Narco Wars (2020) s02e04 Episode Script

1
MAN: Shake this square world
and blast off for Kicksville.
NIXON: America's public enemy
number one is drug abuse.
NANCY: Just say no.
MAN: The Mafia is a major
player in the international
drug underworld.
MAN 2: At the end of the day,
it's all about the dollar.
It's all about the dollar.
REAGAN: American people want
the Mob and its associates
brought to justice
and their power broken.
HARRIS: There's now an
understanding that the war on
drugs was an abject failure.
MAN: You have to stop
and ask yourself,
"How did we get here?"
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SHAUN: The first time I took
ecstasy was in Manchester,
thinking, what is this?
This is pretty boring.
Then, all of a sudden, my
knees just completely buckled,
and time just started
to stand still.
RAVER: Woo!
SHAUN: The whole room
is just throbbing,
and everybody is
dancing and the music's
just pulsing into my head.
All these beeps
and weird noises,
like signals from outer space
that I didn't understand are
now completely making sense.
I never wanted the party
to end after that night.
Raving became my religion.
I'm Shawn Attwood,
known as one of the
biggest ecstasy traffickers
in the US rave scene.
My local nickname
was English Shaun.
I was up against one
of the Cosa Nostra's
most notorious killers.
As a young person,
I set a goal to be
a millionaire by age 30.
"Greed is Good" was my mantra.
I flew out to Arizona because
it had dazzled me as a teenager.
The plane comes in, and
you're looking out the window,
and you're seeing
all these swimming pools
in people's backyards.
The sun's always shining.
It's almost 50 degrees
in the summer and,
as soon as they hear
the English accent,
they roll out the red carpet.
But the rave scene
was barely starting.
They didn't even know
what ecstasy was,
so there was this huge
gap in the market.
(cheering).
When I threw my first rave,
looking down at all the
ravers just going off,
with the strobe lights pulsing,
I knew that this was
my calling in life.
RAVER: It's quarter
to six in the morning.
SHAUN: As an experiment,
I decided to order
1,000 pills out of LA.
All this stuff goes
in one weekend.
I've made thousands of
dollars, just like that.
Partying my ass off.
And that was when I decided
to go full time trafficking.
KAREN: One thing about my
father, he is a businessman,
outside of being a gangster.
Some people call it a
racketeer, whatever,
I say he was a businessman
because he knew business.
He's gonna make money.
My name's Karen Gravano.
I'm the daughter of Salvatore
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano.
He was the under boss of the
Gambino organized crime family,
which was the most powerful
organized crime family
in New York City.
MAN: Gravano was a mean,
vicious, horrible person.
ANCHOR: Better known
as "Sammy the Bull",
a man who pleaded
guilty to 19 murders.
KAREN: My father was
released from prison is 1995.
The FBI wanted him to go
into witness protection,
so he agreed.
He went into the program.
GEORGE: Being a
cooperator, and then,
the witness
protection program,
and walking away
from the Mafia life,
very few of them
can succeed at it.
It is an enormously
difficult task.
KAREN: There's so
many restrictions.
He wasn't able to talk
to us because we didn't
go in the program,
so he signed himself out,
and he joined my mother
and my brother in Arizona.
My father's main thing
was construction.
He loved construction.
He started a company
called Marathon Development,
which, in New York,
he actually had
Marathon concrete.
He was in the office every
day trying to build this
company from the ground up,
legitimately
creating a business.
He wasn't "Sammy the Bull"
anymore.
He wasn't Salvatore Gravano,
he was Jimmy Moran.
That was the identity
the government gave him.
SHAUN: Ecstasy was going
for $25 to $30 a pill.
I started to source them from
Holland for $2 or $3 a pill.
SHAUN: My smugglers would
bring them over and they went
from Holland to France to
Mexico City to Hermosillo,
and over the border
into Arizona.
The most anyone ever brought
on one of those missions
was 40,000 pills.
SHAUN: By 1999 we were
a multi‐million‐dollar
international ecstasy
smuggling ring.
ANCHOR: Use of the
designer drug, ecstasy,
is rising at an alarming rate.
ANCHOR 2: By 1999 seizures
increased 300% to three million.
