Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised 

Carmine Galante was an American Mafioso who was de facto boss of the Bonanno crime family of New York City.

Galante was rarely seen without a cigar hanging from his mouth, leading to the nickname “The Cigar” and “Lilo“, “after the Italian slang word for a stubby little cigar.”He was assassinated on Commission orders in 1979 while dining in a restaurant.

carmine galante was a mobster who frightened even the other mafia men  he was feared by everybody.

even if he seemed old, he was deadly,they were afraid of him.

no  mess with him.

go to a  hardware store and buy a can of nails, look in  the can…

that’s his face.

he had worked the mean streets for decades

carmine galanti was a especially cunning ,not  simply a preditor himself but a leader of preditors.

at the age of 60 ,his career seemed finished.

but fromhis prson cell ,he msterminded an astonishing comeback and flooded new york streets with heroin,his drug empire would become massive,but it would also make him a target.

and his career would end in one of the famous mob hits of them all.

carmine was stepping up into a position they  didn’t want him there .

he wanted that control and that was his downfall….

knickerbock ,avenue, brooklyn , new york, this is the site of  one of the most notorious mob crimes ever.

number 205 was once joe and mary’s resturant, at the rear was  a sheltered terrace.

it was here in the afternoon heat on july the 12th 1979 that one of the biggest mobsters carmine galante was having lunch and it was here that he was  interrupted.

police officers responded to reports  of  gunshots and screams inside the resturant.

the two gentlemen inside died as a result of  multiple gunshot and shotgun wounds .

galante was victim of one of the most spectacular mob hits for years.

it was a fitting end for the man who more than any other had been responsible for flooding the United States with heroin.

carmine galante’s career ws built on heroin,in fact  he had been knee deep in it since the 1950s.

that was  his trade ,he was a narcotic stealer from day one.

1957

four and a half  thousand miles from brooklyn in palermo sicily.

a key  gathering was held.

it took place at the grandhotel de palm to welcome a special guest from america.

that man was  joe bonanno boss of one of the five new york crime families

when he went to sicily he was honored it was like  the king  had returned and  they showed the greatest respect.

bonanno had brought with him his trusted underboss carmine galante

he was known assassin so he carried a lot of weight in a business where wheight counted an awful lot,short  stocky man but very rough  tough powerful.

galante and bonanno were here to doscuss with the sicilian mafia a means of trafficking heroin into the united states.

galante would be bonanno’s heroin emissary, he would  run all the drug side of the business for bonanno’s family.

it is one of the myths of the stateside mafia that they didn’t get involved in drugs , on the surface US mafiosi portrayed themselves as men of traditional values and drugs were not seen as an hornorable sidline.

they held  themselves out as men of honor,men of loyalty,obedient to old traditions the way american society no longer was.

but the reality was very  different .

even though they were taboo in the early and mid- 50s ,all five families  were involved  in heroin trafficking.

narcotics were illegal,it fell within their realm.

and galante’s aim was to be  at the heart of the action.

galante wanted to be the pipeline to the united states.

the drug  trafficking was a high -risk activity

while the authorities might turn a blind eye to gambling or loan sharking narcotics  had always carried a hefty federal prison  sentence.

the rewards however outweighed the risks

especially if galante could import the heroin  wholesale from  sicily .

the island was at the crossroads of the international heroin trade

the majority of the heroin  that was  coming in was going through sicily and smuggled into the  United States.

the opium poppies were grown in turkey, the opium was then refined into so called morphine base , usually in libanon.

next it was transformed chemically into pure heroin in the french port of marseilles before being  shipped  on.

this complex international journey from turkey  to north america through  france became known as the french connection.

but it was once it was in the US that heroin became hugely  profitable 10 kilos of raw opium could be bought for $ 350 once refined into  1 kilo of pure heroin it was worth a  1,000 times that.

the pure imported heroin was sold on across the United States for vast profits.

the largest amount of money that could be made since prohibition was narcotic trafficking the millions and billions of dollars.

