting up a skyscraper

at 55th and Madison.

Hyatt has broken ground for a hotel

on the side of the old Commodore.

[man 3] In the 1980s, there were buildings

going up all across Manhattan.

When all those projects are completed,

city officials glowing predict

that it'll mean an extra 20,000 jobs

here in Manhattan.

[man 4]

What's happened is phenomenal.

I've never seen anything

to the extent I have in New York.

Now, from a real estate standpoint,

it's probably become

the hottest city in the world.

[man 5] Every construction project

is worth millions and millions of dollars.

We were learning the Mob exploited that.

In the next year, three huge skyscrapers

will be completed on a single block.

Topping out ceremonies were held

at one of them today, the Trump Tower.

[man 5] If you're running

a construction company,

you've gotta deal with the Mob.

[man 5] It was a huge, huge racket,

terrifying people into doing

what the Mob wanted them to do.

[reporter]

A work foreman was beaten to death

and thrown out of a 56-floor window.

[interviewer] Make you nervous at all,

to know that one guy's dead,

-another's in the hospital from this job?

-It's all in a day's work.

The game is a tough one.

The stakes are high. The money is big.

And m*rder is not out of the question

for those who get in the way.

["Hard Times" by Baby Huey

& The Baby Sitters plays]

Cold, cold eyes upon me they stare ♪

People all around me

And they're all in fear ♪

So I play the part

I feel they want of me ♪

And I pull the shades

So I won't see them seein' me ♪

Havin' hard times in this crazy town ♪

Havin' hard times

There's no love to be found ♪

Havin' hard times in this crazy town ♪

Havin' hard times

There's no love to be found ♪

[song ends]

[static crackles]

You've never seen anything

Like this before ♪

[man] A new Chevrolet Corvette,

like never before.

Never before ♪

A Corvette superb and authentic

[Alite] In the '80s,

when all this is going on,

we started buying

apartments and property.

And I made all my guys

buy brand new Corvettes.

Then they started nicknaming me

"Johnny Vets."

[man] first computer-activated

manual transmission.

We were like a bunch of girls

going on a shopping spree.

We would go to David Nadler

and buy two dozen shirts at a time,

monogram shirts with our initials on it,

$2,000 suits,

shoes that were 1,000 a pop.

The money that we spent

was ridiculous, on champagne

We would drink Cristal.

We drank Perrier-Jouët

in magnums.

But the personal sacrifices,

while I'm drinking that champagne,

and after I put that glass down,

in two hours I'm gonna

put on a black outfit

and, uh go dig a grave somewhere

and k*ll somebody.

[man] Early this morning,

a man walking his dog

found a body lying in the tall grass

by the shore at Ferry Point Park.

That's in the Bronx.

Police figured it might have been

a gangland rub out.

[man 1]

He makes a deal with the guy in Brooklyn,

59th and 3rd.

[man 2] What the f*ck do you wanna do?

Thirty-two thousand

[man 1] The job shows

a potential extra of $750,000.

[Joyce] We knew we were

onto something big with the Mob.

But we weren't getting clear evidence

of what this conspiracy was all about.

We just knew that we had a lot

of concrete companies

interacting with a lot of Mob families.

But we didn't know anything

about how it worked.

The whole idea was to figure out

if the Commission,

the bosses of all the families,

was a part of the conspiracy.

The Casa Storta restaurant

was a meeting place

for the hierarchy of the Colombo family.

We had the place bugged.

One of the things we noticed

is Ralph Scopo,

who's not a boss,

he's not a capo, he's not an underboss,

he's just a soldier.

He's at the table

when they're talking about

these controversial conversations

over construction.

I knew Ralph well. Ralph Scopo

was actually one of my father's guys.

I liked him.

Early on, I called him Uncle Ralph.

I grew up with him.

He was only a soldier,

but, you know, here's the thing.

If you had a soldier

that was making

a tremendous amount of money

and had a lot of influence,

he could be a powerful guy too,

because he had a lot of authority

in his own right,

because of what

he meant to the family.

Ralphie Scopo was that guy.

[Joyce] We discovered Ralph Scopo

was the President of the District Council

of the Cement and Concrete Workers Union.

It was clear to us, at that point,

that Ralph Scopo was a key player.

And our surveillance shifted

from the Casa Storta restaurant

to Ralph Scopo.

[Joyce] He would go into his office.

He'd be in there for about an hour.

And then, like clockwork,

he would go back to his car.

The contractor would drive up,

get out of his car,

jump in Ralphie's car,

and they would talk.

Clearly, he did not trust his office.

He was doing business in his car.

So we get the microphones installed

in Ralph's two cars.

[Joyce] You have to remember,

Ralph Scopo was the president

of the Concrete Workers Union.

So he controlled the laborers

at every construction project in New York.

[vehicle beeping]

[Joyce] Ralph made sure

he informed the contractors

what the consequences were

if they stepped out of line.

[Giuliani] I reviewed a lot of the tapes

the day after.

