April 7th, 1972. 4:30 in the morning. Alberto’s Clam House, 129 Malbury Street, Little Italy. Joseph Gallow sat with [music] his back to the wall celebrating his 43rd birthday with his new wife Cena, his sister Carmela, his stepdaughter Lisa, and his bodyguard Pete the Greek. They’d just come from the Copa Cabana where comedian Don Rickles had wished Joey a happy birthday from the stage.

The night felt like a celebration, like vindication. Joseph Luparelli, a Colombo family associate, sat at the bar nursing a drink. When he saw Gallow walk in, he immediately left and walked two blocks to a Columbbo hangout. Within minutes, he’d recruited four men, Carmine Diasi, Philip Gambino, two others whose names were never confirmed.

They grabbed their weapons and headed for Albertos. The gunman entered through the side door. 20 rounds exploded through the dining room. Gallow [music] flipped a table on its side and pulled his own weapon, returning fire while moving toward the door, trying to draw the shooters away from his [music] family.

The bullets found him anyway, back, elbow, buttocks. He staggered out onto Malbury Street and collapsed on the sidewalk. Police arrived within minutes. Gallow died at the scene, blood pooling on the pavement where countless tourists would walk for decades to come. He’d lived exactly [music] 43 years.

Born April 7th, 1929, [music] died April 7th, 1972. A birthday that became a death day. This is the story of how Joe Gallow challenged the most fundamental rule of the American mafia. You don’t kidnap your own bosses. [music] You don’t declare war on your family. You don’t recruit black gangsters when the mob is whites only.

You don’t become friends [music] with celebrities when you’re supposed to stay invisible. And you absolutely don’t think you can rewrite the rules just because you read [music] Kamu in prison. But Crazy Joe did all of that and it got him exactly what everyone warned him it would. a table in Little Italy [music] and a bullet riddled corpse on the street.

Joseph Gallow was born April 7th, [music] 1929 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the second son of Alberto and Mary [music] Gallow. Red Hook was a tough waterfront neighborhood where long shoreman worked the docks and street gangs controlled the corners. Ombberto had been a bootleger during prohibition, running liquor, and building connections with organized [music] crime.

He’d invested his earnings into a lone sharking business. He didn’t discourage [music] his three sons, Joey, Larry, and Albert, from following him into the life. Joey was troubled from the start. He got into fights constantly. He had a violent temper. As a juvenile delinquent, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, earning him the nickname that would follow him to his grave, Crazy Joe.

Though historians debate whether he was actually mentally ill or just unpredictable and dangerous. Either way, the nickname stuck. By his late teens, Gallow was running with a crew [music] in South Brooklyn. He dropped out of school. He had no interest in legitimate work.

The streets offered money, [music] respect, and power. Everything else was for suckers. In the early 1950s, Joe and his brothers, Larry and [music] Albert, formed their own crew and aligned with the Prooface Crime Family, one of the five mafia families controlling New York. Joseph Profofasi, known as the olive oil king for his legitimate import business, ruled his family with an iron fist.

He was old school, Sicilianborn, traditional. He believed bosses commanded and soldiers obeyed. No questions, no complaints, just obedience. The Gallow brothers set up headquarters at 51 President Street in Brooklyn, a three-story brick building they called the dormatory. From there, they ran gambling operations, loan sharking, extortion rackets, and collections. They were good earners.

They were ruthless enforcers. And Proface [music] took notice. In 1957, the Gallow crew allegedly received orders from Proface to carry out one of the most famous mafia hits in history. The barbershop murder of Albert Anastasia. October 25th, 1957. Park Sheran Hotel, Midtown Manhattan. Albert [music] Anastasia, boss of what would become the Gambino crime family and one of the most feared men in organized crime, sat in a barber’s chair getting a shave.

Two gunmen walked in and opened fire. Anastasia was hit 10 times. He died in that chair. Police never officially solved the murder, but FBI informants later reported hearing one of the hitmen brag [music] about it. The informant told his handlers. The killer joked, “From now on, you can just call the five of us the barbershop quintet.

