Is it just a 'crazy act?'
If reputed crime boss is found competent, he could be tried for murder
March 5, 1996
Web posted at: 6:15 p.m. ESTFrom Correspondent Brian Jenkins
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Mob informer Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano returned to the stand Tuesday to testify against reputed Mafia boss Vincent "the Chin" Gigante.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that Gigante is mentally competent to stand trial on murder and racketeering charges.
When Gigante was arraigned six years ago on racketeering charges, he shuffled out of federal court in a bathrobe and pajamas with a vacant look on his face.
A string of psychiatrists declared Gigante unfit to stand trial, a finding former prosecutor Charles Rose doesn't buy. (153K AIFF sound or 153K WAV sound)
"He checks in almost yearly at a very, very nice clinic in upstate New York. He stays for a very short period of time and is found, miraculously, to be fit to be released," Rose said.
The government maintains Gigante's habit of wandering around New York's Greenwich Village in pajamas while babbling incoherently and claiming to hear voices is an act to conceal his role as boss of the Genovese crime family, the most powerful in America.
It's a claim Gravano backed up in his testimony Monday.
"I have invested many years in this crazy act," Gravano quoted Gigante as saying in the early 1980s.
Turned on Gotti
Gravano, who has helped prosecutors before, is now in the federal Witness Protection Program. The former underboss of the Gambino crime family defected and helped send his mentor and ex-Gambino leader, John Gotti, to prison for life.
By the time Gotti rubbed out Paul Castellano in 1985 to take over the rival Gambino family, Gigante had been running the Genovese family for several years.
In his testimony Monday, Gravano looked pale and seemed slightly on edge as he testified about his contact with Gigante, who was not in the courtroom.
Gravano recalled that in five meetings with Gigante over a 13-year period up to 1989, Gigante sometimes wore pajamas and a bathrobe, but was invariably lucid.
At a meeting of top bosses in 1988, Gravano said, Gigante arrived in a robe, but took charge, never mumbling, stammering, clicking his tongue or saying God told him not to speak -- the kind of behavior observed by all the psychiatrists.
Gigante's defenders
Gravano's testimony was inconsistent, said defense attorney Barry Slotnick.
"He's added things he's never told the FBI before, and it's his way of trying to get an even better deal (from prosecutors)."
Another Gravano critic is Gigante's brother, Louis, who's a priest. He denies that the bathrobe behavior is an act.
"My brother's been under my mother's care," he told reporters outside Brooklyn Federal Court Monday.
At least two more mob turncoats are expected to testify against Gigante. If found competent to stand trial, Gigante also could face charges filed in 1993 that he conspired to murder eight mobsters, including John Gotti.
Father Gigante says he fears that if there is a trial, his brother's feeble mind and frail heart will not be able to handle the process.
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