"Crazy Joe" Gallo's Last Meal

Gallo testifying before Congress, 1959  AP

Three notable members of organized crime hailed from President Street in South Brooklyn — the Gallo brothers, Larry, Albert and Joey, the latter known with a certain amount of reason as “Crazy Joe.” (He supposedly kept a lion in his Brooklyn basement to scare loanshark victims into paying what they owed.)

It was on April 7, 1972, his 43rd birthday, that Joe met his bloody end at Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy while dining on their scungilli marinara.

Gallo had been dining that night with his wife and with his bodyguard, Peter “the Greek” Diapoula. They managed to flip over the table and use it as a shield. But when Gallo made a run for the door, a bullet pierced his back and cut his carotid artery. He stumbled out the door and collapsed on the street.

Gallo had first made a name for himself in the mob world in 1957 when he carried out a hit at the order of mob boss Joseph Profaci against Albert Anastasia, head of the infamous Murder, Inc.

Gallo lies in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

It is suspected that hitman Frank Sheeran killed Gallo, but no one was ever officially charged with the murder. Before his death in 2003, Sheeran confessed to killing Gallo, and also claimed that he had killed Jimmy Hoffa.

Read more about "Crazy Joe" Gallo at the Eagle