FBI files indicate that when crime boss Albert Anastasia was assassinated in 1957, one of the shooters was a mobster named Joseph Cahill—a shadowy figure about whom relatively little is known. According to informant information from sources within the Gambino crime family, most credible historians lean toward the theory that the shooters in the hit on Anastasia were Steven Grammalta and Joseph Cahill. Interestingly, journalist and author Jerry Capeci has stated that a source told him Jewish mobster Arnold “Witty” Wittenberg was one of the shooters. For those who subscribe to the theory that Grammalta and Cahill carried out the murder, the story begins with Alfredo Santantonio, a soldier in what is now known as the Gambino crime family.
Santantonio was close with respected captain Charles Dongarra, and he became an active FBI informant. Santantonio told authorities that Albert Anastasia was planning to kill three influential members of his own crime family: Joseph Riccobono, Joseph Biondo, and Charles Dongarra. Another captain, Joseph Franco, alerted the three men to Anastasia’s plan. Riccobono, Biondo, and Dongarra decided to strike first and orchestrated the famous hit on Anastasia.
Joseph Biondo, one of the conspirators, had formerly been consigliere to Anastasia’s predecessor, Vincent Mangano. Biondo was a powerful figure in organized crime, especially in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and was a close boyhood friend of Charlie Luciano. Biondo reached out to Lower East Side mobster Steven Armone, who put together the hit team for the Anastasia assassination. The team comprised Grammalta and Cahill, two Lower East Side gangsters.
A fair amount is known about Steven “Stevie Kugan” Grammalta. He was a Lower East Side soldier in the Gambino crime family. Following the Anastasia hit, Grammalta returned to his normal racket of narcotics trafficking. In 1965, at age 47, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for his part in a narcotics smuggling ring.
After his release, Grammalta served in the crew of Captain Joseph “Piney” Armone and eventually became a captain himself around 1994. In 1996, he was part of a ruling committee in the Gambino family helping acting boss Junior Gotti. He passed away around 2016. But what is known about Joseph Cahill, the other alleged shooter?
Joseph Patrick Cahill was born in New York City on December 5, 1915, and was of Irish heritage. A law enforcement document described him as 5’7″, 165 pounds, stocky build, with hazel eyes and gray-brown hair, wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses. Cahill was a boyhood friend of future Gambino underboss Joseph “Piney” Armone and, through him, was close with Piney’s older brother, Steven. Cahill was associated with the Lower East Side crew of the Gambino family.
In 1938, Joseph Cahill and Joseph Armone were picked up by police for planning the armed robbery of a floating crap game. They were arrested for carrying loaded weapons. As one newspaper reported, five men armed with loaded revolvers were captured without a shot being fired and faced charges in Brooklyn Felony Court. According to the charges, the five were captured at 11:30 p.
m. on a Friday night as they prepared to hold up a floating crap game near 38th Street and 15th Avenue in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. Six detectives under Lieutenant Neil Winbury of Inspector Michael McDermott’s main office squad surprised the five as they got out of their hired car. After a brief tussle, they were handcuffed.
Three of the men—Frank Scrabiki, 20; Nicholas Calamaris, 23; and Joseph Armone, 21—were said to be armed with . 45 caliber army automatics. The other two, Joseph Cahill, 23, and Thomas Mena, 16, were charged with carrying loaded . 32s.
Armone, a singing parolee, was held without bail. In 1939, Cahill and Armone pleaded guilty to holding up a pool room on December 4, 1938. Joseph Cahill moved into the narcotics racket alongside the Armone brothers. Authorities listed his criminal history as dating back to 1938, including arrests for robbery, violation of parole, assault, receiving stolen property, and violation of federal narcotics laws.
Through his association with the Lower East Side crew, Cahill became close with powerful mobster Joseph Biondo. When a hit team was put together for the Anastasia assassination in 1957, Joseph Cahill was considered trusted enough to carry out the high-profile murder. In 1958, a few months after the Anastasia murder, Joseph Cahill was arrested for illegally selling alcohol in a secret, lavish after-hours club that police said Cahill was running. Steven Armone was also arrested with him, although the newspaper report may have published the name wrong, as the age more closely matches Steven’s brother, Joseph.
Police described the club as a lavish operation. Once past a black steel door with one-way mirrored glass for screening customers, visitors walked on wall-to-wall carpeting, sipped drinks at a black leather and gold bar, or sat at tables covered with snowy linen while waiters in tuxedos attended to them. A baby grand piano tinkled softly in the back of the 50×100-foot room. The 50 customers in the plush after-hours joint, many of them women in fine furs, were allowed to leave after giving their names.
The raiders took into custody eight men working in the club and confiscated 26 bottles of assorted liquor being sold at $1. 50 per shot. Joseph Cahill, 41, described as a convicted bookie, was held in $1,000 bail. Police said he was the club manager.
The other seven, each in $500 bail, included Steve Armone, 37, and his brother Alfred, 26. At some point after this arrest, Joseph Cahill moved his operations down to Florida along with the Armone brothers. As one FBI file states, a source from the Miami Police Department furnished information on August 8, 1960 regarding visitors who either attended Steven Armone’s funeral or visited him at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach prior to his death.
The file listed Joseph Patrick Cahill as a resident of room 114 at the Junes Motel in Dade County, Florida, and stated that Cahill handled all arrangements and personal affairs when Armone died. Following the death of Gambino captain Steven Armone, Joseph Cahill appears to have moved back to New York. One FBI file states that an informant heard that Cahill and another former close associate of the late Steve Armone had sold all their interest in Florida and were back in the East 12th Street Manhattan neighborhood. Joseph Cahill was part of a narcotics smuggling ring with the Armone brothers, ultimately headed by Carlo Gambino’s underboss Joseph Biondo.
According to one law enforcement document, Cahill’s primary function was to furnish heroin to wholesale traffickers. Another FBI file states that Joe Cahill was a big distributor and pusher of narcotics for a number of men, including Joseph Biondo. In 1961, Joseph Cahill was on trial in Hartford, Connecticut on heroin smuggling charges. However, after only the second day of the 21-day trial, Joseph Cahill disappeared.
As one newspaper reported, a third convicted conspirator, Joseph Cahill, 47, of New York City, could not appeal his sentence. He had been missing since the previous month, when he disappeared after two days of trial. If found, Cahill faced a maximum term of 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. Narcotics authorities speculated to newsmen covering the trial that Cahill had either fled the country or met with foul play by underworld enemies.
A nationwide manhunt turned up no trace of him. In his absence, Joseph Cahill was indeed handed a 20-year sentence for his involvement in a multi-million dollar narcotics smuggling ring that operated in France, Spain, Egypt, Italy, and the Eastern United States. Joseph Patrick Cahill, who also went by the aliases Joe Kale, Joe Olsen, and Joe Mason, may well have been murdered by his mob colleagues. But law enforcement evidently considered it a serious possibility that he was on the run, and based on informant information, believed he was either in South America or Europe.
His file states his last known address was 25 Daffodil Street in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York. He frequented the Italian Harlem section of New York City, and was reported to be either in Brazil or in Europe. Following his disappearance, Joseph Biondo, Carlo Gambino’s underboss, was questioned by authorities regarding Cahill’s whereabouts. One FBI file states that Biondo said he knew Cahill from his neighborhood—the Lower East Side of New York around 11th Street and 1st Avenue.
Biondo stated that the last time he saw Cahill was approximately five years earlier in Florida, where Cahill was associated with a bar and grill in Miami. Biondo said he did not know Cahill’s whereabouts, knew of no one who would know where Cahill was, and possessed no information that Cahill was dead.