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-Hey. -Hey.
-How you doin'? -[kisses]
-You look great. -Yeah?
I've lost some weight.
Yeah. Hey, but you look good, you look great.
-Hey. -Hey.
[kisses]
-Hey. Good seeing you. -Good seeing you. You look great.
All right, this is living room, take one. AB common mark.
-[man] And we are speed and set. -Rolling.
[man 2] Hey, Sam, do you want to pick up a photo there
and tell me what we're looking at?
This is a Christmas with my daughter and my son.
-[Gerard] Is that in Brooklyn? -I want to think that's Grandma and Grandpa's house
in Long Island.
And then this is you, got a little older.
We're on a boat.
-Those were, like, the best memories of my life. -That was amazing.
[Karen] This is my communion.
Gerard, look how short you were. [chuckles]
[Karen] Look how innocent you look, just young and innocent.
Did you ever go to confession and tell the priest your sins?
Mmm, yeah, I went to confession.
I told the priest, "You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine."
[Sammy] My name is Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano.
I'm a fucking gangster.
[man] On the right is John Gotti.
On the left, his trusted assistant Sammy the Bull.
Gravano committed 19 mob murders.
Like my father, I also believed in Cosa Nostra.
But then everything changed.
Am I a rat?
I took fucking 20 years to help my kids and my family. Is that a rat?
[Gerard] This is a story that we never allowed my father to tell.
[reporter] This is Phoenix, Arizona,
and this will be our armchair vacation
to The Valley of the Sun.
[Karen] When we moved to Phoenix
we were definitely fish out of water.
-[crowd cheering] -[Karen] But there was this whole underbelly
in the middle of the desert having rave parties.
[reporter] What keeps much of the action pumping, according to authorities...
-...is the drug ecstasy. -[woman whispers] Ecstasy.
[Gerard] I didn't come to Arizona to sell drugs but I was built for this shit.
I wanted to control the ecstasy scene here in Arizona.
But then some guys started undercutting us.
-[woman] It was Shaun. -[man] It was Shaun.
-[man 2] It was Shaun. -[man 3] It was Shaun who was the mastermind
to our ecstasy empire.
It's fuck or be fucked in this world.
[Gerard] This means fucking war.
It's not fun anymore. Now we're getting automatic weapons.
[man] Get down! Get down!
[man 2] It's like a fuckin' movie.
[Gerard] I was prepared to kill him.
-[thunder rumbling] -[Shaun] And then the name "Sammy the Bull" Gravano
entered my sphere.
I don't give a flying fuck.
We'll go to war [clicks] like that.
It was me and my family against the world.
[Gerard] When we moved to Arizona,
it was completely different than New York.
I grew up with people that would pick up a gun and shoot you in two seconds.
This is a story that I'm gonna tell
that we never allowed my father to tell,
me and my whole family...
...but let's start at the beginning.
We grew up in Staten Island.
A very, very tight-knit family.
This was my sister's birthday.
That's me.
That's my sister, and there's my father.
He was always present in our lives,
but at that time I really didn't know anything about what my father did.
[Karen] At the time, everything seemed normal to me.
I came home and I was surrounded by love, family.
My father was a provider, he was a protector, and he was a friend.
He was someone that I always knew
was gonna be there, no matter what,
so I didn't question much.
But then, at my sweet 16, I remember my friend told me,
"John Gotti's here."
It was at that point I realized my father's first family
was the Gambino family.
He was a gangster to the core.
He's Sammy the Bull.
[reporter] John Gotti and his underboss, "Sammy the Bull" Gravano,
are two of the most notorious and infamous figures
in the history of organized crime in America.
Gravano committed 19 mob murders,
but none were as expertly carried out
as the brazen 1985 assassination
of mob boss Paul Castellano.
[Gerard] I never judged what my father did for one second.
Back then, I also believed in Cosa Nostra.
If he killed someone they deserved to die.
They did something wrong or broke the rules.
Being surround by that life made me want to do the same things.
It made me want to go out and hurt people and commit robberies.
I wanted to be ready, I wanted to know how to handle it,
so I was 15 and boxed at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, New York.
I was in great shape, and I was fighting people,
and I was building this confidence within myself.
I started getting respected because I was the son of Sammy the Bull.
That gave me a sense of power
that I can do what I want to do...
...and there was gonna be no repercussion.
And then everything changed.
[reporter] In 1991, facing life in prison,
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano turned on his boss, John Gotti.
John Gotti, I, along with some others, murdered Paul Castellano.
John Gotti became the boss.
I became the official underboss,
which I held until I began to cooperate with the government in 1991.
[reporter 2] Sammy the Bull's testimony
was crucial in convicting the infamous mob boss John Gotti,
but it had also made him a prime target
for the criminal underworld.
This development is likely to have significant
and potentially dangerous repercussions.
[reporter 3] Despite admitting to 19 murders,
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano served only five years in lockup
before being released into the witness protection program.
They told my father he had to do two years
in the witness protection program in Colorado
and then he was done.
We never went to Colorado when he was there.
We weren't allowed to.
But me, my mother, and my sister
never went in the witness protection program.
We had nothing to do with it.
And we all stayed in New York.
And I had to take on the role as the man of the family,
and at that time I was about 17, but I was willing to fight.
I was on high guard.
I did get two guns and I carried them everywhere I went.
And I was gonna do anything I had to do to protect my family.
And then, a few months later, the FBI goes to my father.
They're like, "There was a hit put on Gerard."
They're gonna kill me to send a message to my father.
That was the plan.
My mother said, "That's it, I'm not doing this anymore. We have to leave New York."
So we decided to move to Phoenix
to be closer to where my father was in witness protection.
Before we left, we dug up my father's money.
I put it in the back of my truck,
and I was driving across country with 3 million cash.
[Karen] As soon as my father left the witness protection program,
which he was only in for seven months,
he came straight to Phoenix.
[reporter] Sammy the Bull's future whereabouts are uncertain.
However, given his past, he may not be the most desirable neighbor.
But if he can effectively conceal his previous identity,
his new neighbors won't know that living in their midst
is a man with a price on his head.
[Sammy] When I became a main member in the mafia
that was a high for me.
I was involved in three mafia wars...
...and I was involved in 19 murders.
I didn't like a hit but I was focused on it.
To me, the mafia was no different than being a soldier in the army.
I never killed a woman, a child, or people out of the life.
It was always people who broke the rules of Cosa Nostra.
You knew what it was.
But everybody knew the life...
...and they knew the consequences of the life.
I cooperated at one time in my life.
And I tell my family...
..."I broke the rule...
...and I could be killed at any time."
I came to Phoenix to be with my family.
I wasn't gonna just sit back and hide...
...so I kept my name.
My father gave me that name,
and that's the name I wanted to die with.
I didn't live with my family, I lived by myself
because I knew the mafia would come.
I had a .357 Magnum I always carried around under my belt.
There was four loaded guns in my apartment.
I was geared and ready for any fuckin' hit guy
who would have came down lookin' for me.
[Sammy] You cookin' up a storm?
-He hasn't started yet. -[Gerard] Yeah, I'm gonna make...
