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Joey Gallo (April 7, 1929 - April 7, 1972) better known as Crazy Joe Gallo, was a gangster who was a member of the Profaci crime family (later known as the Colombo crime family). He was a gunman and a racketeer.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929, Gallo earned his nickname in mafia circles because he was a ruthless killer who was a happy shooter and very unpredictable. The Gallo brothers did some work for Carlo Gambino (whose family would later bear his name), and are credited by most sources to be the assassins of Murder Inc. leader and gangster Albert Anastasia in 1957.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, he tried to overpower mafia boss Joseph Profaci to take control of the Profaci family. Gallo was helped in this war by his brothers Larry and Albert. Albert was himself nicknamed Kid Blast. Due to Profaci's unpopularity with his men (he was seen as somewhat stingy and require constant tribute), the Gallos and their chief ally, Carmine Persico, seemed poised to take control of the family.
Profaci was saved, however, when Gallo was arrested and convicted of extortion in 1961. Gallo would spend the next ten years in prison.
Upon his release in 1971, Gallo battled Profaci's successor Joe Colombo and the now renamed Colombo family. Gallo was one of the first mafiosi to predict a shift of power in the New York streets from the Italian mafia to black gangs, and he started becoming friends with members of the black gangs. Gallo was allied with Carlo Gambino against Colombo. Joe Colombo was shot in June 1971 by a black gunman named Jerome Johnson. Johnson, who was immediately shot dead by Colombo's bodyguards, was believed to be an associate of Gallo and therefore Gallo was widely suspected by both the police and other mobsters as being the one behind Colombo's shooting.
On April 7, 1972, Gallo was celebrating his 43rd birthday with his family at a restaurant, "Umbertos Clam House" on 129 Mulberry street in Little Italy, New York City, when three gunmen burst in and opened fire. Gallo was hit five times and died after stumbling into the street whilst his killers speeded away in a car. The gunmen were never identified or convicted.
He was immortalized in the song Joey by Bob Dylan & Jacques Levy on his 1975 album Desire.
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