Did Sammy Bull Gravano kill Jimmy Hoffa?

Consider the circumstantial evidence: Hoffa disappeared after running afoul of hoods who ran the Teamsters – his old union – in New Jersey. Gravano was into the Teamsters big time. He controlled Local 282, the biggest construction trucking local in the metropolitan area. The Bull is also a self-confessed multiple mob murderer.

When Hoffa vanished in 1975, Gravano had already whacked his first victim, and was looking to work his way up the Mafia ranks, doing favors for mob bosses.

That’s what cops call motive and opportunity. What more do you need? After all, Gravano admits taking part in 19 murders.

What? You're not convinced?

Well, neither are several very knowledgeable law enforcement officials about murder charges that New Jersey authorities lodged this week against Gravano in the March 14, 1980 slaying of allegedly corrupt NYPD detective Peter Calabro.

Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said Gravano authored the slaying by hiring self-confessed jailed-for-life serial killer Richard (Iceman) Kuklinski (right) to do the job. Calabro, 36, was 

shot to death as he drove home to his wife and young daughter in Upper Saddle River N.J. after a tour of duty with the Queens Auto Crimes Division.

The Bull, according to Molinelli and his chief of detectives, Mike Mordaga, supplied the murder weapon and assisted in the hit, communicating with Kuklinski via walkie-talkie as they waited for Calabro (left) to drive by in his Honda Civic.

The genesis of the charges is Kuklinski, 67, who cracked jokes and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself last week as he pleaded guilty to Calabro’s murder as his widow Stephanie and daughter listened in silence.

“I shot him with a shotgun,” said Kuklinski, smiling throughout the bizarre proceeding, safe in the knowledge that an agreed upon 30-year sentence means nothing since he’s already serving four life terms that keep him ineligible for parole until he’s about 110.

New Jersey officials may buy that story, but others believe Kuklinski is simply making it up.

“I’m 100 per cent sure that Gravano had nothing to do with it and I’m 99 per cent sure that Kuklinski didn’t do it,” said one investigator who was on a state and federal task force that convicted many members of a stolen car ring that paid Calabro as much as $3000 a week for inside information, according to court records.

“We told them two years ago that Kuklinski was full of it,” said another law enforcement official, recalling talks with members of then-Prosecutor William Schmidt’s staff about evidence that put the lie to many Kuklinski claims, first aired on an HBO special in May 2001.

Among the many debunked Kuklinski stories is the assertion he was “with” a murderous mob crew of car thieves and drug dealers headed by Gambino

soldier Roy DeMeo that killed at least 75 victims from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, and that he killed DeMeo in 1983.

Kuklinski, according to authorities who brought almost all of the surviving crew members to justice in the late 1980s, visited DeMeo’s headquarters in Canarsie, Brooklyn once, to buy a handgun.

Murder Machine, a 1992 book Gene Mustain and I wrote about the DeMeo crew, detailed Calabro’s corrupt dealings with DeMeo and disclosed that investigators concluded that the detective had been killed by relatives of his first wife, Carmela, who had drowned under suspicious circumstances in August 1977.

Law enforcement sources yesterday confirmed that account – naming two of Carmela’s brothers as the key suspects. The sources added that even if their suspicions are wrong, it was highly unlikely that Gravano, a Gambino soldier based in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, would have been part of a mob plot to kill a corrupt cop who fell out of favor with the Canarsie-based crew of Roy DeMeo. (left)

If Gravano were part of the plot, the sources added, it is equally unlikely that he would have hired anyone to do his work. Had Gravano actually participated in the killing, they concluded, he would have jumped at the chance to clean up his record while admitting 19 other murders, including the killing of his brother-in-law – and he would have fingered Kuklinski for it.

Investigators dismiss the theory that Gravano held back on the Calabro hit out of fear, as New Jersey detectives have speculated, that a cop killing would wreck his chances for a short prison sentence.

In the immortal words of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, as he justified his own law enforcement rubout: “We’re talking about a dirty cop.”

The bottom line is that charging Gravano with Calabro’s murder makes about as much sense as accusing him of Hoffa’s murder.

But you never know. When Kuklinski was asked about Hoffa’s disappearance, the Iceman, who claims to have killed DeMeo and 100 others since he was 14, smiled and said, “Now THAT’s an interesting story.”

Gambino capo Greg DePalma (right) and his mobster son Craig were both nabbed for racketeering with former acting boss John A. (Junior) Gotti, and like the Junior Don, they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison in 1999.

The outcomes for father and son were markedly different, however.

The elder DePalma was so ill at the time of his sentencing that it had to be held in a hospital ward. The aging mobster at the time was believed near death, breathing through an oxygen mask and hooked to intravenous tubes. Last week, however, he beat the odds and was released from federal prison.

DePalma, 70, is enjoying his freedom in a new home in Eastchester with Terri, his wife of more than 40 years, said longtime attorney Robert Ellis.

“It’s nearly a week, and Greg hasn’t once called to ask me to take him back,” Ellis cracked.

Along the way, the ailing mobster was tape recorded in prison discussing a plot

to kill Gambino rival Nicholas LaSorsa, went to trial, and despite the tapes and testimony by a jailhouse informer, DePalma was acquitted of conspiring to murder LaSorsa.

Following his acquittal last August, while en route from New York back to his assigned facility, Greg visited son Craig (left) in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, an unusual event for jailed relatives.

At the time, sources said, Craig was depressed as he awaited trial for criminal contempt for refusing to repeat testimony he had given to an Atlanta federal grand jury about capo Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo at DiLeonardo’s Atlanta racketeering trial.

The following month, after his father had been transferred, Craig tried to commit suicide by hanging himself. Saved from death by prison guards, Craig, 36, is now the one desperately ill. He is in a coma at a Fort Worth Texas prison hospital, breathing on his own, but receiving nourishment through feeding tubes, and with no real chance of recovery. He is scheduled for release in December of next year.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

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The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

    Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.