That man was reportedly Joey Gallow.” After the Anastasia hit, the Gallow crew expected rewards, more territory, higher positions, a bigger cut of the profits. They just eliminated one of the most powerful mobsters in America on Proface’s orders. Surely that counted for something. It didn’t. Profacei saw [music] things differently.

He was the boss. He didn’t owe his soldiers explanations or bonuses. They’d done their job. That was reward enough. Besides, this was the early 1960s when mob bosses [music] were respected and obeyed without question. Who would be crazy enough to challenge that? Crazy Joe Gallow. That’s who.

The Gallow brothers grew increasingly frustrated with their treatment. They [music] were bringing in serious money for the Profi family, but keeping almost nothing. Profacei demanded tribute payments from all his captains and crews. The gallows were earning tens of thousands monthly, but paying a huge percentage straight to Profi.

They felt exploited, disrespected, taken for granted. In late 1960, tensions exploded. The gallows decided to do something unprecedented in mafia history. They kidnapped their own bosses. February 27th, 1961. The Gallow crew grabbed four top Proface family members. Under boss Joseph Magalyoko, Proface’s brother Frank, Captain Salvatorei Musakia, soldier John Simone.

They held them hostage and made demands. The gallos wanted a fairer financial [music] arrangement. They wanted more respect. They wanted what they believed they’d earned. The audacity shocked the entire New York underworld. Kidnapping rival gangsters was one thing. Kidnapping your own family leadership was insane. It violated every code, every tradition, [music] every rule of conduct that held the mafia together.

Frank Sheeran, [music] the hitman later made famous in The Irishman, would say about this incident. I don’t know how he got away with that. You don’t get away with that. You do that, you die. But initially, Gallo did get away with it. After weeks of negotiation, Proface and his conciglier Charles Lucero cut a deal.

The hostages were released unharmed. The gallows received promises of better financial terms and no retaliation. Proachi had no intention of keeping that promise. What followed was the first Columbbo war, though the family was still called the Profi family then. It was a bloody conflict that would rage through Brooklyn streets for months.

Proface aligned with Joseph Bonano, [music] boss of another New York family, to crush the Gallow Rebellion. The commission, the mafia’s governing body, pressured Proface to end it. The violence was drawing too much attention, too much heat. But Profacei refused to back down. He wanted the gallows destroyed.

On August 20th, 1961, Profi gunman struck. Joseph Gioelli, known as Joe Jelly, a Gallow loyalist, was shot and killed. The same night, hitmen tried to strangle [music] Larry Gallow. He barely survived. Carmine Persico, who’d been allied with the gallows, but switched sides, led the attack on Larry.

From that moment on, the gallows called [music] Persico the snake. The gallows retreated to the dormatory and fortified it. Bars on windows, armed guards, 24 hours security. They were at war with their own family, outgunned and outnumbered. In late 1961, authorities charged Joey Gallow with conspiracy and attempted extortion.

The case stemmed from shakedowns unrelated to the war. On December 21st, 1961, [music] he was sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison. The streets got a little quieter. The war lost its [music] most charismatic leader. In June 1962, Joe Proface died of cancer at age 64. Joseph Maglo, the underboss the gallows had kidnapped, took over.

But in 1963, after getting involved in a failed plot to kill other bosses, Maglo was forced [music] to retire. The family passed to Joseph Columbbo, one of the four men the Gallows had held hostage [music] back in 1961. The irony was thick. The man [music] the Gallows had kidnapped now controlled their fate.

While Joey sat in prison, a truce was brokered. The war officially ended, but the resentment remained. And Joey Gallow was about to get an education that would change him forever. Prison transformed Joe Gallow in unexpected ways. He became a voracious reader, philosophy, literature, history. He studied nature and kamu.