-He was waiting for you. -I'm waiting for you. I'll make some breakfast.
It's like when we first moved out here to Phoenix and started our new life,
and you finally came in and joined.
It was like we never tried to hide.
We got away from the mafia, we got away from everything...
-...we got away from our past. -[Gerard] Yeah, but there was always
-that possible threat of something happening. -Oh, yeah, of course.
Actually, when I first came to Arizona
I got concealed weapon permits, I bought two, three guns,
because I was the man of the house
-for a long time. -[Sammy] While I was gone, right.
[Gerard] And now you stepped back into that role.
My feelings is like, "Okay, now, what do we do?"
It was, again, we were reunited,
and it was us against the world.
[Sammy] When I came to Phoenix,
my thinking was no matter how much they do to us,
we survive...
...and we go forward.
I wanted nothing to do with my old life. I'm done.
I wanted a good life, clean life.
I was about to change my life.
So I started business, legitimate businesses.
I had a pool company, an excavation company, a construction company,
a restaurant, Uncle Sal's Italian restaurant.
Gerard was in culinary school, so my father thought this would be a great opportunity.
[Gerard] That's me cooking. Yeah, I was in good shape back then.
[Karen] We were trying to start a new life,
but one thing I will say, we were definitely fish out of water.
-Let's just put that out. -Yeah, no, no, we were.
It was totally different lifestyle from New York to Arizona,
especially at that time.
I felt like Phoenix was so slow.
Did you feel the same way, Gerard?
-Go out and see... -Yeah, the people I would meet
and they were wearing flip flops
and socks up to their knees.
It was a different world.
For me, I was lookin' to rebuild my life
and start from scratch.
[Karen] I remember saying to my brother,
"You have to start making some friends
and rebuild everything that we lost in New York.
We have to start rebuilding it here in Phoenix."
[Gerard] One night, I'm in my restaurant...
...and a friend walks in with this charming guy named Mike Papa.
He's from Long Island, he's Italian.
He was a good looking kid, he was very articulate.
I was told that he was going to ASU. He was a med student.
[Gerard] He walked in and sat down,
and he plops down $1,000 on the desk.
And I said, "What is that?"
He said, "It's a gift.
I want you to have this from me,
but I want you to come out with us one night."
So I said, "You know, why not?"
I took the 1,000, I put it in my pocket.
Next night, I go out with him.
We walk in to the VIP. The bouncer gives us this table.
He puts a bottle on the table. Everything is on the house.
I felt like I was back in New York.
[Karen] Who doesn't want to go out and pop bottles?
We came from a lifestyle like that in New York.
Anything we wanted, we got.
It's like that life that was ripped away from us just started coming back.
[Gerard] And at that point, I became fast friends with Mike Papa.
He's very popular in town and the club scene,
and everyone knew who he was.
And so going to these nightclubs,
I started to notice he was selling ecstasy.
I was closing up for the night,
and Mike Papa comes in and says,
"You know, I really cornered the market,
and if you come in with me we can really make some good money with this."
So I said, "What are we gonna make from 'em?"
"We'll make about 2, maybe 250 per pill."
And you're selling 30,000 pills a week?
That don't sound bad.
And, at that time, I was about 20, $30,000 in credit card debt,
so I had a motivation to go out and make fast money.
So I said, "What do you need from me?"
Mike Papa said, "We need a supplier.
We need to get this product cheaper."
-I knew people in New York and people I grew up with -[beeps]
that I was still very friendly with...
-...and I started asking around... -[telephone ringing]
..."Can we get ecstasy? What's the price?"
I was trying to get it cheaper.
Well, I did find someone.
I had it set up where I was gonna get 30, 40,000 pills.
But then, somehow or another, my sister found out.
[Karen] So now there's all this talk about New York.
"New York, New York."
Talking about he's gonna start
selling ecstasy because he has connections where he can get it in New York.
Gerard had left New York 'cause there was a hit put out on him.
So, I'm thinking, "If Gerard goes there...
...connects with the wrong person...
[gun firing]
...it's gonna be bad."
So, my instinct is to go to the man
that I go to whenever I'm in trouble,
and that man is my father.
My father was, obviously, a big gangster outside of the house,
but what he did outside of the house never reflected in the house.
He was such a good father.
He would bend over backwards if he knows that can he help me or Gerard.
[Sammy] I have a split personality,
part of me is a lion
and part of me is a lamb.
This is a great memory.
-Put 'em up, G. -Okay, Dad.
[Sammy] Here's what I did in a the mob,
when I was making money I bought a farm.
All right, Gerard!
And I bought them horses, and mini bikes, and chickens,
and you name it, it was a farm.
See, that's when they stop on my foot.
Friday night, I left the mob behind me
and I did this.
I found happiness away from a violent lifestyle.
When I was there I wasn't in the mafia.
I wasn't a hitman, I was a dad.
Look at the smile on his face as a kid.
And my son's like a cowboy.
Nice day on the tracks, Gerard...
I kept Gerard away from the mafia,
a lot of guys bring their kids in.
I'd never had intentions of bringing my son into the life.
So, when I heard Gerard was selling drugs
I was so angry, I wanted to get him outta that business.
[Gerard] I remember sitting in my house,
I was by myself, I was watching TV.
Next thing I know, my front door comes crashing in.
It's my father. He runs up to me, tackles me, and he's like,
"What the fuck are you doing? What are you thinking?
You wanna go to New York? You wanna fucking sell drugs?"
I said, "You can't come here and deal drugs."
[Gerard] He felt like I was going behind his back,
doing something that could affect him and the entire family.
I didn't want him going into New York for fear for his life.
[Gerard] And he shook me and he said,
"Do you wanna die?
I'll kill you if you wanna die.
I'm not gonna let anyone else kill my son. I'm not gonna allow it."
[Sammy] I tell ya, I'll kill ya myself.
I said, "I'm not asking you. I'm telling you, don't do it."
I was here in Phoenix and moved outta New York because of his choices.
But I never questioned his choices.
So me, I'm 22 years old, and he's in my house telling me what to do,
questioning my choices.
I didn't need him anymore.
And I wasn't gonna be told what to do.
And I told him that night,
if he wanted to go to war with me, if that's what he wished,
we can do so.
Listen, I don't give a flying fuck.
We'll go to war [snaps fingers] like that.
[Gerard] My father was so devastated that he just left.
I went to New York
I think I got, like, 30,000 hits of ecstasy.
I brought it back to Arizona.
We got rid of them in a week.
We made $90,000 profit.
I was very successful.
I didn't come to Arizona to sell drugs, but I was built for this shit.
I thrived in it.
At that point,
I wanted to control the ecstasy scene here in Arizona
and no one was gonna stop me.
But then one day, Mike Papa, started telling me
about some guy that's undercutting us.
And that his prices were considerably lower
and that we would not be able to compete.
And that's how I learned about the rave scene in Arizona.
[Karen] There's this whole underbelly,
this whole lifestyle of people,
that once the clubs close
they're in the middle of the desert having rave parties.
[Gerard] And the person who threw these raves was a guy named English Shaun.
He controlled the ecstasy trade in Arizona.