As we developed the Commission case,

we realized that by controlling

the construction units,

the Mafia controlled

the entire construction industry.

[reporter] The strike has halted

one and a half billion dollars

in construction projects in the city.

The walkout, which began yesterday,

continued today

The Mafia controlled unions

to make it impossible for you

to function and make a profit

by going on strike.

All of a sudden, you realize

it's better to pay these creeps off.

[Savarese]

Ralph Scopo terrified people

into doing what the Mob wanted them to do.

We had him on tape talking

to the construction company presidents,

and reminding them,

"You know that guy you read about

in the newspaper who was whacked?

You know, that was us."

And the message, not too subtle, was,

"If you don't do

what I'm telling you to do,

you could wind up like that guy

you just read about the paper."

[interviewer] You know that one guy

fell down the stairs here

and is in the hospital to this very day,

and another guy was

thrown out a window on the 56th floor.

That happened before my time.

[Savarese]

We had terrific tapes of Ralph Scopo,

but we needed proof that the Commission,

the ruling body of the Mob,

was at the heart of this extortion.

[Joyce] We had a squad working

each of the families.

We'd have a meeting of the key agents

on the squad,

-and we would compare notes.

-[tape deck clicks]

[indistinct chatter on tape]

The squad that was investigating

the Genovese family

was getting great information

about construction

at the Palma Boys Social Club,

where Fat Tony hung out.

[Joyce] The Gambino squad

was getting their information

from a bug they had on Paul Castellano.

[Joyce] Tony "Ducks" Corallo,

he's the boss of the Lucchese family.

His car's bugged.

All of those were little pieces,

little facets of the whole story.

And we started putting them together.

[click]

[whirring]

-What was that?

-[typewriter clacking]

[man] Speak now

or forever hold your peace

[Joyce] One day, one of the contractors

was in the car with Ralph,

and he was talking about

having a pretty decent sized job.

He says, "Look I've got this job.

It's gonna be about a $1.5 million job."

And Ralph says

[Joyce] The club was the key.

In a very short three minute conversation,

Ralph laid out the existence of the club.

He says, "There's eight companies

that participate in the club.

Each of those companies

is connected with a Mob family.

Anything over two million

was gonna be allocated

to those eight companies,

and no one else could bid."

It's fixed. It's fixed.

Everything is fixed from the beginning.

Everybody knows who's allocated what job.

Let's say its value

is really eight million.

They would put in their bid

for ten million,

and all the other companies will put in

a bid higher than the ten million,

thereby guaranteeing

that they would get

the job for ten million,

when it really only had a value

of about eight million.

So they were making a couple

of extra million dollars on a job.

And so with all these

extra millions of dollars,

it was going

into the pockets of Mob families

that represented that company.

But then we found out

another incredibly important

piece of evidence.

[tape whirs]

[Joyce] The contractors that interacted

with Ralph kicked back two percent

to the Mob families to be divided up

two percent a job.

And there's hundreds

of millions of dollars of construction

underway at any given time.

[Savarese] Stop, think about it.

There are buildings going up

all across Manhattan.

Many of these are buildings

that we all know. We all see.

They're still there.

And while they were being built,

the Mob had its hand in,

collecting its two percent.

[indistinct speech]

[distorted clanging]

[distorted speech overlaps

with sounds of machinery

[Savarese] Every concrete construction job

in Manhattan of over two million in value

would pay the Mob.

[Joyce] The concrete club showed up

in every conversation,

whether it was in Fat Tony's social club,

or Paul Castellano's wires,

or Tony "Ducks" Corallo's wires.

The Commission was always mentioned.

The Commission was centrally involved

in every big building

going up in Manhattan

for years and years and years.

[man] I told you, I ain't playing around.

[Joyce] We're literally talking

a billion-dollar operation.

[man] The deal was 400-plus.

You gotta put it behind you.

[overlapping distorted chatter]

[man] How does the Bronx zoo sound?

Aqueduct Racetrack, Belmont, the Coliseum?

[man 2] The first part of the job

is 4.8 million

The concrete club has to have been

one of the most audacious schemes

that the Mob ever pulled off.

But we can't just win this trial

by proving that there's something

called the "concrete club" alone.

To prove a RICO case,

we've gotta connect that Commission

to a series of other underlying crimes.

So, to show that they're

utterly terrifying people,

we thought that it would be great

if we could have something more violent,

more gripping,

more, you know, sort of really

grabbing your attention

and grabbing the jury's attention.

We were gonna prove a m*rder.

[Chertoff] The FBI were assigned

two agents to be the case agents.

The idea was they would be the main point

of contact between the prosecutorial team

and the FBI.

One was Pat Marshall

and one was Charlotte Lang.

[Lang] When I got there,

the FBI was very male-dominated.

I think it was 97 percent male.

The supervisor said to me,

"I didn't ask for you. I don't think women

can work organized crime."

He said, "You'll be the only woman

on the squad." And I was.

And I thought this must be,

"Hi, welcome to New York!"

