Crazy Joe Gallo, a rising star in the New York mob whose unpredictable violence earned him his nickname, met a violent end on April 7, 1972, when he was gunned down just hours after celebrating his 43rd birthday at Umberto’s Clam House in Manhattan’s Little Italy. The murder ended the life of a man who had spent years waging war against the Colombo crime family and had once engineered the kidnapping of top mob figures in a brazen power play. Born in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn during Prohibition, Gallo dropped out of high school at 16 and soon turned to a life of crime with his lifelong associates. After suffering a head injury in a car accident, he developed a nervous tick and began impersonating the gangster character Tommy Udo from the film *Kiss of Death*, complete with a gravelly voice and menacing cackle.
Gallo and his two brothers, Larry and Albert, built a reputation as enforcers under the Profaci family, running loan sharking, vending machine, and jukebox operations from a tenement at 51 President Street. The Gallo brothers also secretly owned several nightclubs and two sweatshops in the Garment District. Their ambitions soon brought them into conflict with family boss Joseph Profaci. Gallo later claimed that Profaci ordered their crew to assassinate Albert Anastasia, the head of the Anastasia crime family, who was famously gunned down in a barbershop in October 1957.
Carmine Persico later claimed that he and Gallo carried out that hit, though the shooters were never officially identified. As the power struggle within the family escalated, Gallo and his men clashed with the Colombo family, then led by Joe Profaci. In 1961, Gallo orchestrated the kidnapping of four of Profaci’s top men, holding them for weeks until a peace deal was negotiated. The truce did not hold.
Gallo was arrested on charges of extorting money from a businessman and, in December 1961, was sentenced to seven to fourteen years in prison. While serving his sentence at Greenhaven, Attica, and Auburn correctional facilities, Gallo became friends with African-American drug trafficker Leroy “Nicky” Barnes, predicting a power shift in Harlem’s drug gangs. He also took up watercolor painting and worked as an elevator operator. During a prison riot at Auburn, he rescued a wounded corrections officer, who later testified on his behalf at a parole hearing.
By the time Gallo was released in 1971, much had changed. Joe Profaci had died of cancer in 1962, and Joseph Colombo had taken over the family. A peace agreement was reached between the warring factions, but Gallo claimed it did not apply to him because he had been imprisoned when it was negotiated. He reportedly demanded $100,000 to settle the dispute, a demand Colombo refused.
In 1971, Colombo was shot three times at an Italian-American Unity Day rally. He survived but was left paralyzed and died in 1978. Although many believed Gallo was responsible, police concluded that the gunman, a black man named Jerome Johnson, acted alone and was immediately killed at the scene. Still, the Colombo family held Gallo responsible for their boss’s shooting.
On the night of his birthday, Gallo and his party were at Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. According to Colombo associate Joseph Luparelli, he spotted Gallo and left the bar, recruiting three other gunmen to carry out the hit. The four men entered the dining room and opened fire, shooting Gallo in the back, elbow, and buttock. Gallo staggered outside where he collapsed in the street, mortally wounded.
He was rushed to Beekman Downtown Hospital and pronounced dead shortly after 5:30 a. m. Gallo was survived by his wife, Sina, whom he had married only three weeks earlier.