I told Mike Papa, "Let's talk to him.
Maybe we can get a better deal."
I'm not expecting to get them for what he's getting them for.
But I expected to get it cheaper and we could all be happy.
So we decided to contact English Shaun.
[Shaun] My mantra was, "Greed is good."
It's fuck or be fucked in this world.
Whatever it takes, I'm gonna make the most money,
whatever means possible.
At the peak of the criminal enterprise,
I had approximately 200 people working for me.
The profits over the years was over $5 million dollars.
And the street market value of those drugs
in the 10s of millions.
I controlled the ecstasy scene in Arizona.
One of my biggest markets was at a club called The Ice House.
The Ice House was the epicenter of the rave scene.
And it was there that my master salesman,
Schooly, made the most money.
[Schooly] This place is different.
A lot different.
I'm Schooly.
I was English Shaun's number one salesman.
We ran the ecstasy market
in Phoenix through this location.
Phoenix in the '90s was a very special place.
Raves were new to me and new to everybody around us.
It was like a wonderland.
There was a place where light wouldn't come in,
where you could step back in the shadows and nobody could see you.
They could see everybody else, but they couldn't see past the shadow line.
And that's where I would sell pills all night.
I could make $14,000, $15,000, $18,000 here in a night.
Like, my pockets would be out to here with money stuffed into 'em,
by the end of the night.
Everyone came to English Shaun's parties
'cause you knew you could get the best pills there.
But then everything started changing.
There was a guy that usually would get pills from us.
On day he said, "Hey, check these out."
And he had these other pills we had never seen before.
I'm like, "Man, where you getting these?"
All of a sudden a new type of ecstasy dealer starts to appear on the scene,
run by two guys called Gerard Gravano and Mike Papa.
These guys are massive, muscle bound,
steroid head, jock, type characters.
Probably not dressing like ravers.
[Schooly] They have tight shirts on, always gel in their hair.
Like, mafia wannabes.
The Sopranos must have been their bible
'cause that's how they all acted.
They were there to just...
make money and lift weights.
I don't know what the fuck those kids do.
[Shaun] They became the biggest threat to the organization.
[Gerard] Every time I reached out to English Shaun he refused to meet me.
The way I grew up, and it goes back to New York, there was that mentality
in my head that you're refusing to come in to talk to me.
And my feeling was immediate disrespect.
So, Mike Papa asked me, "Well, what are we gonna do?"
I said, "I'm not gonna let anyone disrespect me."
I said to Mike Papa, "Let's go to one of Shaun's raves."
I wanted to send a message back to Shaun,
so we go to The Ice House.
Wow. The Ice House.
I use to come here back in the day.
Me, and Mike Papa, a bunch of my friends.
I was on planet Mars when I walked in here.
It was a bunch of kids really, running around, waving glow sticks,
sucking on pacifiers,
they were like a bunch of babies jumping, bouncing off walls.
We used to just disperse and ask who was selling drugs.
This kid came running right up to us.
He's like, "What'd you want? I got this kind, this kind, this kind."
And I said, "Okay. I want more. Do you got more?"
I'm like, "I'll pay $20 apiece, I don't care.
I don't care, just get me a couple hundred."
He ran around the club probably gathered from all his little friends.
And he came back, he said, "I have this, this, and this.
Three different kinds, it's $200."
I said, "All right," and I just took 'em.
He said, "What're you doing?"
I said, "Go tell Shaun
that Gerard took his shit.
And if you don't walk outta here right now
I'm gonna send you outta here on a stretcher."
He turned around, left with his tail between his legs,
and I sent my message.
I shot my shot.
[phone ringing]
[Shaun] After I found out that one of my dealers
had been robbed by Gerard Gravano
I was so determined not to lose my grip on the empire.
At that time, in Arizona, my ego was a big as the Grand Canyon.
I was a character in the scene.
I've got all these people working for me.
I'm the man, Mr. Cool guy.
I was addicted to the lifestyle.
But rewinding my life back,
it's hard to believe that I ended up running
an international ecstasy trafficking operation.
I'm from a chemical manufacturing town just outside Liverpool
in the Northwest of England.
Didn't have much money growing up.
My dad was a door-to-door insurance salesman.
My mom was a stay-at-home mom in the beginning.
But for me, one of my early influences was watching the movie Wall Street.
Where Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko,
this corporate takeover artist.
Greed, for lack of a better word,
is good.
[Shaun] So, I wanted to concur the stock market.
I was gonna go out there make these millions,
and become something far removed from what my father was.
Right now, we're on the M62 to Liverpool
where I was doing my business studies degree.
So, this road held promise for me
of, not just education
and forever prospects in the stock market, and my career.
But also [chuckling] eventually
the thing that completely changed my destine,
which was the rave scene.
[reporter] It's been called a youth-culture of 1988,
the new sound is called acid house.
And it's not just a type of music, it's a movement.
And it's fueled with the drug ecstasy.
[Shaun] So, when I saw these people on TV I'm thinking,
"I want some of that."
Because I was a shy, anxious teenager, no way would I dance.
The thought of dancing just mortified me.
And then that very first time I went to the Thunderdome, all that changed.
When I showed up at the Thunderdome
my mate scored some ecstasy.
He says, "You gotta neck the pill."
So, about 30 minutes in
the ecstasy starts to hit.
My body's getting all warm, my head's tingling,
I've got goosebumps on my arms,
it's tickling running up the spine,
my t-shirt feels like it's melting into my body.
I look up, I'm just smiling this massive grin.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
The whole room's moving this rocking motion.
We're doing this, doing this,
this, and this.
Finally, for my first time in my life,
I'm loving dancing.
I'm enjoying dancing.
I never want to stop dancing.
When I took ecstasy, all that stress and tension melted away.
From that moment on, raving became my religion.
I never wanted the party to end.
I sat my final exam for my degree coming down off ecstasy.
So, I had all these beeps and beats,
[mimicking rave music] going off in my brain
as I'm doing all these balance, and payments,
equations, pages and pages of calculus.
However,
I aced the test.
I've got my education,
and all I can think about now is going over to America,
concurring the stock market, and becoming a millionaire by the time I'm 30.
My Aunt Sue lived in Phoenix.
So, in May 1991, I'm embarking on my journey to Arizona.
When I arrived in Phoenix
all I had was my student credit cards.
But I was so determined whatever it takes, I'm gonna rise up in America.
My first two years in Phoenix was a penny stock brokerage outfit,
I'm barely making ends meet.
I'm running out of money on my student credit cards.
But as we get to years three and four
I start becoming the guy who's getting the most leads.
[chuckles] And my commissions are going through the roof.
By 1996 I'm the top producer and stock broker.
My commissions for that year were over $500,000.
It was then that I realized the money was great.
But I was getting burnt out on the rat race, I needed an escape.
And then one night I went to the Silver Dollar Club.
Entering the Silver Dollar Club,
could feel the goosebumps on my arms
as I saw the DJ, strobe lights, hands in the air.
The music that I'd enjoyed in England was just creeping into the Arizona scene.
So I said, "We gotta get some ecstasy."
So, we're looking around and there was this big guy,
Moo his name was, with a bull ring through his nose.
