Crazy Joe Gallo: The Mad Genius Who Declared War on the Godfathers 

On a narrow street in Red Hook, the smell of the waterfront combined with coal smoke and old brick as a 9-year-old boy learned a lesson most men never dared to attempt. Not how to steal, not how to fight, but how to disobey the mafia and survive. His name was Joseph Gallow. People called him Joey, but not with affection.

 There was something in his eyes, cold, unblinking defiance that even the most hardened dock worker found unnerving. Neighbors whispered that he was born wrong, a kid who didn’t fear punishment, God, or consequences. His father, Ombberto Albert Gallo, drove trucks for the Profasi crime family. A quiet, obedient man who followed orders and never caused trouble.

 Joey was the opposite. unpredictable, sharp-witted, and allergic to submission. Red Hook was a place where to survive meant compromising. But Joey had no interest in compromise. He wanted control. Even as a boy, and control required one thing, power, not power earned, power taken. By the time he was 16, Joey Gallow had been arrested twice.

 Not for petty crimes, but for jobs that showed a criminal mind far beyond his age. Both cases collapsed. Witnesses disappeared. Complaints were withdrawn. Missing police reports. Even then, Joey knew leverage and fear. What unsettled the NYPD wasn’t the crimes. It was Joey himself. Most teenagers panicked in interrogation rooms. Joey smirked.

 Every cop was a nuisance. Every question an insult. He wasn’t reckless. He was calculating. And men who valued those traits noticed him. The Profashi family. They ruled South Brooklyn like medieval lords, operating numbers games, collecting protection money, and controlling the docks. Everyone who worked for them did so quietly.

 Everyone but Joey. He dressed sharp, talked fast, gambled heavy, and surrounded himself with misfits, loners, street punks, and smalltime gunmen who admired one thing about him. He feared nothing. They started calling him crazy Joe. Not behind his back, to his face. And he embraced it. There was another side to Joey that made him even more dangerous.

Brilliant. Even he was smart. While most street guys could barely sign their names, Joey read Toltoy, Dstfki, Nichze, and Shakespeare. He haunted used bookstores, obsessed with outlaws, tyrants, and revolutionaries. He studied people, their motives, their weaknesses. The poor devil was getting philosophy down him like ammunition.

 And he came to a straightforward conclusion. A mafia wasn’t a brotherhood. It was a medieval monarchy, and he wanted to overthrow it. He had no desire to rise through the ranks. He neither wanted to kiss rings nor swear loyalty. Joey wanted to change the rules or burn the entire system down. By the late 1950s, Joey had assembled a crew in his likeness, charismatic, loyal, unpredictable, and fearless.

 Pete the Greek Dipulus, Joey’s right hand. Larry Gallo, his older brother, disciplined and steady. Albert Kidblast Gallow, the youngest, impulsive and eager. Around them was a revolving circle of stickup men, gamblers, and armed robbers who swore allegiance not to the mafia, but to Joey himself.

 To the old school mob bosses, Joey’s crew looked like a wild, undisiplined pack. But Joey’s wild dogs were smart. They robbed bookmakers tied to other families. They hijacked trucks claimed by the profess. They bullied bars without warrants. They refused tribute. They called no man boss. This wasn’t rebellion. It was independence.

The Profasi family, primarily boss Joe Profashi, also known as the olive oil king, required utter loyalty, tribute, and obedience. His rule was unbending, strict, and oldworld. To Joey, he was greedy, weak, and outofdate. But the final push toward war wasn’t ideology. It was money. He taxed every racket in Brooklyn.

 The Gallo brothers paid thousands each month. Every hijacking, every gambling operation, every shakeddown. Profashi expected a cut. One day, Joey stopped paying. Profashi insisted on an explanation. Joey gave one. We’re done being milk. Those five words spoken in a smoky backroom set off the first mafia civil war in New York since the 1930s.

