Steve D. Sims interviews Sammy "The Bull" Gravano "Director's Cut"

hey sammy welcome to the show thank you thank you very much pleasure to be here oh it's a pleasure and it's been an honor to get to know you you know we had conversations before this we had dinner the other day we went out yesterday with a friend of ours um it's been really interesting to get to know you and understand your mindset i want to jump into the deep end we've seen a lot of romanticism around the world of the mafia um it's probably the most unsecret secret society out there from all the movies and the tv shows is that what lured you in at a young age into that life well in benson ice brooklyn where i grew up it was saturated with the mafia every bar every restaurant no matter where you went there was mafia people and i grew up with that it was an italian jewish neighborhood dominantly italian and that's part of our culture uh my father knew about it he was a legitimate man um i remember him telling me when i asked when we were going to church one sunday we passed the corner there was a bunch of guys on the corner who's shooting dice in the street and stuff and i said that who's those people he said they're bad people you got to stay away from them but you got to remember they're our bad people they're part of us when we have problems they help us they keep the neighborhood clean so it was like a mixed message bad people but our bad people and stuff and i've got to learn that growing up got to understand when i was younger and i was in a gang that they were tough you can get killed [ __ ] around with these people and stuff like that so avoided them a little bit but they became through movies and everything they became idols and the guys from my neighborhood had really big names big reputations that were known not only in brooklyn new york but throughout the country and uh i looked up to them and i respected them and they were always pretty decent you know to my family or to myself my father was friendly with a guy uh suvita he was from italy my father had trouble with the unions one time and i was helping him in the factory i heard these two big guys come in and telling my father that he's got to pay money he's operating non-union and this and that and and i was paying attention to it i was young it was maybe 16 and then the gang so i watched it carefully and then they told my father if you don't have an envelope by next week we're going to come in and we're going to break your legs and i went to the leader of the ramp is this guy jerry pappa i told him about it i said i'm going to have some of the guys come down with me when they come in if they raise their hands to my father we can go to work on them jerry picked up his shirt and he had a gun he said hey take this if they raise their hand shoot them then give me a call we'll get rid of the bodies and i never killed somebody i was young and kind of shook me a little bit but i was intent not having my father beat up by these guys sure so i went there with a gun and uh the next time they came in i was ready but they came they hugged them jerry why didn't you tell us your new sous video and i heard that and they were like just giving them if anybody bothers you call us up from the union and this and that now i knew souvedo is my father's gumbada the guy was little tiny guy skinny a wind could have blew him over and it dawned on me how could this little small guy intimidate these people why are they afraid of him and i've come to know that he was made in italy and made in the united states as well it's actually two different things but and the fear of him as small as he was it was the fear of the mafia and that backed these two big guys up so it was the family they had they had people behind him and that's what it was well the mafia always had so it's the whole organ when you're [ __ ] with the mafia you're [ __ ] with all of them so i mean if you're an outsider and you're going against somebody in the mafia any any family there's now you're going into thousands of people could blow your head off that's that's one of the points i want to kind of fine tune on um you know i i do a lot of growing up in east london i know a lot of people in in new york um there's a respect there's a fear and then there's a respect and that there's there's both they had both with them but it's this respect that i want to focus on because i think today in today's economy we're losing that a lot you know the thing that i knew and the thing that i recognized was there were people you messed with and there were people you didn't and in the neighborhoods especially in brooklyn uh and east london the neighborhoods were safe if you paid attention and you paid the respect to the people in that area uh and i remember you saying that you know if you in your neighborhood if a guy's walking down the the street and he's got his wife and there's a bait that's safe in your neighborhood um and there was a respect there was there was it was made to today we've lost that um how did you gain the respect on top and in a way of the fear of hey if you don't do this because that's intimidation and i think intimidation and respect they are different things and i've seen you communicate absolutely so you knew for a while you said a girl could be walking with a husband and she could walk safely there the point is that she could walk there without her husband her husband actually encouraged her you're going to have the baby you're going