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He made it to the top of the ladder in 1976, after cousin Carlo Gambino had died. He did have to pretty much split the family with Aniello Dellacroce, who was to become the underboss and have control of his own crew. However, Paul was the boss. From then on, it was up to him to control business. All the loan-sharking, pornography, hijacking, bribery, tampering, and unions were under "Big" Paul. He also held power in the meat business, supermarket chains, garment industry, and construction.

After a few years, "Big" Paul became a very wealthy man (if he was not before). He purchased a mansion in Staten Island which people referred to as the "White House", because it looked somewhat like it. It was this house where Paul ran the family. In fact, he pretty much separated himself from the street life This insulated Paul from prosecution, and from prying eyes (or so he thought). The FBI managed, amazingly, to place a bug inside the godfather's own security tight house. This was a major blunder for the godfather. The FBI received an obscene amount of information from this bug about the family. This led to an indictment of "Big" Paul and many other highly placed members of the family. The FBI had put together a case against all the heads of the five families which led to the "comission" trials. Castellano was a major defendant. However, before the trial had ended, "Big" Paul and his underboss / body guard, Tommy Bilotti, were assassinated in the streets of New York on the way to a sit down. They were taken down by associates of the next godfather, John Gotti, because Paul was going to turn over the leadership to Tommy Bilotti, after he went to prison. This left no room for Gotti who wanted to move up, so he assassinated Paul with the permission of the "Commission."

"You only live once, Piney. Am I right? You don't get to do everything. No one does. Me, I got no regrets. The thing I wish, I wish I had more education. I wish I was more, ya know, educated. But I say that now. At the time, what I wanted was the streets, so I took 'em. I always felt, if there's something you want to do, do it now. Don't fuck around waiting. Am I right?"

"Yeah, Paul, you're right."

"But at the same time, let's not kid ourselves. This life of ours, this is a wonderful life. If you can get through life like this and get away with it, hey, that's great. But its very, very unpredictable. There's so many ways you can screw it up. So you gotta think, ya gotta be patient. A lotta guys they're yanking their zipper before their dick's put away, then they wonder why they got snagged. And they don't know when to zipper their fucking mouth shut, either. I tell 'em 'You listen, you learn. You talk, you teach.' Am I right, Piney?"

"Yeah, Paul, you're right."

"Because there's just so many fucking things that can blow up on you."

"Yeah, Paul, there are."

"There's so many ways they can get you."

Look, when we sit down to clip a guy, we have to remember what's at stake here. There's some hazard. Guys forget that. They get a guy behind in his vig payments, they get a hard-on about it, right away they want to whack him. Why? Just because they're pissed off, they're aggravated. But what I say is: "Hey, you're making a living with this guy. He gets you aggravated, and right away you want to use the hammer? How do you get your fucking money then?"

It's means and ends. The idea is to collect. But you know, Paul, I think some guys just take so much pleasure from breaking heads that they'd almost rather not get paid.

Yeah, yeah. We got some guys like that. Dick-fists, I call 'em. I'm always sayin' to 'em, "Just to take a guy out, that ain't the point." Because I tell ya', Piney, anytime I can remember that we knocked guys out, it cost us. It's like there's a tax on it or some shit. Somebody gets arrested. Or there's a fuckup, which means we gotta clip another guy, maybe a guy we don't wanna lose.