galante and bonanno had their eyes on these wast profits made by getting the drugs into USA.

it was to set up this complex smuggling  network that the meeting  with the sicilian maffia had been convened as a result galante and bonanno solded up a large part of the supply of heroin for themselves

and from this point on galante began to dominate the heroin trade in the USA.

galante immediately set about overseeing his new business operation he traveled to Miami, Cuba,Marseille and above all canada.

galante knew canada especially well,much of his time in the 1950s was spent in montreal where he had risen to become  one of the citiy’s biggest mobsters by 1955.

joe bonanno sent him to montreal to organize the rackets there on behalf of the bonanno family and one of those rackets is narcotic importation.

he built a network of contacts and a strong power base in montreal and it just so happened ,canada was one of the places where  french connection  heroin made landfall in north america.

drugs from europe and the middle east would basically go to montreal or to toronto

from montreal it was only a relatively short drive to new york city.

galante made sure the drug was hidden in shipping consignments and then smuggled into the USA over land.

they were bringing it in of course in cars and in  trucks and things like that,  a lot of the major cases were in vehicles.

you ‘take a  20-gallon gas tank and you’d put in a tank that’s only about a gallon just  to get the car  started and off the pier.

and rest of it was filled with heroin in that gas tank.

the heroin  was in the doors and things  like that.

by the late 1950s galante was good at his job, he was  importing large quantities of heroin.

the galante organization out of montreal brought  an estimated  600 kilog of heroin a year .

within  a short space of time galante had built a hugely profitable international heroin smuggling network.

but galante didn’t just operate out of canada  because it was good for the business it was also a good place to hide.

in  the united states itself ,galante was known  to the FBI.

in fact  the FBI had been tracking  him for years

he was on their books as one of the top hoodlums in the country with an impressive rapsheet.

1930

incarcerated  sing singh prison, shooting a police detective.

prison  assessment emotionally dull IQ of a 14 year old

1943

implicated a suspected killer of a dissident italian jorunalist.

back in the 1940s when he was younger, he was suspected of killing a man named carlo tresca.

that was a very sensational case.

a lot of prominent people very high ranking americans were interested in that case.

he was never  indicted due to a lack of witnesses.

although they couldn’t pin anything on him  the FBI file on galante showed they knew he was someone to watch out for.

he should be  considered armed and extremely dangerous”

the file revealed the FBI  knew where he had lived 

including his park avenue adress with  views of  the crysler building, even his business interests.

for galante this  law enforcement heat as enough to make him nervous and was a good reason to remain  on the run.

but all of his narcotics trafficking  had  drawn  the attention of yet another law enforcement agency.

one that was even more fearsome than  FBI

it was called the FBN  the federal Bureau of narcotics.

the FBN specifically targeted opium and heroin smuggling around the globe.

the FBN and the FBI were supposed to get along but there was a bitter rivalry between them.

the federal bureau of investigations was a much  bigger organization then the bureau of narcotics.

it had 10 times as many agents ,it had a budget that was at least 10 times as great if not greater than the bureau of narcotics.

 the rivalry  wasn’t just professional it was personal.

the two leaders despised each  other but at this stage the FBN was way more effective than its federal rivals when it came to targeting the mob.

of all the law enforcement agencies  in the  united states it was the only one that seemed to know everything the mafia was doing

the minute it did it and it and it  was based largely  on the fact that it had compiling data on each and every mafioso including carmine galante since 1930.

and the FBN also had a better conviction rate,the reason it  had a powerful weapon at its  disposal.

the draconian 1956 narcotics control act.

narcotics control act of 1956 mandated that anybody dealing in heroin could get mandatory sentences up to 40 years.

this was unlike any other country in the world in italy or france .

people who were arrested for the same quantities of narcotics might serve two or three years in prison.

from  1959 onwards…

the FBN began to  target  galante activitely, and soon they had a breakthrough,

they discovered where he was ,intelligence revealed that he had traveled from canada back to new york on buisness and was in hiding.

the FBN arrested him in 1961 on a charge of narcotics trafficking.

galante’s case came in april 1962.

he was about to feel the full force of the narcotics control act.

 he  got 20 20 years in prison.

first at alcatraz..