But then the supervisor told me

that he was going to assign me

to work with Pat.

I would describe Pat Marshall as

the big brother that anybody

would want to have.

[Marshall] Charlotte was a former

school teacher, very well-organized.

She was my right-hand woman, my friend.

What I couldn't figure out, she could.

We work very, very well together.

It was our responsibility,

Charlotte's and mine,

to prove the Commission

had authorized m*rder.

So

how are we gonna prove it?

[Chertoff] There was a m*rder

we certainly had good reason to believe

was a Commission-ordered hit:

the famous m*rder of Carmine Galante.

[typewriter clacking]

Carmine Galante was rubbed out today

as he sat in a Brooklyn luncheonette,

a gangland execution

of a man believed to be

the most important organized crime

figure in the country.

Two other people in the luncheonette

died as well.

Brian Ross has the gory details.

[Ross] Galante was having lunch

in the courtyard

of an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn

when five men entered

with automatic r*fles and shotguns

and opened fire.

Galante and two other men

at his table were k*lled.

[Chertoff]

Carmine Galante was a Sicilian mobster

who rose to ultimately control

what was the Bonanno family.

Now, there was a lot

of informant information

that to k*ll a boss, you needed

the permission of the Commission.

[Ross]

Galante was resented by other Mafia bosses

because he received so much

attention and publicity,

and because he had been too rough

in his efforts to become the top man

in the American Mafia.

[Lang] When Carmine Galante was m*rder*d

at Joe and Mary's Restaurant

in '79 in Brooklyn,

the other four heads of the family

would've had to agree to that m*rder.

We had to prove that the Commission,

the other four Mob bosses,

okayed the k*lling of Galante.

[Lang] I spent an afternoon with

the medical examiner in New York then,

and he showed me the autopsy photos.

Carmine Galante had 84

exit and entrance wounds in his body.

Five people participated in that sh**ting.

[Chertoff]

There was a lot of informant information

that one of the shooters

was a guy named Anthony Indelicato.

The problem is you can't use

informant information in court.

So how do you prove the case?

[Childers] Bruno Indelicato,

real name Anthony Indelicato,

was a soldier in the Bonanno family,

who, shortly after the m*rder

of Carmine Galante,

was elevated to the rank of captain.

Bruno was a wild guy

known to be sort of a loose cannon,

someone you would

look to for violent crime.

When the car pulled away,

there was a woman across the street

in an apartment

who heard the shots,

saw the car, and wrote down

the license plate number.

She gave it to the police.

The police, within a day or so,

found the car abandoned,

and they took fingerprints

off the steering wheel,

where the driver was,

and also fingerprints off

the rear door handle in the back seat.

[Childers] Indelicato's fingerprints

were compared

against the latent print

on the door handle.

No match.

It was run against everyone who could be

thought of as a possible suspect.

There was no hits.

With no fingerprint hit,

there wasn't anywhere else to go.

[traffic sounds]

[Childers] Now, fast-forward to 1984,

we had the idea:

redo every piece

of the investigation, essentially.

I don't believe the car

was around anymore.

But that door handle,

that metal door handle,

had been removed from the car

and was still in police custody.

We went to the evidence vault

to check it out.

When you look at the door handle,

you realize,

it's not your fingers that would touch

where the print is,

but it's actually your palm.

And so that's when it was realized

that we need to start running

palm prints against these.

Indelicato's palm print

was not in police custody.

The fingerprint cards they had for him

didn't include his palm print.

[Lang] I had to look for Bruno.

We were able to identify,

I think through source information,

about this girlfriend.

And she was expected at this clinic

on a particular day.

We sat there all day waiting, hopefully,

for Bruno to show up with the girlfriend.

Of course, they do show up

like three minutes before it's gonna close

after sitting there all day.

So we arrest Bruno.

Instead of just doing the fingerprints,

we did the whole hand.

It's called a major case print.

We had an FBI agent

that was an expert and could determine

did his fingerprints, palm prints match?

[line rings]

[phone rings]

[Lang] I can still remember Pat--

We were sitting in the squad area

and his phone rang.

[ringing]

And he turned around and he said,

-"It's Bruno's palm print."

-Bingo.

One hundred percent match.

He was one of the shooters.

[Chertoff] That was

very, very good evidence

against Indelicato for m*rder.

Now we needed to connect that up,

to show the Commission had ordered it.

[Childers] It just so happened,

on the day of the m*rder,

there was video surveillance

being done on a social club

in Little Italy,

a place called the Ravenite Social Club.

What we had was somewhat unusual

on that tape.

Approximately half an hour

after the m*rder,

there is this incredible meeting.

Indelicato and a couple of other people

show up.

They are in a very energized state.

[Marshall] The surveillance tape

at the Ravenite Social Club

shows Indelicato wearing an open shirt,

and then everybody congratulates

one another, hugging and kissing.

[Lang] So here you have a Bonanno member,

on the day that the boss is k*lled,

going over and being congratulated

by the underboss of the Gambino family.

