Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [85]
“I was with guys from other organized-crime families throughout the country, motorcycle gangs, drug gangs—just about anybody who had been engaged in major gang or organized-crime activity. It was a real learning experience.
“Being in a small setting, I got to meet and know everybody very quickly. And I found out right away that some of those guys weren’t satisfied to just do their time. They were always looking to get somebody else in trouble. They figured that by ratting on their fellow inmates, they could get a better deal for themselves and get some time shaved off their sentence. They spent their time scheming and plotting. It was a shame, because we were all in the same boat, fighting the same war. But that’s the way it was. Because of that, I limited the number of people I spent time with to a couple of guys I trusted.
“For the rest of that year and into the next, I spent a lot of time with the prosecutors putting other cases together. One of them involved the Colombo drug-dealing operation. Another was against Wild Bill Cutolo in a shylocking and racketeering case, other drug cases, and the double homicide case involving the death of my friend Robert Arena.
“And some of the guys on the streets were trying to get messages to me through my family that I should stop cooperating, because I was hurting some good solid people. That was all a bunch of bullshit. These were some of the same people who wanted me dead before I flipped. And then they had the fuckin’ balls to say I should protect them. Those bastards had no shame.”
Andrew headed into 1999 with renewed dedication to his task. Progress was being made in the criminal cases he was helping put together. Unfortunately, another former friend wouldn’t make it through the year.
20
1999
Two of the three major events for Andrew in 1999 involved the Colombo family. The third concerned the bank-robbery crew. First on the agenda was the case he was helping the FBI build against four Colombo drug dealers.
Anticipating having to testify at trial against the Colombo men, it came as a pleasant surprise to Andrew when the four defendants made deals with prosecutors and entered guilty pleas. He and the other witnesses were off the hook. Although the convictions hadn’t been rendered by a jury, the pleas were a testament to the strength of the government’s case, which was based partly on the information he provided.
On the heels of that news, Andrew learned that the bank-robbery crew members were also negotiating pleas. That included Sal DeMeo, who was in custody after an appearance on “America’s Most Wanted.”
While these developments relieved a certain amount of Andrew’s stress, they didn’t remove it all. He was still confined with 60 other men, all of whom were government witnesses. And many of them were always looking for an opportunity to come up with incriminating information against someone that they could swap to better their own situations. The small space allotted for the witness units limited recreational activities compared to a regular prison. But the lack of a yard large enough to play football or handball was somewhat made up for by one-man cells and television sets.
No matter the accommodations, nothing could make the inmates stop worrying about the safety of their loved ones. Would the friends of a gangster imprisoned on his testimony seek revenge by harming someone the witness held dear?
On the other side of the coin were the inmates whose families had turned on them over their decision to cooperate with the government. They received no support at all from their disgruntled kin. So everyone incarcerated in that facility had his own reason for anxiety.
For Andrew, the seemingly endless hours of debriefing by FBI agents and prosecutors seeking every detail of his involvement in or knowledge of specific crimes was emotionally draining. Reflecting back on it now, he finds that was probably the most insecure period of his life. Nothing