NARRATOR: Previously
on American Godfathers:
The Five Families...
SELWYN RAAB: In the 1930s,
Lucky Luciano,
he made the Five Families
the rulers of the entire
American Mafia.
NARRATOR: Luciano
established a code,
a set of rules
for the families to live by.
SAMI JARROUSH: Omertà
becomes the most pivotal rule.
Never rat out your friends,
never rat out your family,
and you should be okay.
But if you talk outside
of that code of silence,
you never know
what might happen to you.
[g*nshots ringing]
NARRATOR: When they followed
these rules, they won.
But in the 1950s,
a new generation
began to challenge
the old guard...
TOM FOLSOM: Joey Gallo's
one of these
larger-than-life gangsters,
but he also
has these ideas
about the future
of organized crime
that are really
going against the grain.
NARRATOR: ...and their way
of life started to fray.
ED O'DONNELL: Valachi
is gonna commit
the greatest sin
of a mobster,
which is to break
the code of omertà.
First of all,
I want revenge.
CLAIRE WHITE: After
Valachi does it,
the floodgates are open
for federal law enforcement
to take advantage of people
who are willing
to break the code of omertà.
- MAN: What'd you get out of it?
- VALACHI: Nothing but misery.
As you all understand,
once you're in, you're in.
You can't get out.
NARRATOR: Joseph Valachi's
decision to testify
marked a time of change
for the Five Families.
A change in the way they were
chased by investigators,
a change in the way
they were viewed by outsiders,
and a change
in the way they operated.
Changes that would
test them like never before.
TOM: In some ways
I would say
that's the beginning
of the end of--
of the Five Families.
♪
I-- I'm not sure
how to introduce my next guest.
He's a businessman who leads
a most colorful, uh, life.
His name has been in the papers
a great deal lately,
and I, uh,
just met him backstage,
but I'm anxious
to meet him further.
Will you welcome, please,
Mr. Joseph Colombo, Sr.
[audience applauding]
NARRATOR: In the spring
of 1971,
Joseph Colombo was
the reputed boss
of one of New York's
Five Mafia Families.
A title other men
had held before,
yet, on this night,
Colombo decided
to go somewhere,
do something no boss
had done before,
he was a guest
on a late-night talk show.
I was wondering
how you answer the people
who constantly imply
that you're associated
with organized crime?
I would say
it's distressing to all people,
and I would also say that
to associate anybody
with organized crime
and just label 'em
or stigmatize them
or guilt by association
or guilt by innuendo
is very unfair to anyone.
NARRATOR: A Mafia boss
on a late-night show.
Clearly the Five Families
were in a new era.
But it was no accident.
This was all a part
of Joe Colombo's plan.
A plan that started
years earlier.
♪
JOHN F. KENNEDY: A great
change is at hand.
This is one country,
and we owe ourselves
a better country than that.
ED: The 1960s
is a tumultuous decade,
to say the very least.
There are all kinds of social
movements taking place,
principally
the civil rights movement,
where African Americans
are demanding equality
and full inclusion
in American society.
[women cheering]
You have women, feminists,
organizing for equality.
You also have the Vietnam w*r
that's happening at this time.
PROTESTORS: Peace! Now!
Peace! Now!
[crowd chanting, shouting]
SAMI: All of these things
lead to a lot of
Americans during this era
no longer
trusting the government.
NARRATOR: At the same time,
the Five Families,
the core
of the American Mafia,
was in the midst
of its own period of change.
By 1963,
four of the five
original bosses were dead,
and for the first time,
one of New York's Five Families
would be led
by an American-born Mafioso,
Joseph Colombo.
MICHAEL FRANZESE:
In the early sixties,
there was a deal
where Joe Colombo,
he was on a hit squad
to go after Carlo Gambino.
And rather than
carry that out,
he went and let Carlo know
what was happening.
And as a result of that,
Joe Colombo was given
the privilege of becoming boss.
That's how he got it.
Everybody thinks
that we changed the names.
It's the FBI
that changes the names.
We-- we didn't
call ourselves anything.
They changed it
from Profaci to Colombo.
NARRATOR: Joseph Colombo,
born and raised
in South Brooklyn.
Here, the Mafia
wasn't just part of life.
It was life.
Colombo's father, Anthony,
was a made man
in the Profaci family.
When Joe was 14,
Anthony was found m*rder*d
in a car
less than two miles
from their home.
By the time Joe was 40,
he was a made man,
a rising star
in the Profaci family.
He was feared,
having k*lled at least
a dozen men for the family.
In 1961,
when the Gallo Brothers
kidnapped a handful
of Profaci's men,
Joe Colombo
was on their list.
Trusted or feared,
Colombo was the future.
His close relationship
to leaders on the Commission
like Carlo Gambino made him
destined for the big time.
CHRIS COLOMBO: My father
looked to Carlo like a father.
Carlo Gambino
was the most soft-spoken,
gentleman, kind old man
you ever met in your life.
He had a European
sense of chivalry.
He was very unpretentious.
They were men
of few words.
You knew their ethics.
You knew their morals.
You knew their sense of what
was right and what was wrong.
NARRATOR: Carlo Gambino
was an old-school don,
a valuable mentor,
and a vital ally
for Joe Colombo.
But unlike his mentor
and the dons before him,
Joe Colombo
wasn't born in Sicily.
He was born in America.
And what's more American
than putting a new twist
on an old tradition?
Joe Colombo
had a new idea
of what it meant to be
a mob boss in New York City.
♪
My name is Joe Colombo.
I should be treated
the same as anybody else.
Joe Colombo is just a much
more sensible gangster.
He's got a funeral parlor.
He's got a car dealership.
If someone wants
to talk business
and the cops show up,
he's just saying,
"I'm just showing
the guy a car."
He's very business-oriented.
Joe Colombo was totally
innovative
about how he wanted
to operate.
He didn't escape
from the media.
He welcomed the media.
Mr. Colombo,
people have described you
as a man of wealth
and power and everything.
Why not-- Will you
tell us what you do
and how you have
earned your living?
I work very hard,
and I work many a job.
Legitimately, hard, diligently.
TOM: Joe Colombo wants
to take the Profaci family,
now the Colombo family,
to the modern age.
No more of these
sort of Sicilian ideas.
We're gonna
run strictly on business.
Whatever I earn,
I live to what I earn.
INTERVIEWER: You file an income
tax return just as I do.
Every year. Never missed.
CLAIRE: The reality is
is that Joe Colombo
is still running
these extortion rackets,
his family
is still involved
in all of these traditional
racketeering operations
that the family has always
participated in.
JIM NELSON: A lot of
loan sharking,
gambling, union activity.
He strangely enough
had his own
gambling operation
that he ran,
which was very rare
for the top guy.
Usually their underlings
are doing all that,
but he actually ran it.
He was feared
because of his past history
of being a hitman,
a m*rder-for-hire guy.
He was very confident,
as most hitmen are.
Always well-dressed, boastful.
And they have to make bosses for
wherever they need scapegoats.
I happen to be one
of the scapegoats.
NARRATOR: As Colombo
rose in stature
in the criminal underworld,
investigators
began to take note.
Since Valachi's bombshell
testimony back in 1963,
law enforcement agencies
were scrambling
to put organized criminals
behind bars.
And who would be
better to nail
than the first American don,
Joe Colombo?
CLAIRE: By the 1960s,
the average American
finally knows
that the Mafia is real,
there are
organized crime groups
of all ethnic groups
across the United States,
and that
they really are affecting
at least some aspects
of American society.
MAN: Are you a member
of any such organization?
Yes, I am.
CLAIRE: All of
the federal focus
on the Italian-American
Mafia specifically
does sort of give law
enforcement this carte blanche
to focus
on Italian-American men.
And even though
there's mobsters of all ilks,
there is this hyper-focus
on the Italian-American Mafia.
The Justice Department began
to send strike forces
into various cities to attack
organized crime.
Many Italian-Americans
began to protest
that Italian-Americans
were being singled out,
and that they were
being harassed,
that even their families
had not escaped
the prying of the FBI.
In the 1960s, Congress empowered
the Justice Department,
the FBI,
federal law enforcement
agencies,
to get court orders
to authorize
the electronic surveillance
on telephones,
and placing bugs in premises
where there were conversations
about criminal activity ongoing.
NARRATOR: Title 3
of the 1968 Crime Control Act
allowed law enforcement
to more aggressively surveil
New York City's mob families,
and the Colombo
family in particular.
Those around Colombo,
like his underboss,
Sonny Franzese,
were under constant watch.