..and then  at lewisburg pennsylvania.

galante had been riding high,now he seemed to be washed up.

for galante to get so many years in prison ,was a blow to him .

thanks to the FBIN ,galante’s career seemed over 

few mobsters could rise again from such a stretch but then ….

galante wasn’t just any mobster.

instead of despeairing, prison focused carmine galante’s mind.

he started thinking about  how to s tage a comeback.

jail time  hardened galante’s ambition to earn money and one lead his family.

the corner stone ofhis strategem would still be heroin, even though .

he was in jail galante made sure he kept all  his old heroin contacts and supply lines.

he did manage to stay involved in it even from prison.

he certainly have influence over the bananno family from prison.

he already had established the contacts in sicily they were still there the canadian contacts were there

then he started to nurture an idea , to tke over the running of his own family ,he would need massive amounts of money.

being just one of many heroin importers wouldn’t  be enough, he needed to become the sole wholesale supplier of  heroin into the USA.

he wanted control of that spigot where he could turn it on and off and control the price.

the colossal profits from controlling the heroin trade in america would bankroll his quest for power.

so it was just a matter of what when he got out  he was going to make sure that he controlled it all.

as galante  languished behind  bars out on the city streets,events conspired to help his plan.

while he was in prison, there was a rebellion within  the bonanno family and it was largely over  narcotics.

the old leader he respected joe bonanno was forced to retire.

many of the capos or captains that served under him were killed or retired as well.

and the bonanno’s also went to war with the other mafia families.

leaderless and in chaos a power vacuum opened up .

eventually in 1974 philip” rusty”  rastelli was appointed as the head of galante’s crime family.

but he was under police investigation and about to sent to prison.

so , the bonanno’s were ripe for  takeover and galante began to concoct even bolder plans.

he wouldn’t just take over his own  family, he wanted to take on the biggest family in new york…

the gambinos.

run by carlo gambino,it  had become the city’s toughest clan with the most profitable rackets and the deadliest killers.

galante’s ambition was to crush the gambino’s and maybe one  day become the head of all the mafia the so -called boss of bosses.

He was categorized at the time as having a psychopathic personality disorder.

but  whatever his personality failings, outside the prsion walls circumstances continued to help him realize his master plan.

heroin  his main money spinner becoming ever more popular.

heroin use was on the uprise ,because there was so much of  it and the price  was right.

in the ghettos of new york,heroin was now the drug of choice.

but local law enforcement couldn’t understand how the supply was growing by so much .

as former detective bill clark explians.

we really weren’t hip to just  the whole drug trafficking thing where  it was coming from,we didn’t realize the hand that the mafia played in it.

as time went on we realized how far behind it they were ,including carmine galante, anytime there’s a big pool of money around , somebody’s going to try to get in to it.”

the millions of dollars that were being made it was  astronomical .

the number of registered  addicts  had boomed from $ 50,000 at the time of galante’s arrest to $ 500,000.

politicians attempted to stem the tide,but they failed

it destroyed a lot of lives.

heroin was the drug of choice,very few workingclass neighborhoods that weren’t losing their sons or daughters to the heroin  trafficking and   heroin use.

you take an addict who  had an average habit of $ 1 or$ 200  a day, think  of all the  stuff he has to rob and all the muggings and robberies and that had severe effect on what was going on in the United states.

but to exploit the growing demand and to realize  his plan,now galante had to get free, this seemed fanciful until  right in the middle of the heroin craze  his wish was  granted.

the man with the borderline personality disorder was paroled in 1974 for good behavior on condition he didn’t consort with known felons.

after 12 years of careful plotting ,the timing could not have been  better.