 The gallows weren’t just refusing tribute. They were challenging a dome. And challenging a dome leaves only two paths. Victory or death. In 1961, Joey Gallo made the move that cemented his legend. He kidnapped the top men of Proface. Not soldiers, not capos. His inner circle. It was a move so bold, so insane that the world of the mafia stood frozen.

 Kidnapping Adon’s lieutenants wasn’t rebellion. It was war. They were held in basement, tied to chairs, humiliated, beaten, and fed scraps. Joey insisted that Profashi lower taxes and ease up on the family. It wasn’t negotiation. It was extortion aimed at a mafia boss. Profacei agreed. On paper, the moment the hostages were freed, he ordered a contract on the gallows.

 A contract with no expiration date. Retaliation was quick. One humid summer night in a Brooklyn bar, Larry, Joey’s brother, walked right into an ambush led by Profacei hitman Carmine Percigo.Larry was dragged into the basement. A rope was thrown around his neck. Three men attempted to strangle him on the concrete floor, but Larry survived.

 A patrol officer responding to an unrelated call heard the chaos and stormed in. The attackers fled into the night. Larry Gallow stumbled out of the basement, half unconscious, bruised, and gasping for air. From that night on, he was known as the miracle man. To Joey, this wasn’t an attempted hit. It was a declaration, and Joey Gallow did not believe in Tusus.

 After the attack upon Larry, the Gallow crew truly embraced their identity. Outlaws, rebels, an unaffiliated force in a world built on hierarchy and obedience. They hijacked trucks in daylight. They robbed mafia run bars. They never hesitated to shoot made men. The NYPD referred to them as the most unstable crew in Brooklyn.

 That FBI warned they were the spark that could ignite the entire American mafia. Other families described them simply as lunatics. But the streets had a different name, the Gallow Gang, Brooklyn’s wild bunch. Their reputation came not just from violence, but from unpredictability. Unlike traditional mob killers, the gallows didn’t wait for approval.

 They acted out of instinct, out of outrage, out of opportunity. No one personified that chaos more than Joey. He once walked alone into a proface controlled cafe, looked around at a dozen armed enemies and said, “If anybody wants that contract on me, I’m right here.” No one budged. Nobody said a word.

 Joey laughed and walked out. His greatest weapon wasn’t a gun. It was fearlessness. In 1962, the law finally caught Joey Gallow. not for murder, kidnapping, or extortion, but for a failed shakeddown involving a club owner. He received a sentence of 7 to 14 years in prison. To the public, it looked like justice. To the mafia, it was salvation.

 Dozens of killers were hunting Joey. Prison was the one place he couldn’t be touched. But prison didn’t tame him. It sharpened him. Inside he made friends with black inmates, studied psychology, and voraciously read philosophy. He emerged with a worldview park revolutionary, part tyrant, calm, focused, dangerous. When he walked out in 1971 after nearly 10 years behind Mars, New York expected a quieter man.

 Instead, they got something far more dangerous. A man who had finally learned patience. When Joey Gallow walked out of Green Haven Correctional Facility on April 7th, 1971, Brooklyn expected the return of a gangster. What they got instead was something far more dangerous. A cult figure. Joey didn’t slip quietly into freedom.

 He emerged with the calm of a man remade by the conflict. Leaner, more controlled, and more intense than ever. He was sharply dressed. He carried books under his arm. He talked to reporters about Nicho and existentialism while they followed him around like he was a movie star. He even joked. I went away a gangster. I came out a philosopher.

Behind the joke, there was a plan. Prison hadn’t weakened him. It had focused him. Behind bars, Joey had been watching the mafia for 9 years. He had seen the Profasi family crumble. He had watched new leaders rise and crumble. He had watched weak men inherit powerful positions. And to him, that message coming from the streets was clear.

 New York needed him again. While Joey was in jail, the Profashi family became the Columbbo family, named after its new boss, Joseph Columbbo. At the start, Columbbo seemed a stabilizing force. Diplomatic, charismatic, even friendly with the politicians. He gained something most bosses never had, public standing.