MICHAEL: My dad
was the underboss
of the Colombo family
back in the '60s.
A very powerful position.
REPORTER: This man
is John "Sonny" Franzese.
Franzese, who has been
arrested countless times,
was described
as a rising young lieutenant
in the Brooklyn Mafia
and one of the most dangerous
mobsters in the country.
MICHAEL: And my dad
was extremely high-profile
in terms of media attention,
law enforcement investigations.
And he was arrested
several times,
indicted several times
in the state of New York,
so we had law enforcement
around us all the time.
They all had cars
parked around our house
seven days a week.
REPORTER: These women are
the wives, sisters, and friends
of the Colombo
and Franzese families.
All of them claim the FBI
is harassing their families.
"Oh, you must be
Joe Colombo's sister.
Well, we wanna
get to your brother."
Why? Why do you wanna
get to my brother?
"Well, we're gonna
put him away."
MICHAEL: I grew up
hating the police.
Hated law enforcement,
hated the government.
You know, I always saw them
as harassing my dad,
harassing my family.
We were all in a car.
There were the seven--
seven children.
And they said,
"Go ahead, Sonny,
do something to me."
And the other one pulled a g*n
out of his pocket and said,
"Go ahead,
'cause I'm dying to do it."
Taking pictures
or walking into your job,
disrupting your place
of business...
They get me upset because...
they sit in front
of my house.
[sobs] They bother my husband.
...disrespectful
at wakes, weddings.
Name it, they did it.
There is no such thing
as the Mafia.
I'm supposed to be the sister
of the biggest Mafia
in New York.
I don't know
what the word means.
People wanna know
this about Joe Colombo?
No!
What they wanna know
about Joe Colombo,
he's gangster, he's connected
with every dirty thing there is.
We, the family,
know he isn't.
♪
SEAN MCWEENEY: You gotta
remember, this guy whacked up
a lot of other Mafia guys.
That was his job
in the Colombo family,
was m*rder for hire.
And he was hired
by a lot of people,
Gambino and others,
to do those activities.
He was a tough guy
and he was a fighter,
and he wanted
to fight back,
and the investigative activity
involving the Colombo family
was pretty intense.
They had a very
strong squad,
and it was
a natural instinct.
He saw the FBI
coming at his family,
and he fought back.
NARRATOR: If there
was one characteristic,
one universal instinct
of all men in the Mafia,
it was to protect
their families at all costs,
to defend when necessary.
Joe Colombo
was no different.
He realized early
that the best defense
was a good offense.
I will say there's
a conspiracy in this country
against
all Italian-Americans.
And I won't stop
saying it until I feel
that the father
of our country
treats us all
like his children.
INTERVIEWER: Mr. Colombo,
are you a boss of the Mafia?
No, I am not.
- INTERVIEWER: Is there a Mafia?
- No, there is not.
[protesters chanting]
NARRATOR: By the early 1970s,
America was in the midst
of sweeping change.
The new laws brought
about by the Civil Rights Act
were now in effect,
and some
Italian-Americans figured
it was now their turn
to speak up
and fight back against
Italian-American discrimination.
ED: A lot of white
ethnic groups, Irish-Americans,
Polish-Americans,
Italian-Americans,
begin to dig
into their histories
and to say, "Well,
we have a history too,
we have culture too,
and we also have suffered
some level of discrimination."
♪
So Joseph Colombo sees
what's happening in the 1960s
and all this talk
about rights
and oppression
and discrimination,
and he realizes that
there's an opportunity there.
♪
He was so outraged
at that period of time
because the harassment tactics
by the FBI were terrible.
The final thing was that
they had arrested
my brother, Joey, unjustly.
He was charged
with interfering
with interstate commerce,
and he was arrested
and facing 20 years.
My father realized that
it was a tactic to get to him
because of his alleged stature
within what they call
Italian-American
organized crime,
and it was a tactic
to hurt him.
SEAN: Colombo made a big deal
out of his son's arrest,
and he claimed
that the FBI
was just picking on his son
to get at him,
and that they were picking on
Italians in general.
They were trying
to portray all Italians
as members of organized crime,
which was not true.
It was patently
a false claim.
MICHAEL: Well, my dad had been
convicted on a federal case
and sentenced
to 50 years in prison,
And I was devastated.
But shortly after my dad went
into prison in 1970,
we got a call
from Joe Colombo
that his son
had been arrested,
and he said, "We're not standing
for FBI harassment anymore.
We're gonna be picketing
the FBI building
on 69th Street
and Third Avenue."
NEWS ANCHOR: Joe Colombo
had organized a picket line
around FBI headquarters
in Manhattan.
MICHAEL: So I was excited.
I saw it
as a way to help my dad,
and I was probably
the first day or second day
I was on that line,
picketing the FBI.
They actually gave me
a sign when I got there.
"My dad's a victim
of FBI Gestapo tactics.
He was framed
and sentenced to 50 years."
That's what it said.
So I was happy to walk
that line with Joe Colombo.
CHRIS: People started
coming that knew us.
The neighborhood
came to support.
We had a mass
demonstration outside
of 69th Street
FBI headquarters.
MICHAEL: It was several months.
That line grew from 30
or 40 or 50 people
the first day
to several thousand.
I mean, they had
to close off the street.
Before you knew it,
everybody was joining
in that picket line.
The FBI
was extremely distressed.
They didn't
like us out there.
They were throwing
water balloons out
from the top floor
of the building
down onto the line.
Hidey-hidey-hidey-h*,
[indistinct].
I was the night supervisor
at the time.
I worked the 12:00
to 8:00 shift,
and I was in charge
of the FBI office at that point.
And I would go down
in the morning.
They usually came
about nine o'clock.
PROTESTORS: Hitler vowed
he'd never die,
he came back as the FBI!
JIM: We would hear
on the wiretaps sometimes,
the word went out,
"Hey, it's 3:30.
You gotta get down
to 69th Street,"
where the FBI office was.
SEAN: And they'd be carrying
these homemade signs
uh, criticizing the FBI,
saying that the FBI
was picking on Italians,
calling all Italians
members of organized crime,
which was
absolutely not true.
We had more FBI agents
that were Italian
than probably all of the Mafia
people in the United States.
♪
SAMI: The committees
and the hearings
of people
like Frank Costello,
and the rise of guys
like Vito Genovese.
All these names coming from
Italian immigrant backgrounds
are now affiliated
with Mafia,
affiliated with crime,
affiliated with violence.
"We are sick and tired
of being stereotyped
as violent mafioso.
That is not who we are."
So it makes sense
that with all of this...
civil rights activity happening,
why wouldn't Colombo
get involved
in the fray as well?
♪
CHRIS: We were basically
viewed as greaseballs.
They now had
a sense of pride,
which they didn't have before,
and a sense of unity,
and they looked
to my father as their leader.
♪
ED: And so he founds
an organization,
the Italian-American
Civil Rights League.
And in 1970, he holds
a rally at Columbus Circle,
where there's a great big
statue of Christopher Columbus,
symbol of
Italian-American heritage.
And thousands
of people show up.
There are big speeches.
MARIO A. PROCACCINO:
What we are doing here today,
pledging allegiance
to our country
with a show of Italian-
American solidarity.
[crowd cheering]
ANTHONY IMPERIALE:
Let us not forget
that the Italian-American...
has been an asset
to this country!
That we built it with our backs
brick by brick!
We didn't steal it!
We didn't burn it!
[crowd cheering]
Thank God that
I was born
of Italian birth.
[crowd cheering]
But today,
this day belongs
to you, the people!
You are organized.
You are one!
Nobody could
take you apart anymore.
[crowd cheering]
You've overcome
what no Italian
has overcome
in this country.
God bless you,
and thank you!
[crowd cheering]
ED: And this goes
really well.
They start
to draw in lots of members.
By the end of the year,
he says he has 45,000
dues-paying members
across the country.
SELWYN: Nelson Rockefeller,
who was then the governor
of New York,
became a supporter.
And there were
other politicians.
Nobody wanted to stop them.
So for me, it was all
about the League helping me
get my father's
conviction overturned.
That's what I believed in,
that's why I was there.
As far as, "There was no Mafia."
I obviously knew there was.
This sort of message
begins to steamroll.
The governor's involved
all of a sudden.
You've got Frank Sinatra at,
you know,
Madison Square Garden
for the Italian-American
Civil Rights League.
This thing is huge.
Mobster, Joe Colombo,
he's on the cover
of Time magazine,
and he's kind of
positioned himself
in the spirit of the times
as a civil rights figure
for Italian-Americans.
