In July 1993, a young Brooklyn gang leader named Paul Gulino walked into Anthony Sparzo’s social club in Bath Beach and did something no one in the room expected. He put his hands on Sparzo and pushed him. Sparzo, known as “The Old Man,” was a senior captain in the Bonanno crime family, a man who had served near the top of the organization and briefly acted as its boss. He did not need to shout to control a room full of made members and associates.
When Gulino shoved him, Sparzo did not fight back or reach for a weapon. He quietly turned and walked out. For Gulino, a 30-year-old associate desperate to become a made member, the silence should have been terrifying. He had just physically challenged a man whose approval he needed more than anyone else’s.
In the Mafia, touching a formal member aggressively is not just disrespect. It is an attack on the organization’s entire structure. Less than two weeks later, two of Gulino’s closest friends showed up at the house where he lived with his parents. He let them in.
One asked for a drink. When Gulino turned his back and walked toward the kitchen, the friend followed him, pulled out a gun, and shot him in the back of the head. Then he approached and fired a second shot into the side of Gulino’s head. The shooter was Joseph Calco, a childhood friend and member of Gulino’s own crew.
Gulino’s parents found their son dead on the kitchen floor. The murder was not a spontaneous act of revenge. Gulino had made a fatal mistake after the confrontation with Sparzo. He started telling men he wanted to kill the Bonanno captain, believing he could strike first.
One of those men took the threat directly to the Bonanno family. The Mafia did not send a stranger to do the job. They turned Gulino’s own friends against him. Paul Gulino grew up in the Bensonhurst and Bath Beach neighborhoods of Brooklyn, an area of row houses, bakeries, social clubs, and restaurants where families had known each other for generations.
Young men watched older criminals command respect from shop owners and bartenders. For those searching for an identity, the Mafia seemed to offer everything ordinary life lacked: money, fear, and status. Known as “Paulie Brasco,” Gulino wanted to become a formal member of the Bonanno family. That required Italian ancestry, sponsorship from a made member, approval from the administration, and a reputation for earning, silence, and service.
Gulino assembled a group of young men with the same ambition. The organization became known as the Bath Avenue Crew. It was not a formal Mafia crew led by a made captain. Closer to a training unit, the associates committed crimes and handled dangerous work, hoping the Bonanno family would choose some of them for induction.
Key members included Paul Gulino, Joseph Calco, Thomas Reynolds, James Candra, and Fabio DeFrancesco. Many members marked their loyalty with matching ankle tattoos—numbers that represented their rank in the group. Gulino wore number one, symbolizing both his leadership and the promise that they would rise together. If he became a made member, he could bring the others closer to the family.
The crew earned money through robberies, drug dealing, theft, and violence. They targeted both criminals and legitimate businesses. Robbing a drug dealer had two advantages: the victim had cash or drugs, and he was unlikely to report the full truth to police. But it carried another risk—the target might belong to a larger organization, and stolen drugs could trace back to a Mafia member.
This is why the crew needed Anthony Sparzo. He could provide protection when disputes reached the Bonanno family. He could decide whether the Bath Avenue boys were useful or reckless. Most importantly for Gulino, Sparzo could influence whether his name came up for membership.
Sparzo had spent decades building a quieter kind of power. Known for raising pigeons and spending time at his Brooklyn social club, he survived the eras of Joseph Bonanno, Carmine Galante, Philip Rastelli, and the internal conflicts that repeatedly damaged the family. He understood that the loudest man in the room was not always the strongest. By the early 1990s, the Bonanno family had been weakened by prosecutions, internal betrayal, and the damage caused by undercover agent Donnie Brasco.
Senior leaders were in prison. The family needed young partners willing to earn and commit violence. But it also needed discipline. The Bath Avenue Crew offered both sides of that dilemma—young men bold enough for dangerous jobs, but reckless enough to create new investigations and murders the administration had not ordered.
Gulino tried to prove he could control them. He developed a relationship with Bonanno soldier Joseph Bonante and trained under Thomas “Tommy Karate” Pitera, one of the most violent Bonanno members of his generation. Gulino believed his record had earned him formal status. He had led men, brought in money, and proven his willingness to work.
But the promotion never came. The delay became an insult in Gulino’s mind. Every additional job brought another promise that went unfulfilled. Every made member he served became proof that the family was using him without letting him in.
It is a trap built into Mafia life: the family never has to promise a promotion. It simply lets an associate believe the next robbery or murder will finally be enough. Gulino had invested too much—his reputation, his friendships, his freedom, possibly lives taken on behalf of men above him. Sparzo watched the desperation grow.
A patient associate could become a valuable soldier. A desperate one could become dangerous. Gulino began acting as if his importance should already be recognized. He wanted direct access to Sparzo.
He wanted explanations for decisions. He wanted the respect given to men who had completed induction. But Cosa Nostra only recognizes rank. Sparzo was part of the administration.
