Joe Gallo

Joseph Gallo (April 7, 1929 – April 7, 1972), also known as "Crazy Joe", was an Italian-American mobster and a captain in the Colombo crime family of New York City.

Diagnosed with schizophrenia in his youth, Gallo became an enforcer in the Profaci crime family and formed his own crew with his brothers, Larry and Albert. In 1957, Joe Profaci allegedly asked the Gallo crew to murder Albert Anastasia, the boss of what was to become the Gambino crime family; Anastasia was later murdered at a barbershop in Midtown Manhattan. In 1961, the Gallo brothers kidnapped four of Profaci's top men: underboss Joseph Magliocco, Frank Profaci (Joe Profaci's brother), captain Salvatore Musacchia and soldier John Scimone, demanding a more favorable financial scheme for the hostages' release. After a few weeks of negotiation, Profaci and his consigliere, Charles "the Sidge" LoCicero, made a deal with the Gallos and secured the peaceful release of the hostages. This incited the First Colombo War.

In 1961, Gallo was sentenced to seven-to-fourteen years' imprisonment for conspiracy and extortion. During his incarceration, Magliocco took over the family in the wake of Profaci's death, leading to a murder attempt against Carmine Persico by the remaining Gallo brothers in 1963. Patriarca family boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca negotiated a peace agreement between the two factions, but Gallo later refused to abide by the agreement, citing his imprisonment. After Gallo's release from prison in 1971, a peace offering of $1,000 was made by boss Joseph Colombo, but Gallo demanded $100,000; Colombo refused. On June 28, 1971, at an Italian-American Civil Rights League rally in Columbus Circle, Colombo was shot three times by an African-American gunman, who was immediately killed by Colombo's bodyguards; Colombo survived the shooting but was paralyzed. Although many in the Colombo family blamed Gallo for the shooting, police eventually concluded that the gunman acted alone after they had questioned Gallo.

The Colombo family leadership was convinced that Gallo ordered their boss' murder after his falling out with the family, inciting the Second Colombo War. On April 7, 1972, around 4:30 a.m., Gallo was shot dead at Umbertos Clam House in New York's Little Italy while celebrating his 43rd birthday. Although differing accounts of who the killer or killers were have been reported by various sources over the years, "the case officially remains unsolved."