SELWYN: And he also
got the FBI
and the Justice Department
to never use
the word "Mafia"
when they had the few
indictments that they did.
In fact,
Colombo was so powerful
that when the movie,
The Godfather was made,
he made sure
that the word "Mafia"
would never be used in it.
CHRIS: It was Lindsay's office
that wouldn't give him
the permits,
because the League
was up in arms.
What happened
is Al Ruddy comes
and meets my father
at League headquarters
and brings him a suitcase,
they don't put this
in the movie,
with a half
a million dollars,
which is significant money
in 1970, '71.
Serious money.
My father says,
"Keep your money.
Bring the script."
He says, "I'll help you.
As long as you don't put
"Mafia," "Cosa Nostra"
and try to make
Italians look bad."
It was an immigrant story.
It was a great story.
AL: We have been in touch
with the Italian-American
Civil Liberties Union--
- MAN: Civil Rights.
- Civil Rights, [indistinct].
We are going
to delete any reference
to "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra."
We are working closely
with your organization
to get ultimately
the result that I want,
that Paramount wants,
and that you all want.
[audience applauding]
TOM: It's interesting
that these themes
that are going on in
American culture during the '60s
are also finding voice
in the underworld.
Flip side, though,
is that they want money.
For a guy like
Joe Colombo, it's like,
"Let's start this League.
I'm gonna be
in charge of it
and, uh, I'm gonna send out
this terrific message,
but, you know,
it's also a really good way
to launder some profits."
SEAN: Colombo began
using the League
for, uh,
purposes of extortion.
Extorting shopkeepers
in Queens and Brooklyn,
uh, asking for donations
to the Italian-American
Civil Rights League,
and it ended up being, uh,
an extortion-type racket.
NARRATOR: To the naked eye,
Joe Colombo
was a businessman,
an organizer, a public figure.
But beneath the surface,
he continued to lead
one of New York's
most powerful crime families,
and he was sworn
to a code of secrecy,
a code that, if threatened,
could cost him his life.
♪
♪
NARRATOR: As Joe Colombo's
public exposure increased,
the other bosses
looked on uneasily.
At the time, Carlo Gambino
was the most tenured
and respected boss
in New York.
Gambino and his allies
in the Lucchese family
had enthusiastically supported
Colombo's Civil Rights League
in the beginning.
But word
on the street was
that the bosses
were having second thoughts,
that all the publicity
was doing more harm than good.
But Colombo was unperturbed.
By this point,
Joseph Colombo
had been boss of
a Mafia family for seven years.
He had come to power at the end
of the Gallo-Profaci w*r,
a time of great conflict
and uncertainty
within the family.
But he had successfully
steadied the ship.
It may have been
his strong leadership qualities.
Or perhaps the fact
that the family's
biggest troublemaker,
Joey Gallo, was stuck in jail.
That was
about to change, however.
Crazy Joe would soon be back
on the street,
which meant trouble
for Joe Colombo.
♪
SELWYN: After becoming
head of the family,
Joe Colombo was outward.
Welcomed people.
Wanted publicity.
But that was his undoing.
Because eventually
what happened to him was,
with that Italian-American
Civil Rights League,
he exposed himself,
which a lot of bosses
didn't wanna do.
♪
You didn't go out there
and address thousands of people,
'cause you realized
it was always a crackpot
or some enemy.
You get the sense
that your Carlo Gambinos
are kind of looking
at Joe Colombo,
and they don't want publicity.
And this guy's on,
you know, the cover of Time.
I mean, it was bad enough
when the Gallo brothers
were plastered
all over the tabloids.
So, you get the sense
that a shrewd cat
like Carlo Gambino is just like,
"What the hell is he doing?"
You know, "He's taking
this thing too far."
I mean, going
and antagonizing the FBI
will really probably only
get you in trouble at the end.
MICHAEL: There was a lot of
dissent coming from the guys.
But there was a lot of talk
on the street
that Joey was becoming
too high-profile.
A lot of the guys
within the family were upset
that they were walking the line,
and that
the FBI was noticing guys
that probably had
a lower profile prior to this.
So, everybody's complaining,
"Hey, I'm on blast here,
you know?
"The FBI is watching
our movements now.
Where they didn't know us,
they're knowing us now."
Uh, and one time I went
to see my dad in Leavenworth,
and he wanted me to stop
hanging out at the League.
He said
"It's gonna put you in trouble."
And I said, "Dad,
they're gonna help you."
And he said,
"They're not gonna help me."
♪
NARRATOR: In early 1971,
things were tense
in the Colombo family.
It didn't help
that on April 11th, 1971,
Joey Gallo was released
from prison.
It had been 10 years
since Crazy Joe
was down on President Street,
and a lot had changed.
His brother, Larry, had died,
as had the old boss,
Joe Profaci.
But Joey Gallo was still
a bull in a china shop
with no respect for the rules,
no respect for the code,
and no respect
for his new boss, Joe Colombo.
Joe Colombo,
his one big enemy
was Crazy Joe Gallo.
And Crazy Joe had also come
from the same roots
in South Brooklyn.
They knew each other.
And Crazy Joe really thought
he deserved to be head
of the Profaci family
when Profaci died,
that he was really the one
who had been a big earner,
had done
a lot of important things,
including being involved
in the assassination
of Albert Anastasia.
So, here was an inbuilt rivalry
that Colombo wasn't ready for.
♪
While in prison,
Gallo was looking
for reinforcements
for his own group.
And he knew
he couldn't get it from Colombo.
And he recruited
a lot of Black prisoners.
And he told them,
"When you come out,
go and see my brothers
in South Brooklyn."
So, he was building up an army.
It's sort of
an interesting thing,
because this is definitely
a breach of etiquette,
to go into prison
and to be actively
courting friendships
with people
outside of the mafia.
♪
When you're in prison,
each ethnic group
is gonna look at the guy that...
the people in that group gonna
have the most respect for.
If they can see themselves
making money with that person,
they're gonna try
to get in touch with them.
TOM: Joey Gallo,
he does not like the shape
that the Gallo brothers are in.
Joey starts to think,
"You know what?
"If the Black gangsters
got organized,
"they could team up with us,
the Gallo brothers.
You know, we would really be
kings of the streets then."
Now, this idea
to the traditional
mob establishment is just,
"Why would you, you know,
partner with Black gangsters?"
They don't see
this happening at all.
But Joey Gallo is,
um, better or for worse,
he's sort of an innovator
in that sense,
and he's willing to go there.
FRANK DiMATTEO: Joey came home.
Joey never acknowledged
that Joe Colombo
was gonna be boss.
So, he refused him as boss.
"I don't care who made him boss.
Ain't happening."
And he demanded from Colombo,
the Colombo family,
pay him $100,000
that was owed to him.
And then Colombo
took a dollar bill
out of his billfold
and threw it at Gallo
and said, "Here,
this is all you're getting,"
and left the room.
CLAIRE: The fact
that Gallo is even willing
to demand things,
and allude to a lack of respect
for his leadership
is very much outside of the code
of the families.
Even if you don't agree
with your boss,
you don't outright say it.
FRANK: When Joey got home,
he told 'em,
"We give them nothing
and we take everything
"from now on.
"I want everything
that was ours before.
"The waterfront,
bars, restaurant,
"bookmaking, shylocking.
I want it. That's it."
TOM: Joey Gallo, he thinks
that the Gallo brothers
are being disrespected
by Joe Colombo.
He hates the idea
of this Italian-American
Civil Rights League,
thinks of it totally
as a sham.
And he starts ripping up
these League posters
that are required
to be put on Red Hook turf.
Sort of like
grease the pistols, you know?
The w*r's back on.
♪
[cheerful music playing]
[crowd cheering]
It's June 28th, 1971.
This is the second
Italian-American
Civil Rights League rally.
[crowd chanting]
All over Columbus Circle,
you got cameras everywhere.
People are coming in droves.
They've got
the little Italian-American
Civil Rights League pins.
They've got--
Waving Italian flags.
This is gonna be
a major turnout.
CHRIS: I had my outfit
all picked out,
red, white, green shorts, a hat.
You know, excited to go.
Sausage and peppers, zeppoles.
You know, entertainment,
people, politicians.
MICHAEL: So, I wanted to be
among the first getting there,
so I was there early.
My mother refused to come.
As a matter of fact,
she didn't want me to come.
She said she had a dream
that something bad
was gonna happen.
She said,
"I don't want you going."
And I said, "Mom, I'm going."