And he's the guy who hooked us up with ecstasy for the first time in Phoenix.
So, as soon as that kicked in, then I was just right at home.
Dancing my ass off all night long.
Talking to strangers.
Meeting the DJs.
I was having the absolute time of my life.
Ecstasy was virtually impossible to source in Phoenix, Arizona.
The most we could get from the local dealers was 50 to 100.
In the beginning, I was just showing off
giving them to my friends for free.
But the demand for ecstasy is so high
I can't even get enough to hook up my friends.
So, I'm seeing that there is an arbitrage opportunity.
If we can find out where these guys are getting them from,
there's a possibility here of making a lot of cash fast.
Found out that the locals were getting them
from this surfer, gangster guy called Saul out of California.
Arranged a meeting with Saul and do my first
interstate, bulk ecstasy transaction.
And they were going for $25 to $30 back then.
Those pills were gone in one weekend.
Now I saw this other path of parting,
chemical fueled happiness.
A lure that completely demolished
the worth of wall street side of me.
That's when I made the decision to go full-time
and try making money from ecstasy and raves.
And that's when the guy nicknamed Schooly came into my life.
At the beginning, I'm like, "Hey, man. I wanna get a bunch of pills.
I wanna make some money.
Like, I really don't have a place to live, I need to get my hustle on."
[Shaun] He was living rough.
Smoking crack, eating out of dumpsters.
And people warned me to avoid him.
But my attitude was to give everybody an opportunity.
He said, "If you can get rid of these pills for me, I'll give you a job."
[snaps fingers] He sold 'em like that.
I think English Shaun first saw me as an investment.
And then it turned into a friendship,
and then into a brotherhood.
And we just hung out all the time, we partied together.
And we called each other Little Brother and Big Brother.
[British accent] Little Brother.
[regular voice] I could count on him for anything.
He got me out of a lot of problems and...
he did a lot for me.
He made sure I had a place to live,
he paid for everything, and in return, I made him a lot of money, you know.
[Shaun] With Schooly at my side
I was at the top of a multimillion-dollar monopoly.
But eventually all monopolies attract competition.
[Gerard] English Shaun was selling the finest.
This guy's gonna knock us outta business 'cause we can't even compete with him anymore.
So, to take out English Shaun's empire
I needed to step-up our supply.
Somehow we got on the road and go back and forth to New York.
That was just picking up 50,000 pills.
We were selling these things so quick.
I had different looking pills than Shaun's,
they were red and white, they were everywhere.
And everyone knew they were coming from me.
Shaun had to be feeling the pressure.
[Shaun] We started noticing a new flood of colored pills hitting the market.
I knew we needed to step-up our game.
So, I started flying Schooly directly to LA to ramp up our buys.
Pre-9/11 security was easy.
No dogs, no Homeland Security.
You could walk from your car to the gate without going through any security.
But in LA, any bag that you have
you have to send through the X-ray machine.
I'm trying to figure out a new way every time
to get these pills back on the plane with me.
Nobody can see anything taped to your legs
when you're wearing huge JNCO jeans going through security.
I could have probably taped a German shepherd [chuckling] to my legs and got through.
I got really nervous all the time
'cause I didn't know if this was gonna be the time that I go to jail or not.
But nothing ever happened.
I had a stack of plane tickets like this.
I don't know how many times I went to LA, probably 75-80 times.
[reporter] Ecstasy, the euphoric happy pills,
are the dynamic fuel that propel all-night rave parties
to go on, and on, and on.
Over the last two years America has seen a 71% increase in teen ecstasy use.
[reporter] Researchers are now linking ecstasy to fatal high blood pressure,
killer kidney trouble, and even deadly heart failure.
It's dangerous, it's addictive, it's deadly, and it needs to stop.
I didn't know anything about ecstasy until I got told that I was gonna supervise
a teenage enforcement squad
to try to lower the teenage drug use
in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
We actually inserted detectives in high schools
and did the whole 21 Jump Street thing.
Not knowing where it was gonna take us.
That's when we first found out about this ecstasy-rave-club-culture.
I always listened to '80s rock.
Some harder stuff like AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin,
and I'm from New Jersey, so of course Bruce Springsteen.
But this club, rave scene was not that, I can tell ya.
During our surveillance, I remember me parked outside one of the raves.
I just remember seeing the crazy lights,
and the thumping of that techno music just vibrating our whole car.
And we were like, "What in the heck did we get ourselves into?"
I think we were one of the first units in the country
that actually proactively went into the raves and started making buys.
Matt Shay's probably one of the best undercover officers I've seen.
I was just in my mid-twenties.
We had a lot of fun going out and making undercover buys.
Rose was on the same squad,
she's prefect for the part, this beautiful, young, narc.
Super easy for her to get in with a crowd, she fit right in.
As a young child I wanted to be a Charlie's Angel,
and so it was fun being somebody else.
Did my hair up goofy like.
Put some, you know, pink in there.
And just kinda made ourselves free-loving, I guess, you could say.
During the investigation I worked undercover at The Ice House.
When I came in I was just shocked.
It was just super-crazy loud.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. Over and over again.
'Cause they were using ecstasy.
A lot of them were underage 17, 18, 19 year olds.
Pretty much as soon as we walked in
people started coming over and asking, do we want anything.
And we just started making buys.
[James] We didn't make arrests right away.
One guy would come to a rave with 1,000 pills
and put 'em in the hands of 20 kids
and then let them go out and sell.
So, we were trying to identify the next level up.
[Rose] When we started asking around about who was behind the drugs,
the same guy kept coming up over and over again.
And that was English Shaun.
[Matthew] He was a major supplier of ecstasy.
He was an entrepreneur in drug dealing, right?
He provided the whole package.
And hand over fist, he made a ton of money.
But he's not the only guy that sells ecstasy in this town.
[Rose] During the investigation we found out there was another seller
infringing on English Shaun.
[James] And that's how we ended up bouncing into Mike Papa.
Mike Papa was involved in a variety of crimes,
and one of those crimes is selling drugs
in the metro Phoenix area.
[James] So, when we started looking at Mike Papa we were in a whole different league.
You know, they didn't go to raves,
they didn't go to that lower-end street level stuff.
They were in the high-end clubs in Scottsdale.
[Rose] He was more about money, and looks, and being important.
He was not about partying and looking like a raver.
[James] That was a phone call that we captured
on our wire tap form Mike Papa's phone.
That call was significant because Mike Papa's phone
was registered back to Marathon Construction.
So, another detective and I went to that location to do some surveillance.
I was looking through binoculars
and I was like, "Oh, my God!
I can't believe it.
It's Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano."
[Matthew] That's fantastic, yeah.
Bring him on in Phoenix and drop him down on top of us
and then leave him alone. That's a great idea.
The investigators thought,
"All right, if Sammy's gonna come and play in our sandbox
then we're gonna get him dirty."
[Gerard] I'm gonna tell ya a story about Dad.
My father, he never sold drugs his entire life in the streets.
And he could've made millions of dollars selling drugs.
He never did it.
When I was in a powerhouse, in New York,
drugs were coming in, heroin, I was never involved.
