Here is a 2005 column from Ganglandnews about the Calabro murder and Sammy the bulls reaction to being charged.


Sammy Spurned Sweet NJ Plea Deal


Two years ago, Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano rejected a plea deal from state prosecutors in New Jersey for the 1980 murder of a NYPD Detective that was even sweeter than the one the pint-sized killer got from the feds for 19 mob slayings, Gang Land has learned.

For the mob hits, Gravano had to do five years – he’d already done most of it by time he was sentenced – and agree to testify against his boss, John Gotti.

But the deal Sammy Bull was offered for the murder of Peter Calabro was a total free pass – no jail time at all – if he agreed to plead guilty, according to a prosecution memo obtained by Gang Land.

The plea offer tendered by Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli did not require Sammy Bull to testify against anyone, according to a memo by Detective Robert Anzilotti. The nine-page memo details rambling discussions that Gravano had with Anzilotti and another detective on February 21-22, 2003.

The discussions took place while Gravano was housed at the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix awaiting transfer to federal prison to serve a 20-year rap for drug dealing. The offer on the table called for him to do no extra time, just accept a 20 year sentence that would be served concurrently with his stretch for drugs. It was an “everybody’s happy” deal: Molinelli gets a conviction; Sammy never does an extra day.

The proposed deal did have one requirement, but it certainly wasn’t a heavy lift. In exchange for the free ride, Gravano would “have to provide a full confession


to include all others involved in the murder,” according to the memo.

The session between Sammy Bull and the detectives went down this way, according to the memo: After reading Gravano his rights, Anzilotti engaged Gravano in small talk about Roy DeMeo, a Gambino soldier (right) who was killed three years after Calabro, until Sammy Bull pressed him with: “I know you didn’t come all the way here to talk about Roy. Why don’t you just get to the point and if I can help you I will.”

Anzilotti obliged, telling him that convicted killer Richard (Iceman) Kuklinski, who claims to have been a DeMeo associate and once boasted that he had killed DeMeo, had fingered him for the Calabro hit. The detective also showed him a copy of an affidavit by the Iceman that implicated Gravano in the murder.

Throughout the first 85 minutes of the interview – before Anzilotti presented Gravano with a written document outlining an agreement for him to plead guilty – Sammy Bull’s remarks were filled with wisecracks and sarcasm.

“Believe it or not,” said one source familiar with Gravano’s mindset at the time, “Sammy thought the whole exercise was some kind of a weird, bizarre joke. They brought him coffee and donuts, and wanted to talk, so he talked to them.”

After reading Kuklinski’s affidavit, Gravano “volunteered” that “if” he had wanted to kill Calabro, he would have “whacked him myself,” wrote Anzilotti,


who quoted Sammy Bull as adding: “What do I need this Polock for? I hate to say it, but we were good at it.”

At another point, after Anzilotti had shown him1980 crime scene photos that obviously did not connect Gravano to the murder, Sammy Bull looked at the detective and stated: “Maybe I should just cop to it and move on.”

Immediately after that crack, however, the light bulb in Gravano’s brain finally went on when Anzilotti showed him a prepared cooperation agreement that he had brought along.

He immediately asked to see his Arizona lawyer, Greg Parzych. The attorney listened to the detectives summarize their talk with Gravano, read the documents they provided, and conferred with his client, apparently convincing him that while the investigation and accusation made little sense, it was no laughing matter. The next morning, Parzych told the detectives that Sammy Bull would not answer any more questions.

“Gravano then spoke,” wrote Anzilotti, “and in a noticeably different attitude from the previous day stated that he would not cooperate with us, nor was he interested in taking the deal being offered.”

To cap off the sessions – the actual conversations with Gravano took about 90 minutes – Sammy Bull said “he had no involvement in the Calabro murder,” Anzilotti wrote.

Two days after he turned down the deal, Molinelli called a press conference to announce the filing of murder charges. If convicted, Gravano, now 60, faces life, added to the 12 years he still owes