 He founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League. He held big rallies. He gave speeches against discrimination. He went on national television and proclaimed that Italian Americans were unfairly associated with organized crime. Then came Columbo’s fatal mistake. He believed in his own image. He had felt that the spotlight made him untouchable.

He thought federal agents wouldn’t dare move against him. He thought rival families would admire his boldness. He was wrong on all three counts. Behind the scenes, however, the remaining bosses in New York were furious. Columbbo had broken the oldest rule of all. Draw less attention to oneself. The mafia survives in shadows, not on camera.

 It didn’t take very long for someone to decide he had to be silenced. June 28th, 1971, Columbus Circle. An Italian-American Civil Rights League rally. Tens of thousands cheered as Joe Columbo stepped toward the stage. Cameras rolled, smiling politicians. Journalists prepared to record his next traumatic line.

 Then a man came forward, tall, quiet, wearing press credentials. His name was Jerome Johnson, a small-time black criminal with no known ties to the mob. He walked up behind Joe Colombo and raising a gun, fired three shots into Columbbo’s head and neck. Columbo collapsed in front of the cameras. Johnson tried to run. In a flash, a Colombo bodyguard shot him dead.

 The rally erupted into chaos. Sirens howled.People screamed and scattered. Photographers took pictures of him bleeding on the ground. The mafia commission panicked. The Columbbo family panicked. New York panicked because no one grasped the interconnection between the shooter and the man who had just come back from prison.

 Within hours, rumors sprinted across Brooklyn. Crazy Joe was behind it. Why? Because the shooter, Jerome Johnson, had been seen in Manhattan clubs connected to Gallo. Because Joey had a history of working with black associates, because the hit felt like something Gallo would design, theatrical, humiliating, and carried out in front of the whole city.

 The Colbo family was certain. The FBI suspected. The streets whispered. Joey Gallow, sitting in a loft in Greenwich Village, heard the accusation just like everybody else. Over the evening news, he laughed. When a reporter called him that night, Joey said, “If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead. This wasn’t my style.

” Whether that was the truth or performance, nobody can tell. Yet, the consequences were deadly. Guilty, the Columbbo family believed him to be. And within the mafia, belief is all that matters. By dawn, they had passed sentence of death. Joey Gallow had declared war a decade earlier. The war had finally come back to him now.

 What happened next became one of the strangest chapters in New York crime history. Instead of going into hiding, Joey Gallow plunged headirst into Manhattan nightife. As if auditioning for a part, he drank in art bars. He spoke with painters. He argued with critics. He spent time in jazz clubs with black musicians. He watched plays in off Broadway theaters.

 He became a celebrity outlaw. Authors admired him. Actors flocked to him. Poets tried to imitate him. Celebrities like Jerry Orbach and his wife Elaine. Even Bob Dylan became fascinated with Joey’s mind. As Dylan would later say, he could have been a politician. He could have been a king. Joey told stories about prison politics, mafia codes, and the hypocrisy of the underworld.

 He fascinated intellectuals because he was something they rarely met. A criminal with a mind sharper than most professors. He was unpredictable. He was articulate. He was charming. And that terrified the mafia. To them, Joey wasn’t just a rogue. He was becoming a symbol. A myth that couldn’t easily be erased. And myths are dangerous.

 Joey began rebuilding his crew. But this time, his soldiers weren’t traditional Sicilian tough guys. They were young black men from Brooklyn, street fighters he had met and respected, mentored in prison. He trusted them. He believed in them. He saw in them what he always had been lacking. Loyalty without tradition.

These young men looked up to him because he gave them something the mafia never did offer. A real place at the table. He paid them. He defended them. He trained them in strategy and discipline. The other families saw it as blasphemy. Working with black associates was a direct violation of unwritten mafia rules, a line no maid man was supposed to cross.

