Ecstasy In Arizona: A Cop and Bull Story

By Edward Barnes/Phoenix

Both "ecstasy" and "Sammy the Bull" Gravano came to Phoenix the same way: by stealth. But when they met, in the darker corners of this sprawling, newly built city, the result was explosive. Gravano arrived under the pseudonym Jimmy Moran, placed in secrecy by the federal witness-protection program. The former underboss of New York City's Gambino crime family and a hit man responsible for 19 murders, Gravano became the government's most important witness against the Mob. His testimony put 37 top-level mobsters behind bars and earned him a $1 million price on his head. Flush with money from book and TV deals, he was starting a new life as a businessman far from his old Brooklyn haunts. He bought an eight-bedroom, 4,399-sq.-ft. home with stables, a three-car garage and a pool complete with waterfall, plus a separate apartment. He set up legitimate businesses: an Italian restaurant and a small pool-construction company with brand-new trucks and heavy equipment.

Ecstasy came to Phoenix just as quietly. It came in small bags brought by friends to share at secretive, insular clubs around the city. It was nothing big, just something that like-minded friends would pass among themselves while dancing away weekends. "We didn't even know it was here," said a Phoenix narcotics cop. "It is not a 911 drug. Parents would drop their kids off at clubs thinking everything was O.K. because they didn't serve alcohol."

But the secrets could not be contained. About two years ago, the rave scene in Phoenix began to grow. "It used to be everyone that showed up dressed alike and thought alike. Everyone knew each other. It was sort of a New Age hippie thing. Very cool, very mellow. No problems," says an already nostalgic twentysomething local. "Then it just started to grow. People from the university would show up. Jocks would be there. It was, like, everybody was doing it." As word of the raves spread, police began to hear that a new drug scene was sweeping the city.

Last year Gravano's life in the slow lane sputtered. His identity, never a big secret, was disclosed by a local paper. The construction business, according to police, was far less successful than Gravano had hoped. But as Gravano whiled away the hours in the small brown office of Marathon Development--the same name he once used for a front company in New York--a new opportunity presented itself. Among the employees he had hired was an old acquaintance from New York, Michael Papa, a close friend of Gravano's son Gerard. By this time, Gravano was no longer trying to conceal who he was. In fact, he reveled in the notoriety. In cafes and restaurants, he would talk to whoever would listen about the Mafia and the murders, gaining him a small but loyal following of young, rapt local kids to whom he offered advice and sometimes friendship.

Of all the acolytes, Papa, 23, was the most like Sammy the Bull. Like Gravano, Papa was the swaggering leader of his own gang of young Arizona toughs. According to police, Papa was one of the founding members of a group that went by various names-- Hitler's Youth, White Power or Devil Dogs--purportedly a racist high school gang that terrorized the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert. In truth, police sources say, the gang was really a steroid-laced football team that went bad from lack of direction. "They were bad, but they weren't racist. Hell, there were even black members," says a police source.

As the city's rave scene changed from spontaneous get-togethers to organized, clandestine parties complete with code words and secret phone lines, Papa and his friends were drawn to the action and quickly began to see the moneymaking possibilities. Using a supplier in Las Vegas, they began distributing low-grade ecstasy pills to clubs or wherever else the party drug was wanted. "Papa didn't need Sammy to teach him to be a gangster. He came by it honestly," explained a source familiar with the group. By all accounts, the ecstasy ring was led by Papa, a premed student on the dean's list at Arizona State University, who used former high school friends to distribute the drug. Soon he began to emulate Gravano's life: he bought a flashy silver BMW M3 and began to hang out at his own choice table in some of the more upscale clubs. But, police say, Papa was still a small-time dealer. "It was 100 pills here and another 100 there."

Until that time, police drug busters had been focused on the flood of pot and cocaine coming across the border from Mexico. But as the ecstasy scene broke into the mainstream, the cops started to take action. Phoenix police sent in a young female undercover detective to start making buys. "We had to tell her to stop, she was getting so much," said a law-enforcement source. They were also surprised by how widespread the use of the drug was among young suburban kids. "Only 1,000 ecstasy pills were seized in all of Arizona the previous year. Now we were finding it everywhere," says a police source. Shortly after the Phoenix police began climbing the distribution ladder, they began to hear one name over and over. It was Gravano. As the police were dealing with low-level dealers, the Drug Enforcement Agency intercepted a large Federal Express shipment of ecstasy in San Francisco. Faced with arrest, the dealer mentioned a name that stopped the feds in their tracks: Gravano.

The two agencies mounted a joint investigation. From October until last January, police teams shadowed virtually every move Gravano and Papa made. They also intercepted 16,000 phone conversations.

With demand soaring, police say, the operation run by Papa made the leap from being one of hundreds of small rings to importing the drug in quantity. A Phoenix police spokesman explained that during the department's surveillance, Papa and his friends "changed the methods under which they operated after learning from Sammy. They became more aggressive, showed a lot of force and were more organized. It was almost like they were being schooled." They also began to use Gravano's name to intimidate other dealers and took to carrying guns. Almost overnight, police say, the gang became the top supplier of ecstasy in Arizona. At its height, police estimate, the ring was selling as many as 10,000 pills a week and raking in almost $1 million a month.

Over the next several months, police would watch as the gang made the rounds of restaurant parking lots to deliver ecstasy to couriers and buyers. Among the spots the gang used for dealing ecstasy was Uncle Sal's, a restaurant owned by Gravano's wife Debra; its motto was "The Best-Kept Secret in Scottsdale." Police say the restaurant was in her name only because Sammy could never pass the background check for a liquor license.

After a month of intense surveillance, the police moved in on Feb. 24. They arrested Sammy, Debra, his daughter Karen, her fiance David Seabrook, Gerard as well as Papa and 41 others. In raids on their properties, police found ecstasy pills, guns and nearly $100,000 in cash, most of it in the Gravano house. (In Sammy's separate apartment, the only drugs found were pot and Viagra.) Gravano, who has pleaded not guilty, is still in jail, unable to come up with $5 million bail. There is some skepticism about the extent of Gravano's role among federal officials who know him. They say there is a big difference between mentoring kids and masterminding a drug operation. "This is going to be a wiretap case," says a defense lawyer. "If the wiretaps hold up, the government has a good case. If they don't, it falls apart."

Still, a DEA source theorizes, even as a mentor, Gravano "seems to have forgotten all he learned. He just did everything wrong. He used his own house for meetings and to store drugs. He used his own telephone without even trying to use code words. He drove a flashy Lexus that made him stand out. He left records of the transactions around. He used his wife to monitor the money and kids to run the operation. He prided himself on being a mobster. But he sure forgot what John Gotti taught him."