he was  ready to set his plan into motion.

galantegot stuck in immediately, with a hectic  schedule, first he got his own house in order.

he moved to fill the leadership vacuum at the topg of the bonanno family.

with Philip Rastelli starting a long jail term,galante assumed the role of acting boss.

then he laid down a marker , he settled any scores with rivales who had moved in on his business interests while he was in  prison.

he was homicidal, quite  frankly, he had killed a number of people, he was feared.

the other people around him were absolutely petrified of him.

that made him acceptable as a leader of predators not simply a predator himself but a leader of  predators.

next  he returned to his jet setting ways, he wasted no time in  solidifying the idea that he would be the main importer of  the heroin through these various means that he set up.

he went to miami, dallas,los angeles even disneyland.

all the time  doing deals with his old associates and galante once again hoovered up more heroin supplies and source from the sicilians .

he had that pipeline open and there was such an upsurge of heroin coming in to the united states.

the  pipline worked  so well because  galante had a novel way to bring the heroin in.

when galante got out, they established a means of bringing in major amounts of heroin.

airliners arriving in new york  throughout 1970s often had a secret cargo in their hold ,they were bringing heroin in on  Alitalia flights .

every flight that left Milan,Italy , every day , a suitcase or two was put on the flight and unaccompanied .

the suitcases were stuffed with pure heroin,when it landed at JFK of course the suitcases were marked.

a mafia baggage handler would removed the marked  suitcase before it even wenth through customs and pass it on into the network.

it worked  beautifully, your talking about possibly  40 kilos of heroin coming in every day.

bringing in the drugs was one thing,but galante needed a distribution network .

so he hit the idea  of using  paizza parlor as outlets.it just  so happened this  gave him a chance to strike back at his rivals-the Gambino family.

the Gambino crime family had dominated  the cheese and pizza industries for years.

they made  money by monopolizing the cost of food supplies to the pizza parlor and  chasing away the competition.

then  a spate of fires at Pizza parlors , signaled  a new front in galante’s heroin  campaign.

as the  Gambions resturants burned, new pizza parlors owned by Galante  were opened up in their place and Galante used them to distribute vast amounts of heroin to the dealers.

it would just be distributed , a kilo came in, his people would distribute that pure kilo, they would sell it to the black drug dealers who were  taking all  the heat for this,in short time Galante once again built a vast international drugs network, he dominated importation and distribution .

drug agent Frank Panessa witnessed this firsthand.

the money they  were making and not only through the northeast,he had distribution throughout the United states, people in  Puerto Rico  were getting  their heroin from Galante’s people.

he had achieved all this in just four years since coming out of jail

there was a ruthlessly fast rise to power built on fear.

at this  stage Galante was only dealing in pure  heroin and he had a particularly unpleasant way of testing  its purity.

he became infamous at this time for what he called -the black man test.

an addict would be abducted from harlem and drugged with two  bags of heroin,if he died in a set time frame the drug was pure.

but as time went  on Galante began  to want even more…..

Galante was his own worst enemy ,he was making those millions of dollars but yet  he had the greed and he was greedy.

so he would put a whack on it,he would add quinine to it so something that was 90%  heroin ,he would whack it so it was 70% heroin and make even more  money selling it as pure heroin.

driven by such greed his buisness went from strenght to strengh.

everything  was going well he was making vasst amounts of money and was succeeding in his ambition become a boss in all but name.

the only that might spoil his meteoric climb to power was either the law or jealousy from  other mobster who resented his growing dominance.

1978

it was the law that came kncoking  first.

Galante was arrested and charged with violating the terms of his parole and consorting with known felons.

he had ben spotted with other criminals 

most notably at a disneyland meeting 3 years earlier

it looked like he would be back behind bars,just as everything was going so well…but once again he got away with it.

enter  Galante”s attorney roy cohn.Cohn was a controversial figure who  had syarted his career on many high -profile senate committees 

like the mcCarthy hearings.

but nowdays he represnted a number of infamous mafia clients.

