July 12, 1979, on the mean streets of the Bushwick
neighborhood of Brooklyn New York, acting boss of the Bonanno family just walks
into a restaurant. The restaurant
belonged to his cousin Guiseppe Turano, the name Joe and Mary’s
Restaurant. On a sizzling sweltering
summer afternoon, Galante enters the restaurant with his bodyguards known as
the “The Zips”, Mafiosi from Sicily that he had for protection. The two were identified as Baldo Amato and
Cesare Bonventre. The bodyguards were
good looking Italians, but could kill on the drop of a dime. Galante believed that American mobsters had
become too soft. The three enter the
restaurant and made their way to the courtyard of the restaurant in the back
patio. Galante sits down, facing the
back of the building so he could keep his eye on who sig coming or going. Galante and his group finished the meal and
where waiting for coffee and dessert, then Galante lights a cigar.
Three unknown and masked men enter the restaurant through
the front. They made their way into the
back patio and began to spray bullets at the table where Galante and his party
are sitting. Galante is assassinated
along with the other two sitting at his table.
It is later discovered that “the Zips” made no attempt to aide their
boss. Bonvetre and Amato fired rounds at
the three sitting at the table. It is
believed that they were in on the hit, it was sanctioned by the commission, and
we know this because Joseph D. Pistone aka Donnie Brasco testified that a hit
to take out a boss must be authorized.
After the hit the three assassins jumped in a getaway car, that was
stolen a month earlier. Soon after the
hit Bruno Indelicato is observed at the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy in
New York getting congratulations.
Indelicato is there to report the news of the successful hit to Aniello Dellacroce and Stefano Canone
Galante was born on February 21, 2010, he was short in
stature but made up for it in anger and toughness. Throughout his adult life he often walked
with a cigar in his mouth. Galante was a
mean son of a gun, and he took no crap from anyone, certainly not from the
other mob bosses in the city. Galante
was known to be a heroin king, bringing it in from Sicily and refusing to share
the profits with the commission families. This angered many of the bosses from
the other families.
Why was Carmine Galante assassinated?
Galante controlled the import of Heroin into the New York
City area, and he refused to share profits with the other families. Galante was the acting street boss of the
Bonanno family, he wanted to use the money he was making off the drugs to gain
control of the Bonanno family. Galante
took over the family as acting boss when Rastelli was sent to prison in the
early 70s. Around the mid-70s he had
perfected the drug network that he developed a system of pizza parlors to
distribute drugs.
To understand why Galante was in the drug business we must
go back to the late 50s October 1957, when Joseph Bonanno and Galante made
plans in a hotel in Sicily to import heroin into the United States. The agreement includes Sicilian mobsters to
go to the U.S. for the distribution of the drugs. Galante brought many
Sicilians mobsters from Castallammare Del Golfo, Trapani to work as hitmen,
bodyguards, and drug traffickers, they became to be known as “The Zips”.
Indictment
A year later Galante in indicted on drug charges along with
Willian Bentvena. Bentvena got involved
in the drug game in the late 50s and he was a made-member of the Gambino Crime
Family. Bentvena was a member of the
Carmine Fatico crew out of the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club in Queens. In 1962 Galante was convicted and sentenced
to 20 years in federal prison. 12 years
later he was released from prison on parole.
While Galante was in prison the mafia commission forced Joseph Bonanno
to retire from boss of the family. This
did not sit well with Galante because he felt that he should have been given
the title of boss, he used his power to try to push out Rastelli, the boss of
the Bonanno family at the time.
Galante’s Power Grab
Galante orders his family to take over the heroin market and
push the other families out. In the
1970s Galante arranged for the murders of eight Gambino family members. The reason for the hits is that the Galante
and the Gambino family were having a tough battle on the streets to control the
drugs. The more drugs you push., the
more money you make. Galante took
offense to this and decided to act by arranging hits on Gambino family members.
In the late-70s Galante declared war on
the Gambino and the Genovese family.
Genovese Boss Frank Tiere began the movement to get rid of Galante. He started contacting the commission and
built a case against Galante. The commission even obtained permission from retired boss Joseph Bonanno to
assassinate Galante.
The Hit
On July 12, 1979 Galante is assassinated. Galante was shot in the face with a shotgun. The two others assassinated with him were
Bonanno Capo Leonard Coppala, cousin and owner of the restaurant Giuseppe
Turano. The mafia commission worked with
Gambino Crime Family, underboss Aniello Dellacroce and Bonanno Crime Family
consiglieri Stefano Canone, Bonanno soldiers Bruno Indelicato, Dominic
Trinchera, and Cesare Bonventre to plot the assassination of Galante. After the assassination Indelicato,
Trinchera, and Bonventre were promoted to the rank of capo.
Carmine Galante was assassinated because of greed and
power. Galante felt betrayed when he was
not named boss of the Bonanno family. He
decided to try and get control of the heroin trafficking from the other
families, and keep all the profits and take over the Bonanno family without
authorization. In the end the power of
the commission was far too superior for Galante to match. The commission used its power and yielded its
big hammer and wacked acting boss of the Bonanno family Carmine Galante.
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