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by Lawrence Venturato (Editor), Joe Bruno (Author)
Even though he was a vicious, cartoonish character straight out of a B-grade mobster movie, Crazy Joe Gallo's murder made the front cover of Time Magazine. If Crazy Joe, all five-feet six-inches and 150 pounds of him, had not been iced in the early morning hours of April 7, 1972 inside Umberto's Clam House in Manhattan's Little Italy, the entire landscape of the Mafia in America might have changed, and not necessarily for the better.Crazy Joe was born and raised in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn along with his older brother, Larry, and his younger brother, Albert. Crazy Joe was instrumental in waging two Brooklyn gang wars against the Profaci/Colombo Crime families for control of the Brooklyn rackets. Mafia Boss, Joe Profaci, refused to give the Gallos the respect they thought they earned and deserved, so the Gallos decided they would take matters into their own hands and force their way up Brooklyn's organized crime ladder. The main problem was the Profacis/Colombos had almost 500 strong on their side, and the Gallos had, at most, 30 loyalists, with another 200 or so mobsters, who either constantly changed sides or stayed completely out of the fray.While doing a ten-year stretch in prison on an extortion conviction (1962-71), Crazy Joe recruited dangerous and hungry black convicts to join him in his quest, after he was released from prison, to unseat Joe Colombo as boss of the Brooklyn mob (After Profaci's death from natural causes, Colombo had replaced Profaci while Crazy Joe was in prison).So, when Joe Colombo was shot to death by a black man, Jerome Johnson, at a June 1971 Italian-American Civil Rights League "Unity" rally at Columbus Circle in New York City, most mobsters and members of law enforcement pointed the finger at Crazy Joe Gallo.But did Crazy Joe Gallo really orchestrate Colombo's demise?"Crazy Joe Gallo - The Mafia's Greatest Hits - Volume Two" will present you with the possibilities and the factors that ultimately led to Crazy Joe's brutal death.
Author Biography
Joe Bruno, a former New York City sportswriter, is the author of more than 45 crime-related books, including true crime, crime novels and crime screenplays.