[Chertoff] Once you prove

that Indelicato was a sh**ter,

the fact that he goes to the boss

of another family to be congratulated

is very powerful evidence that in fact

the Commission did order the m*rder,

as the rules required them to do.

[Giuliani] This was tremendous evidence.

We were getting very close.

I knew what I would need

to indict Commission,

and I became obsessive-compulsive

about it.

I always felt like the pinnacle

of the case would be

proof of a Commission meeting.

That's what we needed.

Nobody had ever taken

surveillance photographs

of a Commission meeting before.

[ship's horn blows in distance]

[O'Brien] It was May 15, 1984.

I got a call in the morning

from my informant saying,

"There's gonna be a Commission meeting."

I didn't believe him. This was unheard of.

I said, "Yeah right."

He goes, "No, all of the bosses

are gonna be there.

They're gonna be talking about

this concrete club they had going."

I said, "Alright, if I make a fool

of myself, it's your a*s."

The bosses of the crime families

couldn't afford to get caught

meeting together.

They would reconnoiter the area

looking for vehicles,

and if they did

they would detect the surveillance team.

They would call it off.

So the plan was, if the meeting

is gonna be at one o'clock,

we're gonna set up at two o'clock.

Don't have to get 'em going in.

We can get 'em coming out.

I was sitting in the passenger's side

of the van I had rented.

Andy was seated behind me.

He had a 300 millimeter lens,

which he had on my shoulder.

[barking]

We sat there, an hour

two hours.

Andy was starting to doubt they were

in there. I said, "They're in there."

And all of a sudden, we got 'em

[shutter snaps]

[O'Brien] Fat Tony Salerno,

head of the Genovese family.

Andy was using my shoulder like a tripod,

and I didn't even wanna breathe.

I'm hearing the click, click, click…

[click]

of Tony "Ducks" Corallo.

I was afraid to even move.

He might get a blurry photograph.

Gennaro Langella,

acting boss of the Colombo family,

and then Paul Castellano,

the boss of bosses.

They're coming out family by family.

This is historic.

This is a Commission meeting,

right in front of our eyes, unfolding.

They've got all these tapes,

but they don't have a meeting.

This is a meeting.

This was the final thing they needed,

these photographs.

[traffic sounds]

[thunder rumbles]

[Kossler] There came a point in time

where we had enough evidence

to prosecute all the bosses.

[phone line ringing]

[Kossler] The decision was made,

that we would make the arrest

the following morning.

[phone ringing]

I was sitting in my office.

We get a call.

It was NBC News.

NBC News said they know

that we are going to arrest

the bosses of all the Five Families

the next morning.

So they're gonna announce that

on the evening news.

[overlapping chatter]

So this was like six o'clock at night,

and the evening news

was gonna be coming on any minute now.

[woman] Ten seconds.

[Kossler]

And I knew that once that happened,

those folks that were to be arrested

would be in the wind.

So I told my bosses, I said,

"I think we gotta go right now!"

[woman] In seven, six, five

[man] Rollers.

[woman] Stand by, chyrons. Insert.

It was a very high honor

to be sent out to arrest the most

powerful mobster in America

on the most serious of charges.

Three, two, one

[announcer] This is NBC Nightly News.

Paul Castellano was having dinner.

His family was there.

[announcer]

This is NBC Nightly News in New York.

Told him we had a warrant

for his arrest on RICO charges.

Had to bring him in.

He said, "Can I get dressed first?"

"Sure."

When he was ready to go,

he put his hands out to be handcuffed.

I said, "Oh,

you don't have to handcuff him."

And, as we were driving in,

we had the radio on,

and then it came out on the radio.

Breaking news.

[radio squawks]

[man] There's a major roundup underway

of top leaders in organized crime

in our area. Top leaders.

First time ever, the reputed

[O'Brien]

And he leaned forward to hear it.

And then they said,

"Paul Castellano, the boss of bosses,

was also taken into custody,

from the information from the case

that was developed

from bugs in his house."

That's when he found out,

by listening to the radio,

that we had put a bug in his house.

So he goes, "You bugged my house!"

And it was kind of awkward.

I just kind of looked the other way,

you know.

I said, "Hey, you know,

that's the game we play."

[upbeat music playing]

[man] From WNBC-TV,

this is News 4 New York

with Chuck Scarborough and John Hambrick.

Good evening.

Tony Ducks, Big Paul,

Fat Tony, Gerry Lang, Rusty Rastelli.

A godfather roundup!

[DeVecchio] How often do you

send out agents to arrest every boss

in an organized crime family?

That was an exciting day in the office,

to see all these guys

get arrested and brought in.

Maybe once in a lifetime

you have that happen.

Authorities call this

the most important prosecution case

ever brought against organized crime.

[Franzese] It was sensational.

All the bosses,

carted away at the same time.

It was a day that I won't forget.

People wouldn't even dream about this,

you know, ten years before.

And here we were

in the middle of making history.