to go walk go right in front of sammy the bulls club walk over there why'd he tell her to go there no way he's going to hoot and howl because she was sexy or beautiful and nobody could bother her because we took his wife and him and the whole neighborhood this was our neighborhood our people you better not [ __ ] with her you better not be a rapist or a child molester or something because you'll not survive in our neighborhood once we know so people got to know that and respect that and the violence that we committed was within our rules against ourselves we very rarely went outside and hurt legitimate people we would maybe intimidate and threaten them but we didn't kill them or hurt them we didn't do things like that so they didn't they lost the fear of us they didn't have fear the fear became respect i've noticed that and and you there's been stories that you've heard i've been i've heard some great stories with you over the last few days and there's been times when you you know you've had that you're holstering you're wearing you're packing you've got guys around you but there's been a time to have a conversation now where did you learn to to that skill of communication because you are very articulate you're very charismatic um and you've got to be blunt no neck thugs that just can like walk in there and they're in there for one reason but then you've always been able to go in there and use that charisma to have a conversation how did you learn that skill set well i've learned it from my parents first of all before the mafia and in the mafia i learned it from people who had more wisdom than i had and they told me about the life and how to conduct yourself and that violence is something we use on occasion but it's at a last resort not even beating somebody up or doing something now not every mafia so things like that some we got thugs we got racketeers we got guys who can handle uh both sides of the fence like that you know and it's what what you get you get a different respect when you're honorable and you're trustworthy and you're not so aggressive that you're looking to eat everybody or or what they have you know i used to go into businesses and and i would talk with somebody i'm going to give you an example this guy had a container business small business and i got to know me it was a good guy and i said the containers you have they're not the best quality you know i got a place in jersey they make the best containers for construction debris and stuff like that they were steel they were better containers and i'm thinking about maybe that you could use a partner so at first he sat back he may have thought that there was a threat about to come out so i said tell me what you make a year last year he said i made a hundred thousand going back that was quite a bit so i said well here's what i could do with you i could become your partner i could do this we don't need contracts we could do it on a handshake the first hundred thousand that's yours that's what you generally make anything above that i get a third and i'll bring that business in and you'll buy better containers i'll do all that leg work he said well once you go into the city now then i'll have trouble with you and no you will never have trouble with unions that's my i'll take care of that he liked the conversation how it went he liked the point that we weren't signing the contract i shook his hand he shook my hand and we did it i got embedded containers i got him contracts to pick up construction debris in manhattan on a big job rather than some guys calling in tess house and clean out his house and he wants to use some [ __ ] container it went on for a year and i talked to him at the end of the year i said how did we do he says i made 400 000 this year great great he says and i don't want to take a third of the above number i want to take a third of the whole thing and give it to you you're a perfect gentleman a great partner i had a couple of problems you solved them overnight and two thirds and four hundred thousand a hell of a lot more than i made so we did that and later on in a couple years later i was doing other things and i was too busy for it and i told them i said listen come here we're partners now what is it going on three years you were a great partner and i earned with you you listened you respectful you're a good man i put my hand out and they said the business is yours now i'm not your partner i'm your friend if you have a problem you can call me i'll resolve your problem with unions or any of that [ __ ] or anybody wants to come and become your partner that you don't want i'll be there for you but you earned it it's yours now enjoy the business so when you conduct yourself like that people will come around you in herds but if i take a guy and i tell you i'll hurt you i'll do this give me your [ __ ] i want there you're going to be labeled as a thug people see you and they want to turn the corner it will get the [ __ ] away from you so it depends on how you conduct yourself in life it's not because they're a tough guy or you're dangerous it's what kind of guy they could like or love or trust being in their business inviting them over their house with their wife and kids which he's done a number of times i went over his house on a sunday with him not only his wife and his children but his family and i got to know the whole family and it was like hey sammy shaykh i was part of the family so when you conduct yourself like that the