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Bad blood between the Colombos and Gallos went back to 1960, when Joey, along with his brothers Larry and Albert ("Kid Blast"), began a rebellion in the Brooklyn fief of the late Joseph Profaci. After a two-year war and at least nine murders, Joseph Colombo took over the Profaci organization. Again last year, the Gallos tried to move in on Colombo's gambling operations. They also opposed Colombo's Italian-American Civil Rights League. Before last summer's rally, Gallo's men moved through the Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn ordering shopkeepers to remain open on Unity Day and stay away from Columbus Circle.
Then, two weeks ago, came Joey Gallo's murder. The immediate assumption was that Colombo forces had taken their revenge. The war was on. Early on the day of Gallo's funeral, a Colombo lieutenant named Gennaro Ciprio left his restaurant in Brooklyn and walked toward his car. He stopped three bullets, apparently fired by a rooftop sniper, and died in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Investigators say that Ciprio was probably killed because he was spying on the Colombos for the Gallos.
Four other men attached to the Mob were hit. Bruno Carnevale, a "soldier" in the Carlo Gambino family,* was felled by a shotgun blast near his house in Queens Village, and died with $1,400 still in his pocket. A day later Tommy Ernst, a Staten Island mobster, was fatally wounded. A New Jersey janitor named Frank Ferriano was found in a lower Manhattan parking lot with half his head blown off by a shotgun blast. Hours later Richard Grossman, said to be a credit-card swindler working for the Colombo family, was found in the trunk of a car in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. He, too, had been shot in the head with a shotgun.
Carlo's War. The Colombo-Gallo war was directly involved only in the Ciprio killing. Yet all of the assassinations had been specifically approved by leaders in the Gambino family. Although neither the Colombos nor the Gallos seemed to be aware of it, the Gambinos were deliberately promoting the war, approving executions in order to fan the flames and encourage the Colombos and Gallos to kill one another off. Eventually, 73-year-old Carlo Gambino hopes, the war will leave him in undisputed control of four of the five New York Families. The holdout would be the Bonanno family, run by Natale Evola, which controls trucking and narcotics rackets in Manhattan. The other clans are the Lucchese gang, run by Carmine Tramunti; the Genovese family, bossed by Jerry Catena; and the Gallos and Colombos (see chart, page 46).
Already the Gambinos are so strong that none of the other 19 Mafia clans across the nation dare to challenge them. If the Gambino family literally buried its opposition in New York, then Carlo Gambino could, if he wished, control the entire national rackets combine of La Cosa Nostra. He might become what the Mafia calls capo di tutti capi —boss of all bosses. The job has been vacant since Salvatore Maranzano was assassinated in 1931.