The Mafia leaders were rounded up

in an overnight sweep.

And today, US attorney Rudolph Giuliani

announced the indictments.

This is a great day for law enforcement,

but this is a bad day, probably the worst,

for the Mafia.

[Franzese] I felt terrible.

I knew Fat Tony, I liked him a lot.

[reporter] And tonight a man

identified as Ralph Scopo

[Franzese]

Ralphie Scopo, I knew Ralphie well.

I grew up with him.

[Giuliani] This case charges

more Mafia bosses,

in one indictment, than any ever before.

[overlapping chatter]

[Alite] When that RICO case

first got announced,

we were cursing out

Rudy Giuliani like crazy.

We don't even know

what they were talking about at the time,

'cause we didn't understand the law.

It was very technical.

There're a couple of Mob guys

who went to the hospital

thinking they were

gonna get indicted [laughs]

that we didn't name.

Everybody was worried.

All of a sudden, every gangster

that couldn't count to ten

started trying to understand

what RICO meant.

We realized this is a law

that enables the FBI

to gather multiple members

of the Mob together in a conspiracy case.

So anybody that was from the street

really understood what RICO meant to us,

and especially to our bosses

of the five families.

At least two of them, I know,

will be able to post bail immediately.

-[reporter] Is Castellano one of them?

-Castellano, yeah, and Fat Tony.

[man] I was

Fat Tony Salerno's defense lawyer.

At the time we met, I was 34.

I was a little bit intimidated

to meet with Mr. Salerno,

kind of afraid

to ask him certain questions,

because maybe the answers

were something that, uh

he didn't either want to tell me,

or maybe I shouldn't know.

Um And he once stopped me,

'cause he sensed that,

and he said, "Listen kid,

you can ask me any question you want,

and I will always,

always tell you the truth.

Some questions you're gonna ask me,

I won't be able to answer,

and I'll tell you I can't answer that.

You take it for whatever

it means at that point,

but don't ever be

afraid to ask me a question.

[reporter] I asked Fat Tony if he had

anything to say about all this.

You have something to say, Tony?

[reporter] Thank you.

[reporter] Excuse me.

[Cardinale]

Fat Tony was a very kind person

to me.

Here comes Marcy.

I want you to meet her.

[woman]

Introducing the new Cabbage Patch babies,

the littlest Cabbage Patch kids of all.

[Cardinale] My daughter was

about two years old at the time.

There was a doll that was very famous

called the Cabbage Patch doll,

and it was sold out everywhere,

and my daughter desperately wanted one.

Can't remember how he found that out,

but the next thing you know,

he sent a case

of Cabbage Patch dolls to my daughter.

[jingle playing]

[man] Cabbage Patch Kids babies,

with everything shown here.

Each sold separately from Coleco.

[man] Castellano left

the federal courthouse

in Lower Manhattan tonight

after posting

two million dollars bail money.

[Giuliani] Paul Castellano walked out,

and this reporter from 60 Minutes came up

to him, introduced himself and said,

"We'd like to put you on 60 Minutes,

Mr. Castellano.

People have to hear that Giuliani

isn't the only word on this."

And Castellano went

and reached in his pocket.

"I'll be glad to talk to you.

Here's my card. Talk to my lawyer."

He acted like a businessman.

Fat Tony walks out of court.

Fat Tony was fat

looked like a Mafia guy.

First thing he does when he gets out

of court is puts a cigar in his mouth.

[imitates match igniting]

The guy comes up to him,

says the same thing.

He says, "You're a reporter?

Then go F yourself.

Just go F yourself,

I don't talk to no reporters."

And he walks off. [chuckles]

It was a difference between two men.

One was totally pretentious,

and Fat Tony knew exactly who he was.

[Cardinale] One of the things

that came across in representing Fat Tony

was the notion that this group

was essentially its own government.

They did not play by the rules of the--

what the, say,

United States government rules were.

They had

their own law and order and justice.

And that's what they live by.

[reporter] It happened in the middle

of the evening rush hour

on a crowded Midtown street.

I was sitting in my office,

at the US Attorney's Office,

writing the government's response

to a variety of motions.

[reporter] Two men were apparently shot,

either getting into or leaving the car.

I happened to be playing

in a basketball game.

[reporter] One of the men appeared

to have been a driver.

The keys were only several inches

from his hand

All of a sudden,

our beepers were going off.

My secretary walks in and hands me a note.

[reporter] Both men appear

to have been shot in the head,

shot gangland execution-style

on the street.

I remember one of my colleagues

running down the hall saying,

"Big Paulie was just whacked!"

sh*t.

[reporter] It is a historic event

in the history of the Mob.

You are looking

at the body of Paul Castellano.

[Kossler]

We got into cars and drove up there.

It was mayhem.

There were people everywhere,

all over the street.

The street was closed.

Castellano's body was laying

with his head in the gutter.

This was really significant in that he was

the boss of one

of the largest families in the Mafia.

