The man who brought down John Gotti has quit the Witness Protection Program and started a new life with a surgically altered face, the author of his life story said Friday.
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano's transmuted kisser will appear within seven weeks on the cover of the new book - a bizarre move for a man with a reported $1 million bounty on his head, a killer of 19 people, a witness whose testimony jailed Gotti and three dozen other mobsters.Mob experts questioned the sanity of Gravano's suddenly high profile. "If I were Gravano, I would worry," said Ronald Goldstock, ex-head of the Organized Crime Task Force. "Gotti's in prison with no hope of getting out. Getting Gravano is something you'd think he'd be serious about."
Peter Maas, who wrote "Underboss: Sammy The Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia," said the notoriously vain Gravano's decision to go public was influenced by previous mob witnesses. "In terms of the other guys who cooperated, they appeared in wigs and fake mustaches - Sammy said they looked like clowns," Maas said. "That's not him."
Gravano had some plastic surgery when he went into the program in the spring of 1995. The latest fine-tuning came in the course of repairs to his nose for damage suffered in his early days as a boxer, Maas said.
The now youthful-looking Gravano also has divorced since he entered the protection program and delivered a message through Maas to America's female population: "Tell 'em I'm single and available."
Finding Gravano for a date is another story. "He is, you know, cautious," said Maas, whose previous books include "Serpico" and "The Valachi Papers." The two met a half-dozen times while working on the book, all in undisclosed locations west of the Mississippi River.
Gravano, as Gotti's right-hand man and trusted underboss, had been a millionaire construction boss who sampled Manhattan's night life with the Dapper Don.
It was Gotti, now serving a life sentence, who reportedly put out the contract on The Bull. But relatives of Gravano's 19 murder victims or associates of the 36 other mobsters jailed by his testimony have their own reasons to exact revenge.
Federal marshals, in the witness protection business since 1971, have never lost a witness who followed their guidelines.