Judge rejects elderly Gambino gangster's request for freedom

Judge rejects elderly Gambino gangster's request for freedom

  November 29, 2020    Dapper_Don

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Mob turncoat Sammy “The Bull” Gravano proved a far better witness for the prosecution than the defense.

The murderous ex-mobster’s bid to help spring an elderly Gambino family cohort jailed for life was left for dead by a federal judge — who drily noted gangster Frank “Frankie Loc” LoCascio’s sudden fondness for the long-reviled informant.

Gravano’s “embrace by LoCascio as his savior ... not vilified but reborn as a Mafia man of loyalty and credibility, will, I suspect have seismic reverberations in the annals of organized crime,” wrote Brooklyn Federal Court Judge I. Leo Glasser in a pointed and pithy 28-page ruling issued on Tuesday.

The lethal ex-crime family underboss sought to clear the imprisoned LoCascio for the cold-blooded October 1990 execution of Gambino mobster Louie DiBono on orders from family boss John Gotti, one of the crimes that led to racketeering convictions and life sentences for both mobsters.

Gravano emerged two years ago to offer his updated take on a wiretapped chat between Gotti and LoCascio prior to the mob hit, insisting Frankie Loc “had no role” in the parking garage killing beneath the World Trade Center.

Glasser scoffed at the claims in slapping down the 87-year-old LoCascio’s bid for freedom, noting Gravano didn’t attend the Dec. 12, 1989, meeting and remained an unlikely source of salvation for any Mafioso.

“(Gravano) was condemned as a rat and marked for death ... he was vilified in the harshest terms as a liar and every conceivable variation of that word,” wrote Glasser.

Ex-Gambino family boss Sammy "The Bull" Gravano at his home in Arizona. 

“But it would appear that the death sentence the law of LaCosa Nostra makes mandatory for a rat has a previously unknown exception for a rat who remembers a mind he read more than 30 years ago in aid of a former Mafia friend in prison.”

Gravano, whose devastating testimony led to the convictions of Gotti, LoCascio and another 35 mobsters, reversed paths two years ago by offering a new and exculpatory interpretation of a wiretapped conservation between his Gambino pals.

The ex-family underboss and admitted killer of 19 provided a Nov. 30, 2018, declaration asserting LoCascio “had no role in the planning of, nor did he participate in any way in the murder.”

But Glasser — who presided over the trial of Gotti and LoCascio — was dismissive of the new version, offering his own interpretation of the lethal chat described by the defense as an “ambiguous conversation” between the late Gambino boss and a trusted advisor.

He noted LoCascio said nothing after Gotti announced plans to whack DiBono over the doomed mobster’s lack of respect toward the boss.

“LoCascio’s utter silence upon that stark pronouncement bespeaks a wordless assent,” wrote Glasser. “That wordless assent was to a death sentence on DiBono, not because he committed a crime but worse — only because he did not come in when called by John Gotti.”

Frank LoCascio, (center) once the underboss of the Gambino crime family under John Gotti, flanked by Richard Martino (left) and alleged Gambino family captain Andrew Campos. This photograph was seized from Campos’s home in June 2019. 

DiBono, shot three times, was found inside his parked Cadillac De Ville beneath the Twin Towers. Gotti, during his recorded chat with LoCascio, famously explained why he wanted DiBono executed.

“You know why he’s dying?” said Gotti, who died behind bars in 2002. “He’s gonna die because he refused to come in when I called. He didn’t do nothing else wrong.”

Glasser had the last word in his decision to keep LoCascio behind bars, noting the gangster’s parting comment at his Brooklyn sentencing: “If there were more men like John Gotti on this earth, we would have a better country.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-sammy-the-bull-gravano-testimony-mob-locascio-20201129-n7apgpikqvb43lrhez3px4sy4q-story.html