[reporter] Witnesses said that Castellano

was sitting in his limousine

when three men in trench coats walked up,

started sh**ting, and they made a getaway.

The atmosphere was very tense.

I knew it was coming, for a while.

Castellano's rule is, like most bosses,

don't deal drugs.

If I find out about it,

you're gonna be k*lled for dealing drugs.

Angelo Ruggiero, John Gotti, and myself

were all moving drugs.

Angelo Ruggiero and John Gotti realized

that Angelo had been caught on hours

and dozens of wiretaps in his house,

discussing the drug business.

In our life, in the Mob world,

when you, uh break a rule,

your life is ended like that.

[static]

[Alite] Gotti and Ruggiero understand

that if Castellano

is in those tapes at the trial,

they're dead.

[tape deck clicks]

They had to hit him first.

Law enforcement officials

are wondering this morning

whether the m*rder of the country's

top Mob boss Monday

was the first salvo

in a new gangland w*r.

And they're looking

for this man, John Gotti.

[O'Brien] I felt bad

because the whole object of my case

was to put Castellano away.

There's a strange bond

that sometimes exists

between law enforcement officers

and criminals.

They both live

by codes of honor and respect

more stringent than most normal people.

And there's

a certain psychological connection there.

I heard him on the mic for 600 hours,

for a four, five-year period.

I felt like I knew him.

It wasn't supposed to end this way.

He's supposed to end up in federal prison.

[DeVecchio] It was frustrating

to learn he had been k*lled

just for the reason that

he was the boss of bosses.

I would much rather have seen

Castellano convicted,

rather than ending it that way.

Paul Castellano was

a very, very important defendant to us.

We had fantastic tapes

from his kitchen in Staten Island.

He was a reigning boss,

and we very much wanted him

to be a defendant at trial.

So it was both a shock,

and in some ways frustrating,

that we did not have a chance

to bring him to justice.

It certainly increased the pressure

on all of us as a trial team,

because the press and the whole country

were watching New York.

Tonight we begin

with an NBC News exclusive.

The godfathers of the New York Mafia

are in big trouble.

This was billed as probably

the biggest organized crime case ever.

The federal government

is trying to prove there are five men

who were the alleged bosses

of New York City's five crime families,

and they comprised a commission.

They are charged with a wide range

of strong-arm tactics,

including infiltration of New York City's

high-rise construction industry.

This case was a media circus,

no question about it.

Dare we hope that this is the beginning

of the end for the Mob?

Hopefully, with an organization

like the Mafia,

we will wear them down. I think this is

a perfect time to crush them.

Rudy did rather love

being in front of the cameras.

Some of your critics have accused you

of being a publicity hound.

Uh How do you plead to that charge?

I plead not guilty to the charge,

certainly with the way it's characterized.

[Savarese] Did we tease him a little bit?

Sure.

It was a running joke

among all the assistant US attorneys.

Being the the Mob buster

was a big part of his persona.

You can almost regard it

as a hidden tax.

[man] Giuliani and other officials

say the tax is exacted every time

[Cardinale] The government will do

whatever they can to win the case.

Including in that is to make sure

the publicity permeates the public

A major racketeering trial in New York.

[Cardinale] so that the jurors

are fully aware

of the most nefarious aspects

that Giuliani could put in the press.

It's outrageous that that kind of thing

happens in our society

[man] The public

must understand, they say,

that these men are gangsters and murderers

who steal from everyone.

[Childers] This clearly was

the biggest thing

I would ever do professionally.

[Giuliani] Young lady, let us through.

So there was a certain amount of pressure.

I had just turned 29.

John had also just turned 29.

And Mike was 30.

I'm sure in some quarters,

there were people questioning,

"Really? These three kids

are going to try this case?"

All my guys were incredibly young.

That's all you get. They don't pay

any money in the US Attorney's Office.

None of us had ever tried a case

of this magnitude before.

When you think about it,

it's a little crazy, right?

The United States is entrusting

essentially three novices

with this momentous case.

And all of a sudden,

we're up against

these terrifying, formidable Mob figures.

[reporter] Are you confident at all

about the charges?

[Savarese] Just before the trial began,

I proposed to my wife,

and she was nervous.

She kept asking me

about whether I was gonna come

into any kind of harm or danger.

Uh, fortunately, knock on wood,

I never did.

But others around me did.

[Giuliano] One day, US Marshal came

in my office and said,

"We have a documented threat

from the Mob,"

to k*ll my wife.

And they taught me and my chief assistant

how to use a g*n.

[typewriter clacking]

[Chertoff]

Once the jury was finally seated,

my job in the opening statement

was to give them

a road map about what they're gonna hear

and explain it in context.

"Members of the jury,

Mafia families have

a single overriding purpose:

to make money

using corruption, fear, and violence.

The Cosa Nostra and Commission

are not words that are coined or made up

by the government.

These are words

these defendants used themselves.

And you are going to hear them

use those words on the tapes

with your very own ears."

