SURVEILLANCE SNAPSHOTS

The following are snapshots from about 6,000 pages of police surveillance
reports of Salvatore Gravano and his family. Attorneys for the defendants
declined to comment on the case, though several have challenged the
propriety of the wiretaps and the accuracy of police interpretations.

Guns and fists

Although Ecstasy is touted as a peace-love drug, police wiretap summaries
link a number of the suspects in violent acts.

• In early February 2000, phone taps picked up a man identified as "Homer"
telling Gerard Gravano that he had been interrogated by Tempe detectives
concerning a homicide. Homer asked Gerard to warn a friend and vowed that
he would "never rat ... no matter what these detectives say."

Tempe police confirmed that Homer Moore, a former collegiate wrestling
champion who competes in extreme fighting, was questioned in connection
with the slaying of Karam H. Jabbar, a 19-year-old valet from Tempe.
Jabbar's body was found Aug. 3, 1999, in the trunk of a rental car. He had
been asphyxiated. No one has been arrested in the case.

• Undercover officers reported seeing Gravano with a gun on his lap before
a suspected drug deal. SWAT officers say they found three pistols in
Salvatore Gravano's Tempe apartment and an arsenal at his wife's house.

• Michael Papa, Salvatore Gravano's business partner and suspected of
leading the drug syndicate, told of choking an ex-cop unconscious in a bar
fight and using 20 young thugs to extort a Tempe restaurant operator.

• Papa and Gerard Gravano talked about how to deal with a customer who owed
$4,250 for Ecstasy. After the terrified young man left a phone message
saying he got the money from his mom, Gerard asked Papa, "Should I give him
a beaten (sic) still?"

• When a drug client started asking questions about an Ecstasy supplier,
one of the gang members told her she had a big mouth. If she talked, he
warned, she "will be found missing ... floating."

Popping pills

Many young suspects in the so-called Southwest Ecstasy Syndicate seemed as
eager to take pills as they were to sell them. According to wiretap summaries:

• Papa complained of a hangover from drinking three bottles of champagne
and taking 10 Ecstasy pills during a millennial New Year's party at the
Gravano restaurant in Scottsdale. A week later, Papa told roommate Anthony
Chinn that he needed an energy drink because he'd taken two Xanaxes
(sedatives) the night before and that Gerard Gravano had slipped a bunch
more pills in his drink as a joke.

• Surveillance notes say one of Anthony Chinn's buyers called because she
was worried about a friend who "went into a G hole (from GHB, a depressant)
and is puking blood." Chinn said that was normal and the guy would sleep it
off. (The Drug Enforcement Administration says GHB contains the same
ingredients as industrial cleaner and has resulted in at least 58 deaths
since 1990.)

Rip-offs

Gravano associates are frequently heard in wiretap summaries plotting to
cheat and rob one another.

• In one case, David Seabrook, suspected of being a business partner of
Gravano, duped a kid into paying $3,800 for Ecstasy that was never
delivered. The youth's nightmare escalated through hours of frantic phone
calls, detectives reported, and finally ended with weeping, begging - and
threats from Seabrook.

• Other wiretaps picked up Andre "Dre" Wegner, who according to court
records was the Arizona gang's supplier, complain that he was shorted
$10,000 on a $100,000 payment. Police noted that Papa swore the full amount
was sent because "the big man himself" counted the cash.

• Other wiretap summaries allege that some of the gang members talked of
going to Los Angeles to rob other drug dealers. Police fueled the distrust
by silently seizing a Federal Express shipment of pills to Cleveland. In
frenzied phone calls, a half-dozen people tried to figure out what went
wrong, then agreed never to use Fed Ex again.

Busted

In early February 2000, police listened as phone users from Tempe, Los
Angeles and Cleveland spent several days devising a cockeyed drug deal.

The final plan, according to wiretap summaries: A courier from Los Angeles
would fly to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix with several thousand Ecstasy
pills just as two prospective buyers arrived from Cleveland. Michael Papa
and Anthony Chinn would serve as brokers.

On Feb. 10, a dozen undercover officers tailed the suspects around the
airport and eavesdropped on cell phone calls. Moments after the exchange in
Terminal 3, police say, detectives stopped Eric Billock and Eric Schwartz,
both of Cleveland.

Officer Timothy Burk's report describes what happened next: "I noticed that
Billock's hands were shaking violently and that he had trouble speaking.
... I searched (him) and located what felt like a large bag of pills in his
groin area."

Billock and Schwartz have pleaded guilty.

Normal life

Seabrook, who worked for Gravano and was his prospective son-in-law,
compared their lives to the popular TV show about a New Jersey mob family:

"Dave says The Sopranos is a good show because it's not all gangstered out
like The Godfather," a police wiretap summary notes. "It's really like ...
normal."