RICH: Ecstasy never carried
that dirty social stigma that
methamphetamine did, or
heroin did, or cocaine did.
So, the younger generation
thought it was OK
to be taking it.
RAVER: And why not just
go a club and, you know,
be messed up?
INTERVIEWER: How old are you?
RAVER: 16.
RICH: Next thing you know,
little Johnny's not coming
home 'til the sun's coming up.
There were times when they'd
start on a Friday night,
and they'd go through Sunday.
MAN: Do you know where
your teenagers are?
This could be the night
your child ventures into a
secretive and, potentially,
dangerous world.
The world of the rave.
RICH: All of a sudden,
we start fielding calls of
complaints from
middle class families.
ANCHOR: There is
reason to be concerned.
Even one pill of ecstasy
can cause dehydration,
anxiety and exhaustion.
COPE: When my lieutenant
asked for volunteers,
there wasn't one supervisor
that wanted to volunteer for
that mission because
it wasn't one of them
sexy things to do.
We're doing cocaine,
heroin, meth, marijuana.
I'm Sergeant Jim Cope,
from the Phoenix
Police Department.
I was the junior
drug enforcement
sergeant at the time,
so I got assigned the job.
I drafted Rich Lebel.
He was our lead undercover
in the whole operation.
At the time,
the spiked‐up hair with
the bleached tips were in,
so we had
him spike his hair.
We developed the strategy
to go in the raves and
actually make undercover
purchases at the raves.
RICH: You have to
dress the part,
and it's certainly not stuff
I would wear on a daily basis.
You walk inside
and, right away,
the music makes your insides
vibrate because it's so loud,
and it's thumping over
and over and over,
with strobe lights
and lights flashing.
It's all, sort of, hypnotic.
SHAUN: The vibe was peace,
love, unity and respect.
There was no violence.
There was no Scarface
level activity.
RICH: Once you were inside,
they were super trusting.
Somebody would walk by you,
and they'd ask you,
"Hey, do you need any E?"
And we would just
be making buys.
SHAUN: All of a sudden,
I received mass reports of
these guys that
stood out selling ecstasy.
These were big,
steroid head characters
in shiny polyester shirts.
I'm wondering,
who the hell are these guys?
They wanted to have
a meeting with me.
So, I sit down between
these two guys.
The friendlier one, he says,
"English Shaun, why don't you
start moving some of our pills?"
And, I say, "Look, I've
got a good reputation.
Why would we wanna be
getting your stuff?"
Then the big guy just jumps
up off the sofa and says,
"Who the (bleep) are you
disrespecting our pills."
He throws out
this name, Jimmy Moran,
and I'm not familiar
with that name, and then,
he follows it up with,
"One call to
"Sammy the Bull" and we can
have you taken out
to the desert."
Now, that stopped
me in my tracks,
because I've seen John Gotti
and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
on the news.
These guys are the
Gambino crime family.
KAREN: I went to
dinner with my father.
I wanted to sit down
and know all the things
that I never asked before
when I was kid.
I didn't want him to be my
father and try to protect me.
I wanted him to tell
me the truth and,
for the first time
in my life, like,
my father started telling me
about the Mob, and, you know,
about the things that he did.
You know, my father was
accused of 19 murders.
I wanted to know, like,
did you kill someone?
What was is like?
He looked me in the
face and was, like,
"It was, honestly, a rush."
It was like an adrenalin rush,
to be able to take another life.
Um, I didn't expect
him to say that.
RICH: I was probably
a little bit shocked
that he got the five.
19 murders, five years.
How can anybody confess to
that many murders and then do
five years in prison?
MAN: I think it's clear
that "Sammy the Bull" is
a marked man.
There are Mob members
that would love to kill him.
There are wannabees that
would love to kill him just
to add to their reputation.
GEORGE: He's, basically thrown
all the rules out the window.
But the biggest one is
being omertà, right?
He's destroyed
the oath of secrecy.
"Sammy the Bull" is
now "Sammy the Rat".
He's still working with us
on cases and information.
It was in my best interest,
as the government,
to make sure that
this guy survived and
played by the rules.
(cheering).