For a criminal trial in the United States,

the US Constitution says the jury

has to be unanimous,

so you've gotta persuade all 12 jurors.

[Cardinale] If we could just convince

one or two of those jurors,

we would essentially win the case.

[Savarese] When the trial is underway,

you're watching the jury like a hawk.

You wanna see

what their body English is like.

Do they seem to be paying attention?

[Chertoff] Are they understanding

the evidence? What's interesting to them?

So you can calibrate your presentation.

[Lang] The forewoman of the jury

was a very elegant woman

who wore this gold cross.

And then this young, very attractive,

red-haired woman was in the front row.

And there was an elderly woman.

I said to Pat, "Wait till she starts

listening to some of these tapes."

Because it's difficult to understand

what was going on.

The judge directs

that the jury will listen.

They put on their headphones.

[indistinct speech]

[indistinct speech]

[Lang] It seemed like the elderly woman

was straining to understand

what was going on.

[indistinct speech]

[Savarese]

Get down to the bottom of the page.

[man] You look at it as a big corporation.

You're running a big corporation.

When we saw all 12 jurors turn the page

at exactly the right moment,

we just looked at each other like,

"Yes! They're following.

They're paying attention.

They're hearing what we've heard."

[man] For several weeks, a federal jury

has been sifting through tape recordings.

The vast majority of this case

is built on, uh, tapes of the defendants

talking about their criminal activities.

It's from those tapes

[Alite] Everybody followed

the Commission trial,

especially if you were a street guy.

When we were sitting around

the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club,

we were saying it's ill*gal,

it's this, like we were Harvard grads.

But in reality we understand

that we've got serious problems now.

[man grunting]

[Cardinale] The government did have

some pretty strong evidence.

The head of the Lucchese family,

Tony "Ducks" Corallo,

there was a bug placed in his car.

[Cardinale] There were conversations

about cement trade in New York.

[Cardinale] On one of the tapes,

Fat Tony remarked

that he had just seen a cement truck

drive down Second Avenue with--

The name on the truck

was something he didn't recognize,

and he wanted to know who had guts enough

to drive a truck through Manhattan

that was affiliated with a company

that he wasn't aware of or didn't control.

So it was that kind of tape

that was kind of difficult for us

to get around, if you will.

We knew we were in for a rough ride.

[typewriter clacking]

The strategy that I employed

was to do everything we could to

win the so-called sex-appeal parts

of the case

uh, the violence that they threw in

gratuitously, the Galante m*rder.

Anything that the government

can do to get an edge, they will do.

If anyone thinks this is fair

and they're trying to do right is wrong.

They're there to win the case.

It was very dramatic,

it was very violent,

and it was what was put in there

only to get the jury's attention.

[Chertoff] At the point in time

when we started putting evidence in

about the Galante homicide,

the world changed for Bruno Indelicato

inside that courtroom.

The reason Bruno Indelicato,

a lower-ranking member in the Mob,

was a defendant in the case

is because he was a g*nman

in the m*rder of Carmine Galante,

and the Commission authorized that m*rder.

He was a person who took the orders

and carried out the Commission's bidding.

Now, all of a sudden, he's very agitated,

squirming in his chair,

understanding that no, this isn't

something he's going to skate on.

All of a sudden

it's real for him.

I guess it got to be too much for him.

Indelicato sprang to his feet

and yelled at me,

"What are you doing?

You're not playing fair.

I know who you are.

You can't do this crap."

That's the first time I ever had

a m*rder*r actually threaten me.

The marshals immediately grabbed him,

put him back into the holding cell

in the back of the courtroom.

Lunch happens.

Indelicto comes back out,

comes over to me and says,

"Mr. Childers, I want to apologize.

I was out of line."

My best guess as to why

there was the change

of heart in Indelicato

is that he was back there

in the holding cell

with "Fat Tony" Salerno,

the boss of the Genovese family,

and Carmine Persico,

the boss of the Colombo family,

and they're on trial for their lives also.

And they outrank him.

And I would think

that they would've said,

"Hey, idiot, what the hell are you doing?

We don't need any more problems."

[Cardinale] Gil Childers was brought in

to present that case.

And he did it with great fanfare

and big blow-up pictures of Galante

with the cigar in his mouth and his eye

hanging out and b*llet holes all over him.

But all of the violence

really had nothing to do with this case.

The government's theory was

there's a rule,

and the rule is you can't hurt your boss

unless all the other bosses agree.

The "Commission" has to agree.

My argument was that Fat Tony

was not the boss of the Genovese family

when Galante was m*rder*d.

Somebody else was.

So Fat Tony

really had nothing to do with it.

If we could just convince

one or two of those jurors,

Fat Tony had nothing to do

with the Galante m*rder,

we could win the case.

[Savarese] Everyday, you're on edge.

You're in court.

Then at night,

you're preparing for the next day.

And then all weekend

you're preparing for the next week.

So you're exhausted.

So, by the end,

we felt good that we had made our case,

but you never know.

And then the jury goes off,

and they deliberate.

