1. Joe Gallo soon became an enforcer in the Profaci crime family, later forming his own crew which included his brothers Larry and Albert.
36 Facts About Joe Gallo
1. 2.
In 1961, the Gallo brothers kidnapped four of Profaci's top men: underboss Joseph Magliocco, Frank Profaci, caporegime Salvatore Musacchia and soldato John Scimone, demanding a more favorable financial scheme for the hostages' release.
3.
In 1961, Joe Gallo was convicted of conspiracy and extortion for attempting to extort money from a businessman, and was sentenced to seven-to-fourteen years in prison.
4.
Patriarca negotiated a peace agreement between the two factions, but after Joe Gallo was released from prison on April 11,1971, he stated that the agreement did not apply to him because he was in prison when it was negotiated.
5.
The Colombo family leadership was convinced that Joe Gallo ordered the murder after his falling out with the family, inciting the Second Colombo War.
6.
Joe Gallo was born in the Red Hook, Brooklyn, area of New York City.
7.
Shortly thereafter, Joe Gallo sustained head trauma in an automobile accident, resulting in the manifestation of a "nervous tic"; by this juncture, he and lifelong associates Peter "Pete the Greek" Diapoulas and Frank Illiano had begun to contemplate various criminal schemes while frequenting Church Avenue's Ace Pool Room and a candy store on 36th Street and Fourteenth Avenue in the nearby Borough Park section.
8.
In 1949, after viewing the film Kiss of Death, Joe Gallo began mimicking Richard Widmark's gangster character "Tommy Udo" and reciting movie dialogue.
9.
In March 1972, three weeks before his death, Joe Gallo married 29-year-old actress Sina Essary.
10.
Joe Gallo maintained his headquarters at "The Dormitory", a three-story brick tenement at 51 President Street that previously housed the Gallo family's vending machine interests; there, he allegedly kept a pet lion named Cleo in the basement.
11.
Anastasia's killers have never been conclusively identified, but Carmine Persico later claimed that he and Joe Gallo had shot Anastasia, joking that he was part of Joe Gallo's "barbershop quintet".
12.
On February 27,1961, the Gallo brothers kidnapped four of Profaci's top men: underboss Joseph Magliocco, Frank Profaci, caporegime Salvatore Musacchia and soldier John Scimone.
13.
Joe Gallo wanted to kill one hostage and demand $100,000 before negotiations, but his brother Larry overruled him.
14.
The Joe Gallo brothers had been previously aligned with Persico against Profaci and his loyalists; they then began calling Persico "the Snake" after he had betrayed them.
15.
In November 1961, Joe Gallo was convicted of conspiracy and extortion for attempting to extort money from a businessman.
16.
In 1962, while Joe Gallo was serving time in Attica, his brothers Larry and Albert, along with five other members of the Joe Gallo crew, rushed into a burning Brooklyn tenement near their hangout, the Longshore Rest Room, and rescued six children and their mother from a fire.
17.
Joe Gallo predicted a power shift in the Harlem drug rackets towards black gangs, and coached Barnes on how to upgrade his criminal organization.
18.
At Auburn, Joe Gallo took up watercolor painting and became an avid reader.
19.
Joe Gallo worked as an elevator operator in the prison's woodworking shop.
20.
In May 1968, while Joe Gallo was still in prison, his brother Larry died of cancer.
21.
On May 19,1963, a Joe Gallo hit team shot Persico multiple times, but he survived.
22.
Joe Gallo later stated that the peace agreement did not apply to him because he was in prison when it was negotiated.
23.
Joe Gallo's connection started when actor Jerry Orbach played the inept mobster Kid Sally Palumbo in the 1971 film The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, a role based loosely on Gallo.
24.
Joe Gallo reportedly told the family representatives that he was not bound by the 1963 peace agreement and demanded $100,000 to settle the dispute, which Colombo refused.
25.
The Colombo leadership was convinced that Joe Gallo ordered the murder after his falling out with the family.
26.
Once at Umbertos, the Joe Gallo party took two tables, with Joe Gallo and Diapoulas facing the wall.
27.
Rickles and Lemongello, whom Joe Gallo had invited to join them at Umbertos, managed to find an excuse to get out of the engagement, possibly saving their lives.
28.
When Luparelli saw Joe Gallo, he claimed he immediately left Umbertos and walked to a Colombo hangout two blocks away.
29.
Joe Gallo swore and attempted to draw his handgun, but twenty shots were fired at him and he was hit in the back, elbow and buttock.
30.
The mortally wounded Joe Gallo stumbled into the street and collapsed.
31.
NYPD homicide detective Joe Coffey, who inherited the Gallo case from original investigators, reported that based on eyewitness testimony and crime scene reconstruction police always believed the Gallo shooter was a lone man.
32.
Shortly before his death in 2003, Sheeran claimed that he was the lone triggerman in the Joe Gallo hit acting on orders from mobster Russell Bufalino, who felt that Joe Gallo was drawing undue attention with his flashy lifestyle.
33.
Jerry Capeci, a journalist and Mafia expert who was at Umbertos shortly after the shooting as a young reporter for the New York Post, later wrote if he were "forced to make a choice" about who shot Joe Gallo, Sheeran was the most likely culprit.
34.
Joe Gallo then implicated the four gunmen in the Gallo murder.
35.
Joe Gallo was portrayed by Sebastian Maniscalco in the 2019 Martin Scorsese film The Irishman.
36.
Joe Gallo is portrayed in the 2019 film Mob Town by Kyle Stefanski.