I didn't want that kinda heat or those kinda people.
[Gerard] Look, now his son is selling drugs.
Obviously, he knew. He stayed away a little bit.
I guess he was probably trying to think how he could approach
the situation in a different way to get me to stop.
And then, one day, he came to me and said,
"Hey, how can I help you get outta this whole thing?"
And I didn't want him going to New York anymore.
[Gerard] I said, "Okay, you want us out of this,
we need to make about three or four big buys, we need cash."
We needed a $150,000 per buy.
I would've never accepted that back in Staten Island.
But I became a little more liberal than I normally was.
I didn't wanna bully him or do anything like that.
I wanted him to understand that for himself to wanna pull away.
So, I said, "Listen.
if I fund four deals,
four big deals,
would you give me your word that you guys would quit?
You'd have a pocket full of money
and then come with me in a legitimate businesses."
[Gerard] He explained that there's heat that comes with this,
there's long prison sentences.
You can't do this for a long period of time.
So, four deals and then you're done.
But I want interest on my money.
Like, I would lend it out as a gangster.
Yeah, of course my father was gonna take his cut off of it.
My father's still who he is. He's still Sammy "The Bull."
[Gerard] And we all sat there and agreed.
And I funded four deals.
[Gerard] With my father's money,
me and Mike can now muscle into Shaun's LA connection.
[Shaun] Gerard Gravano and Mike Papa
expanded their source from New York to LA.
So, I did something radical.
I'm thinking, "We need to take this to Holland."
[reporter] Amsterdam is a lesser-known side
the tourist guides tend to omit.
Over 90% of ecstasy is manufactured in Holland.
Shaun started to look to Amsterdam to find pills.
And they were less than half the price,
they were $2 or $3 a pill versus $8.50 a pill.
Somebody just had to fly over there and get 'em.
[Shaun] We had people fly over to Holland,
picked up the pills,
flew to Mexico City,
and brought in the pills over the Arizona border from Mexico.
Shipment sizes increased from the 5,000 to 10,000 I could get out of LA
up to 10s of thousands of pills per load.
The most we brought in was 40,000 pills stacked in computer towers.
So, you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars profit.
In the beginning, we were wrapping the money, it was going into sports bags.
But the money started coming in so fast
I had to figure out strategies to launder it.
To maximize my profits,
I drew on all of the knowledge I'd gleaned
from my business studies education.
I flew people from the UK, opened bank accounts in their names,
opened stock market accounts in their names.
And once that money went into that account
it then went into a spider's web of various accounts
in the stock market.
It's been said that I ultimately ended up
with a case of gangster capitalism.
I would never consider myself a gangster.
I would say that I was a business graduate nerd
that had a huge case of gangsteritis.
And gangsteritis
means that I've watched too many movies
and TV programs like Miami Vice and Scarface.
I was attracted to the adrenaline, and the buzz,
and the glamorization of that world.
Myself and my friends would joke
we're living like characters out of a movie.
Blah, blah, blah, we'll never get caught.
We had all of these grandiose delusions.
[reporter] While illegal drug laboratories persist in producing ecstasy
Congress has recently enforced stringent new prison sentences
for those engaged in trafficking drugs.
There's no doubt about where these raves are.
In the middle of the desert.
Arrest the promoter.
[James] We had two investigations going on at the same time.
And then when Sammy "The Bull" popped up during a surveillance
the Gravano investigation became our main focus.
Once we knew that Marathon Construction
was associated with Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
we went out there, 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning,
and break into his office and install some art bugs.
[phone ringing]
[James] As our investigation advanced,
we started learning what their daily habits were
and some of the important locations.
Marathon Construction, the second being Sammy "The Bull's" apartment.
And then, Uncle Sal's Restaurant, which is in Scottsdale.
They would do drug deals
either in the front parking lot or the back parking lot.
It was an excellent place for us to be able to identify
different members of the organization interacting with each other.
It was right out of a movie about mobsters, quite honestly, right?
They would all come in,
shake hands, and have a great time.
Sit in the back and allegedly discuss business and whatever else.
[operatic music playing]
[Gerard] At this time, our sales dropped dramatically.
We were now only selling 10,000 pills a week.
And I knew English Shaun was selling up to 140,000 a week.
I knew a couple of his dealers and I called them in.
We told 'em, "Tell English Shaun
Arizona is ours.
Every pill he sells from here on out
he needs to pay us 50% on every pill he fucking sells."
So, they went and brought that message to him.
[Shaun] I heard that Gerard and Papa were threatening to tax my sales.
I had to take this threat seriously
because his operation was being funded by none other than...
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
I'm thinking, "What the hell is going on here?" I couldn't believe it.
In my mind, I'm running the calculation.
Sammy "The Bull," he's wacked a bunch of people,
but he's no longer with the mafia.
I wasn't going to backdown, but I knew I needed to increase my security.
This picture is myself and Wild Man, my best friend from childhood.
Wild Man always had my back. He would take a bullet for me.
And as crazy as it sounds,
growing up, Wild Man reminded me
of a character from one of my Marvel Comics.
This maniac that's got these massive muscles and brute force strength,
who's about to crush Ironman's head in with this rock
symbolizes Wild Man.
So, I flew Wild Man from England to Phoenix.
[Schooly] He fit that role, it worked out so well.
You owed money, Wild Man would go collect.
If there was a problem
or somebody was threatening you,
you brought Wild Man with you.
I've seen him...
hit people and knock 'em five feet into a refrigerator.
I mean, he was a big
brick shithouse.
[Shaun] Now, we had a protective shield.
But I was wondering how long the peace would last.
[Schooly] I was at a club one night,
two kids came up to buy pills.
Went to the bathroom to make the deal.
Stuck my hand in my pocket to get the pills and next thing I know...
I'm lying on the floor.
And I'm like, "What the fuck just happened?"
I was knocked out.
Two of 'em sucker punched me.
Checked my pockets, my money was gone, my pills were gone.
I'm like, "Ah, hell no. This is some bullshit."
[Shaun] When information came in
that some of the Gravano people linked to the attack on Schooly were our property
Wild Man jumped up and said, "Let's go over there right away.
Nobody fucking rips the English off!"
Four car loads showed up to this house, 12 o'clock at night.
[Shaun] There was a bunch of us armed to the teeth.
[Schooly] One person knocked on the door, soon as they opened the door
everybody in the house.
[Shaun] So, we're charging into this house.
Guns drawn.
It's almost like your brain goes in slow-motion.
And I can hear Wild Man yelling, "Don't fucking move!"
It's like a fucking movie.
We went through every room. We took everything outta that house.
PlayStations, VCRs, TVs, shoes.
I mean, if it was worth $5 it came outta that house into somebody's car,
we cleaned that house out.
We didn't get the drugs back, but we got everything they owned.
[Shaun] And we just took off into the night after that.
When I found out, my first reaction was anger and rage.
And everyone's looking at me, like, "What are you gonna do?"
The way I grew up, this is how people get killed.
I said, "Okay."
I put the word out there to everyone I knew,
the second someone sees English Shaun to call us.
I need to know where he's at, I need to find him.