NARRATOR: While Joe Colombo
and his League members prepared
for their biggest rally yet,
the Gallo crew
down on President Street
has other plans.
Joey Gallo and the Gallo faction
were not interested
in the political actions
that Colombo was trying
to push forward.
This is not a world that
they wanted to be a part of.
They weren't going to go
to this rally.
FRANK: They made us go
up into Court Street
and go to a few stores
and make sure
they didn't close down
for the day.
Told 'em that Joey didn't want
them closing for the day.
And then the day of rally,
we all were in the clubs
on President Street,
just hanging out.
NARRATOR: Back in Manhattan,
Giuliano Schiozzi,
a 22-year-old cop
from the 14th Precinct
prepared for the day's events.
He remembers it well.
♪
GIULIANO SCHIOZZI: I heard
about it
the morning of the actual event.
So, there's
no advance notification given.
You came to work
and you were told,
"You're attending this
Italian-American unity rally."
I had heard
through the grapevine,
having Italians
in my family,
that Italians who worked
for unions
would not work that day.
They were told
to take the day off.
"Don't come to work that day.
Go up to the rally."
JIM: So when the rally--
On that-- on that day,
police were everywhere.
We staked out a photo area
on the 13th floor of the Gulf
and Western Building,
looking right down on--
on Columbus Circle.
One of my squad mates
had the camera,
and I had binoculars.
We're all watching.
[crowd cheering]
CLAIRE: It's a wild thing,
you know.
It is-- it's a political rally,
but it's a mob boss,
and Joe Colombo is there,
like always, front and center.
He is just mixing
with the people.
He is, uh,
talking to the media,
he's talking
to law enforcement.
He's interacting
with all of these people
that, traditionally,
the mob would have done anything
to distance themselves from.
♪ God bless...
GIULIANO: These were all
peaceful people milling around.
I thought it was benign.
Kick off with a few speeches
and a few rounds of applause,
and that would be the end of it,
we would be dismissed,
and I'd go back to the precinct,
and that would be the end
of the day.
♪
Somebody came and said
"Joey wants to see you,"
so I went up on the stage,
and he looked at me
and he gave me some brochures
to hand out near Central Park.
And then he looked at me
and the last thing
he said to me, he said,
"Hey, Michael, this League
is going to help your father."
[cheering]
I walked 12 steps away,
ready to go down the stairs,
and that's when the shots
fired out.
[g*nsh*t]
[screaming]
[g*nshots]
GIULIANO: I hear
what sounds like, to me...
muted firecrackers.
But people don't run
from fireworks.
People run from g*nf*re.
As Joseph Colombo
is making his way
through the crowd,
a g*nman approaches him
and gets off three shots.
Shoots him three times,
Colombo collapses to the ground.
Please do not panic!
Please, ladies and gentleman!
This is the type of thing
you can't do!
OFFICER: Captains,
get into your position.
Keep your eyes open.
[clamoring]
GIULIANO: As I'm going
towards the area
where the g*nshots are,
I see a female
with a medium-sized afro
with a camera,
a tri-lens camera.
She's running away.
Where she ultimately
ends up going,
down the subway.
Joe Colombo was on the ground...
with what appears to be
two g*nsh*t wounds
to the back of his head.
There was an individual
holding a g*n.
Myself and other police officers
now tackle
this unknown person.
Take him to the ground,
secure him, handcuff him.
Mr. Johnson,
I believe was his name.
[overlapping shouting]
MICHAEL: I turn around,
and it's hysteria.
The only thing I heard
was "Joey's been shot,
Joey's been shot."
And, you know,
I didn't see him.
He obviously went right down.
And then, boom,
I heard another shot...
- [g*nsh*t]
- [shouting]
MAN: Please be calm!
...and that's when
they got Johnson.
GIULIANO: Jerome Johnson
was, uh, shot
while being apprehended
by the police.
♪
NEWS ANCHOR: The crowd
was still gathering
in New York's Columbus Circle
for what was to be
the mass rally
of Italian-Americans
when suddenly, g*nshots,
a whole series of them.
And Joe Colombo Sr.,
the principal organizer
of this event,
was lying on the ground,
badly wounded,
shot in the head
and bleeding profusely.
REPORTER: One
was apparently k*lled.
One was k*lled.
I don't know what happened
to the other two.
The one-- the girl
was closest to the colored guy.
She was here, I don't know
what happened to her, either.
JIM: Through the investigation,
Jerome Johnson, Black man,
had press credentials.
And he had a camera pouch
on his belt,
and he's taking
Colombo's picture like that.
Put the camera down,
pulled out his g*n,
and hit him three times
in the head.
Jerome Johnson
was grabbed by the police
and dragged down immediately.
Meanwhile, as we later learned,
a Colombo bodyguard
named Philip "Chubby" Rosillo
crawls through the cop's legs,
got his g*n,
and shot Jerome Johnson
in the back and k*lled him.
And get this, he got away.
With-- with 25 cops
around the whole--
the whole time, he got away.
CHRIS: This fellow,
Philip Rosillo,
he crawled under the cops,
and he unloaded a .38
into Jerome Johnson's back
and neck.
Crawled out from under the cops.
They never arrested him.
Could never figure out why.
JIM: Police investigated him
but were never able
to get enough to charge him.
m*rder's not a federal crime.
And usually,
and unfortunately, when--
when our jurisdiction ends,
quite often we have to back off.
DIRECTOR:
Oh, we gave 'em all to--
to New York City
Police Department, sure.
And there was a--
there was a female with--
with Jerome Johnson,
our photos showed.
And I thought-- I've thought
many times since then,
all you have to do is go
to where Jerome Johnson lived
and show photos of that.
So, I don't know
what the police did,
but to my knowledge,
they never found out
who she was.
[siren blaring]
I ask you in joining hands...
to order a prayer with me
for Joey.
NARRATOR: With three rounds
in his brain,
Joe Colombo was rushed
to Roosevelt Hospital,
where doctors scrambled
to keep him alive.
♪
JIM: Colombo is then taken
to Roosevelt Hospital.
Uh, and I was then sent
to go find out what's going on.
We got there,
and they said he's in operation.
- REPORTER: How many b*ll*ts?
- Three in the brain.
- Three in the brain?
- Yes.
Is there any hope, Doctor?
It's impossible to say.
JIM: Two surgeons came out
right next to me,
and I heard them say,
"We're out of B-negative blood."
B-negative blood is--
is had
by about 1.5% of the population.
I have B-negative blood.
So, I'm thinking, "Uh-oh.
What do I do?"
I said, "I have
B-negative blood."
They said,
"Would you give it?"
I said,
"Under these conditions,
nobody else
needs to know about this."
They agreed.
I don't know what was said
at the FBI headquarters
in New York,
but after I gave blood,
I was brought back
up to the office,
to the head of--
of Criminal Investigations,
who was my boss, and he said,
"Tell me what happened."
I told him
exactly what I just related.
And I said,
"I don't want any publicity.
"I did it. It's my blood.
And the person was dying."
His pupils were unreactive.
He was more or less half-dead.
He is more or less reacting...
much better now
than he did before.
NARRATOR: With Joe Colombo
on life support
and his survival unlikely,
word began to spread
in the underworld.
♪
FRANK: There was somebody
who came and told us
that Joe Colombo got shot.
You know,
a lot of scuttlebutt about,
you know, right away,
that it was a Gallo.
What are we gonna do?
Who are you gonna reach out to?
Go get a g*n?
What are we gonna do?
It was a lot of,
you know, chaos.
TOM: Now, here's the big
million-dollar question.
Is Jerome Johnson
just a lone nut
like Lee Harvey Oswald,
or is he part
of a greater conspiracy?
This is, of course,
what the mob thinks.
And if there's anyone
who they can look at
and say is responsible
for hiring Jerome Johnson
to k*ll Joe Colombo,
it's Crazy Joe Gallo.
♪
♪
WOMAN: Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come...
NEWS ANCHOR:
In New York City today,
they are still trying
to figure out
who wanted Joe Colombo dead.
Colombo is the alleged
mafia figure
identified
by the federal government
as a top man
in Brooklyn crime circles
who has gained
considerable notoriety
as the organizer
of the Italian-American
Civil Rights League.
Colombo was shot yesterday
at a League rally,
and he remains
in critical condition today.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit--
CLAIRE: When Joe Colombo
was first brought
to the hospital,
there's really no clear idea
of whether
he will survive this hit.
He's in a coma,
and his biological family
as well as his crime family
as well as his activist family
are all sort of rushing
to his side to be there
and to give him their support
and their prayers.