 Joey crossed it openly, boldly, proudly. Gallow wasn’t just changing his crew. He had been trying to reshape organized crime in his own image. Paranoia swept through Brooklyn after the Columbbo shooting. Every alleyway felt threatening. It seemed like every dark corner of a bar was a trap. Every car that backfired made men jump. Hitman roamed the streets.

 Old alliances cracked. The name Gallo, spoken in pizzeras and social clubs, carried a new kind of danger. The Columbbo family wanted revenge. But Joey was harder than ever to reach. He stayed in hotels in Manhattan. He dined at plush restaurants. He traveled each night with different people. He was always on the move.

 The gallows were no longer just mobsters. They were stylish fugitives. And the mafia hates nothing more than an enemy who refuses to behave like one. Joey Gallow’s 49th birthday fell on April 7th, 1972. He had survived prison. He had survived war with the prophakis. He had survived several attempts on his life. He had survived being blamed for the shooting of Joe Columbo.

 He was a shining star in Manhattan nightlife. >> [snorts] >> He had reinvented himself as a philosopher of the streets. He is under the impression, perhaps foolishly, that he has risen beyond the old rules of the mafia. But the mafia never forgets. That night, Joey celebrated his birthday at the Copa Cabana. He drank wine, danced, and laughed with friends, and received congratulations from fiddlers who looked up to him. He was untroubled.

 happy he was. He was careless. He thought the Columbbo family wouldn’t dare strike in Manhattan. He felt that they wouldn’t attack with celebrities and civilians around. He thought that he was safe. He was wrong. Because within the mafia, one rule is never altered. A contract does not ever expire.

 And to Joey Gallow, midnight was coming. The end was near. and the men who would deliver it were already making their plans. April 7th, 1972.A chill spring night in Manhattan. Joey Gallo stepped out of the Copa Cababana with the swagger of a man who believed he had reshaped his own destiny. He wore a dark tailored suit, a navy silk shirt open at the collar, and a wide confident smile. He wasn’t drunk.

 Joey never allowed himself to lose control, but he was relaxed. Too relaxed. The time is past 300 a.m. Instead of going home, Joey made a spontaneous decision, the kind only men who feel invincible ever make. He wanted food, not just anything either. He wanted Italian. He wanted a place where old-timers still argued loudly, where waiters wore crisp white shirts and the air smelled like garlic, wine, and memory.

 He wanted Little Italy. In any case, Joey and his little entourage walked east. Joey, his wife Cena, his stepdaughter, actor Jerry Orbach, and his wife Elan with a handful of friends bringing up the rear. No bodyguards, no lookouts, no guns. Not because Joey trusted the streets, but because he relied on himself more than any soldier.

 That confidence, that stubborn faith in his own invincibility would cost him everything. They arrived at Alberto’s Clam House on Malbury Street, a tight, blindingly lit seafood restaurant. The kind of place where chairs scraped loudly on the floor and plates clattered against the tables. Joey walked in with no hesitation, nodding at the tired waiter wiping down the tables.

 He opted for a back seat against the wall, something a younger Joey Gallo would never have done. He ordered the linguine with white clam sauce, a glass of red wine, a few raw clams. He laughed loudly as if the world had forgotten every grudge it held against him. But the world hadn’t forgotten, and little Italy was the final neighborhood where Joey Gallow should have felt safe, because earlier that night, a Colbo associate had seen him at the Copa. Word spread quickly.

 By the time Joey sat down at Ombberto’s, his enemies were already assembling. Across the neighborhood, three men stopped their car in an alley. They weren’t amateurs. They were not freelancers. They were professionals carrying out a contract signed years earlier. History points to a crew of Columbbo loyalists.

 Philip the Snake Gambino, Carmine, Sunonny Pinto, Diasi, along with a gunman known only as Little Li. Whether those are actual names or legend is irrelevant. What matters is simple. The Columbbo family had decided that tonight was the night. They walked swiftly, nolessly, coat collars up and faces lowered. One brandished a.