SHAUN: With this new
breed of ecstasy dealers
infiltrating my raves,
there was this change in
the atmosphere at the party.
Pills were cut with all
kinds of toxic substances.
People were tripping.
People felt like they
were on crystal meth.
All kinds of bad
reports were coming in,
and violent episodes occurred.
When my top
ecstasy salesperson got
his teeth smashed out,
in the back of my mind then,
I'm thinking
these guys wanna
take me out to the desert.
Sammy the Bull.
You can't mess around
with people who've got
that lethal reputation.
I got so scared I moved over
100 miles to Tucson, Arizona,
to live in a gated,
guarded community.
COPE: When Rich Lebel was
up to 250 to 500 pill buys,
the suspects we were
dealing with said,
"Hey, if you guys are gonna
be players in this market,
you'd better be careful
because the New York guys
are running everything,
and you're gonna have to
pay tax on your pills to them."
Rich is from the East Coast,
and I'm from the East Coast,
and we were both, like,
New York guys.
You know, we're in
Arizona, whatever.
We didn't take it
serious at all.
You gotta realize, at the time,
The Sopranos was in.
They were all striving to be
some young gangster, you know?
Some mobster.
These are just kids talking.
DENNIS: I got a tip that
Sammy the Bull Gravano was
hanging out in Arizona under
the assumed name of Jimmy Moran.
Um, I wasn't sure exactly
how to go about this.
It's not like you got out
and interview Mafia hit men
all the time.
I found that he had a
construction company.
I drove around
Marathon Development, like,
two or three times thinking,
what am I gonna do here?
It was in a big warehouse
district of Phoenix.
Kind of, a junkie area,
and it had a little foyer,
and there was a
little bell there,
and there was nobody upfront,
at the front desk
so I rang the bell.
(ding)
And, out of the office
walks Sammy the Bull Gravano,
and he walked
straight up to me,
and he had these
shark‐like eyes and he said,
"What the
(bleep) do you want?"
And, I said, "Mr. Gravano,
I wanna interview you",
and he kept saying,
"You don't know anything
about me", and I said,
"Well, I know that you're
responsible for something
like 18 homicides",
and he says, "Get your
(bleep) facts straight.
It's 19."
And that just blew me away.
He said,
"If you do this story,
people are gonna get killed.
It's not a good idea."
KAREN: My father just
came home from prison.
My mother and brother
bought a restaurant.
Everyone always thinks that
we picked the name "Uncle Sal"
as the best kept
secret in Scottsdale.
KAREN: When they
bought the restaurant,
it was already
called Uncle Sal's.
I mean, yes, we laughed
about it, and it was, like,
Salvatore Gravano,
Uncle Sal's.
It's ours. We're taking it.
We joke at home,
but I think my mother's
the real gangster here.
My mother's name's Debbie.
She came to Arizona
with all the money.
So she financed things,
whether it was the restaurant,
or whatever it was.
My brother, Gerard,
he was a chef working
in the restaurant.
I'd just had my daughter,
and my brother had a son,
and we were doing good.
We were working hard, we
were staying out of trouble,
and we were just really,
honestly building
our family back up.
(splash)
GEORGE: Word came back to me
that a reporter by the name of
Dennis Wagner was
gonna write a story and we
wanted to stop it.
DENNIS: My publisher was
on a cruise in the Caribbean
and a shore to
ship call was made by the
FBI trying to convince my
publisher not to
run the story.
(phone ringing)
GEORGE: You print this
story and expose this guy,
all you're gonna do
is get him killed.
The story's not as important
as you think it is.
This guy's life is.
(tone)
DENNIS: It was picked up by
media all over the world.
It was, kind of, an
explosion in that sense.
GEORGE: We knew the Gambino
family were actively trying to
figure out where he was and
how to set up on him, and now,
all of a sudden,
they were able to
start tracking him down.
KAREN: Once that newspaper
article came out,
it made everyone
start looking at us.
That was actually the start
of everything going bad for my
family in Arizona.
All the kids that were,
you knew, Mob groupies,
or whatever you
wanna call them,
infatuated with that lifestyle.
"Oh, Sammy the Bull's here."
"Oh, his family
owns this restaurant."
And that's what drew the
attention of the wrong people.