There are vigils
outside of Roosevelt Hospital
for days,
praying
that he will make it through.
...forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
I mean,
it was a horrible situation.
It was a tragedy.
It forever changed
the life of my siblings,
my mother, the family,
the Italian people.
NARRATOR: The sh**ting
of Joe Colombo
devastated family members,
shocked the press,
and left law enforcement
with more questions
than answers.
Here's what was understood.
The sh**ter,
Jerome A. Johnson,
a 24-year-old Black man
and graduate
of New Brunswick High School
was an aspiring filmmaker
and small-time crook.
♪
He had a rap sheet
that cited arrests
for grand larceny,
attempted r*pe,
and drug possession,
and did a two-year stint
in prison
from 1968 to 1970.
When he got out,
it was back to making movies,
or trying to.
[chanting]
And on June 28th, 1971,
he attended the rally
with his Bolex camera, a rental,
and an unknown female associate.
Before the rally began,
he fired three rounds
into the head and neck
of Joseph Colombo.
Johnson was tackled instantly,
subdued, and shot to death.
We know what happened to him.
We know what he did.
We don't know why
or who gave the orders.
The street knew.
Or thought they knew.
They knew Joey Gallo didn't like
Joe Colombo.
Joey Gallo had Black friends.
And they knew a Black man
k*lled Joe Colombo.
Without any evidence
stronger than that,
a theory took hold.
Yesterday,
a federal crime official said
Colombo's assassin acted alone.
Today,
the New York Police Department
disputed that theory
and said
it is the department's view
that the sh**ting resulted
from a power struggle
in the underworld.
The story right away
was that Jerome Johnson
was set up
by Joey Gallo
because he made friends
with a lot of the Black guys
in prison,
and that somehow they set up
this guy, Jerome Johnson,
to do the hit.
I mean, it kind of made sense.
That was the talk.
Nobody really knew.
But that was the talk.
And obviously
it had to be investigated,
but everybody
pointed to Joe Gallo.
Everybody.
NARRATOR: Joey Gallo
was suspect number one,
yet another theory
implicated a boss
from a different family.
Sure, Gallo
still helped orchestrate,
but the call
to k*ll Joe Colombo
came from even higher up
the food chain.
From the most respected boss,
Don Carlo Gambino.
REPORTER: Carlo Gambino,
regarded
by the Justice Department
as the boss of bosses.
Gambino was said to have been
Colombo's patron at one time,
but then, say police officials,
he and the Gallos became
disenchanted with Colombo.
♪
The theory
behind the whole thing
goes to an argument
that Carlo Gambino had
with Joe Colombo
a couple of weeks before.
And what the argument was
is that Gambino ordered Colombo
up on the carpet
and ordered him
to cease and desist
as far as the Italian-American
Civil Rights League.
He told him to stop it
because it was hurting
their mob business.
Colombo called Gambino
a traitor to the Italian cause.
Which, obviously,
Gambino, born in Sicily,
took great umbrage of.
It ended up--
Colombo stormed out of the room.
Before he did,
he spit on the floor
at the feet of Carlo Gambino.
An ultimate act of disrespect.
Carlo Gambino did not like
what Joe Colombo was doing.
And he knows
that Joey Gallo essentially
feels the same way about Colombo
that he does.
And so the story goes
that Gambino talks to Gallo,
sort of hires him for the hit.
SEAN: We believe
Carlo Gambino used Gallo before
in killings,
in the Anastasia k*lling.
So, it's logical.
CLAIRE: And the guy
that Gallo taps
is this guy Jerome Johnson.
And there's proof
that Johnson is,
you know,
connecting with Gambino guys.
♪
Shortly before
the second rally
at Columbus Circle,
Jerome Johnson was spotted
by the NYPD
going into a social club
in Queens
run by the Gambino family.
And that again
is the potential tie-in
with Gambino.
NARRATOR: It seemed
unfathomable to some
that Carlo Gambino would order
the slaying of Joe Colombo
in such a public manner.
Broad daylight, Columbus Circle,
thousands of witnesses.
But it wasn't entirely
unprecedented.
Bosses had been whacked
in public before,
and it would surely
happen again.
Whether Gambino was in cahoots
with Gallo was never proven,
but on the street,
the word was that Crazy Joe
had put Jerome Johnson
up to the hit.
And for those seeking revenge,
there was never a doubt
of who was behind it,
and what would come next.
NARRATOR: April, 1972.
One month after The Godfather
premiered in theaters
and less than a year
after Joe Colombo was shot
in broad daylight,
Joey Gallo had a problem.
He knew what his perception was
among those
in the Five Families.
He was nuts, crazy, a liability,
and likely the man
behind the k*lling
of Joe Colombo.
FRANK: Joey was always
making trouble in that family.
It just escalated
after the Colombo sh**ting.
There's an open hit
out on Joey Gallo
after the Colombo hit.
The Colombo family's
gonna get revenge.
And the word was out
that Gallo was gonna get hit.
I mean, I heard that.
And that's why
they told me again afterwards,
um, not to go down
to Little Italy at all,
'cause he was known
to go down there quite a bit.
I should stay away
from everybody,
and matter of fact, don't come
into Brooklyn for a while,
'cause they didn't know
how far this was gonna go.
You're on the Columbo side.
And-- um, so whether he was
at fault or not, he was gone.
NARRATOR: He knew
that he was danger.
Revenge in one form or another
was imminent.
But at least on the surface,
Joey Gallo didn't seem to care.
Everybody was telling Joey
just to stay low,
not to walk around
so freely,
because we know
there's an open hit.
And Joey said, "No,
they ain't got the ba*ls
to do it, [bleep] them."
That's exactly
what his expression was.
"[bleep] them, they ain't
got the ba*ls to do it."
♪
So Joey Gallo's
basically walking around
the streets of New York.
He's kind of
the walking dead.
At the same time,
in the wake
of The Godfath movies,
he's become a celebrity,
because The Godfather is a hit,
and all of a sudden,
society types in New York City
wanna start hanging out
with the real gangsters,
especially a gangster
who's as erudite
and intelligent
as "Crazy Joe" Gallo.
"Wow, these guys
aren't really that bad.
They're just on
the other side of the system."
So there's this
sort of naïve thinking
in New York high society
that makes Joey Gallo
a bona fide celebrity.
♪
FRANK: Joey, you know,
would just disappear.
He was running
around the Village,
sightseeing, having coffee,
talking to people.
He would talk to anybody,
he would just go up to you,
"Hey, how are ya?
I'm Joey."
He was
very inquisitive that way,
and wanted to walk around
and smell the roses
and have a drink.
He walked around
doing what he wanted.
He wasn't afraid.
TOM: Now,
the problem is,
is that you can't really be
a media celebrity
like Joey Gallo
and still be
in the Mafia.
They don't like that.
He's gonna spill
all the Mafia secrets, this guy?
And he just put
a hit out on boss Colombo?
They're gonna get him
one way or another,
and I think Joey Gallo
starts to know this.
NARRATOR: April 7th, 1972.
Joe Gallo's 43rd birthday.
Against the advice
of his crew members,
Crazy Joe threw a party
for himself at the Copacabana,
a who's-who of entertainers
and socialites.
Gallo was traveling
with a party of five,
his wife, Sina,
his stepdaughter, Lisa,
his sister, Carmella,
his bodyguard, Pete the Greek,
and Pete's girlfriend, Edith.
It was a big party,
and news traveled fast
among the wise guys
out that night.
Joey Gallo
was a sitting duck.
Joey Gallo is celebrating
his birthday.
He's just recently married.
He's with his new wife,
his ten-year-old daughter,
and they've got
a huge night planned.
Any other mobster at this point,
with all of the heat on him,
is probably gonna lay low.
Celebrate quietly at home,
go out of town.
Not Gallo.
He goes to the Copacabana.
Very high-profile,
very easy to spot.
SEAN: They had seen a show,
and afterwards,
they went to Umberto's Clam Shop
in Little Italy
at 4:30 in the morning.
♪
A Colombo guy
had to get permission
to do something.
A high official
in the Colombo family
gave the okay...
♪
and they went through
the kitchen of the restaurant,
and they just started sh**ting.
[g*nshots popping]
Gallo got up, tried
to get out of the Umberto's,
crawled to the door,
and got out to the street.
TOM: Staggers out...
and drops dead.
We got a call, maybe 7:30.
And he goes,
"They k*lled Joey."
♪
CAPT. ROBERT MCDERMOTT:
At about 5:30 this morning--
this is the best that we can
determine at this moment--
an unidentified male
walked in the side door,
fired some shots,
and then ran
from the premises.