38 revolver. Another brandished a 9 mm. The third had a backup pistol tucked under his waistband. They were not just killing a rival. They were killing the symbol. A man who had ridiculed them, a man who disobeyed them. A man they feared may rise again. 4:00 a.m. The restaurant door burst open. A man in a long coach stepped inside.

 He walked straight towards Joey Gallow. Some diners said that he shouted something. Others insisted he stayed silent, but everybody remembered the moment he raised his gun. The first shot hit Joey in the arm. The second one entered his back. The third ripped into his side. Instantly, chaos exploded. Diner screamed, pots broke, wine glasses spilled.

 Joey’s wife shielded her daughter. Chairs went flying on the floor. Joey overturned the table and attempted to crouch behind it, but the gunman continued to fire. In came two more shooters with bullets flying everywhere. Glass shattered, clamshells exploded, gunpowder filled the air. Joey was on his feet somehow, stumbling through the door out into the street.

 He ran, bleeding, wounded, dying. He still ran down Malbury Street like a man refusing to give into his fate. For a moment, it seemed like he could get away, but the shooters followed. More gunfire, more screams, more blood hitting the pavement. Joey Gallow slumped beside a fire hydrant. He threw himself up onto one elbow, panting, peering into the darkness as though seeking one final foe or a final reply.

Then he was still Crazy Joe Gallo, the outlaw who defied the mafia, died on the sidewalk at 4:30 a.m. 49 years old. He was When the police arrived, the restaurant was in shambles and the streets were washed in blood. Patrons shook beneath blankets. Reporters flooded in. Detectives said the FBI agents stood wordless, exchanging practiced glances.

 Everyone knew the truth. The Colbo family had struck back. Within hours, newspapers screamed. Crazy Joe Gallo shot dead in Little Italy. The real story was less cubrious. Some said the hit came from multiple families who were scared of Joey’s ever escalating alliances, his influence, his mind. Others said it was personal, a vendetta, a long delayed settlement of old debts.

And then there was the rumor whispered in Brooklyn. Then Joe Columbo’s sons swore revenge the instant their father fell. Whatever the truth, the message was unmistakable. The mafia had reasserted their authority. Joey Gallo had broken too many rules. And in the mafia, every broken rule must beanswered in blood.

 But Joey’s death didn’t silence him. It immortalized him. Within days, artists and writers enshrined him as a popular legend. Songs were written. Poems published. Bob Dylan recorded Joey describing a man who couldn’t be bought with money, couldn’t be bought with lies. Directors studied his life. Actors emulated his gate. Broadway whispered his name.

 Even the police acknowledged quietly that Joey Gallow had become something rare. A gangster remembered as a rebel, a visionary, a tragic hero, the outlaw who took on the mafia and paid with the ultimate sacrifice. Something quite unexpected happened in the years following his death. Young criminals, black, Latino, Irish, even women, invoked Joey as role model.

 He had dared challenge the rigid traditions of the old mafia. He had opened the doors which nobody else had dared to touch. For them, Joey wasn’t just a gangster. He was a revolutionary. And the mafia really detested that legacy. For them, Joey was no hero. He was a heretic. A man who questioned their laws and nearly changed them.

 Joey Gallow was many things. A killer, a genius, a philosopher, a clone, a rebel, a visionary, a contradiction. He read Hemingway and Machaveli yet beat men with pipes. He admired black poets, yet fought mob bosses. He loved Malcolm X, yet plotted extortion. He wanted peace, yet he declared war. He desired power, but shunned the very rules that would have sustained it.

 He was too bright for the mafia, too reckless for politics, too unpredictable for business, too bold to survive. And that’s why his story lives on. Because crazy Joe Gallo lived a life no writer could invent. A gangster who thought he wasn’t one. A criminal who thought he was a philosopher. a rebel who thought he could reinvent organized crime.

 He wasn’t completely right. He wasn’t entirely wrong. He was just Joey. Crazy Joe, the outlaw who declared war on the mafia and died under the neon lights of Little Italy with a fire hydrant as his final witness.