Crazy Joey Gallo

0:00 Joe Gallo walked into the office of Senate counsel

0:04 Robert F. Kennedy in 1958 wearing a one -dollar

0:07 -work shirt and a smirk that suggested he owned

0:10 the building. He didn't just sit down. He took

0:13 stock of the room, scuffed the carpet with his

0:16 shoe, and told a future attorney general of the

0:19 United States that the rug would be a fine place

0:21 for a crap game, when Kennedy, unamused, suggested

0:26 they go a few rounds physically if he wouldn't

0:29 talk. Gallo didn't reach for a weapon. He reached

0:32 into his pocket and pulled out a mezuzah, a gift

0:36 from a Jewish associate, and thrust it toward

0:39 Kennedy like he was warding off a vampire. He

0:43 wasn't just a gangster. He was a performance

0:46 artist in a world of stone -faced killers. This

0:50 was Joe Gallo, the man they called Crazy Joe.

0:54 a figure who would go on to rewrite the rules

0:56 of the American mafia while quoting Albert Camus

1:00 and keeping a lion in his basement. Before he

1:03 was the philosopher king of the Red Hook docks,

1:06 Joe was a teenage dropout who patterned his entire

1:10 life after the movies. He was obsessed with the

1:13 1947 film noir Kiss of Death, specifically the

1:18 deranged, cackling hitman Tommy Udo played by

1:22 Richard Widmark. Gallo didn't just watch the

1:25 movie, he inhabited it. He mimicked Udo's mannerisms,

1:30 his sneer, and that chilling, high -pitched laugh.

1:34 This wasn't just theater, it was armor. By the

1:37 time he was in his twenties, Joe and his brothers,

1:41 Larry and Albert, were the muscle for Joe Proficy,

1:45 the head of one of New York's five families.

1:48 But while most enforcers were content with the

1:51 occasional envelope, The Gallo Boys wanted the

1:55 world. They operated out of a three -story brick

1:58 tenement at 51 President Street, known as the

2:03 dormitory. In the basement of that building,

2:06 Joe kept Cleo, a mountain lion he'd purchased

2:10 from exotic animal dealer in Manhattan. Cleo

2:13 wasn't a pet in any traditional sense. When a

2:17 debtor was slow to pay, Joe would drag them down

2:20 to the cellar door. The man would hear the heavy

2:24 rattling of a chain and a low, baritone roar.

2:28 Most people found the money very quickly after

2:31 that. The breaking point with the mafia establishment

2:35 came in the late 1950s. Joe Profici was known

2:39 for his greed, demanding high tributes from his

2:42 crews while offering little in return. Joe Gallo

2:46 felt he was being underpaid, especially after

2:49 the Gallo crew. was rumored to have handled the

2:52 high -profile 1957 assassination of Albert Anastasia

2:58 in a midtown Manhattan barbershop. Gallo famously

3:02 joked that you could call his team the barbershop

3:05 quartet. When the rewards for such a hit never

3:08 materialized, Joe didn't just complain, he declared

3:12 war. In February 1961, the Gallo brothers did

3:18 the unthinkable. They kidnapped five of Proficy's

3:22 top men, including his brother Frank and underboss

3:26 Joseph Magliocco. Joe wanted to kill one of the

3:30 hostages immediately to show he was serious,

3:34 but his brother Larry, always the stabilizer,

3:38 talked him out of it. It was a tactical error.

3:41 Proficy negotiated a peace deal only to break

3:44 it almost instantly. In August of that year,

3:48 prophesized hitmen lured Larry Gallo to the Sahara

3:52 Club in East Flatbush. They had a rope around

3:55 his neck and were strangling him when a passing

3:59 police officer happened to walk in. The war was

4:02 officially on, but Joe wouldn't be there to finish

4:06 it. He was arrested for an extortion attempt

4:09 involving a local cafe owner and sentenced to

4:14 seven to 14 years in prison. Prison is where

4:18 the myth of Crazy Joe truly transformed into

4:22 something far more complex. While incarcerated

4:26 at Greenhaven and later Auburn, Gallo became

4:29 a voracious reader, reportedly consuming eight

4:33 books a day. He didn't just read pulp. He studied

4:37 Machiavelli, Sartre, Kafka, and Tolstoy. He took

4:42 up watercolor painting, fellow inmate, Donald

4:46 Franco's recalled that Gallo could describe the

4:48 process of gouging a man's guts out with the

4:52 same eloquent ease he used to discuss classical

4:55 literature. But his most radical transformation

4:58 was political. In an era where the mafia was

5:02 strictly segregated, Gallo began fraternizing

5:06 with black inmates. He befriended the future

5:10 Harlem drug kingpin Leroy Nicky Barnes. coaching

5:13 him on how to organize his criminal enterprise

5:16 into a professional hierarchy modeled after the

5:20 Italians. Gallo saw the future. He predicted

5:23 that the power in the city's drug trade would

5:26 shift from the traditional families to the neighborhoods.