Joe Gallo is dead, DOA,
at Beekman Downtown Hospital.
A man walked in
from the back door,
and he walked up
to the side of the table
and fired three shots,
and he hit Joe twice
and he hit his bodyguard
Pete the Greek one time.
FRANK: No one
knew really nothing
until Pete the Greek
got out of hospital.
Pete the Greek
was bodyguarding Joe that night,
and Pete got shot in the a*s,
got arrested.
But he went to the hospital,
made bail,
and got called back down
to President Street.
"Who shot Joey?"
Pete the Greek
turned around and said,
"Sonny Pinto did."
CLAIRE:
When you have that breakdown
in the official rules
of the Mafia,
it's easier
to let anything slide.
Instead of
doing something in a way
that's not going
to affect the family,
this is now
just commonplace.
You can k*ll someone in front
of their wife and child,
and that's an accepted part
of doing business with the mob.
The period of the 1970s,
the continued violence
that we see in New York,
in a lot of ways
becomes the undoing
of these traditional
Mafia families.
It's quiet out here
on President Street,
Joey Gallo's turf.
In fact, it's too quiet.
Joey Gallo was a hero
out here.
Speculation has it
that his k*lling
may start a g*ng w*r,
if it hasn't already.
FRANK: There was
a sit-down afterwards,
but they couldn't blame nobody.
It was either go to w*r
with the whole world,
or you had
to take it on the chin.
[church bell chiming]
♪
SEAN: The funeral
for Joe Gallo was a scene.
The sister roared out
on the church steps
that New York City
would run red with blood
over what happened
to her brother.
♪
FRANK:
A lot of people were there.
A lot of people were hurting.
A lot of people were mad.
Joey was loved
in the neighborhood.
He was very generous.
He was liked, Joey.
♪
REPORTER: What did Joey Gallo
mean to this neighborhood?
He was a nice guy...
far as my point of view.
REPORTER: When you say
he was a nice guy,
did he do anything
to help the neighborhood?
Oh, yeah, lots of it.
What I've seen of it.
- REPORTER: Did you like him?
- Sure.
- REPORTER: Why? Why?
- He was a good guy.
REPORTER: Why do you say
he was a good guy?
He tried
to help everybody around here.
TOM: The public reaction
to the Joe Gallo m*rder,
it's legendary,
especially for a guy like him,
who lived his entire life
trying to be a movie gangster.
Joe Gallo becomes sort of a hero
to the younger generation.
You know, they tell
their dons to piss off
when they don't like
what they're being told.
It just was this thing
where there's no order
in the ranks anymore.
So in some ways,
I would say that's... [sighs]
...the beginning of the end
of-- of the Five Families.
NARRATOR: The k*lling
of Joey Gallo marked the end
of a chapter in the history
of New York's Five Families.
Gallo and Colombo
had both reimagined
what it meant to be
an American gangster,
and they were
both k*lled for it.
As much as a new wave
of American mafiosos
wanted to innovate and transform
their criminal operation,
they were still bound
to their original code,
a code that had no tolerance
for individualism.
A code that resisted
publicity and fanfare.
A code that continued to require
absolute and unwavering silence.
Omertà.
♪
NARRATOR: The 1970s
was a transformative time
for the Five Families.
By the middle of the decade,
all Five Families
would be led by men
born not in Sicily,
but in America.
The old guard
was getting old.
Carlo Gambino, the most revered
godfather of the time,
died of natural causes in 1976.
His cousin from Bensonhurst,
Paul Castellano, became boss,
a promotion that was not
without controversy.
Vito Genovese died in prison
in 1969
and was succeeded by
Philip Lombardo of East Harlem.
After the sh**ting
of Joe Colombo,
the Colombo family
fell under the leadership
of Carmine Persico
of South Brooklyn.
The death of Tommy Lucchese
in 1967
led to Antonio
"Tony Ducks" Corallo
becoming boss
of the Lucchese crew.
And the Bonannos--
well, after their Don
fled to Arizona,
they'd been trying
to figure that out.
Another
East Harlem-bred gangster,
Carmine Galante,
had his eyes on the throne,
and the conditions
in New York City
could not have been more
accommodating for his rise.
Certainly people talk
about the 1970s
as when New York
was going off the rails.
New York lost almost
a million people in the 1970s.
Huge population decline.
[sirens blaring]
ED: White New Yorkers
are leaving New York City
for the suburbs,
and they're taking with them
their purchasing power
and also their tax dollars.
So by the mid-1970s,
New York City,
still a very expensive city
to operate,
is running out of money.
The fiscal crisis
of the mid-70s
really puts New York City
in a bind,
and the city
almost goes bankrupt.
All that meant that
there was a lot of empty space
and a lot of sort of
general hopelessness.
If you walk around
the Lower East Side in that era,
the number of empty buildings
is amazing.
♪
You go look at a picture
from Avenue B, Avenue C,
and it's just entire streets
of empty buildings
with cinder blocks
in the windows, over and over.
Same in Harlem,
same in big swaths of Brooklyn.
There were so many people
out of work,
so many people leaving,
that you ended up
with a city
that really felt like
its best days were behind it.
And inevitably,
that leads to opportunities
for predatory criminal behavior.
And the rise
of drug culture,
which was really destructive
to the city fabric.
[siren blaring]
NARRATOR: It was allegedly
against Commission rules
to be involved
in the drug trade.
♪
But since Joe Bonanno's
meeting in Palermo in 1957,
members of the Bonanno family
had doubled down
on the heroin trade.
Carmine Galante,
an associate of Bonanno
who was
at the infamous meeting,
had spent the years after
growing the family's
international drug operation,
and in the process,
had earned himself a reputation.
ANTHONY DESTEFANO:
Well, Carmine Galante
was a drug dealer.
He was violent.
He had a volatile temper.
ALEX HORTIS:
Even by Mafia standards,
he was considered
particularly crazy,
particularly ruthless.
♪
He is really interested
in the drug trade.
Galante has long-standing
connections in Montreal.
Quebec was a much easier way
to move drugs
into the United States
than the New York ports,
and so
Carmine Galante sees that,
he ramps up
drug trafficking in a big way
through that particular route
in the '50s.
♪
SELWYN: It created
a lot of resentment
with other families who thought
he wasn't cutting them in,
and at the same time,
he was endangering the families
by getting arrested a lot.
He wasn't that careful.
So Galante was always
on the outside looking in.
NARRATOR: Galante was arrested
on narcotics charges in 1959
and convicted in 1962.
He served 12 years
of a 20-year sentence
and was paroled in 1974.
By the time he got out,
his mentor, Joe Bonanno,
had retired to Arizona,
and the Commission had chosen
Phillip "Rusty" Rastelli
as the new boss.
But Carmine Galante,
he had other ideas.
♪
EDWARD:
Galante became the subject
of a lot of media attention.
He had been incarcerated
since the 1950s
for the result of a major
narcotics investigation
involving the Bonanno faction
in Montreal.
And he came back
on the scene,
and it was sort of amazing
that he was able
to have all this clout,
spending almost 20 years
in prison.
♪
When he got out,
the story was
that he tried
to assert himself
as boss
of the Bonanno family.
He never really was boss,
but he was given wide berth
because people were wary of him,
'cause they knew
about his volatility.
EDWARD:
Galante came in and said,
"I'm taking over,"
throwing his weight around,
even though he technically
wasn't the boss of the family,
he started acting as if he were
the boss of the family.
And the newspapers don't know
who's the boss
or who isn't the boss,
but here's a guy
who's saying he's the boss.
REPORTER: The federal
investigators say Mr. Galante
is the boss of organized crime
in this country.
Would that be a correct
characterization,
the godfather
of the New York Mafia?
I don't think, uh--
From my experience,
practically everything
they've said
is totally incorrect
and inaccurate.
The Commission had said no,
that they had picked
Rusty Rastelli,
somebody they trusted
and somebody they thought
deserved the post.
Galante wouldn't stand
for this.
It was obvious he was determined
to create havoc.
NARRATOR: With little
local support in New York City,
after more
than a decade behind bars,
Galante needed reinforcements.
So he called on associates
back home in Sicily
to join him in New York,
work as foot soldiers,
help run his drug operation,
and serve
as bodyguards, henchmen.
They had
their own code name.
"Zips" is
the colloquial term
that the mobsters
in the US
called the Sicilian gangsters
for hire.
What was convenient
about the Zips
is they didn't really have
a profile in the United States.
They weren't really known
by the FBI or by the DEA.
