Gender

Mob justice

Sammy Gravano literally got away with murder when he turned state's evidence in a mafia trial. But the sisters of two of his victims were determined that he would pay for his crimes

Two weeks before he died, Rosanne Massa's brother came to see her at four in the morning. High on cocaine, paranoid that he was being followed, frightened for his life, he called up to her window. She recalls his bug-eyed terror: "'Jesus Christ Ro,' he told me, 'I'm in so much trouble.'"

Michael DeBatt knew he was going to die. His drug addiction had got out of control and his mafia friends no longer trusted him to keep silent. His sister tried to reason with him, suggesting that he go away to dry out. But they both knew there was no way out.

DeBatt had got involved with organised crime through the same route that many young men born and raised in a mafia-run neighbourhood do: trouble and debt. His father, Mackie, had owed money to most of the loan sharks in Bensonhurst, a traditional Italian neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York. One of these loan sharks was Sammy Gravano, nicknamed "the Bull" because he would take on anybody in a fight. Gravano was an up-and-coming hustler who would later become an underboss of the infamous Gambino crime family, second in command to John Gotti, its colourful boss. When some of the creditors threatened to get nasty it was Gravano who kept them at bay. In gratitude, Mackie introduced his son to Gravano; he could tell this young wannabe wiseguy was going to go far and advised his son to stick with him.

So he did, but Sammy the Bull's progress up the ladder of organised crime was not achieved through helping the weak. When Gravano feared that Michael's drug problems were making him a liability, he had to go.

It was some years before the details of Michael's murder came out, but Massa always knew who was behind it. After a mafia family wedding, Michael had gone back to the neighbourhood bar with a few close friends, expecting the wedding party to join them for a nightcap as usual. "But the only ones who went back there were the four murderers," says Massa. "And Gravano waited for them to come and tell him it was done."

Fifteen years on, no one has been charged with the murder. For the sake of her brother's daughter, who was four years old when he died, Massa, 45, is still in pursuit of some form of justice. In this she is not alone. Jackie Colucci, 56, has a similar story. Her brother Joey was another close friend of Sammy the Bull - so close that, in classic mafia style, Gravano was chosen to kill him.

Clearly, Gravano was not a man to be messed with. But the two women, who live in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood, had other ideas. For the past five years, they have campaigned with other families of Gravano's victims to exact their own kind of revenge through the courts. And today it is these formidable women who intimidate Sammy the Bull, rather than the other way round.

Gravano described the murder of Joey Colucci in his autobiography. "Sammy said he felt bad he had to kill Joey because he was his friend, and he had two kids and everything," recalls Colucci, stabbing her fingernails into the tablecloth for emphasis, "but then in the next sentence he said how great it felt, how powerful he felt when the bullet left the gun and went into my brother's head."

Both women suffered the bitter irony of being comforted by their brothers' murderer. "A couple of hours after the cops found my brother," says Colucci, "in comes Sammy going, 'We're going to find out who did this to Joey,' crying, consoling me and my mother and father. At that point you're so ripped apart and these people, you think they're your friends; you go, 'Yeah, please, please try to find out...'"

Eventually, the women did find out. In 1991, Gravano turned state's evidence and testified against John Gotti, after the two were indicted on racketeering and murder charges. His victims' families saw Gravano confess to murdering their loved ones and then, soon afterwards, released into the witness protection programme. He was set up with a business and a new identity in Arizona. Massa shrugs. "We just thought, 'Sammy wins again.'"

For years the women remembered their dead, separately and alone, knowing that nothing could touch the killer. But when Gravano published his book, Laura Garofalo, a young woman whose father had been murdered, invited other victims' families to mount a campaign to prevent him earning any money from it.

"They organised this luncheon at a restaurant in Coney Island," says Massa. "And the whole room was nothing but families that had members that were murdered or their murders were OK'd by Sammy. I knew the names, but I never met them before. There were some very strange conversations: 'How many bullets was your father killed with?' 'Did they ever find your brother's body?' Strange conversations. But the bottom line was that my brother and everybody else, they did what they did, but Sammy shouldn't have been allowed to make money from their murders."

Colucci and Massa hit it off immediately. Strong, outspoken women, both had assumed the role of emotional support for their bereaved families, and finally they had found someone with whom they could express their own pain. But they had a deeper bond due to an invisible barrier that divided them from the rest of society, which branded their brothers as organised-crime associates and judged that they deserved what they got. "Nobody cares," says Colucci. "They think, 'Well, mafia was killed by mafia.' But even if they're the worst scum of the earth, who's Sammy to say, 'You live and you die'? It's not up to him."

The motley group filed a motion under the so-called Son of Sam law, a statute prohibiting criminals from using their notoriety for profit, which was introduced after the serial killer David Berkowitz (known as "Son of Sam") was paid for his story. Under this law, any money offered to a criminal by publishers or film-makers should be given to the victims' families.

The group's first attempt was knocked back on a technicality. But for Colucci the campaign and subsequent media coverage was therapeutic: "It gave you something to do. It kept you busy. We did TV things, we were running around."

They had the satisfaction of having their say, but things got a little uncomfortable as the women were exposed to the glare of the media and found themselves subjected to stereotyping. One of the group was questioned on camera about how her father had shot another woman's son.

Bruised by such encounters, most of the families fell away, desiring privacy over revenge. With just three or four women still active, it seemed that their attempts at legal redress were doomed. Luckily for them, Sammy the Bull was soon back in trouble again.

Unfortunately for the government, its star witness was arrested in 2000 for trafficking ecstasy. Gravano had been unable to cope with life as a simple, law-abiding pool salesman, and had taken over distribution of the drug for the whole of Arizona. The victims' families made another attempt to file a motion under the Son of Sam law. They also turned up in court for every stage of the prosecution. Massa says it has given them some satisfaction to see him on the receiving end of justice. They also know that there will be reporters waiting to catch a few vindictive words from a bereaved relative. And they do it to show Gravano that they haven't forgotten. "We sit right in the front and just stare at him," says Massa. "Makes you feel better."

The face-off is a strange reminder of the old days, when they were all friends in the neighbourhood: Colucci knew Gravano in high school; Massa worked as his secretary. As his legal troubles go on and on, their lives seem inexorably linked.

The most recent meeting between the former friends took place in Brooklyn federal court last week, where Gravano was sentenced for drug trafficking. It was a strange encounter. The mobster who became famous for betrayal had come to resemble a rat - all his hair had fallen out as a result of a thyroid disorder, he looked shrunken, he coughed and sniffed, and his pink-rimmed beady eyes stared at the people coming into court behind wire-rimmed glasses.

Massa and Colucci occupied the front bench, alongside Laura Garofalo and her grandmother. They had suffered nervous stomachs and sleepless nights; now they muttered and groaned in response to the defence arguments. The judge recalled Gravano's criminal history, his "complete absence of rehabilitation" and "utter lack of remorse", and handed down the maximum sentence: 20 years in prison.

The women thanked the prosecutor, said their piece for the news cameras outside the courthouse, and phoned their families with the good news. "I'm really happy. I wanted him to be held accountable for all those murders he did," said Colucci, lighting a longed-for cigarette in the autumn sunshine. "I wanted to see him do time. I feel like finally we got some kind of justice."

"I was always for not letting him have the last word," says Massa, beads of sweat appearing on her brow as she struggles with the emotion of the moment. "That's what this is about for me: I refuse to let him have the last freakin' word."

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