Cohn had been charged with jewelry tampering and purgery and was now seen as too cozy with the mob.

nevertheless he was an undisputed star when it came to getting mafia men of the hook.

Cohn was galante’s less than secret weapon to ensure he didn’t do yet more time and it worked for him.

1978

Cohn succeeded in getting the parole violation charge overturned.

and galante became yet another success story for the mob friendly lawyer

with law enforcement out of the way,Galante could now turn his attention to an even more pressing threat.

his jealous fellow mobsters.

Galante was  not stupid,he knew  they  wanted a piece of his drugs profits but he thought he had the perfect solution,a foolproof way to protect himself….

herecruited a band of specialist killers imported directly from his sicilian homeland and the same town as his family.

Castellammare del Golfo.

the derogatory nickame for these men were Zips

and they had well-defined roles.

the Zips were sicilians brought over by Galante to run the pizza shops that they had all over  new york  in pennsylvania  not only to  distribute the heroin  but to use these Zips for murders and anything else that they needed from them.

for Galante the Zips were not soft like american gangsters but schooled in the old fashioned ways of doing things and their loyalty was  legendary.

the other advantage the Zips had was no criminal records in the states.

the Zips appeal to Galante on another level too, they were happy to kill women, children ,whoever.

The Zips would kill anybody they were assigned to kill , american hitmen didn ot like the  idea of shooting  policemen,prosecutors or  judges they weere  off limits to most of the mob.

but the Zips would take a  contract on anybody ,with rival factions in his own family most notably supporters of Philip Rastelli and further enemies like the Gambinos ,Galante used the Zips to make sure no one messed with him .

two of his most trusted Zips Cesare Bonventre known as “The Tall Guy”  and his cousin Baldo Amato.

caesar was a very imposing figure he was 6’7 , the type that if he had a mirror in front of him he’d constantly be staring into the mirror he was very vain person.

Baldo Amato and Ceasar bonventre  were  responsible for murders,they were used to collect money  ,they controlled the card games in brooklyn and if somebody didn’t pay up with the money that they lost they would send out Bonventre and Amato.

to ensure their  loyalty further the Zips were rewarded by being made into the crime family , in other words formally initiated and given their own money -making operations.

with the  Zips guarding his every move Galante felt untouchable.

whitout a doubt he would feel safe with them, he was the one that recruited them, he was the one that made them ,they were making major money with him.

as a result,he didn’t even bother  to carry a gun.

at  the height of his success not only was Galante shifting  millions of dollars worth of heroin  a year.

he was taking charge as the head of the family and surrounded by loyal  guards, he thought he was invulnerable.

the fact was whilst  Galante was seemingly in charge, the respect accorded him was often fickle and Galante failed to appreciate the looming danger.

his money was making other mobsters jealous.

and many still refused to recognize his status as self-proclaimed head of the family, especially supporters of the imprisoned bonanno family boss philip Rastelli.

Rastelli hated that Galante was expoiting the power vaccum and trying to steel his job.

so as the summer heat began to settle on new york ,dark forces were at  work.

one faction of the bonanno family didn’t like him heading the family they made an alliance with a faction of the Gambino family.

the underboss Aniello John “Neil” Dellacroce  who whas very very powerful for  an underboss.

this alliance with DEA ,Dellacroce  would be prove to be deadly.

on july the 12th ,1979 ,Galante’s driver dropped him off at joe & mary’s Italian resturant on  knickerbock ,avenue, brooklyn , new york

it was  his cousin’s resturant and Galante was visiting to wish him well on  a forthcoming trip .

back of the resturant ,there’s a garden cafe with tables and chairs  he ate there many times, he had his two trusted bodyguards who were armed.

with Baldo Amato and Ceasar bonventre watching over him ,he felt safe he had a friend  that he met there.,he had the resturant owner ,they had just had a big meal,he was about to light a cigar when three shooters come in ,these three people walked in and just  blew them away…

galante was gunned down ,cigar in mouth.

