various ways.
Quite often, a cryptic message would accompany the rubout. A traitor’s genitals would be cut off and stuffed in the corpse’s mouth, for instance. In 1961 Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Profaci, founder of what is now known as the Colombo family, put out a contract on a member of a rival gang. Ten days after hitman Joseph ‘Jelly’ Gioielli disappeared, his bosses, the Gallo brothers, received the man’s clothes wrapped around a fish. Translation: ‘Jelly sleeps with the fishes’.
Joseph ‘Crazy Joe’ Gallo had been celebrating his 43rd birthday with a slap-up meal at famous Umberto’s New York Clam House when he was ‘clipped’ in 1972. When he assassinated Gallo, the lone gunman – later revealed to be out- of-state hitman Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran – broke an unwritten Mafia rule: you don’t blow a man away in front of his family. With him at the restaurant that night were his bride of three weeks, former dental assistant Sina Essary, and her ten-year-old daughter Lisa, as well as Gallo’s sister and a number of friends.
The furious gun battle spilled into the street, leaving Gallo, New York’s most feared hitman, dead and his bodyguard, Peter ‘The Greek’ Diapioulas, wounded. The Gallo brothers had been responsible for shooting down rival don Joe Colombo at an Italian-American rally at New York’s Columbus Circle a year earlier. At least a dozen men died in the ensuing feud between Gallo and Colombo factions of the old Joe Profaci family.
The violence was not restricted to New York. In Chicago, the infamous Momo ‘Sam’ Giancana was executed in 1975 by three hoods who burst into the kitchen of his suburban home. The 67-year-old was shot in the mouth, with another five bullets to the neck.
In Kansas City, the Spero brothers were wiped out one by one during their ten-year war with the reigning Civella gang. Nick was executed in 1974 and stuffed into the boot of his car. Michael was gunned down in a bar five years later. Joseph was wounded at that time but died when an explosion tore apart his warehouse in 1980. Carl was shot in the back when his brother Mike died. Paralysed, he carried on the war from a wheelchair, but in 1984, as he was rolling towards his specially adapted car, the Civella boys blew up the whole parking lot.
The decade was marked by a rash of arsons at Mafia-owned restaurants in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York. In the smouldering ruins of Giuseppe’s Pizza joint in Philadelphia one day in 1977, police discovered two charred bodies. One was still recognisable: Vincenzo Fiordilino, a Bonanno capo from New York. How had he come to die in a Philadelphia cafe? Police pieced together the story. Fiordilino and his friend had just brought 200 gallons of petrol into the kitchen, intending to start a blaze, but the pilot light ignited it before the two could get out.
Vincent Papa, a Colombo capo who made himself a legend when he stole $100 million worth of drugs from the police in 1972, was stabbed to death in the exercise yard of the Atlanta Penitentiary six years later. That daring robbery became a smash-hit movie,
The French Connection.
But Papa had begun to parade himself. It’s called ‘showboating’ and if you do it within the Mafia, it usually gets you killed.
James Eppolito, a Gambino lieutenant, was running a bogus charity so successfully that the then president’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, endorsed it with an appearance in 1979. A picture of the two together appeared in newspapers and Eppolito had extra copies made, which he passed around among friends andbusiness associates. Two weeks later he was dead. Hitmen Roy DeMeo and Richard DiNome had orders from the top. Then they, too, were rubbed out.
One age-old Mafia rule always applies: the old must make way for the young. Many stooping, white-haired dons, like Carmen Galante, seemed to forget that. And so, usually with the thumbs-up from the other bosses in the Commission, the Mob ‘retires’ its oldsters. A
Quite often, a cryptic message would accompany the rubout. A traitor’s genitals would be cut off and stuffed in the corpse’s mouth, for instance. In 1961 Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Profaci, founder of what is now known as the Colombo family, put out a contract on a member of a rival gang. Ten days after hitman Joseph ‘Jelly’ Gioielli disappeared, his bosses, the Gallo brothers, received the man’s clothes wrapped around a fish. Translation: ‘Jelly sleeps with the fishes’.
Joseph ‘Crazy Joe’ Gallo had been celebrating his 43rd birthday with a slap-up meal at famous Umberto’s New York Clam House when he was ‘clipped’ in 1972. When he assassinated Gallo, the lone gunman – later revealed to be out- of-state hitman Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran – broke an unwritten Mafia rule: you don’t blow a man away in front of his family. With him at the restaurant that night were his bride of three weeks, former dental assistant Sina Essary, and her ten-year-old daughter Lisa, as well as Gallo’s sister and a number of friends.
The furious gun battle spilled into the street, leaving Gallo, New York’s most feared hitman, dead and his bodyguard, Peter ‘The Greek’ Diapioulas, wounded. The Gallo brothers had been responsible for shooting down rival don Joe Colombo at an Italian-American rally at New York’s Columbus Circle a year earlier. At least a dozen men died in the ensuing feud between Gallo and Colombo factions of the old Joe Profaci family.
The violence was not restricted to New York. In Chicago, the infamous Momo ‘Sam’ Giancana was executed in 1975 by three hoods who burst into the kitchen of his suburban home. The 67-year-old was shot in the mouth, with another five bullets to the neck.
In Kansas City, the Spero brothers were wiped out one by one during their ten-year war with the reigning Civella gang. Nick was executed in 1974 and stuffed into the boot of his car. Michael was gunned down in a bar five years later. Joseph was wounded at that time but died when an explosion tore apart his warehouse in 1980. Carl was shot in the back when his brother Mike died. Paralysed, he carried on the war from a wheelchair, but in 1984, as he was rolling towards his specially adapted car, the Civella boys blew up the whole parking lot.
The decade was marked by a rash of arsons at Mafia-owned restaurants in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York. In the smouldering ruins of Giuseppe’s Pizza joint in Philadelphia one day in 1977, police discovered two charred bodies. One was still recognisable: Vincenzo Fiordilino, a Bonanno capo from New York. How had he come to die in a Philadelphia cafe? Police pieced together the story. Fiordilino and his friend had just brought 200 gallons of petrol into the kitchen, intending to start a blaze, but the pilot light ignited it before the two could get out.
Vincent Papa, a Colombo capo who made himself a legend when he stole $100 million worth of drugs from the police in 1972, was stabbed to death in the exercise yard of the Atlanta Penitentiary six years later. That daring robbery became a smash-hit movie,
The French Connection.
But Papa had begun to parade himself. It’s called ‘showboating’ and if you do it within the Mafia, it usually gets you killed.
James Eppolito, a Gambino lieutenant, was running a bogus charity so successfully that the then president’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, endorsed it with an appearance in 1979. A picture of the two together appeared in newspapers and Eppolito had extra copies made, which he passed around among friends andbusiness associates. Two weeks later he was dead. Hitmen Roy DeMeo and Richard DiNome had orders from the top. Then they, too, were rubbed out.
One age-old Mafia rule always applies: the old must make way for the young. Many stooping, white-haired dons, like Carmen Galante, seemed to forget that. And so, usually with the thumbs-up from the other bosses in the Commission, the Mob ‘retires’ its oldsters. A
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