I can't be disrespected. Everyone was watching, everyone.
So, one night I got a phone call
telling me that English Shaun was at the Crowbar.
Four, five of us got in the car, we headed down to the Crowbar.
I had two or three guns on me and I had a shovel in the back of my car.
Plan was to walk up to him, choke him out, put him to sleep,
carry him out, put him in the car.
I was prepare to kill him and bury him in the desert.
[Gerard] We pull right up to the Crowbar.
We all walked in,
place was crowed, people dancing.
We were looking for English Shaun.
But I couldn't find him.
He was gone.
[Shaun] It's downhill from there, it just gets more and more dangerous.
I no longer felt safe living in the Phoenix area.
[Schooly] Everybody got real protected.
And everybody's getting violent
and it's not raving, it's not fun anymore.
Now it's...
who's gonna get shot? Who's gonna get kidnapped?
Like, who's gonna get robbed? Like... And this is an everyday thing.
Everything was falling apart.
And then, I was told that Sammy "The Bull" had a hit out on me.
They were offering $10,000 for my head on a silver platter.
Now, I was having dreams at night of people bursting through the door,
putting a gun to my face, taking me out to the desert.
I was in a living hell.
I was doing more drugs and the side effects were rising in the background.
Paranoia,
the malnourishment, the sleepless nights,
the mental deterioration.
Everything just seemed to go down all at the same time,
my organization and my psychology.
[Schooly] And now Gravano's were flooding the market with 1,000s of pills,
so our business dried up.
Like, the money wasn't there anymore.
They took all the market. They killed our empire.
[Rose] We knew that Mike Papa and Gerard pushed English Shaun out.
And Gerard became the king of ecstasy with Sammy as the money behind it.
[James] During our Papa and Gravano wiretap
we were getting circumstantial stuff
through Gerard's phone, Mike Papa's phone.
And then, we had a breakthrough.
[James] Mike Papa was negotiating an ecstasy deal with a supplier in LA.
[James] The deal was for around $140,000 or 25,000 ecstasy pills.
[James] The next day, when the confirmation was made to meet the courier
we followed Mike Papa to a parking garage.
This meeting and purchase with the supplier by Papa
was gonna be monumental in our case.
We're gonna get one shot at this and we need to make it happen.
The courier had the red duffle bag with the pills.
We watched those drugs go from the courier to Papa.
And then, the courier getting out of Mike Papa's car
with the bag full of the $140,000.
You know, in my head I'm thinking,
"Okay, we got Papa, the courier,
locked down from that deal in the conspiracy.
Let's see who we get next."
After the meeting, we continually tracked Mike Papa.
We were hoping that he would go back to where Sammy Gravano was.
And that's exactly what he did.
We knew he had the red duffle bag with the pills.
And we saw him go into Marathon Construction.
There was another plus that,
"Hey, we're getting closer to getting Sammy wrapped up in this whole conspiracy."
Ironically enough, it was Sammy's mistake
that really solidified everything and did him in.
This call was significant because it showed that Sammy
was an active participant in financing the ecstasy drug deals.
When he had an argument with Debra, his ex-wife.
[James] Sammy made a miscount on the next $70,000 deal
and he called Debbie and he said, "Hey, I'm counting it, it's short."
She said, "It shouldn't be. You know, I counted it myself.
Gave it to your daughter, Karen. She brought it to ya."
And, you know, at the same time
we have the hardwired bug in Marathon hearing the money counter running.
Continuous slapping of the money sorting through.
He ends up counting it again and the recount, you know, he counts it right.
[James] Sammy making that miscount and associating with his family on the phone
was pivotal in our case.
His miscount really solidified that he was financing the purchase of the ecstasy.
But shortly after that call
he heard an electric screwdriver that we felt was very close to our bug.
[screwdriver whirring]
Right after the stop of the electric screwdriver
you could hear Sammy get agitated
and then start singing really loud in Italian.
[Sammy singing]
[James] And then, walk out the back door.
[Karen] We were all in the office and my father had called us outside.
We went in the back of the Marathon Construction office and he said,
"Something is going on.
I feel it, there's a presence here.
I don't know if it's the mob from New York,
I don't know if cops are following,
but whatever you guys have, if you have anything in the house,
anything's going on, make sure it's done.
I don't want it around me, I don't want it around any of us."
And everyone agreed.
[Sammy] I was in bed.
And I had a little dog, he was 6-pounds.
He'd sleep with me in the bed, right between my legs, hanging out.
And I hear him growling.
Hair's up on his back and he's growling.
[dog barking]
So, right next to the bed I had the .357 Magnum.
I picked it up,
I moved the blinds a little bit,
and when I moved the blinds...
Police! On the ground!
[Sammy] ... SWAT teams came crashing in.
Kicked, punched, banged down to the ground.
I could see out of the corner of my eye the dog was fucking flipping out.
[dog barking]
I understand there was 200 cops,
helicopters, armored vehicles to arrest me.
By myself.
When they opened the door I had put the gun down, I had nothing.
But underwear.
I don't know what they thought I was,
but I think it was more of a show.
[James] After we arrested Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
we got him down to our processing center
and he immediately started
scanning all the paperwork on the desk.
Trying to evaluate, you know, how bad it is or what's going on.
So, I started telling everybody, "Hey, flip the papers over."
He looked up at me right then and said, "So, you're running this whole show?"
And I think my reply was,
"No. I'm just a working man like you, Sammy."
When they took me in I walked passed cages.
In one cage I saw my son,
I saw my daughter,
I saw my ex-wife.
I see my whole family in different cages.
It broke my heart.
It really did, it broke my heart.
My official charge was illegal use
of an electronic communication in a drug transaction.
They believed that I was someone that passed messages
from my father to the street organization.
I got probation because I didn't have priors.
They didn't really have too much on my father, but they had a lot on Gerard.
The fucked up thing about this whole thing is when we all got arrested
my father had nothing to do with this, they had very little to go on with him.
He may have been looking at six years.
I'm looking at 40. I'm dead-cold.
I'm wiretaps, there's no way to get outta this whole thing for me.
But then, the Federal Government got involved
and everything went crazy.
[James] The FBI were so mad that Sammy went back to crime.
And, frankly, I felt like they got a little egg on their face.
The most importance to them was charging Sammy.
They told me right away that, "We want this guy. We wanna prosecute him."
Sammy "The Bull" was the money behind the operation.
was definitely the face.
[detective speaking]
When I look at that, that's bullshit.
And that's a threat.
I would like to be sitting
in front of that cop...
...with my .357 Magnum
pointed in his fucking face,
and say, "Do you wanna cooperate with me now before I pull the trigger?"
He will be number 20.
[detective speaking]
This kid, he broke before he got in the room.
He didn't even get a slap in the face.
Mob guys in New York,
you gotta kick their balls around a little bit...
...for them to break. When you're facing a slap in the face,
take the slap, motherfucker.
[Karen] People would look at that and say he's a rat, right?
I look at it and say he's a snake
because I think this was something
that he was always planning on doing
if he got in trouble.
[Gerard] He knew he was gonna do that the day he met me.