Gulino was still just an associate. The tension finally exploded at Sparzo’s social club. Federal case reports describe an argument between the two men. Gulino believed Sparzo had ignored or insulted him.
Sparzo saw an associate challenging authority. The argument escalated, and Gulino pushed him. In ordinary life, shoving an older man during an argument might lead to a fight or an apology. Inside the Mafia, the act threatened the entire system.
A made member’s protection depends on everyone accepting that he cannot be struck without consequences. Allow an ambitious young associate to push a member of the administration and walk away, and every soldier watching begins to question the value of rank. Sparzo did not need personal revenge. He needed the organization to believe the rules still stood.
Sparzo turned and walked out. Maybe his calm response gave Gulino false confidence. No one had shot him inside the club. Perhaps the old man had decided to ignore the incident.
The men around them understood what was really happening: Sparzo was postponing the response. Gulino soon seemed to realize the danger, but he did not apologize or disappear. He began discussing killing Anthony Sparzo. Maybe he believed Sparzo had already marked him for death.
Maybe he thought striking first was the only way to survive. Maybe he believed a successful hit would prove he was powerful enough to force the family to accept him. Whatever the motive, speaking about the plan created a final betrayal. Gulino shared the idea with people inside his inner circle.
Joseph Calco heard it. Calco faced an impossible choice. Gulino was his friend and his crew leader. Sparzo represented the crime family they had spent years trying to join.
If Calco stayed loyal to Gulino and the plot failed, the Bonanno family could kill everyone connected to the Bath Avenue crew. If he warned the family, he would have betrayed the man who treated him like a brother. Calco chose the Mafia. He went to Joseph Bonante and explained that Gulino wanted Sparzo dead.
Bonante said he would relay the information to the old man. The next day, he returned with the answer: “Paulie’s got to be taken care of. ” The order, according to Calco’s later testimony, was immediate. Gulino had to be killed that day.
Speed was critical. Once Gulino had spoken about assassinating Sparzo, every hour he remained alive was a risk. He could recruit another gunman, disappear, or attack the social club. The family wanted him eliminated before he realized Calco had betrayed him.
Calco and Thomas Reynolds were chosen because Gulino trusted them. This followed a basic Mafia principle: the hardest targets are not beaten by confronting them as enemies. They are beaten using the people allowed close to them. Gulino knew violence.
He would have watched for unfamiliar cars and carried weapons around strangers. But Joey Calco and Tommy Reynolds were his own people. They committed crimes together, planned futures together, and treated Gulino’s push toward membership as a first step toward recognition for all of them. When the two men arrived at the house on a Sunday morning, Gulino had no reason to believe the murder contract had reached them.
He let them in. There was no break-in, no struggle at the front door, no masked men rushing through the rooms. The scene began as another visit between friends. Calco asked Gulino for a drink.
The request created the opportunity. Gulino turned and walked toward the kitchen, turning his back on the man following him because he trusted him. Calco drew the gun and fired into the back of Gulino’s head. The first bullet dropped the crew leader to the floor.
Calco approached and fired again into the side of his head. Two shots ended one friendship. Calco and Reynolds left the house. Gulino’s parents were left to discover what the Bonanno family had done inside their home.
The location made the betrayal crueler. Gulino was not killed during a robbery or attacked outside Sparzo’s club after another argument. He died in the place he believed was safest, killed by two men he never expected to fear. The murder also sent a message to the surviving Bath Avenue members.
The crew belonged to the Bonanno family only when the family found it useful. Their tattoos promised loyalty to each other, but the Mafia oath stood above that promise. When Gulino challenged Sparzo, the friends he expected to lead into membership helped get rid of him instead. After the shooting, Calco met with Anthony Sparzo.
According to testimony later presented in federal court, Sparzo greeted him warmly—a kiss, a hug, then words of approval: “You’re a good guy. ” It was the closest Calco ever came to formal recognition for what the crime had accomplished. He had killed his friend to protect the old man. But Calco did not become untouchable.
He did not rise through a safe Mafia career. He continued committing crimes and became involved in more violence, drug trafficking, and arson. The life he chose to protect by killing Gulino kept turning against him. The Bath Avenue Crew also began to collapse.
Members were arrested. Others cooperated. Old friendships became evidence in federal courthouses. James Candra later described the crew and its crimes to the government.
Calco eventually became an informant while facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. The man who betrayed Gulino for the Mafia later betrayed the Mafia for himself. This is how prosecutors finally tied Gulino’s murder back to Anthony Sparzo. In May 1999, federal authorities arrested Sparzo and charged him with racketeering conspiracy, including murders, gambling, and illegal lending.
The case covered the deaths of Louis Tuzzio, Vincent Bickelman, and Paul Gulino. The government argued that Sparzo used young associates to commit violence while keeping himself far from the actual crime scenes. Calco became the key witness in Gulino’s murder.
He described Gulino’s anger, the plan to kill Sparzo, the conversation with Bonante, the order that Paulie had to be taken care of, and the Sunday morning when he followed his friend into the kitchen and fired twice.