Joe Turano the cousin was also  failed , so too was the other lunch companion leonardo Coppolla.

news of the shootingreached police detective bill  clark.

the police rushed to the resturant.

the scene inside  was  horrific.the crime scene at joe & mary s resturant was chaos.

local news photographers managed to grab a shot of Galante splayed out  by the unfinished meal.

it became an iconic image of the mafia’s bloody reality.

that was the famous picture  that went out across the world.

it was such a perfect hit that it entered  mafia folklore.

as investigators dug deeper, they soon  realized it was a carfully devised assassination .

it was well planned ,because  a car  was waiting for them outside the resturant and they got away with it.

the getaway car was recovered a few blocks away.

and  there was an even greater puzzle,where were the Zip bodyguards

witnesses spoke of two other men in  leather jackets fitting the description of Baldo Amato and Ceasar bonventre hurrying  away from the crime scene.

it looked like the Zip bodyguards supposed to protect Galante had betrayed him.

for the new york police and the FBI it became one of their  most high- profile cases, they needed to solve  it to show they were coming down hard on organized  crime.

in the end the only clue as to what  had gone on came thanks to a stroke of good bluck.

covert  suveillance of a meeting of Gambino family men at a social club showed something interesting…

they started the camera going right across from the ravenite social club of everything happening  there.

they saw some of the bonanno faction come  over and give high fives with Aniello John “Neil” Dellacroce  people.

these guys go up and it’s like  big hug and kiss,it was everything but a touchdown signal in the  end zone .

this is  right after the galente killing.

and that gave the  information that it was a mob commission sanctioned hit.

the surveillance evidence would lead to the only conviction to date, one of the group Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato was charged as one of Galente’s mass killers.

no one else stood trial,this includedthe two Zips seen fleeing the shooting.

they turmed themselves in to be interviewed  a couple of days later and  they had their attorney with them and refused anything detectives asked them.

the motive for the murder however was clear.

Galante had become reach through  drugs and refused to share his  wealth, this had made  enemies both inside and outside his own family.

it was just too much money for them to pass up,we talking about  millions and millions of dollars.

his determination to replace Rastelli as bonanno family boss merely added to the list of those who wanted to kill him.

it’s one of those situations where you make a lot of enemies and your enemies get together and decide  you should go .

there’s a clue as to why the Zips turned on him,  after galante’s death

bonventre took over his  heroin business.

he  continued to distribute the drug by exploiting what became known as the – pizza connection.

and bonventre made even more money.

but a chance encounter on an airliner ended the pizza connection Era.

bundles of cash wrapped in aprons from a pizza parlor gave away the network.

federal law  enforcement officials are celebrating what they consider to be a major  victory in their war against organized crime.

a former head of sicilian mafia and 16 other reputed organized crime  figures convicted  of running one of the biggest heroin smuggling rings ever uncovered.

1985

a showcase trial  brought the pizza connection to an end.

since Galante’s death and the dismantling of the pizza connection

the mafia ‘s involvement  in drugs has waned , other  ethnic groups moved in and new  drugs rosse in popularity

the french connection has been replaced by new smuggling roots and new drug lords.

as for carmine Galante,his legacy  is unusual even by mafia standards.

he  showed that focus and sheer  determination could get you far and fast even after 12 years in prison.

but his spectacular killing showed  you can be too ambitious and too greedy even for the mafia.

he wanted to be the guy ,but he never made it,carmine was stepping up into a position that they  didn’t want him in and that’s what got him killed….Galante was a  ruthless street rat thug who certainly got what he deserved.

in the end  he was  so loathed that he was even refused a catholic funeral mass, what’s more that rare thing in mafia  circles ,he was buried surrounded by just  a tiny  group of close family.

few of his wider crime family bothered to  pay respect.

a true sign in the mafia  of an unloved and feared man.

a final insult for  someone hated  by those who knew him…………