1-16-02
Mob Plotted 'Bull Hit. New York Post

January 16, 2002 --

Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano was a sitting duck in an Arizona jail, where fellow inmates with allegiance to the "Mexican Mafia" secretly plotted to kill the mob turncoat on a La Cosa Nostra contract, Gravano's lawyer claims.

The Maricopa County sheriff's office went so far as to warn Gravano, who was locked up for running a major "ecstasy" drug ring with his son Gerard.

Officials "had removed any suspects from his pod in the jail" in August, "but they asked that he exercise caution," Lynn Stewart revealed in a letter to Brooklyn federal Judge Allyne Ross.

"Sammy said he'd keep an eye out," Stewart told The Post, adding that the deadly scheme shows how prison is harder on Sammy the Bull than on your run-of-the-mill crook.

Ross heard Gravano's guilty plea last June in Brooklyn and is expected to sentence him in the near future. Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda Lacewell wants the judge to throw the book at Gravano and give him the maximum 20-year sentence for his role in the! drug ring.

Prosecutors say the turncoat threw away his second chance and a sweetheart deal that allowed him to serve five years in prison for 19 murders after he testified against John Gotti.

Stewart is trying to persuade Ross to stick within the plea agreement guidelines of 12 to 15 years. In court papers Stewart denies Gravano masterminded the plot - saying he only financed it - and calls the ecstasy prosecution "vindictive."

Gravano also pleaded guilty to ecstasy charges in Arizona, where a judge will sentence him following Ross' ruling.