My brother was working
in the restaurant.
This guy came in, and he
threw $1,000 on the table,
and he told Gerard, "Here,
put this in your pocket.
Come out with us tonight.
We're gonna go to the clubs.
Everything is on
me, and, by the way,
I love your father."
So, that's how Mike Papa
comes into the whole picture.
That's how this whole
ecstasy thing started.
Mike Papa was a sharp kid.
He dressed nice.
He was a good‐looking kid.
He knew how to talk.
He had the New York hustle,
because he was
originally from New York.
So, Gerard, building his
friendship with Mike Papa,
started going to
clubs with him.
Gerard started seeing
that this guy's, you know,
he's selling pills,
he's selling ecstasy.
Mike Papa was a big, big
person in that rave scene.
COPE: As our investigation
was progressing,
we kept hearing the rumors
about the New York guys.
I was at the gym working out,
an acquaintance of mine said,
"Hey, do you know
anything about some kind
of crazy club drug or",
he called it a "sex drug".
He goes, "All these
young kids are, at the gym,
bragging about how much money
they're making off these pills",
and he named
Mike Papa, and he goes,
"You're not gonna believe it,
they say they're being backed
by Sammy the Bull Gravano."
RICH: When I first
started hearing about the
Gravano name being involved
in the ecstasy scene,
you know,
I said to myself,
Sammy would be crazy to get
involved in any of this stuff.
COPE: I think we
have something here.
But I've already had to
convince everybody, hey,
there's something to
this with this drug ecstasy,
you know, and now,
I'm gonna say, "I think
Sammy the Bull Gravano,
a legendary Mafia
hit man is also involved."
People would think I was crazy.
KAREN: Mike Papa started to
come into the restaurant and
my father finally met him.
My father was,
you know, "Who is this guy?"
He wasn't introduced
to my father as,
"Oh, this is our drug
dealing friend, Mike Papa,
who sells ecstasy at raves."
It's, like,
"This is our friend Mike.
He goes to ASU.
He's a college student.
He's from New York."
My father was anti‐drug,
and so adamant about
Gerard and I having the
straight and narrow path,
building a life
that is unbreakable.
But, unfortunately,
we (bleep) up.
(sirens)
OFFICER: We see ecstasy
coming from Canada.
Unfortunately,
the ecstasy and Molly,
it's actually caused
death, here in Detroit.
OFFICER: Any time where
there's drugs involved,
you know, you're dealing
with a lot of money.
People tend to use guns.
MAN: The DJs are selling
the dope and it's coming
out of the bathroom too.
OFFICER: The door, the door.
Search warrant,
gotta go, gotta go.
Move by the door, the door.
OFFICER 2: Face down.
Face down.
Straighten your legs out.
Straighten your legs out.
Face down.
Look at the floor.
Don't be looking around.
This ain't entertainment.
Keep your hands
where I can see them.
Wanna get cuffed up?
Look at the floor.
OFFICER: You have
any guns on you?
MAN: No.
OFFICER: Got a gun right here.
It was loaded.
I just cleared it.
Put your hands on the floor.
Crawl out now.
Crawl backwards.
Crawl backwards.
Now, move.
What do you have?
Coke in there.
Tried dumping the coke.
Toilet doesn't flush.
It didn't work.
Looks like a pretty good
size piece of crystal meth.
Ecstasy. Heroin. Crack cocaine.
Good job, guys.
COPE: As we were progressing
and learning that, you know,
there's a possibility
that Sammy the Bull Gravano
was involved,
I knew we were gonna have
to take it to another level,
and I said, "You know,
I'm gonna sit down with Ron."
STERRETT:
My name's Ron Sterrett,
and I was the
lead detective for the
Phoenix Police Department
in the Gravano ecstasy
trafficking investigation.
I didn't believe that Sammy
would be associating with
college kids selling
drugs, quite honestly.
I thought that was
beneath his level.
But, when we obtained
Mike Papa's phone number,
it was subscribed to
Marathon Development.
COPE: It, right away,
hit me a business that Sammy
ran back in
New York was Marathon.
STERRETT: So,
the link was created.
Mike Papa, who was involved in
ecstasy trafficking worked for
Sammy at Marathon Development.