He learned about existentialism and absurdism. He saw himself as an artist, a poet, a thinker trapped in a violent world not of his choosing. More controversially, he befriended black inmates. This was unheard of for a mafia soldier. The mob was strictly whites only. Italians, some Irish, a few Jews. That was it.

Black gangsters [music] existed in separate worlds, separate territories, separate organizations. But Gallow didn’t care about those rules. He respected strength and intelligence wherever he found it. He reportedly became close with several black inmates who were connected to criminal organizations in Harlem.

When he got out, some of those relationships would continue, and that would terrify the mafia establishment. [music] In 1969, while Gallow was still locked up, journalist Jimmy Brereslin published a novel called The [music] Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. It was a satirical fictional account loosely based on the Gallo Profasi war.

The book became a best-seller. In 1971, it was adapted into a film [music] starring a young Robert Dairo. Actor Jerry Orbach played the gallow inspired character, Kid Sally. The fictionalized version portrayed the [music] gallows as bumbling but charismatic underdogs fighting corrupt bosses. When Gallow was released from prison in 1971, he’d become something rare in organized crime, a folk hero.

The counterculture embraced him. Artists and actors found him fascinating. He was the rebel who’d stood up to the system. The intellectual gangster who quoted Kamu, the outsider [music] who didn’t fit the traditional mobster mold. He befriended Jerry Orbach, the actor who’ played a character based on him.

He hung out in Greenwich Village. He attended gallery openings. He married Cena Esseri, a 29-year-old actress in March 1972. He was becoming a celebrity, which was exactly what the mafia didn’t want their members to be. But Gallo’s celebrity status couldn’t protect him from street realities.

Joseph Columbo now ran the family, [music] commanding hundreds of men. When Gallo got out, Columbo sent him a $1,000 welcome home gift, a gesture of peace. Gallo was insulted. $1,000. After [music] everything he’d been through, he felt he deserved $100,000, maybe more. He’d been a loyal soldier. He’d done Proface’s dirty work.

He’d killed Albert Anastasia. He’d survived a war. He’d done time. And now he was supposed to be grateful for a thousand handout. According to those who knew him, Gallow felt he’d moved past being a soldier. He’d become educated, cultured, connected. He had relationships with black gangsters in Harlem.

He had celebrity friends. He had legitimacy in artistic circles. Why should he take orders from Joe Colombo? The answer was simple. Because Columbbo was the boss. But Crazy Joe couldn’t accept that. [music] On June 28th, 1971, Joseph Columbo stood at a podium in Columbus [music] Circle addressing a crowd at an Italian-American Unity Day rally.

Columbo had founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League to fight discrimination against Italians. But the real purpose was public relations for the mob, trying to portray organized crime as ethnic persecution. The other families hated it. Columbo was drawing [music] massive attention to the mafia.

FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover had even ordered agents to stop using terms like mafia and kosa nostra under pressure from Columbbo’s group. It was [music] embarrassing. It was dangerous. It made everyone targets. As Colbo [music] prepared to speak, Jerome Johnson, a black man dressed as a news photographer, approached and shot him three times at point blank range.

Columbo’s bodyguards immediately killed Johnson, but the damage was done. Columbo survived, [music] but was left paralyzed and essentially brain dead. He’d linger until his death in May 1978, never [music] recovering. Police investigated. They concluded Johnson acted alone, but nobody in the underworld believed that.

Everyone suspected Joe Gallow. The evidence was circumstantial, but compelling. Gallow had black associates from his prison years. He’d feuded with Columbbo over money, and using a black shooter meant it couldn’t be traced directly to an Italian crew. [music] It was exactly the kind of unconventional tactic Crazy Joe would use.

The Columbo family believed Gallow ordered the hit. They wanted revenge. But first, they needed to be sure, and they needed the right moment. Gallow lived his last year like a man who thought he’d beaten the system. He partied with celebrities. He married Cena in a ceremony attended by actors and artists.

