Joseph Gallo (Mafioso)

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Joseph "Joey" Gallo - Mugshot

Joseph "Joey" Gallo , also known as "Crazy Joe" (English: "Crazy Joe"), "Joe The Blond" (English: "Joe the Blonde"), (born April 7, 1929 in Red Hook , Brooklyn , New York ; † April 7, 1972 in New York City ) was an Italian-American mobster and member of the Profaci family in New York City, which was later classified as the Colombo family .

Gallo and his two brothers Lawrence Gallo and Albert "Kid Blast" Gallo sparked one of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of the Cosa Nostra .

Life

The beginnings

The son of Italian parents, together with his two brothers, quickly made a name for himself in the circles of the Cosa Nostra as a contract killer and is associated with the murder of Albert Anastasia .

Joseph Gallo was a colorful character and a talkative personality. He is said to have kept a pet lion in his President Street apartment that was chained in the basement. In the 1950s he was nicknamed "Joey the Blonde" because of his blond hair. Former New York chief investigator Albert Seedman once said of the much better known nickname "Crazy Joe": "Gallo always struck exactly when his victims least expected it, so he was given the name Crazy Joe."

Joseph Gallo was married several times. His first wife Jeffie, known not much more than her first name, divorced him and married him a second time in July 1971. After this second marriage with Jeffie had failed, Joe Gallo met Sina Essary - a 29-year-old Italian American - whom he married a good three weeks before his death in March 1972. Gallo was the secret owner of several nightclubs on Eighth Avenue . Among other things, he earned his money through illegal gambling .

In the 1960s, Gallo tried to make friends with African-American gangsters , as he assessed it as more lucrative than they - as it was otherwise customary in the Mafia families - to fight. This idea of ​​uniting the leading figures of the Afro-American and Italian underworld was a lifelong dream of Joseph Gallo and was later taken up again by various capos and bosses.

One of Gallo's great hobbies was reading sophisticated literature . His reading included the works of Franz Kafka , Jean-Paul Sartre , Albert Camus , Alexandre Dumas , Victor Hugo , Ayn Rand and his great role model Niccolò Machiavelli .

Gallo's philosophy of life was: "If you are a taxi driver then be the best taxi driver in the world, if you are a gangster, then be the best and never be satisfied with second best."

Donald Frankos, a former inmate of Gallo's, described him as follows: “Joey was extremely eloquent. He could talk about how to tear a guy's guts out as easily and freely as he could about classical literature. ”(During their time together in prison, Gallo Donald Frankos had introduced the teachings and principles of his hero and role model Niccolò Machiavelli.) Gallo was considered an outsider among the other Italian inmates, as he was often seen with Afro-American inmates. In particular, he is said to have been the mentor of the African American Leroy Barnes , who after his release from prison in Harlem founded a gang modeled on the Mafia and thus dominated the drug trade there.

The Gallo-Profaci War

In the late 1950s Joe Gallo tried to overthrow the mafia boss Joseph Profaci in order to achieve a change of power at the top. With this endeavor he got a lot of help from his two brothers Larry and Albert. Since Profaci was very unpopular with members of his family at the time, the Gallos and their fellow ally Carmine Persico saw a good chance to overthrow Profaci. However, the supposed ally Persico later changed sides and smoothed the waves again within the clan, so that there was no change of power after all.

As head of the family Profaci could not let the coup attempt rest and in May 1961 carried out an assassination attempt on Gallo, which however failed. Profaci managed to smuggle John Scimone into Gallos crew as a spy, who organized the murder of Joseph "Joe Jelly" Gioelli, a gang member of the Gallos.

Profaci's men kidnapped Gioelli and took him to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn in a fishing boat . There Gioelli was shot and dismembered. His clothes were stuffed with dead fish and thrown in front of a restaurant that the Gallo gang frequented.

On August 20, 1961, Gallo's brother Larry was lured to a meeting at the Sahara Lounge , a strip club in Brooklyn. When he entered the club, he was surrounded by Profacis men (among them Carmine Persico is said to have been). They tried to strangle him. A police officer passing by, who happened to be entering the store, irritated the perpetrators who did not finish their act, and Larry Gallo got away with his life. Thereupon the Gallos wanted to take revenge for the planned murder of Larry and ambushed Carmine Persico; he had gunshot wounds on his arm and face, but survived the fire attack on his car.

Imprisonment

In late 1961, the FBI hit the Gallo brothers, and "Crazy Joe" Gallo in particular was arrested for extortion and sentenced to ten years in prison. The remaining members of the Gallo faction continued to act against Profaci.

When he died of liver cancer on June 7, 1962 , the conflict could have ended, but Joseph "Joe Maylak" Magliocco took his place as head. Some members of the commission - in particular Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese - and also the Gallos disagreed with this decision.

"Crazy Joe" was a shrewd and devious man who tried several times to poison fellow prisoners with strychnine- added food. During a riot in Auburn Prison, Gallo rescued a badly wounded law enforcement officer. This later testified in court for Gallo, which brought him a reduction in sentence. Gallo was released from custody in February 1971. He had met Leroy Barnes in prison and had instructed him on how to organize a gang. Barnes then built a thriving heroin trade in Harlem.

Assassination attempt on Joe Colombo

Four months later, on June 28, 1971, Joseph Colombo , the new “acting boss” of the Profaci family, was shot by gangster Jerome Johnson at a rally of the Italian-American Civil Rights League . Colombo then fell into a vegetative state from which he would not awaken until his death in 1978. The assassin was shot dead by Colombo's bodyguards immediately after the crime. Since the perpetrator was an African American , there was speculation as to whether Gallo was the client for the attack on Colombo, but this could never be clarified with certainty.

Gallo's death

On April 7, 1972, Joe Gallo celebrated his 43rd birthday at Umberto's Clam House , a restaurant in Little Italy . Among the guests was Gallo's bodyguard Peter “Pete the Greek” Diapoulas.

An armed man stormed the place and opened fire from 32 caliber firearms . Gallo, who was sitting at a table with his friends, was hit twice. Bodyguard Peter Diapoulas was hit in the hip by a bullet and barely survived. Gallo staggered out of the restaurant into the street, where the assassin shot Gallo three more times in the upper body. A few minutes later a police patrol arrived at the scene and took the shot Joe Gallo to the nearby hospital. There he died a short time later due to the high blood loss.

The contract killers escaped in their car; they were never identified. The informant and Pentito Joe Luparelli claimed that Gallo's murderers were Carmine “Sonny Pinto” DiBiase and two brothers he only knew by the names Cisco and Benny. He also testified that Phillip Gambino was also involved in the murder. Despite what Joe Luparelli said, none of these men were charged with the murder.

Investigators assumed a different thesis. According to this, this attack was ordered by Joseph Yacovelli , the brief head of the Colombo family , and it was carried out by Frank Sheeran . As a result, the conflict that had begun under Joseph Profaci , which had actually been formally over since 1963 under Joseph Magliocco , should now be definitively resolved by Gallo's death. In 2003, Frank Sheeran admitted his involvement in the murder shortly before his death.

Adaptations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The return of Crazy Joe on trutv.com (engl.)
  2. ^ Profaci Dies of Cancer; Led feuding Brooklyn mob. In: New York Times. June 8, 1962, Retrieved November 26, 2011 .
  3. ↑ "Vegetabled" - Colombo Family on trutv.com (Engl.)
  4. ^ Umberto's Clam House Opens For Business, And Bullets, Again. on americanmafia.com
personal data
SURNAME Gallo, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joe Gallo, Crazy Joe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mobster
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1972
Place of death New York City