next guy is definitely not intimidated so one thing he thinks about with you is not being hurt or intimidated is that he can make some money with you he could solve some problems with you nobody like with my father and sous-vide nobody could push on you i'm cerebral now but why is it why is it such a stretch of the imagination now that people don't keep their word um why is it kind of like oh you look at the matthew and you know we're looking at we're not trying to glorify or romanticize it but you know this is the mafia but it takes an illegal operation to talk about being a man of your word keeping your honor and respect why don't we see that in normal relationships well you don't have the same fear factor i guess i don't need a contract first of all i don't want to have a contract with you because the next thing my name is on your paperwork you got the irs you the government everybody's bothering you so i want to stay away from that and let you have a free thing but if you want to turn around and try to just cheat me then you'd say well here's a little dangerous now i'm being a [ __ ] jerk off to do what i'm doing and maybe he won't hold back so you have that that fear factor maybe in it a little bit and then you turn around if you're any kind of a man and say well he lived up to his word with everything why would i treat him why would i do anything so it has both it starts off with the fear factor of the mafia itself i guess and uh you know it doesn't hurt you to have that reputation or name or backing so i think that opens the door and then once they start to deal with you it happens just like doing some of these interviews you know i guess when i first got out of prison i mean nobody wanted to sit with me and talk with me now there's people in herds who want to talk to me because they know i'm fair in the situation and i talk like a normal human being and i'm not looking to hurt people i'm not looking to do anything so it's it's that reputation that that follows you what kind of a person are you you're a cheater you're a liar but it's okay when you're making money to to to be honorable and to be respectful because everything's going well but you were telling me about a situation with a a jewish partner that you had where it didn't um but you saw long game potential so tell us about that well there was a jewish guy who called me up i know we did some work together and he says i have a job sammy i like to give you a piece of the job with me a partnership small not a major piece but 10 12 whatever it was and i said all right we could do that and he knew he was wise enough to know his union problems or any kind of problems i would be able to stop them and i did have construction businesses that were able to do the work i had a drywall company i had 200 carpeters that were working for me so i was able to go in and do the work successfully in a very quick manner i mean you can't get too many guys and he called me up one time he said this week they're breaking my chops i need about 20 30 guys to come down and do what they want me to do before i can get in my next check and this and that and the other thing so i went to the guy i was partners with a guy named joey madonia joey let's take some guys pull them off for jobs put 20 or 30 guys on his uh job right away and we did he was flabbergasted how are you going to get 30 guys overnight to come in there and and bang the job out and so he can get his payments so this is you know a way that i work my business so i'm taking care of the street end i'm taking care of what work i can do there's drywall i had plumbing companies had a few different kinds of companies but we just lost money he called me up he said sammy the job was they called it a bastard everything that could go wrong went wrong so he said we're going to take a beating i was sitting with my brother-in-law eddie and he was a maid guy and i was a speaker phone and he said uh we're going to take a beating so i said all right how bad do you think it's going to be my end he said sammy it could be two 250 000. so i said all right let's get in there let's try and salvage some money let's you know work hard end the job maybe we can lower that number and we'll see what we're doing okay sammy thanks you're so my bun law said you're not thinking of paying him i said why not he said well he's a jew and there's no contract what is he going to do he can't do nothing no it's true he can't do nothing but uh if i do that who would ever go partners with me again that that'll be my reputation he's there for the take but for the loss he's waving goodbye who's ever going to deal with me again no it's your choice i know it's my choice i'm just asking you a question your advice you're giving me and otherwise don't pay him so i said i appreciate your advice but um i paid him and uh a couple of my guys thought it was pretty interesting a couple of weeks a month later i got another job a friend a guy another jewish guy who's friends with him and uh he says i got a job he said sammy uh maybe i could talk to you about so i said sure he says i heard you were on that job you took a pretty good beating yeah yeah we lost money he said i heard you lost like 350 000 you personally i said no it was really about it was 246 250 000 something like that it wasn't that 350. he says all right i'd like to offer you a piece on my job i you know i think this is going to be a winner you know could use your talents you can get the blueprints and