GRAVANO BUSTED IN DRUG RING

PHOENIX - Former Mafia hit man Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a mob
turncoat whose testimony helped put crime boss John Gotti behind bars, was
arrested Thursday for involvement with a drug ring, police said.

Gravano was not selling narcotics but helped finance the drug ring and was
a "mentor" to the ring's leader, Michael Papa, the founding member of a
white supremacist gang, said Phoenix police spokesman Jeff Halstead.

Thirty-five members of the ring, which allegedly trafficked the drug
ecstasy, were arrested including Papa, Gravano's wife, Debra; son Gerard;
daughter Karen; and son-in-law David Seabrook.

A judge set Gravano's bail at $5 million.

Gravano, a confessed hit man, ravaged the Mafia by defecting to the
government, making headlines when he helped convict Gotti and dozens of
other gangland cronies. Authorities called him the most important mob
turncoat in U.S. history.

"His primary testimony against the mob doesn't give him a free ride to
facilitate drug dealing in Arizona," state Attorney General Janet
Napolitano said.

His bombshell testimony, along with conversations secretly taped by the
FBI, finally put Gotti, the so-called "Teflon Don," behind bars for life in
1992 after three previous acquittals.

Under his deal with prosecutors, Gravano admitted to 19 murders, but served
only five years for racketeering.

He then entered the federal witness protection program, but dropped out in
1997 saying he wanted to live normally, not always looking over his
shoulder for "some kid" hoping to "make a name for himself by taking me out."

By 1999, he was making a new life in a Phoenix suburb, living under an
assumed name but telling a reporter for The Arizona Republic he didn't
think he was in any real danger.

"I'm not running from the (expletive) Mafia," Gravano told The Republic
last year.

Attorney Ron Kuby, who represents the families of Gravano's 19 murder
victims in a civil suit, said Gravano's insistence that he was repudiating
his criminal ways had been a scam.

"I wonder how the government officials who cozied up to this mobster must
feel. First they allow him to get away with 19 murders, then they turn him
loose to deal poison to the unsuspecting people of Arizona," Kuby said.

On its Web site Thursday, The Republic reported the ring targeted Phoenix
area teen-agers and rave music clubs.

The drug operation allegedly sold upward of 30,000 ecstasy pills a week.