Aug 18, 2003 3:59 pm US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) The brother of the late mob boss John Gotti was charged Monday with plotting to kill Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the Mafia turncoat who once dared the Gambino crime family to hunt him down.
Peter Gotti was named in an indictment that included five other Gambino family members already charged in a wide racketeering conspiracy that included the plot to kill Gravano. Gravano was arrested in a drug case before the hit could be carried out.
The new indictment in U.S. District Court in Manhattan told little about the scheme, saying only that Peter Gotti and others conspired from October 1999 through May 2000 to kill Gravano and boost their own worth in the crime family.
Prosecutors said the Gambino family would pay an unspecified amount of money for the hit.
Peter Gotti, a former sanitation worker, was convicted in March of racketeering and other charges. That case, heard in Brooklyn federal court, accused him of taking control of the Gambino crime family after John Gotti's son was jailed.
Peter Gotti's lawyer, Gerald Shargel, did not immediately return a telephone message for comment on the new charges. Gotti faces up to 70 years in prison on the new charges, which also include allegations he tried to extort construction companies in the metropolitan area.
Gravano confessed to roles in 19 murders as a mob hit man when he agreed to testify against his former boss, John Gotti. The deal resulted in his freedom after serving only five years in prison on racketeering charges. John Gotti, the Gambino boss, died in prison last year.
Gravano, who was living under the alias Jimmy Moran, eventually left the witness protection program, living openly in Arizona as he taunted the Mafia during interviews in 1999.
"They send a hit team down, I'll kill them," Gravano told Vanity Fair. "They better not miss, because even if they get me, there will be a lot of body bags going back to New York."
Before his dare could be met, Gravano was arrested on charges that he led an Ecstasy ring that pocketed more than $300,000 weekly. He eventually admitted his role and was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison.
Gravano also faces a murder charge in New Jersey, where prosecutors in Bergen County have accused him of hiring an assassin to murder New York detective Peter Calabro of Upper Saddle River, N.J., in 1980.
Greg Parzych, a lawyer for Gravano, has said his client "adamantly denies any involvement in that case."
