The New Italian American Civil Rights League Wants To Trump A Sammy Bull Gravano TV Show

Joe Colombo’s long-defunct Italian American Civil Rights League (IACRL) is back in business, Gang Land has learned. And it’s got a plan of action that the late Colombo crime family patriarch would have loved. For starters, the group seeks to block FX Network from airing a weekly TV show about Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano. How come? Because it glorifies the life of a vicious mobster responsible for 19 brutal murders and perpetuates “harmful stereotypes” about Italian Americans.

Things are much different than they were 53 years ago when Colombo was able to keep Marlon Brando and the entire cast in The Godfather from using the word “Mafia” in the classic 1972 mob film. But the revived IACRL, which calls Prez-elect Trump a “modern day Columbus,” has some political juice of its own: Longtime Trump ally and dark-arts advisor Roger Stone is a major player in the League. 

The IACRL’s 300 dues-paying members are gearing up to use New York’s Son of Sam Law in federal court to eliminate Gravano’s profit motive. They also plan to use the bully pulpit of the IACRL in the court of public opinion to get FX to change its mind about airing the “Sammy The Bull Gravano” show, says attorney Gerard Marrone, the vice president of the IACRL

FX’s plans to air “an epic crime series weekly” about the turncoat Gambino family underboss written by The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire screenwriter Terence Winter, were disclosed last month by deadline.com, an online news outlet that focuses on the entertainment industry.

“They agreed, we’re working on it already,” Gravano confirmed this week. “We’re in contract,” he told Gang Land. “We’re in pre-production right now,” he said. 

That announcement was like waving a red flag at the reborn IACRL bull: “The decision to greenlight a show centered on Sammy Gravano is a slap in the face to the Italian American community,” Marrone states in an IACRL news release. “There is nothing honorable or redeeming about profiting from the notoriety of a cold-blooded killer,” he said, noting that the Bull is “also a convicted drug dealer” whose Arizona based-ring was selling 10,000 Ecstasy pills a week when he was arrested in 2000.

Gravano began his podcast on December 16, 2020, 35 years after his greatest hit, the execution of Mafia boss Paul (Big Paul)Castellano. The podcast came three years after he was released from concurrent federal and state prison terms for earning what authorities said was up to $1.2 million a week selling Ecstasy pills in the Phoenix area. He relocated there after his release from the sweet five year term he’d gotten for testifying against John Gotti and dozens of other mobsters.

Marrone told Gang Land this week that the League, and several family members of Gravano’s murder victims whom he represents as an attorney, decided to move now to stop Sammy Bull, because he’s taking his four year-old Our Thing podcast about his life of crime and his so-called redemption from “the shadows” to a “major television network.”

“He’s a serial killer,” and the IACRL has “hundreds of members telling us to go ahead with this and press FX to cancel” its plans to air a weekly series about Gravano, Marrone said. “And this has nothing to do with the fact that he was an informer, that he’s a rat,” the lawyer continued. “It has to do with the fact that he continues to open up these wounds.”

“The families say, ‘Enough is enough,'” said Marrone. “It’s really outright disrespectful that these victims have to be victimized again by Sammy The Bull while he continues to profit from his violent crimes,” he said. “He’s made money, but his blog is kind of in the shadows. Now that he’s going to a major network, he’s coming out of the shadows and we’re going to go after him.”

Another reason is that the IACRL, a non-profit organization that Marrone called the “successor of the former organization” that Colombo created in 1970 is a relatively recent phenomenon. “It was reformed in 2023 as a new corporation with the same name,” he said.

“A lot of the old members from the ’70s are current members,” Marrone said. “This is nice,” he continued. “We go into the old neighborhoods and are very well received by them.”

The IACRL website makes no bones about its ties to the defunct so-called civil rights group that Joe Colombo founded in 1970 to protest the FBI’s arrest of his son Joseph for melting down silver coins, charges for which young Colombo was acquitted at trial less than a year later.

The site features a huge 1970s IACRL billboard with a picture of Colombo’s mobster son Anthony in front of it, and an Associated Press photo of three young boys standing in front of a Brooklyn storefront. The storefront boasts a sign stating it is the national headquarters of the IACRL. Its home page unabashedly claims: “Founded in 1970” and “Made Great Again in 2023.”

That pronouncement is no surprise since Stone, the lobbyist whose 40-month sentence for obstruction of justice was commuted by Trump in 2020, is an IACRL member who addressed the group at its Christmas party last month on Mulberry Street at the Caffe Palermo

On Instagram, in a pre-2024 election posting, the IACRL “proudly” endorsed Trump for president, asserting that he is a “modern day Columbus” who “made America great again” after “Marxist radicals” had made the country Columbus discovered “unrecognizable.”

Marrone poo-pooed the assertion that the organization had mob ties since it held its Christmas party at the Caffe Palermo,which is owned by Gambino soldier John (Baby John) Delutro. “I don’t know that,” he said. “I met him for the first time that night.” Delutro, 73, claims to have opened the place when he was 17. His last trouble with the law, 25 years ago, was for witholding informaton of a crime, natch, from the law.

Marrone insisted that “some of our members, like Stone, have political associations and affiliations with the Trump Administration, but as an organization we’re not political.” Regarding its decision to endorse Trump for President in November, Marrone said: “Now as an organization, we have changed that. We do not support, as an organization, President elect Trump, or any other political entity.”

But it’s not hard to imagine that Trump, who has stated his angry displeasure with “flippers” just might try and be helpful to the IACRL’s angst with FX’s plans to air a series about Gravano.

Marrone said the League is “going to bring in a law firm” with expertise in civil rights law to sue Gravano under New York’s so called Son of Sam Law that permits victims of crimes to seize money that convicted criminals earn that are proven to be “profits of a crime.” 

If so, they’ll have to do without the services of lawyer Ron Kuby, who filed a Son of Sam lawsuit in 1998 on behalf of two daughters of a slain demolition contractor. “I am not interested,” Kuby told Gang Land. Kuby’s lawsuit was one of four suits that were dismissed in 2000 because Sammy Bull was guilty of federal crimes that were not covered by the state law, which had been written with the .44 caliber killer David Berkowitz in mind. 

In 2001, the law was amended to include profits from convictions in federal court, but Kuby, who recalls nightmares of becoming The Bull’s 20th victim, says don’t call him.

“The first rendition almost got me killed,” Kuby said. “If people think I’m a coward for not doing it again, they can think that. Mr. Gravano, as I now call him, hopefully has been fine with the current situation, the case being dormant for 20 years. If he’s happy to keep it that way, it’s certainly fine for me to keep it that way.”

As it turns out, Gravano’s not concerned about any lawsuits. 

“I don’t have three cents,” he told Gang Land. “They can sue me all they want. I got no money. I don’t own anything.” The Bull declined to discuss where the funds his podcast earned during its five seasons have  gone, or who’s been pocketing the money from the sales of T shirts, mugs, and a slew of other Sammy The Bull paraphernalia that is sold on his site.

Gravano noted that relatives of several murder victims have already shared $400,000 he earned from Underboss, the book Peter Maas wrote about him. But that was seized by Arizona authorities under their state’s racketeering laws. And instead of being used for law enforcement purposes, as is normally the case, the state prosecutor decided otherwise.

As for the Sammy The Bull TV show, “It’s the story of my life,” said Gravano, who seemed to be bored with the subject, which is after all, old news, to him. “It’s gonna start the same way as The Sopranos, a one or two episode pilot, and then they’ll bounce back and forth with it, and it’ll be a weekly thing.”