So they were more easily
controlled in a lot of ways.
The Zips were hired hands
that were brought in from Sicily
to help with the dirtier aspects
of the drug trade.
Galante was bringing
in those so-called Zips,
these recruits from Sicily,
because he had
no real following in America
with the Five Families
in the New York area.
NEWS ANCHOR: Cesare Bonventre
and Baldo Amato,
who they describe as henchmen
for the crime family
Galante headed.
♪
FRANK: First time I met Galante,
he was very serious.
No big smiles,
no big hellos.
He had those two bodyguards
with him both times.
Greaseball,
old-style, old-school.
RUSS KUBIT:
His reputation is one
of being totally
ruthless and vicious.
Of course,
that is by reputation,
and it may
or may not be one
that he chooses
to embellish upon himself.
He may enjoy that reputation.
It may make, uh, dealing
with his competition
a lot easier.
FRANK: He wanted
to be the boss,
and he had
that old-school mentality.
He was making
tons of money in dope,
so he's powerful.
And he was a real tough guy.
NARRATOR: Carmine Galante's
return to New York City
and ruthless pursuit of power
took the underworld by storm.
He became a priority
for law enforcement
and a regular
on the nightly news,
often within an arm's
length of his lawyer.
ROY COHN: Sit down.
I'm gonna leave in the morning
go into the country.
ROY: What are you gonna do
when you get to the country?
Well, I mean,
I planted peppers last week.
Now I'm gonna plant tomatoes.
ROY: You think
that'd have any influence
on the federal judge
when he held that you were right
and the parole commission
was wrong?
CARMINE: I think so.
He thinks a farmer ought
to be able to seed, right?
I think so, I mean,
it's very well-known
that that's what I do.
NARRATOR: But most of all,
he was becoming a problem
for the Commission,
a problem that sooner or later
would have to be dealt with.
♪
The US government estimates
that there were
about 50,000 heroin addicts
in America in 1959.
By the 1970s, there are 500,000,
and the number is soaring.
♪
There's two things that happen
to make the heroin epidemic
a real problem.
One is the Vietnam w*r.
Hundreds of thousands
of American soldiers
are gonna go
over to Vietnam,
where heroin is cheap,
it's available,
and many of them
are gonna get hooked.
One study of the US military
from the early 1970s
estimated that 10-15%
of American soldiers
were hooked on heroin.
And the second thing
that happens is the supply,
through these Mafia connections,
flooding the streets
of New York City.
DENNIS SNYDER: My estimation
is that I am seizing
approximately 7-10%
of the heroin
that is smuggled through
the port of New York.
REPORTER:
The heroin trafficking,
which is attributed
to organized crime,
has a ready market
all over
the metropolitan area.
in the United States
are heroin addicts,
are located here
right in the city
of New York,
which gives you 40%
of the consumer market.
NARRATOR: In public,
Mafia leaders fiercely denied
any involvement
in the drug trade.
Joe Bonanno would famously swear
years later
that he had no knowledge
of the family's drug operation.
MIKE WALLACE: Now,
let me understand.
If anybody dealt in narcotics
from the Bonanno family,
they did it
without your knowledge?
Without my knowledge.
No question about it.
- MIKE: You swear it?
- I swear it before God.
NARRATOR: But this was
far from the truth.
We have guys going on record
like Joe Bonanno saying,
"We don't deal drugs.
We're not a part of the trade."
The evidence points
to that being entirely false.
ANTHONY: The rule was
that you're not supposed
to get caught.
And if you got caught,
that was trouble.
But, you know, it was,
like, a question
of, uh, sculpted ignorance.
The bosses didn't wanna know
if you were involved.
They would take the money.
They could say, "Oh, well,
I didn't know
where it was from."
But everybody would know
that drugs
were a key feeder
for organized crime's coffers.
Half of them say,
"You can't do it,"
the other half say,
"You can't do it,"
and both halves
take the envelope.
So, I don't know.
Smoke and mirrors, man.
NARRATOR: Carmine Galante had
no problem breaking the rules.
He'd been trafficking heroin
for decades
and had paid the price for it
with lengthy prison sentences.
Now back in New York City
and under the microscope
of law enforcement
and the Commission,
Galante employed
his Sicilian muscle, Zips,
to run the bulk
of his operation.
He wasn't alone
in this kind of subterfuge.
Mob leaders throughout the Mafia
had taken it a step further,
frequently hiring
members of other gangs
to do their dirty work.
ALEX: The Italian Mafia,
after some very hard
lessons early
in which some of their members
were convicted,
they tried to do more
insulating practices.
So for the most part, the Mafia
wasn't doing street deals.
They instead were relying
on Black organized crime figures
for a number of reasons.
First of all,
reduce their exposure
to actually being caught.
If they could be caught,
it gave them some deniability.
And also, it wasn't easy
for some Italian guy
to walk into Black Harlem
and start dealing drugs.
You sort of had to be part
of the community in some ways
to get away with that,
and to not be reported.
♪
I was born May 31st, 1951,
in Harlem Hospital.
I went to Catholic school,
so I was with a lot of Italians.
I knew people...
that were seeing people,
and I wouldn't-- I wouldn't
be able to say their names.
I wouldn't be able to say
who I just knew
that people were seeing guys
considered organized crime,
that had access
to getting them
good quality drugs,
and they formed an alliance.
♪
You gotta realize,
they were
legitimately organized crime,
and they took over the docks,
and they had the truckers.
So they can move things around
at massive levels
that, you know,
most ethnic groups,
they didn't have
that kind of organization.
Organized crime had generations
to develop information
and instruction to pass down,
where in the inner communities
where I come from,
the heads
keep getting chopped off.
♪
When I was growing up in Harlem,
there was adults coming
from everywhere to buy drugs
so they could either use it,
and maybe come back to
their neighborhoods and sell it.
They could be
from Maryland, DC,
not just Long Island
or Connecticut or the Bronx--
That area in Harlem
was an open-air drug market
where the highest quality drugs
for the lowest price
was being distributed.
NARRATOR: Through the 1970s,
the Mafia made a fortune
moving mass amounts of heroin
into New York City.
At the top of the list
of earners was Carmine Galante.
But it wasn't
the drugs explicitly
that put him in danger.
It was greed.
If one were a mob boss,
I think high up on the list
of things not to do
was to be too greedy
in what you're collecting
from your underlings.
That would be
high on the list.
Talking to the media or becoming
a media figure is very bad,
that all of a sudden,
you get an expiration date
from the other gangsters then.
Above all,
don't make yourself vulnerable
to snakes in the family,
because they will come back
and bite you.
♪
♪
NARRATOR: In 1975,
Carmine Galante,
AKA "The Cigar,"
and his crew of Sicilians
had the Bonanno family
in disarray.
The rightful boss,
Rusty Rastelli,
had the backing
of the Commission...
but legal troubles
made it difficult for him
to run a family
with a disruptor in its ranks.
He needed
a solution, quickly.
Phil Rastelli
wasn't a very good boss
in the sense that he would
constantly get into trouble,
constantly get indicted,
and constantly
get sent to prison.
Prosecutors have filed
an unprecedented civil suit
against the Mafia family,
the Bonanno mob.
The Bonanno crime family,
which has existed
for some 50 years,
and engaged in everything
from bootlegging,
to loan sharking, to m*rder,
to robbery, to hijacking.
♪
ANTHONY: His time on the street
was rather limited.
So he had to work
as a boss through emissaries
who would communicate
with him in prison.
NARRATOR: In the mid-seventies,
one of Rastelli's closest
and most trusted confidants
emerges from a surprising place.
ANTHONY: Joe Massino
was a working man.
♪
He grew up
in a poor family environment.
♪
Nothing special.
Money became
always an object.
PAT: Joe Massino,
back in the early '70s,
ran a coffee truck.
He sold bagels,
he sold sandwiches.
And he was a legitimate guy.
But at the same time,
ran numbers and took bets
while he was
on his coffee delivery.
That's why he had the nickname
"Joey Bagels."
That's how he got started.
NARRATOR: Massino
had first met Rastelli
through his nephew
in the late '50s.
They were neighborhood guys.
And through Massino's
lunch wagon business,
the two grew closer.
♪
Rusty took a real liking
to Joe Massino,
as perhaps heir apparent
to himself
within the Bonanno family.
Joey became infamous,
so to speak.
ANTHONY: Joe Massino
would go to see Rastelli
wherever he was in prison,
Be it Lewisburg
or wherever else.
It was quite clear,
it was well known
in law enforcement
that he was visiting Rastelli.