He frequented the hottest clubs in Manhattan. He acted like rules [music] didn’t apply to him. On the night of April 6th, 1972, [music] Gallow celebrated his 43rd birthday at the Copa Cabana nightclub. Don Rickles was performing. Jerry Orbach and his wife were there. Rickles toasted Joey from the stage.

It was glamorous, public, exactly the kind of attention the mob told its members to avoid. After the show, Gallow’s group moved to Ombberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. It had only been open 2 months. It was owned by Matthew Ianello, known as Matty the Horse, a mob connected restrator. [music] Gallow thought he’d be safe there.

Little Italy had an unwritten rule. No bloodshed in the old neighborhood. It was sacred ground. But Joseph Luparelli didn’t care about sacred ground. When he saw Gallow enter, he made his decision. Within minutes, the hit team was assembled. They entered Ombberto’s through the side door.

Eyewitnesses [music] later reported seeing Carmine Debiasi, known as Sunonny Pinto, leading the attack. Philip Gambino was identified as being there. Two other shooters were never positively identified, possibly out of town contractors brought in specifically for the job. 20 rounds tore through the restaurant.

Gallow grabbed his gun and returned fire while overturning a table for cover. His bodyguard [music] Pete the Greek emptied his weapon trying to protect him, but there were too many shooters, too many bullets. Gallow was hit in the back, elbow, and buttocks. He stumbled toward the door and made it to the sidewalk before collapsing.

Witnesses heard him gasping for air. Police arrived within minutes, but it was [music] too late. Joey Gallow died on Malbury Street, blood staining the pavement. The Nevada Daily Mail reported that Matthew Ianiello, the restaurant owner, dove into the kitchen and lay on the floor with his hands over his eyes as [music] the shooting started.

Afterward, Pete the Greek allegedly pushed a gun in Ianello’s face and pulled the trigger repeatedly, but the weapon was empty. He’d used all his bullets trying to save Joey. 3 days later, Gallow’s funeral was held in Brooklyn under heavy police surveillance. His sister Carmela stood over his open [music] coffin and declared, “The streets are going to run red with blood, Joey.” She was right.

Gallow’s brother, Albert, immediately sought revenge. He sent a gunman to the Neapolitan noodle restaurant on East 79th Street in Manhattan where Joseph Yakovi, Alons Persico, and Jarro Langela were supposedly dining. But the hitman got confused. Four kosher meat sellers who had nothing to do with the mafia happened to be sitting at the bar.

The gunman [music] killed two innocent men and wounded two others before fleeing. The botched revenge killing launched the second Colombo war. It raged for years. At least 10 men died in the violence that followed. The war finally ended in 1974 when Albert and the surviving Gallow crew were allowed to join the Genevese family.

The Gallow faction was finished, destroyed by Joey’s refusal to accept his place in the hierarchy. The official case remains unsolved. No one was ever charged with Gallow’s murder. Over the years, several men claimed credit. Frank Sheeran, the Irish American hitman, [music] told author Charles Brandt, “He was the sole shooter acting on orders from Russell Buffalino, but witnesses reported four gunmen, not one.

” She’s confession, like his claim about killing Jimmy Hoffer, has [music] been widely disputed. Joseph Luparelli, the Columbbo associate who spotted Gallow at Ombbertos, later fled to California and became a government witness. He told the FBI he’d recruited the hit [music] team, but didn’t pull a trigger himself. He named Carmine Debiasi, Philip Gambino, and two others.

But prosecutors never filed charges. The witnesses were unreliable. The evidence was thin. The case went cold. So why did Joe Gallow die? What made him so different from other mobsters who survived for decades? He challenged authority in an organization where authority was absolute.

The mafia wasn’t a democracy. It wasn’t a meritocracy. It was a dictatorship where bosses ruled and soldiers obeyed. You could be the smartest, toughest, most talented soldier in the family, and you were still just a soldier [music] until the boss said otherwise. Gallow never accepted that. He kidnapped his bosses because he thought he deserved better.