STERRETT: When it
comes to the wire tap,
we were going to go up,
initially, on Mike Papa.
STERRETT: He was horribly
undisciplined on the phone and
would talk at
length about their drug
trafficking activities.
If the rumors were true that
Sammy Gravano's involved,
Mike Papa and Mike Papa's
phone would walk us directly
into that evidence.
STERRETT: But, actually,
the link was created
to Gerard Gravano.
KAREN: When Gerard got involved
in the ecstasy business,
all of a sudden,
it went from the Mike Papa
investigation to the
Gravano investigation,
because they realized that
this is Sammy the Bull's son.
COPE: During our wiretap I
kept seeing this light‐colored
Mercury Marquis out
on surveillance.
I would always come into
the wire room and I'd say,
"Hey, I think there's
some other dudes out
there following this guy",
and, because of the
shape of the car, I'm, like,
"Maybe it's another cop?"
KAREN: My father started
feeling like people were
following him, and he said,
"Listen, I don't know
if it's the cops,
if it's people
from New York,
but I feel like
something is going on."
COPE: Everybody
told me I was crazy.
There's nobody else, and I'm,
like, "I keep seeing this car.
Something's up with this car."
GEORGE: The whole time
Sammy was out in Arizona
we knew Gotti had given
the contract on Sammy.
'He screwed us.
You gotta go get him.'
STERRETT: During the wiretap
the kids made constant
reference to "The Big Guy".
STERRETT: Every now and
again somebody would slip
and call him Sammy.
COPE: They openly referred
to Gravano, you know,
when they were trying
to feel important or
show off to their friends.
KAREN: Mike Papa is
talking about "'The Big Man'
takes 50 cents",
so he can't drop the price.
That's Mike saying,
"I'm not gonna
drop my price",
and using my
father as leverage.
"If you got a problem,
go talk to Sammy the Bull."
STERRETT: We really
believed Sammy's name
was being thrown out by
these younger kids as a
point of intimidation.
COPE: So, the
speculation was always,
are we gonna get to
Sammy the Bull Gravano?
(tone)
(dialing)
COPE: In January of 2000,
Ron Sterrett
and the investigative team
start intercepting
calls between a supplier in
California and Mike Papa.
(ringing)
COPE: As those
calls progressed,
we realized a large
shipment of 25,000 pills were
gonna be coming in from LA.
STERRETT: We knew exactly
where the exchange of money
and pills was
gonna take place.
STERRETT: They met at a
hamburger place real close to
Arizona State University.
We saw the bag of ecstasy
coming into possession
of Mike Papa.
We followed Mike Papa directly
back to Marathon Development,
and saw Mike Papa
carry the bag in.
(camera shutter)
COPE: It was just amazing how
fast those pills were gone.
They were distributed in
the Phoenix metropolitan area,
and I don't think
they lasted a week.
(busy signal)
It got frustrating because
we weren't getting the
confirmation that Sammy
was involved with this
ecstasy thing that the
kids were doing.
All of the ecstasy purchases
were being done by Mike Papa.
Gerard was right there.
He was a distributor that was
giving it to the other parties
that were going out
and selling the pills.
(ringing)
GEORGE: The whole time
I'm dealing with Sammy,
there were no indications he
was doing anything other than
running his business,
helping the family with
the Italian restaurant,
and trying to be legitimate.
I had no doubt that that's
what was going on with him.
(dialing)
(ringing)
STERRETT: That call came
in somewhere between 11:00
in the evening to
1:00 in the morning.
A normal business doesn't
pay somebody at 11:00 in the
evening for a gas receipt.
$70 for gas receipts,
we knew that that
was code for $70,000
for the ecstasy.
STERRETT: Gerard and
Mike Papa needed to ask Sammy
to front the $70,000
for the next shipment.
That brought him right into
the middle of the financing of
the ecstasy organization.
I can't believe
Gravano was so stupid to be
caught doing these types
of things with these kids.
The prosecutor came
down to the wire room and
listened to the phone call.
SAMMY: Can she
do it right away?
STERRETT: And said, "We've got
the evidence that I'm looking
for to charge Sammy."
COPE: Yeah, we got him.