bid the job the the drywall and you're gonna get it and i took the job and end result long story short we made seven hundred thousand on that job so i told my brother see now do you think they're friends if i would have told him no that's your loss you think this guy would have called me and gave me a piece of his job so you saw the long game in it i saw the long game in it i'm showing him the long game but he's more of a swindler so he wants to just you know in and out now you actually were the um under boss and this isn't revelation it's all written out it's all out there on the internet uh and it's in your book the underboss um you were the underboss to john gotti and the the gambino family correct yes um in that society the one thing you had to do was to keep your head down your mouth shut and keep out of the limelight yeah you were dealing your boss loved the limelight loved the media how did you respond to that well i'll be honest with you it wasn't just me the whole family didn't like it the whole mafia didn't like it end result when he got pinched with his tapes and all this [ __ ] every boss got hurt they made cases left and right now there's another a judge just did a book and people are coming out with stories on the government end and they saying in their stories that john what he did rubbing his finger in the government's eye yeah teflon don motivated the whole government the fbi dea marshals new york state they all joined together to attack not only him but the whole mafia in new york so his actions hurt every boss every under boss every councillor every family in new york and as of today that's a given fact this is the government talking about it they loved what he was doing right because he gave them the mafia on a silver platter that wasn't the smartest thing now you've you've come out of witness protection um you've served your time um you're now out there you i know you're working on movies you're working on shorts um how are you now going from a career of being in the shadows to actually being in media now doing podcasts doing speaking engagements how has that transition been for you to actually get into learning social learning tik tok learning instagram learning the the modern day of distributing your message through multimedia platforms well my son i'll be honest with you started the whole thing my wife was doing some work and she said sammy i got people who want to do a podcast would you help me would you talk about your story your life and i said i'll do whatever i could do to help you and i started doing a podcast my son put me on instagram and facebook and then he put me on youtube then he told me one day when i was getting all kinds of phone calls i said why am i getting all these phone calls and why is my phone popping all over the place and i didn't even know how to operate it well because i had just gotten out of prison after almost 18 years they didn't have these kind of phones i never even saw things like that yeah computers i'm lost with that stuff and then he started laughing he says i put your name out i opened you up these channels and then he was helping me with it and it became almost like a business so i hired people and i just kept going forward in this area i figured this would be a good retirement thing for me to do and uh how do you know i'm 77. good shape did you work out a lot still i do a little bit not as much because i get very sore but i've worked out on and off all my life i never really got out of shape in prison i worked out and i still i do a little walking i go to the gym i do a little swimming in the pool but nothing really heavy anymore right and um so and i keep myself in shape when i put on a couple of pounds i start paying attention to it i watch what i eat do a few extra sit-ups or push-ups or whatever that's good you know that type of stuff we had we had a meeting yesterday and there was a young lady at the end of this meeting she was doing a q a when we were interviewing uh you yesterday and she actually said what would you and it was quite compelling it dropped the entire room she said what would you say to your younger self if you could have gone back and had a whisper in your ear on that corner what was it you said would i answer yeah i don't even remember what i said she said what would you say to yourself when you said don't do it don't don't don't do it right right i remember that answer yeah yeah that was that that kind of we had gone through yeah we've we've got we've got a lot of footage there's going to be a lot of uh this on another podcast but is there any part of that life whether it be the clothes the camaraderie people having your back the respect the power any parts of those things you miss no i know i don't need violence to have that power i have it now i'm i'm dealing with it again but i'm dealing with it in a legitimate way i don't have to threaten people i mean i what i i'm doing the same thing i did in business then i'm doing it now i'm living up to my word i'm doing the right thing um i'm producing things i'll show you i'll give you an example i was doing the podcast and they gave me ear things and a microphone in my face and there was no cameras no video no nothing they said talk and i did my first one like that and i said why isn't there a camera why why aren't we videoing well they don't do podcasts like that good i want a video i want to do it differently and i think i broke the ice with that because i started doing that with