He is bald and pale as a ghost, but Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano showed flashes of his old bull-like self last week in superior court in Hackensack, N.J., his first appearance there since his arraignment two years ago on controversial murder charges.

As he entered a courtroom that was locked and surrounded by scores of court officers, local police officers, and deputy U.S. marshals, Sammy Bull was not the frail, anemic-looking defendant seen in recent years. Gravano, who has 12 years to serve for state and federal drug charges lodged in 2000 and 2001, has bulked up noticeably since losing all of his hair and much weight due to a thyroid affliction known as Graves’ disease.

Based solely on the testimony of Richard “Iceman” Kuklinski, a self-described mob hitman, Gravano – who in exchange for becoming a turncoat got a free pass from the feds on every murder he admitted – was charged with holding back on one, the March 1980 murder of a corrupt NYPD detective, Peter Calabro. Gravano vehemently denies the charge.

The status conference before Judge William Meehan – the first on-the-record session since Gravano’s arraignment in March 2003 – was called to publicly announce that Gravano’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, was bowing out of the case because of a “conflict of interest.”

The conflict arose, as Gang Land disclosed in April, when Mr. Ricco reported that Kuklinski tried to extort $200,000 from Gravano by writing an extortion demand on a corner of a legal pad, ripping it off, and showing it to Mr. Ricco during a jailhouse meeting, and then eating it with a smile.

Mr. Ricco may wind up a witness to Kuklinski’s odd eating habits, disqualifying him as Gravano’s lawyer. Under questioning by the judge, Gravano said he understood and would begin efforts to obtain a new trial lawyer.

When Judge Meehan asked if he would be able to do that by July 12, Gravano, who has a lot of time on his hands, answered, “The 12th of July sounds like a decent date.” The defendant then quickly suggested that the Bergen County prosecutor “take the time to take polygraph exams of the witnesses on both sides.” Judge Meehan said such exams were inadmissible, but the former mob underboss’s point was hard to miss.

Outside the court, Mr. Ricco spelled it out more clearly. Gravano’s crack about lie detector tests, the lawyer told Gang Land, stemmed from his client’s belief – shared by the lawyer – that the case is a “frame-up” made up of lies from Kuklinski and backed up by another jailhouse informer.

The defense will call FBI agents and federal prosecutors involved in the case against the late Mafia boss John Gotti as witnesses, Mr. Ricco said. The purpose, he said, would be to undercut an important theory of the murder charge: that Gravano withheld acknowledging the murder of Calabro because the murder of a cop, even one who had been publicly branded as corrupt, would have thrown a monkey wrench into his deal with the feds.

“That idea is a fantasy of the Bergen County prosecutor’s office,” Mr. Ricco said, noting that Gravano, initially indicted for three murders, told the feds about 16 others that he was not charged with, including several in which he was not a suspect. “It’s ludicrous to think that he would have held back on that one,” Mr. Ricco said.

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If Bergen County prosecutors fail to convict Gravano of murder in the Garden State, you can expect one of their witnesses, convicted killer Felipe Garcia, to finger Sammy Bull for mob hits in Syracuse, N.Y., and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Gravano admitted killings in those cities, Garcia told the Bergen County prosecutor’s office in a tape-recorded interview, because he and Sammy Bull were “very, very, very good friends,” according to a transcript that was obtained by Gang Land. The interview took place on March 10, 2003, days after Garcia read a newspaper story reporting that Gravano was going to be extradited from Arizona to face murder charges in Calabro’s slaying, according to the transcript.

Gravano didn’t supply any details about the Syracuse and Ft. Lauderdale slayings, Garcia said, explaining that Sammy Bull merely said, “Well, I did this murder here, I did this murder here.”

Regarding the Calabro murder, however, Gravano admitted his involvement on three separate occasions while they were housed together in a unit populated exclusively by cooperating witnesses, between 55 and 60 altogether, Garcia said.

Casual readers might wonder why any turncoat would admit anything to another one, since by their nature stoolies are always looking to score points with their handlers by fingering alleged culprits. But Garcia had a ready explanation why Sammy Bull would open up to him.

“He was my best buddy in the federal Witness Protection Program,” Garcia said. “We were buddies from 5:30 in the morning all the way till 1 o’clock in the morning. Every day together. We eat together. We work out together. We sit together. We play cards together. We play pinochle together, we, I teach him how to play chess.”

The subject came up by accident, Garcia said, when he used a derogative Spanish slang word, “cabron,” to coin a new slur word – “calabron” – to kid an inmate who hailed from the Italian province of Calabria, who, it turns out, really came from Sicily.

Gravano grabbed him by “my right biceps hard” and said, “Look, Felipe, never never mention that name around me. Because that name is from a cop that in 1981, I think it was, uh, he got killed. You know, I, I helped to get killed.”

At the urging of a detective who taped the 48-minute session, Garcia amended his recollection of Gravano’s words, substituting the word “whacked” for killed.

Another time, Garcia recalled, Gravano told him the murder took place in New Jersey, that he was “there” for the hit, that a shotgun was used, and that Calabro had been providing information to the Gambino family – all details that were included in the first news accounts of the charges against Gravano.

Garcia, a longtime jailhouse snitch, said he hadn’t disclosed the information previously because he thought his very good friend was kidding around when he made those claims. Even when Garcia, who has often turned on fellow inmates to score points with authorities, was arrested for murder in 2001 and was trying to come up with ways to help himself, the thought of fingering Gravano “never came to my mind.”

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After prodding by Detective Robert Anzilotti, Garcia provided a fascinating tidbit about Sammy Bull’s preparation for Gotti’s 1992 murder and racketeering trial: Garcia pressed the suit that Gravano wore for his classic confrontation with the Dapper Don.

Garcia explained: “Mr. Gravano was going to testify in the trial of Mr. John Gotti, and he asked me, that, since he wanted to go and look very sharp for the trial, that he wanted me to iron his double-breasted gray suit for the trial that he used to testify.”

While interesting, that account could create a bit of a problem for Garcia and the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.

Gravano, who began cooperating in November 1991, never got to Garcia’s federal witness security unit until several weeks after he testified at the Gotti trial.