In that restaurant Uncle Sal's,
when he introduced himself to me,
and I agreed to go out with him,
he already knew he was gonna do that.
He had his mind made up.
He had a get out of jail free card.
And he was gonna betray me no matter what.
From the day I started to the day I got arrested was six months.
Even at the age of 77,
if I can get off this chair quick enough,
I will probably break the fucking chair
right over his head.
Not so much what he did to me.
What he did to my son
who treated him like a brother.
[Rose] When it came down to everything,
Mike Papa ratted out Sammy,
which is ironic because Sammy did that do to the Mafia.
What do you want me to say about this? This is bullshit.
I cooperated because John Gotti did something
that was a rat move.
His defense was trying to say
that I was killing everybody and taking over everything.
So the theory was I would go away and he would go free.
In my mind I said, "Then fuck you, fuck the Mafia,
and I'm leaving, and I'm gonna switch sides."
Whatever happens, happens.
So I decided to walk the fuck away
from the Mafia and him.
Now, can I get rid of this fucking thing?
Now, even with Mike Papa,
my lawyers were telling me, "You could beat this,
but they're gonna bury your son.
Your wife is pinched.
Your daughter is pinched."
When I asked the lawyer, "Then what do they want?"
"They want you, Sammy.
They want you to say you're the boss of it.
They want you to say you ran it all,
you took over Arizona,
you did everything."
[Gerard] And they told him, "You need to take 20 years,
and we'll let your wife, your daughter go,
we'll give your son a light sentence,"
which 10 years to them was a light sentence.
"But you have to take 20 years."
And I told my lawyer, "Make the deal. I did it all."
And that's exactly what I did.
Am I a rat? I took fucking 20 years
to help my kids and my family. Is that a rat?
He didn't sacrifice himself the first time with John Gotti,
wouldn't do it for nothing.
But for his family, he fell on the sword.
I think we all have to admit
that we have not stopped
the flow of ecstasy with this case.
What we have done with this case
is shut down a major drug organization
that was operating in this valley,
and hopefully send a message that, um,
we will take action.
[Shaun] "Sammy the Bull" Gravano's ecstasy operation
had brought unnecessary heat to the ecstasy scene in Arizona.
So I retreated to an apartment in Scottsdale
and didn't even let most of the people I used to associate know
where I lived.
But Schooly, Wild Man, and his girlfriend, Wild Woman
remained in Phoenix's drug-fueled world.
The closest people to English Shaun at the time
would be me, Wild Man, and Wild Woman.
She really caused me more problems than anything.
She was a pain in the ass, honestly.
This apartment is Wild Woman's apartment.
This building has had so much drugs run through it.
He didn't hide anything, it was out in the open.
She had 300 people a day running in here, day, night.
We were gonna get arrested because of her.
Everything was gonna fall apart because of how many people
she had running in and out of this place.
I never said anything to English Shaun about that
'cause at that time, Shaun and I were on, like, the fringe
because Wild Woman started to kinda come in between me and Shaun.
She started to cause a riff.
She was making up stories about me, like,
to make him like her more than me.
I just thought, "This dude's abandoning me,
he's replacing me with these other people.
This is some bullshit."
I was thinking, "Wild Woman's fucking everything up."
I needed to shut this place down, honestly,
'cause this was gonna get us all in trouble.
I bought this smoke bomb at the Spy Store in Downtown Phoenix.
I went to her house...
...jumped out of the car, pulled it out,
lit it on fire, as soon as it started sparking
I went up and pulled it back, and just [mimics hissing].
And I just took off running.
And you could just see smoke already coming out,
shooting out the window,
and you just heard people
running and screaming for their lives.
They had no idea what the fuck was going on.
Wild Woman was near the window when the fire bomb came in.
It just missed her, and I think she's got
something on her face still to this day.
[Schooly] After all that stuff happened with Wild Man and Wild Woman,
I thought something bad was gonna happen to me.
Wild Man was telling everybody he was gonna murder Schooly for fire-bombing his woman.
Schooly was so fearful for his life,
he fled the state.
I never spoke to him again.
I had to stay away,
and that's really about the time
that I dipped the fuck out.
There's no going back.
It was over between me and Shaun.
And then May 16th 2002,
bam! bam! bam! bam!, [mimics door opening] a door flies off its hinges,
and there's screaming, "Hands above your head!
Get on the fucking ground now!
Don't fucking move!"
As I dropped to the floor,
I realized everything I'd ever done wrong in my life,
I now had to pay the price for.
They cuffed me,
and one of the detectives just hoisted me up...
...and was in my face, and he was like,
English Shaun, we've finally got you."
And the question in my mind was
"Who betrayed me?"
[Schooly] Before they arrested Shaun,
I got arrested for cashing bad checks
because I'm broke and I spun out on drugs.
I'm like, "What do I gotta do to get outta this charge?"
The cops were like, "Well, tell me something I don't know."
I just told them about an ecstasy operation.
I kinda gave them stories,
rundowns about Wild Man and English Shaun.
And he's like, "You gotta prove it to me.
"Okay." I said, "Let me walk out and go to my house
and I'll bring you back a stack of plane tickets
that show I went to LA every week.
And so I brought them back that stack of ticket stubs,
and no charges filed, they let me ride.
When I found out that Schooly had gone to the cops,
I was heartbroken...
...that my little brother had gone that far.
I hadn't anticipated that.
If you're my big brother and you got my back,
then you should always have my back.
And if you're gonna discard me
for these other fucking people, then...
...it is what it is, you know.
I sure as hell ain't gonna bite the bullet for somebody
that ain't gonna be there for me in the end.
[interviewer speaking]
Loyalty, and I live by that.
[interviewer speaking]
Yeah, always.
Till the end. [chuckles]
Until the end.
Yeah.
When, uh, when the ship sinks,
I guess everybody runs their own way.
You know.
[Shaun] I was sentenced to nine and a half years.
I served 26 months in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's
Maricopa County Jail system,
the jail system that had the highest rate of death in America.
And to my shock and surprise, my prison mate was none other than Gerard Gravano.
One day, Gerard told me about his plans
the night he came looking for me at the Crobar Nightclub.
I hadn't realized how close I'd come to death.
It's been about 23 years since the last time I was here.
Came in right in this back door right here.
We were here looking for English Shaun.
Place was crowded, people dancing.
But he was gone before I got here.
As we walking in this back door,
he was walking out the front door.
We missed him literally by seconds.
[crowd cheering]
But I was relieved actually
at the end of the day that he wasn't here...
...because I was prepared to kill him that night in the desert...
...only because it was expected of me.
People expected me to be violent,
people expected me to go on robberies
because I was the son of "Sammy the Bull."
I was pushed to be someone I'm really not.
I grew up in the shadow of the "Bull."
-[doves cooing] -Well, growing up in Staten Island,
in our backyard we had these doves.
We had a pigeon coop, and we used to have feed.
But by having these, stray, real ugly gray pigeons used to come.
But we used to have a BB gun.
And we used to shoot them, and they used to fall off the roof,
die, and put them in a bag, and throw them away, it was pretty normal.
One day, I hit the bird...
[pigeon coos]
...and he rolled off my roof and hit the floor.