5:30 In 1964, he even sued the Department of Corrections,

5:35 claiming he was being punished with cruel and

5:37 unusual treatment because he allowed a black

5:40 barber to cut his hair. He was an agitator, a

5:44 man who broke the criminal color barrier because

5:47 he saw it as an obsolete rule that limited his

5:50 own power. Gallo's time in prison wasn't just

5:55 about books and alliances. It was about survival

5:58 and reputation. During a violent riot at Auburn

6:02 Correctional Facility, Joe stepped in to rescue

6:05 a severely wounded corrections officer from a

6:09 mob of angry inmates. That same officer later

6:12 stood before a parole board and testified on

6:16 Joe's behalf. It worked. On April 11th, 1971,

6:21 Joe Gallo walked out of prison after serving

6:24 10 years. He was 42 years old, frail and pale,

6:30 but his mind was sharper than ever. He returned

6:33 to a New York that had changed, but he had no

6:37 intention of falling back into line. The prophesy

6:40 family was now the Colombo family, led by Joseph

6:44 Colombo. When Colombo offered Joe a thousand

6:49 dollar peace offering to settle the old scores,

6:52 gallows spat in his face. He demanded a hundred

6:55 thousand dollars. The war wasn't over. It was

6:59 just entering its second act. By the early 1970s,

7:04 Joe had become a darling of the New York High

7:07 Society. He befriended actor Jerry Orbach and

7:11 his wife Marta after Orbach played a gallo -inspired

7:15 character in the film The Gang That Couldn't

7:18 Shoot Straight. Joe would take the Orbachs to

7:21 dinner in Brooklyn, surprising them by asking

7:24 if they preferred Camus or Sartre. Marta later

7:27 recalled that Joe preferred Sartre because he

7:30 felt Camus was suicidal. citing the car accident

7:35 that killed Camus as evidence that anyone driving

7:38 that fast was looking for an end. He was a celebrity

7:42 gangster dining at Sardis and Elaine's, appearing

7:46 in the columns, and moving through high society

7:49 with a poise that baffled his rivals. But the

7:52 violence of his past was never far behind. On

7:56 June 28th, 1971, Joseph Colombo was shot and

8:02 paralyzed at an Italian -American Civil Rights

8:04 League rally at Columbus Circle. The shooter

8:07 was a black man named Jerome Johnson. While the

8:11 police eventually concluded Johnson acted alone,

8:15 the Colombo family was convinced Joe Gallo had

8:18 ordered the hit using his new connections in

8:21 Harlem. To them, it didn't matter what the evidence

8:24 said. Joe Gallo was a marked man. The end came

8:28 on April 7th. 1972, Joe's 43rd birthday. After

8:35 a night of celebration at the Copacabana seeing

8:38 comedian Don Rickles, Joe, his new wife, Sina,

8:42 his stepdaughter, and his sister headed to Little

8:45 Italy for a late night snack. They ended up at

8:48 Umberto's Clam House on Mulberry Street around

8:51 430 in the morning. Joe sat with his back to

8:55 the door. a rare lapse in the survival instincts

8:59 that had kept him alive for decades. He was halfway

9:02 through his meal when three gunmen burst through

9:05 the door and opened fire. In a final act of drama

9:09 that mirrored the movies he loved, Joe didn't

9:12 just die in his seat. He stood up, overturned

9:16 a heavy butcher block dining table to provide

9:19 cover for his family, and staggered toward the

9:22 front door. shouting obscenities to draw the

9:26 fire away from his wife and child. He took five

9:29 bullets before collapsing on the asphalt of Mulberry

9:33 Street. He was pronounced dead an hour later.

9:37 Joe Gallo lived as a man caught between two worlds,

9:41 the brutal silent code of the old world mafia

9:44 and the expressive chaotic intellectualism of

9:48 the new era. He was a man who rescued children

9:51 from burning buildings and threatened debtors

9:54 with lions. A man who studied philosophy in a

9:58 cell and died in the middle of a street war.

10:01 His life was a performance that ended exactly

10:04 how he had once told the orebox he hoped it wouldn't,

10:09 with his guard down. And that's how I heard it.