SELWYN: They were very close,
very buddy-buddy.
And Rastelli, in effect,
used to pass out
whatever information
he wanted to run the family
when he was in prison
through Joe Massino.
NARRATOR: Information
would flow two ways,
Massino would send messages
to the street
on Rastelli's behalf
while keeping the boss informed
with the latest family news.
And there was a lot
to report.
Carmine Galante
was becoming a problem.
If you're not the boss,
you don't get to decide how much
of your individual earnings
you get.
It may even be, on paper,
your business,
but the earnings are split up.
You've got to pay
your tax up.
There's not a sense
that you hold onto
your individual money.
And a lot of Galante's
organizational challenges
come from the fact
that he was selfish
about his earnings.
NARRATOR: Rastelli knew
that in order to maintain
his position as boss
of the family,
he needed to make a move.
So with the help
of Joe Massino,
he sought approval
from the Commission to strike.
ANTHONY: Joe Massino's role
was transmitting word
and approval
from Rastelli to the street.
The Sicilian faction,
which had been loyal to Galante,
basically
was turned against him.
Joe played a role
to help set him up.
I just think that, uh,
Rusty had a little more guys
on his end of the crew,
and that basically
that was it.
They got his zip guys,
bodyguards,
they said to them, "Come on,"
and they grabbed them and said,
"If you don't walk away,
you're gonna die with him."
He knew
there was trouble already.
He knew
there was trouble already.
But he thought he was strong
because he had
the Zip guys with him,
and he thought
they were strong,
and they wound up
giving him up in a minute.
They gave him up.
There's an old saying
in the mob
that it's only your friends
who can hurt you.
And in this case of Galante,
that's what happened.
♪
[intense music plays]
[cars honking]
[indistinct chatter]
[g*nsh*t bangs]
♪
I heard a job
come over the radio,
reports of shots fired.
I think it was.
Possibly three people
wounded or k*lled.
[siren blaring]
So I take off,
and I was the first
detective getting there.
Speaking to the wife first.
She says,
"My husband hasn't come out.
Carmine."
"Carmine?"
She says,
"Yeah, Carmine Galante!"
So, then I walk back there
and I see Galante
with the cigar hanging
out of his mouth.
There was three people dead
and one other wounded.
[camera shutter clicking]
♪
When I pulled up, I was
the only cop car there at first.
An hour later,
the street was jammed with cars,
all kinds of
photographers and reporters.
Complete insanity, you know?
NEWS ANCHOR: The K*llers
came in two cars,
the three trigger men
rushing inside,
ski masks over their faces.
The owner's son
saw the K*llers advancing,
shouted a warning, "Watch out!"
But a second wave
of two g*nman,
also masked, entered and shot
and wounded the son.
The two gentleman inside
died as a result of multiple
g*nsh*t and shotgun wounds.
Because of television,
the information gets out
to the public right away,
but it also gets
out to all the wise guys.
So if you publicize
all the information
you know about the criminals,
everybody knows.
REPORTER: For the neighborhood,
the passing of Carmine Galante
meant a lot of excitement.
Hundreds of people
took to the streets
of this Brooklyn block
trying to catch a glimpse.
Yeah, when Galante, uh,
hit happened,
I was kind of shocked,
and so was a lot of people
on the street.
A lot of talk about it.
Again, not a lot of chatter,
but just, "Wow."
You know,
"That was unexpected.
Wonder what's going to
happen now."
REPORTER: For organized crime,
it means the beginning
of something new,
a new struggle for control
at the top
of New York's Five Families.
♪
NEWS ANCHOR: As one
police Mafia expert put it,
"A contract was fulfilled
this afternoon."
On the receiving end
of that contract
was one of the top
Mafia chiefs in the nation,
perhaps the boss
of all bosses,
Carmine Galante.
♪
NARRATOR: The m*rder
of Carmine Galante
temporarily restored order
in the Bonanno family.
Rusty Rastelli
kept his seat as boss.
The Commission was relieved.
The man to thank
was Joe Massino.
♪
Massino's orchestration
of the Galante m*rder
put him in the good graces
of the Commission.
And Joey Bagels began
making allies in other families.
One of the strongest families
at the time,
the Gambinos,
led by Paul Castellano,
had an up-and-comer
in their ranks...
♪
John Gotti.
In the early eighties,
Gotti and Massino both lived
in the Howard Beach section
of Queens.
They were around the same age,
and they'd help one another
when they could to keep order
in their respective families.
♪
ANTHONY: Well,
Gotti and Massino were friends.
They helped each other...
the way they could.
The one instance in particular,
about 1980, '81...
NARRATOR: Less than two years
after a power grab was squashed
in the Bonanno family,
another one was underway.
Three Bonanno captains
wanted Rastelli out.
They'd need
the Commission's approval,
however, and they'd never get it
without the support
of the family's powerful
underboss,
Joe Massino.
Massino remained
loyal to Rastelli,
loyal to his oath,
so he once again was tasked
with taking care
of an internal politics.
The three captains,
Indelicato,
Philip Giaccone
and Dominick Trinchera,
were buying g*ns and weapons,
and that was seen as a sign
that the three captains
were gonna make a move.
Massino put together
a countermove.
He went
to the other crime families
and they seemed to say,
"Look, you've got to do
what you've got to do
to protect yourself."
I heard
there was a fraction going on.
They wanted to
take over the family,
and they wound up
with a meeting,
and it was held,
if I remember correctly,
in Sammy Gravano's club.
NARRATOR:
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
was a member
of John Gotti's crew.
He had a club on 13th Avenue
down in Brooklyn
in a neighborhood known
as Dyker Heights.
And for one evening
in May of 1981,
he lent it
to Gotti's friend Joe Massino,
who had some business
to take care of.
RICHARD: So these three guys,
when they walk in,
somebody--
I guess it was Joe--
but the signal was,
he put his hand
through his hair.
They came out of the closet
and started sh**ting.
[g*nshots banging]
And they shot
the three of them.
And Massino's people
took care of the homicide.
Gotti-- Gotti's people
dumped the bodies
in the Hole,
that part
of Brooklyn and Queens
which became known
as a mob burial ground.
RICHARD: The Gambinos
wound up burying the three guys.
♪
And one guy's arm
was found out of the ground,
but that was done on purpose,
from my understanding.
♪
Paul Castellano
was the boss of the Gambinos.
Paul wanted people to know
that body would be found.
"This is what happens
to people
that look
to take over our family."
NARRATOR: The m*rder
of the three captains
sent a message
to the Five Families,
"This is how an unapproved coup
will be dealt with."
But word also got around
of who had pulled it off.
Joe Massino
was getting a reputation
in the criminal underworld.
He had successfully maneuvered
two power struggles
in his own family.
But internal power struggles
were nothing new.
The next threat to face
the Bonannos
would be something new entirely,
a threat that would strike fear
like never before
among the leaders
of New York's Five Families.
ANTHONY: After
the three captain murders,
it was revealed
that an FBI agent
had infiltrated
the Bonanno crime family.
REPORTER: This man,
known as Donnie Brasco,
small-time jewel thief,
now testifying
at a federal trial in New York.
Brasco has revealed
his true name,
Joseph Pistone,
agent of the FBI,
who went undercover
to infiltrate the mob
for six years.
LARRY: It was a disaster
for the Bonanno family.
Probably
the biggest thing was,
the Bonannos were forced
to forfeit their seat
on the Commission
for letting this guy
infiltrate the family.
♪
ANTHONY: Pistone
was dealing with...
the Bonanno family.
But he had information
about other families too.
The feeling is,
"What other shoe's gonna drop?"
♪
NARRATOR:
On the next episode
of American Godfathers:
The Five Families.
The US Government delivers
a blow like never before
to the American Mafia.
CLAIRE: The Commission Case
is a watershed moment
in battling organized crime.
All the bosses went to prison.
NARRATOR: And as the walls begin
to come in on the Five Families,
The Dapper Don takes to
the streets of New York City.
John Gotti showed up
at the right time in New York.
MCSHANE: He became a star.
NARRATOR: Joe Massino emerges
as public enemy number one.
EDWARD: The only true boss
of the Five Families
who's out on the street
with power is Joey Massino.
NARRATOR: But by this time,
the playing field
had changed entirely.
MIKE: If somebody
was in jail
and nobody knew
where that person was,
that person
was probably cooperating
and additional charges
were coming.
I think the guys do
the arithmetic,
and they realize
you're going to spend
the rest
of your days in jail,
what for?
♪
Omertà has eroded.
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