[typewriter clacking]

[ticking]

[Childers] You've done

everything you could do.

You now realize

that everything now rests

in the hands of 12 people

whose names you don't even know,

'cause it was an anonymous jury.

A defense attorney

only has to convince one person,

and, of course, prosecutors

have to convince 12.

[Savarese] The clock is kind of ticking

in your brain as each day goes by.

And you're wondering to yourself,

"What are they thinking?

Are they leaning our way? Are they not?

Who knows?"

[Giuliani] I was worried about someone

getting to the jury because

in the history of Mob cases,

they reached somebody.

[Savarese] The way the Mob can undermine

the jury process is by getting to a juror.

It's effectively corrupting a juror

to hold out and refuse

to vote in favor of conviction.

[Lang] What is going on here?

[man] No verdict yet

in the Commission trial.

Jury wrapped up four days of deliberating.

They go back to work tomorrow.

[Cardinale] The longer a jury stays out,

the better you feel that at least

there may not be a conviction.

This is not a runaway.

[Giuliani] I was 100% percent confident

when it started.

By the fifth day,

I was less sure of the verdict.

If we fail at this

ooh, it could set us back 30 years.

[ticking continues]

[Lang] I thought, "I can't believe

we've done all this work,

and this is gonna go down the tubes."

[Chertoff] My unit chief said to me,

"You should write

two statements for the press:

one if we convict

and one if there's an acquittal."

I said, "I can't do that.

I'm gonna jinx myself."

She said, "You have to do it."

So I gritted my teeth and I did it.

And then we got a call.

[Savarese]

The jury had reached a verdict.

It was like a circus in there.

Everybody showed up.

I mean, it was standing room only.

[Savarese]

We could barely get into the courtroom.

And I remember saying,

"Hey, we're the prosecutors.

We've gotta get in there."

[DeVecchio]

The culmination of years of hard work,

my whole squad, came down to this.

You don't want to screw this up.

You don't want to be the guy

who is known as the person

who let the Mob bosses off.

[Lang] The jury comes back.

You're looking at them all

because you're trying to read their faces,

like what the hell's going on here.

[Chertoff] You're sitting there,

literally with your heart in your mouth.

I had my hands on my lap

and I was saying, like, a prayer.

And Pat reached out,

and he squeezed my hand, and he goes,

"Here we go, pal."

Guilty.

-And it was guilty, guilty, guilty.

-Guilty, guilty.

Guilty, guilty, guilty, 150 times.

She looked over at us.

She smiled and she went

Just like that.

It's the way she nodded her head.

Good evening. A major blow

for the men who rule the Mafia.

Eight mobsters,

including three Mafia godfathers,

were found guilty of serving

as Commission members.

This verdict means the death

of the old school Mob leadership

in New York as we knew it.

I think it's gonna take a long time

to replace the kind of network

these men put together.

[Savarese] My God, we did it!

[chuckles] After all this work,

all those sleepless nights,

all those ruined weekends,

we were finally getting

what we had fought for.

These people

who were untouchables their entire lives

are now gonna be brought to justice.

It was, uh

It's an incredibly moving time.

Every single defendant

was convicted on every single count,

and I think this is a great day

for law enforcement

and for all those

who've been in pursuit of organized crime.

Some have lost their lives.

[man] The top bosses of the Mafia

were given 100 years in prison.

One hundred years

for Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno

[Alite] For us, it was devastating.

When Giuliani brought this w*r into effect

against gangsters,

it was the plague.

Nothing worse than this

could ever come in existence

against street guys in the Mob world.

[man] The FBI now counts 500 Mafia

convictions in the last three years,

and it says more cases are coming.

[Franzese] This was the first time

in history anything like that was done.

And you know it really, really

put the icing on the cake for me.

I said, "When they can start doing that,

this life is in real trouble,

real trouble."

[Kossler] I was elated.

All the hard work that we put into this

and all the time away from home

and all the sweat and tears

and then it came to fruition.

[DeVecchio] This was the culmination of,

as far as I was concerned,

everything I had worked for.

Twenty some-odd years

of working organized crime in New York.

It was one of those thrills of a lifetime.

[Lang] I said, "Pat, it's like

being in a Broadway show,

and the show is over.

So now what are we gonna do?"

[chuckles]

[woman] We have come to know

the face of Rudolph Giuliani,

a steady presence in the morning papers

and evening news.

More than any other US attorney

for the Southern District of New York,

Giuliani has sewn himself

into the fabric of this city.

His most recent Mafia busts

resulting in death threats

[Giuliani] As an Italian-American,

I'm absolutely proud

to be the man who helped to destroy it

and who led the effort.

Rudolph Giuliani has officially

jumped into the race for mayor

at the place where two other Republicans

started their successful campaigns.

As we wrap up this series,

it's interesting to note

that for law enforcement officials,

the questions tonight are

who will the next generation of bosses be,

and what kind of shadowy crime game

will they play?

[sirens wailing]

[intense music playing]