He befriended black [music] gangsters because he didn’t care about racial codes. He became a celebrity because he enjoyed the attention. Every choice violated mafia [music] protocol. Every action drew heat onto the organization. Every move made him more dangerous to his own people than to rival [music] families.

The Columbbo family killed him not because he was their enemy. They killed him because he wouldn’t follow the rules. And in the mafia, that’s a death sentence. Bob Dylan immortalized Gallow in a song called Joey [music] on his 1976 album Desire. The lyrics painted Gallow as a folk hero, a rebel fighting corrupt bosses.

One day they blew him down in a clamar in New York. Dylan sang. The romanticized version appealed [music] to people who saw Gallow as an outsider challenging a corrupt system. But the reality was messier. Gallow wasn’t a hero. He was a violent criminal who’d killed people, extorted businesses, and terrorized neighborhoods.

The fact that he read Kamu didn’t erase his [music] crimes. The fact that celebrities found him charming didn’t make him less dangerous. What made Gallow fascinating wasn’t that he was good. It’s that he was complex. A paranoid schizophrenic who became a philosophical [music] reader. A brutal enforcer who befriended actors.

A rebel who challenged his family’s leadership and paid [music] for it with his life. Ombberto’s clam house remained in business for decades. eventually relocating to the corner of Broom and [music] Malbury streets. The bullet holes in the original location’s walls were repaired. The blood was cleaned from the sidewalk.

Life went on in Little Italy like Joey Gallow had never been there. But [music] for years, tour guides brought visitors to the spot where he died. They’d point to the pavement and tell the story, the birthday celebration, the gunman, the 20 rounds, the stagger to the street, [music] the collapse, the blood. Tourists took photos standing where Crazy Joe breathed his last.

In 2013, the New York Times [music] interviewed Robert Ianello Jr., who was running Ambbertos by then. He told the reporter, “It’s not a movie. Somebody lost their life.” But the fascination persisted. The murder had become mythology. Joe Gallow’s legacy in organized crime [music] is complicated.

He proved you could challenge authority and survive for a while. You could kidnap [music] your bosses and negotiate a truce. You could befriend who you wanted and go where you pleased. You could even become famous for a time, but the ending was always the [music] same. The mafia doesn’t forgive. It doesn’t forget.

It waits until you’re vulnerable and then it settles accounts. Joey had [music] 10 years between his prison release and his death. 10 years where he thought he’d beaten the system. 10 years where he lived like rules didn’t apply. Then on his 43rd birthday, the rules [music] caught up with him in a clam bar in Little Italy with his family watching, just like he’d allegedly arranged for Joe Columbo to be shot in front of witnesses.

Just like the mafia had taught him. Violence answered with violence. Betrayal answered with betrayal. Challenge answered with death. Crazy Joe Gallow wanted to rewrite the rules of the American mafia. He wanted a multi-racial crime family. He wanted artistic legitimacy. He wanted respect without earning it through traditional channels.

He wanted to be a boss without doing the time as a subordinate. The mafia gave him his answer. 20 rounds in a clam bar, a 43rd birthday that ended on a sidewalk, a folk song that romanticized his death, and a grave in Brooklyn’s Greenwood [music] Cemetery where tourists still visit. looking for the rebel who challenged the [music] mob and died trying.

That’s the real story of Joe Gallow. Not the folk hero Bob Dylan sang about. [music] Not the charming rebel from the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, but a violent, unpredictable gangster [music] who thought he was smarter than the system, who believed reading philosophy made him different, who convinced himself that celebrity friends [music] and black allies would protect him from his own family’s judgment. He was wrong.

And on [music] April 7th, 1972, at Ombberto’s clam house, the mafia proved it. If you found this story fascinating, hit subscribe. [music] We drop a new mob documentary every week. Drop a comment. Was Joe Gallow a visionary ahead of his time or just a violent criminal who got what he deserved? Let us know below.