But he wasn't dead.
So I cocked the gun again,
I was gonna shoot him.
My father said, "No, don't shoot him."
He said, "I want you to pick him up,
and I want you to snap his neck and throw him in the bag."
I looked at the bird.
I looked at my father.
I said, "I can't do it. I just can't
fucking snap his neck and throw him in the bag."
I could not fucking do it.
That's my father testing me to see am I cut out for that life in the Mafia?
And I wasn't.
I didn't pass his test.
And the same thing happened here in Arizona.
They expected me to kill people.
Mike Papa was in my ear,
"You're being disrespected,
you're being disrespected,
you're being disrespected."
And then I get a call that Shaun Attwood
is here at this place. And I said, "Okay,
I'll show you what disrespect is."
But ultimately, at the end of the day,
I probably couldn't have done it. I sit here and say
that's what I was planning on doing that night,
but I may have got him out to the desert,
and I just couldn't have done it.
So when English Shaun came into the jail we formed a friendship.
I didn't have any problems with him after that.
It was over.
Chapter closed.
[Shaun] Spending time with Gerard Gravano in jail,
he opened up to me about his struggles,
the pressure on him to make a name for himself,
to be someone, 'cause he's got this dad
who's a legendary figure.
And then the threats to the family's lives.
The constant need for safety.
It really opened my heart to what he'd been through.
For me, over the following weeks,
I started to look back at the last 10 years of my life,
and said to myself,
"Shaun, my God, what have you done?
How on Earth are you still alive?"
Doing an increasing amount of drugs over the years
had eroded my conscience and put a cloud in my head that I didn't know was there.
I'd surrounded myself with people
engaging in equally insane and criminal behavior,
and there was nobody to put the brakes on.
I had to be pushed to the brink to get
the English Shaun persona crushed out of me.
It was a moment of truth for me
that I'd been trying to hide from
throughout the whole time in Arizona.
In all these story arcs of drug trafficking,
it begins with the glitz, the glamour, the fun...
...then the cops, the heat, the competition,
and then the slippery slope down.
[crows cawing]
There's a hell of a price to be paid
if you get involved in the lifestyle.
Most of the men from my inner circle
have paid the ultimate price of death,
including Wild Man.
When I found out that Wild Man had died,
my brain wouldn't accept it.
And then the next day, that was it then,
that's when it just started hitting me.
And there was an owl howling.
And I hadn't heard an owl howl where I live.
And I thought it was him saying goodbye to me.
[sniffles]
Part of owning up to my past is coming to terms with the fact
that I brought my best mate Wild Man to Arizona.
He ended up in jail for seven years.
And he died a young man back in our hometown.
I can't forgive myself for that
because it's something I've got to live with
for the rest of my life.
Oh, where were we now?
[indistinct speaking]
[Shaun] When I walked out the gate and saw my mom, dad, and sister smiling,
my excitement just went through the roof
even though I'd been awake for days.
I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona with no cash, only credit cards.
I burnt through millions over the years.
And I came back on UK soil
with a boxful of worthless belongings from prison.
Looking back, one of my worst memories
is having to call my parents
and tell them I'd been incarcerated for drug dealing.
I thought I was so smart, above the law, never get caught,
or even if I did get caught, I could insulate myself from you guys finding out.
-Mmm. -My friends wouldn't get arrested with me.
-I've got money over here. I could get a lawyer. -Mmm.
-All that kind of stuff. -Got it covered.
But I was wrong,
it was my own miscalculations.
Caused absolute devastation in your lives.
It was dreadful, and your mom was in pieces
'cause we didn't know what we were gonna do.
And I think that same night,
we got a reverse call from yourself.
Do you remember? And it was you with this frightened voice
saying, "You need to raise as much money as possible to get a good attorney."
Having to ask you guys for money
which was a horrible thing to do.
[Shaun's dad] Mmm-hmm.
But I didn't understand
the full gravity 'cause I think you were insulating me at that point.
It was early on over how that affected your lives.
[Shaun's dad] Mmm, oh, yeah.
We just did what we could.
And over the years, as your mom was working,
she also paid off various
lawyers' fees and legal fees.
The other horrible thing besides the financial impact,
was my mom's nervous breakdown.
[Shaun's dad] She didn't tell anybody for months.
She wouldn't let me tell anybody.
[crying] Still feel terrible for that.
I feel so guilty, dad, knowing the suffering I've put youse through.
I would never do anything like that again.
So sorry, dad.
It's done. It's passed.
-As far as I'm concerned, it's done. -[sighs]
We forgive, and there's nothing to forgive now.
I wanna thank you so much.
I mean, just what you've said today...
...has made me feel [chuckles] a lot better to be honest.
I'm gonna have to give my dad a hug, I think.
-Not too hard. I'm fragile, I'm fragile. -[laughing]
Love you. I love you. Thank you.
Thank you. Oh, my God.
Let me see if I can get that.
I can't make a shot if I stood on my head.
We've been through a lot.
And here we are.
In the basement shooting pool.
And, uh, I think you're the perfect guy
to take over and fit into my shoes.
Just remember to stay good and kind with people.
The family, keep it close.
And just do the right thing. Don't make the mistakes I made.
I mean, I've been kind-hearted a lot of...
a good portion of my life.
And I do have the ability to be violent
even though...
...it's not, you know, not what I wanna do,
or a lot of times I was acting because I'm your son.
People expect me to do things.
-Whether... -Is that what this whole ecstasy thing was?
The drugs. Doesn't matter what people want you to be.
Just 'cause I had a big name, don't live in my shadows.
And know all the good things I taught you.
The bad stuff, flush it down the bowl. Get rid of it.
Step out of the shadows and be you.
That's what you gotta be.
For a long time I had
a problem doing that.
I got caught up. I was out here in Arizona,
I meet this kid Mike Papa.
I started to feel like my old self,
like I was back in New York.
What do you think about it now?
You think he made you feel good?
No, and I should have seen this from day one.
It's gone.
Don't carry baggage on that,
"You fucked up, and I went to prison," and all of this shit.
-It... It happens itself. -It's a heavy burden, though.
-It's... It's every burden... I mean... -No. But get away from it.
-...I put you in prison. -Understand you made a mistake.
Don't live with it. It's... It's over, it's done with.
We have our lives started again.
Don't look in the rearview mirror,
you'll never grow.
Look through the front windshield, go forward.
I look at him, he's a great kid.
I call him a kid, he's not a kid,
he's a man, he's a great man.
But, uh, my life
must have added so much pressure onto him,
being "Sammy the Bull's" son.
I think the... the Mafia
did some damage.
But it's how you come out of these things.
[Gerard] You and mom I think did a great job.
raising me and Karen.
I just try to...
My whole goal now nowadays is try to instill what...
what we were taught growing up in my kids.
And I just hope one day I can be a half as father as you were.
[sighs]
I think you've already been
twice the father that I am.
But, uh, that's a great compliment, Gerard.
I appreciate that.
All I can say is people could only pray to be so lucky
as to I still have you today to ask you questions,
and to be here for me.
I will always be here for you.
I always will be here for you.
I really, really will.