a video and you could look back in time and see and then i start saying why isn't there music and sound in this thing this if this is a show how come it's just drab me talking why isn't there sound and video on my podcast talking about my life we don't do that yeah but i want to do it and we did it so i i've been like that all my life and i'm doing that now now we're making shorts you mentioned shorts i'm making shorts it's like a movie in itself but they're in 10 or 12 14 minute little clips one after the other and uh i saw a few of them and it looked like a joke to me and then i saw one that shocked me um there was people playing cards this guy came into the game and uh they don't know him but they're dealing with him and he brings up a story about he knows that they committed a robbery and uh on the way out of the store they bunk right into a 15 year old kid and they shoot him and kill him because maybe he'll be a witness and this guy comes to the game and he's talking to them and he tells them about these three idiots who stuck up a stall and on the way out they put a couple in his chest a 15 year old kid not even in the prime of his life yet they took his life so they they did the score so they're nervous like who the [ __ ] are you he takes out a gun he kills them all and he does talking so i saw this video and i said this is great it's a dark room there's no set there there's no nothing it's just these people sitting at the table why can't we do something like that so where did that creativity come from because we've spoken before and you have a you have an ability to look at something like any entrepreneur which is exactly what you were you look at it and you go hang on a minute how can we make that better how can we do this how can we add video how can we add sound you you have this natural uh gravitation to change the way the norms being done was that creativity always with you no i listen i when i went to prison you know i had a lot of time to do and uh i wanted to do something i didn't want to do the same [ __ ] everybody's doing in prison and a guy a couple of friends i made there uh we're doing artwork i can't even draw a stick figure so i'd say how do you do that it was all charcoal and i watched them do it a couple of times and one of my friends said sammy you want to try it yeah you know i think i would like to try it and i he told me what to do and how to do it and i tried to do it and it was a little tough it didn't look that good and um then i started practicing and uh i got better and better but i would get frustrated when i made a mistake and rip it up and throw it away and they said whoa oh sammy don't do that you're good you got to the point where you got stuck stop don't rip it up that's good work leave it alone and call us and we'll help you where you're stuck so i always worked with somebody and had somebody come in and help me where i was stuck and i started doing work and the work was good i did pictures of al capone which i think you saw i saw yesterday and i have uh a princess and stuff i you know i i did a thing of muhammad ali and uh i did it and i couldn't get the hair for the life of me you know i couldn't a black man i couldn't get the hair so a guy says here's how you do it listen to me he says his whole head get the black charcoal do the whole thing black and use your thumb because there's natural oils and move it around and leave it alone so i did that then he got me a sponge small sponge he dipped it in the water squeezed it out not dry but it was still damp and put it on his head don't press too too hard just a little bit of pressure i did it he showed me i hold my hand and then he said now take it off lightly i took it off and it had all little like white spots and it was perfect it was look like a you know a a short haircut on a black man and that picture i should have kept that one but i didn't it came out perfect really it was i think one of the best ones i did and a black friend of mine came to me and he said sammy says my father loves him muhammad ali could i buy this off here i said no i don't want to i don't think i want to sell it and uh he was begging me for it so i said all right you know what give me 25 bucks and uh buy buy me some commissary 25 worth the commissary i'll give you a list that i gave it to i made such a mistake because it was really really that good i mean i could have probably made a bundle on it now knowing i came out and i'm doing all this and i'm selling picture some of my artwork i lost that but it was one of the best ones i did but i was stuck in certain areas you know hair is a problem doing uh fingers certain things in the artwork but i learned how to do the eyes the nose the lips you know and after a while you get the knack for it i'm i'm i'm hearing what you're saying but i'm also hearing something else in the stories that we've been chatting about um and learning about your past learning about the gangs learning about the mafia learning about your crew when you were giving us some of the experiences of you know the hits and things you had to get involved in and now you're talking about your artwork every single one of those stories was i had these people that had my back i had this crew that looked they went there they helped me out with that this guy helped me you've always been a team player there's a misconception that you are a lone wolf you went out on your own and even when you were talking to me about some of the more