Through all my reading, I have never even heard 1 name mentioned of who may or may not have been one of the 4 people in white trench coats and black russian hats?

Has anyone heard ANY names mentioned?

Who were the Gambino's most trusted killers in 1985?

Is it possible that Senter and Testa were both there. I assume that if someone told them that Castellano ordered the hit on their mentor, revenge would be sought by them both.

The fact that they changed families around this exact time makes me wonder........Meaning, they did a HUGE piece of work, expected to be rewarded but, never were.......Welcoming arms of Lucchese's appears.

Anyone else pondered this topic?

Eddie Lino , john carneglia , vinnie artuso and salvatore scala were the shooters , the back ups were joe watts , iggy alogna , tony rampino and Angelo ruggiero / domink pizzonia

Are you kidding? It's been written about extensively and probably in Sammy's testimony. How could you not find it?

Anyway, Dom Woods just made a correct listing. But it should be noted that Vinny's gun jammed, so he didn't get off a shot. He didn't "freeze up," which was a vicious rumor for a long time.

And that goes back to the jealousy thing we were all discussing in another thread recently. Some of these guys envy each other so much that they'll say anything about each other to get ahead.

Thank You!

I swear that in my 2-3 years of surfing, I have only kept hearing trench coats and hats.

Never read Sammy's full testimony

Why is it that nobody among them got indicted for the hit? Too many people, I can understand if Gravano wanted to "spare" 1 or 2 from his testimony, but for such a crowd to emerge completely untouchable by the prosecution is weird. Why didn't they indict at least the ones who directly pulled the trigger?

Really none of the shooters got charged for that hit ?

Wasn't Bobby Boriello involved too?

Hard to prove on just Sammy's testimony. A bunch of guys in overcoats and Russian hats. No forensics or prints, and don't forget this was before the day of the CSI team. They probably felt they couldn't get a conviction on a single shooter, and they really only wanted Gotti anyway. The Government prosecutes who they want to prosecute. And there wasn't a soul alive at the time that they wanted to prosecute more than John Gotti.

That's weird logic for law enforcement: being obsessed with just ONE gangster who can easily be replaced. The mafia is a system, Gotti and any other boss is just a part of it. To bring down an organization, multiple simultaneous convictions are necessary, and even that often doesn't work (look at the situation in Italy).

Gotti was practically daring them to. I think he started to believe his own hype. I think of him as the Kim Kardashian of LCN, and I'm only half kidding.

You don't understand American law enforcement and the massive ego of the FBI and DOJ, Dwalin. You're my friend, so that's not an insult. But if you lived through it and saw how Gotti kept daring them to convict him firsthand, then maybe you'd get it.

Fucking hell

Merlino is a good example now of how the FBI won't leave certain people alone. They tend to be more persistent with the more ostentatious types. The more they flaunt it, the more it pisses the FBI off.

And, from their perspective, you can see why. Their job is to take these people down. Often they do it their own way and with little regard for rules and the law, but at the heart of it they want the people their chasing locked up for life. If you are working for the FBI and see Gotti beating two trials and then walking around with $2000 dollar suits, you're just going to go after him harder. You see him nicknamed the Teflon Don and plastered all over the papers, seemingly looking like a cat with 9 lives.

Gotti was lucky he had a few years in the can by all accounts. I doubt he would have lasted much longer on the streets.

I'm a bit surprised none of them thought of having a back up piece, or even worse, not knowing or having the where with all to clear a jam. I assume it was a semi-auto, and the jam, if he wasn't able at all to get off a single shot that the jam was magazine related. The classic stove pipe can be cleared, quite intuitively, by merely grabbing the empty shell out of the breech, watching the chamber slam forward and back into battery.

Astounding to me that Vinny didn't have have a back up piece, you know like "Lefty/Tommy Two Guns".

Oh sure, mid-town Manhattan at 6 PM taking out big Paul and the guy is suppose to be cool as a cucumber and clear a jam like its Saturday morning at the gun range...lol...

They didn't need back up guns, they had a whole team of backup shooters. Say what you want is was the best, most well thought out hit in LCN history and maybe the most dramatic...

Go stand in front of Sparks two weeks before Christmas and imagine what it would have been like to have a shootout on that street.

Ballsy. Still should have been equipment/kit checked before going out, and that includes making sure your magazines are ammo are good.

...even Cops carry a back up gun.

One guy Sammy screwed up on was a guy Iggy or ozzy.

Took alot of balls for associates to kill a boss I think that guy john carnig wa deff there he was a made guy but going to jail for the dope case. That guy Roach.

In hindsight it's amazing how well it all went down, considering how many people were involved on the scene. Truly Gotti's high point.

Wasn't Bobby Cabert convicted of murder on Sammy's testimony alone?

They should have used revolvers. If a bullet misfires, just pull the trigger again. Also no shell casings left behind.

What were they using by the way? Did Sammy ever say?

6 inches of Italian salami.

Bada bing. *Bah dum tiss*

I'm here all night.

no, just a rumor

The day you say something actually funny, someone should be there with a tape recorder to witness the moment. Otherwise no one would believe it

better than 4 inch kielbasa boiled in water?

Did you notice, IIM, in your travels that Richard 'Iceman' Kuklinski laid claim to being one of the shooters in the Castellano/Bilotti hit?

WTF was that bogus claim all about? (And it wasn't his only outrageous claim, either...)

He talked so much rubbish he says he was involved the carmine galante murder, Roy demeo, castanalno and even said he killed Jimmy hoffa


Don't get me wrong at his height he was the biggest hit man in America and he was a serial killer he just killed people for no reason and to be fair he spent alot of time with Roy demeo so he might have known about that one. He did make a living out of doing hits for the five families plus the decavs.

But he lied about a lot of the famous hits like castanalo and galante because he was doing life in prison without parole he had nothing to lose and he wanted to build. his reputation up he loved telling the press about the people he killed he was crazy

Kuklinski's bullshit has been discussed on this site ad nauseum. While he was known to hang around the Gemini Lounge on occasion, we only have his word on his being an associate of DeMeo. There's no real evidence for it.