We got enough.
We got enough for everybody.
This whole group is done.
KAREN: We come to find out
Gotti had sent a hit team down
to Arizona.
STERRETT: There was
a plan to kill Sammy where
Sammy parked his car.
The individual was set up in
a position across the street
with a high‐powered rifle.
KAREN: My father would have
never laid down lightly.
It's no secret that,
at that particular time,
he had guns.
If some gun battle
was going off,
he's coming out shooting.
Everybody was ready for
whatever was gonna happen.
♫ ♫
COPE: There was probably
200 tactical officers at
that meeting from
different agencies.
So, I have a lot
of guys there.
They're not real happy
about being up so early.
But the attention level on
the room definitely heightened
when we told them
who was involved,
and what the case was about.
(siren)
STERRETT: We wanted to use the
cover of darkness to minimize
any potential risk to the
officers or Sammy getting
involved in a shooting.
STERRETT:
When they made entry,
Sammy was crawling on the
floor toward getting a gun.
I think he thought it was
the Mob coming after him.
He surrendered,
was handcuffed,
and brought to the facility
where I was waiting for him.
COPE: He was a
really sharp guy.
I could tell he was scanning
every document he could to try
to figure out how bad
it is and what's going on.
STERRETT: I told him 'you're
being arrested for conspiracy
to distribute
dangerous drugs,
and he just kinda
leaned his head back and
closed his eyes and signed,
like, jeez, I can't
believe I got caught for this.
But, quite honestly, we feel
we saved Sammy's life by
arresting him a
few days before he was
gonna get killed.
REPORTER: He insisted he was a
hard‐working businessman,
who had settled into his
new law‐abiding life.
But a tiger doesn't
change his stripes.
REPORTER 2: And authorities
say it was a family affair.
KAREN: I made mistakes.
Did I know that there
was ecstasy being sold?
Yes.
Was I involved in,
maybe, some of the talks?
Yes.
Me and my brother,
we (bleep) up.
ANCHOR: The crime
ring, allegedly,
distributed up to 30,000 pills
a week of the drug ecstasy.
GEORGE: He beyond
stabbed us in the back,
it was betrayal.
I mean, it was the
stupidest thing he could do.
It was the worst
thing he could do.
Nobody was gonna
save him this time.
REPORTER: The turncoat who
sent so many mobsters to jail
could soon be joining them.
RICH: I was over at
Mike Papa's residence
when we arrested Mike.
I thought Mike would be one
of the ones who cooperated.
REPORTER: He might just be the
most famous snitch of all time,
but now Salvatore
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano
has had the tables turned.
GEORGE: That's the
nature of drug dealing.
People are always gonna
be ratting people out and
pointing fingers
at one another.
KAREN: Once Mike Papa started
cooperating with the government,
they threw everything at us.
They threw charges at my mother.
They threw charges at me.
They threw charges
at my brother.
My father's now boxed in.
(sighs).
You know, I don't think
people understand.
My father didn't get involved
in the drug business because
he wanted to sell drugs.
My father stepped in because
he wanted to save my brother.
His biggest fear was Gerard
was gonna get killed on a
drug deal gone bad, and
someone was gonna make a
name for themselves for
killing Sammy the Bull's son.
Family's everything
to my father.
He would never let us
jump in quicksand without
jumping in with us.
And that's why Sammy the Bull
got involved in drug dealing.
STERRETT: There was a belief,
when Sammy ultimately took
responsibility
for what he did,
that he was doing it on behalf
of his family and, certainly,
that plea agreement did
mitigate Gerard's exposure.
It certainly helped Karen out.
SAMMY: I believe you
and this court have been very
fair with me and my family,
and I appreciate it very much.
STERRETT: In my view,
a lot of the Mafia members,
despite this Godfather
script of we don't get
involved in drugs,
they get involved in drugs.
They get involved in
anything that makes money,
and drugs is an extremely
fast way to make a lot of money.
GEORGE: I mean, the fact is,
he was a murderer,
but we still talk,
and I look forward to
conversations with the guy.
You know, if he
was sitting here today,
he would tell you,
straight faced,
"I wasn't a drug dealer."
You got convicted of it.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.