colorful chapters of your life yesterday you weren't alone you had people that had your back you had people that were driving was it innate in you from an early stage that hey you got to do more when you had people around you you could trust oh absolutely i mean and and you need a team player you know it's just like here we could talk deaf dumb and blind and we could do a great job but him doing the recording that guy over there doing the editing or the sound i mean they're part of us they're part of our team there's a team behind us yeah if they're if they're not there you know that you don't see them that are behind the camera but if you don't have their greatness with us then this is nothing we can talk you could hear it you know but you know so you always need a team you always need people around you that are doing things helping you with what you're doing you know and you know i'm going to give you an example one time like you said well how do you know how do you describe different people how do you know if they're good people bad people or this that the other thing and i always been blessed with a few things i'll give you an example one day john gotti was going to have a meeting with a guy and it was a pretty important meeting so i usually sit with the table but i got up and i went get coffee in the other room and uh i hear john call me sammy well come here come here sit over here next to me all right he says i'm gonna meet with this guy tell me what you think just watch the meeting all right so i sat there had a cup of coffee and uh he talked with the guy for about 15 or 20 minutes maybe a little bit longer and they said goodbye and the guy got up and left he said what do you think i said there was parts of the conversation he was lying how do you know he was lying i said he was holding the table his head was comfortable and you asked him a question that question you asked him he immediately moved sat up straight his eyes went low and his hand you could see the whites of the knuckles he was squeezing that table at that question he was super uncomfortable he didn't like it he had a little sweat starting to form on his between his nose and his lip his jawbone was moving up and down he's grinding his teeth he was terrified of that question and when you said okay that's good and you went further he started to relax he was lying you could tell tell sometimes body language looking in a guy's eyes he's looking in your eyes he's talking to you all of a sudden he's bowing his head and he's looking away that could be normal but it depends on the question and it depends on other reactions in his body why did you [ __ ] learn that i said i don't know it's just part of life dealing with people john i do sit downs left and right we're dealing with heavyweights dangerous people bosses and other things i'm sitting with i i have to read them and they're good at lying some of them so i've developed this little knack about it every time i want to meet with somebody get the [ __ ] over and sit at the table because we found out the guy was full of [ __ ] all right so you did oh yeah and john said bro anytime there was a meeting hey sammy come here have a seat that's good that is good look and i feel that i you know i do interviews for jobs or something and i could we ask questions uh richie who's one of them people who's very close to me and we he asks questions and i do the same thing i look at the person and i could see the expressions so many answers and i could the body language and uh i determine who like because i don't know the person from holding the law so i i try to look at that and in your past job it could have risked you being hurt yeah yeah you got to know what you're talking about when you're talking and what they're thinking and stuff like that and my son says i have another quality you could be asking me a question talking as i'm listening to you with this ear i'm already on the other side of my brain thinking of the answer so i could be quick with an answer even though i don't know what you're going to ask me and that's another quality i have that i'm able to listen try to you know see what i what i think of that question and how i'm going to answer it and why i'm going to answer it so i try to do that it doesn't always work but i try to do that as well i have that talent i can do i think you got that from the street i think so i think that when you're in those kind of serious meetings where it's life in debt and all kinds of [ __ ] you got to pay attention to every word every single thing when you're talking on that on that on that kind of level i think that's fantastic we've spent about three days together now uh and it's been it's been cool and i'm hoping it's not the last i've been impressed with the way you've been able to articulate what you learned from being part of a major organization how you've been able to transfer that to entrepreneurs um and how do you be able to transfer it to business owners and communication so i urge you to keep doing it i urge anyone out there thinking of uh getting a very interesting speaker to reach out to you um but uh i'm i'm very respectful of your time i know you've got to go somewhere else so sammy thanks for spending the time with me my pleasure the garcia pal stay tuned for the next one

Channel: Hassan Rasul

Views: 91,153

Keywords: sammy the bull, mafia, interview

Id: wS1llqF9PE8

Length: 39min 7sec (2347 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2022