On a scorching summer afternoon in Brooklyn, New York, the life of Carmine 'The Cigar' Galante, a powerful and feared figure in the Bonanno crime family, came to a violent and abrupt end. The 69-year-old male, of Italian-American descent, was enjoying a final meal on the patio of Joe and Mary's Italian-American Restaurant in the Bushwick neighborhood on July 12, 1979. He was accompanied by his cousin and restaurant owner, Giuseppe Turano, and a loyal Bonanno capo, Leonard Coppola.
Also present were his two Sicilian bodyguards, Baldassare Amato and Cesare Bonventre.
As Galante was lighting one of his signature cigars after finishing his meal, three ski-masked men burst onto the patio around 2:45 p.m. and opened fire with shotguns and handguns. The attack was swift and brutal, leaving Galante, Turano, and Coppola dead at the scene. A gruesome photograph from the aftermath showed Galante lying dead with a cigar still clenched in his mouth. In a clear sign of betrayal, his two bodyguards, Amato and Bonventre, were left unharmed and did nothing to protect their boss.
The assassination was believed to have been sanctioned by the Mafia Commission, the governing body of the American Mafia, due to Galante's immense greed and his attempt to take complete control of the lucrative heroin market. Other mob families, including the Genovese crime family, were alarmed by Galante's ambition to become the 'boss of all bosses.' The plot to eliminate him was reportedly orchestrated by Philip 'Rusty' Rastelli, the official boss of the Bonanno family who was incarcerated at the time, with the approval of other high-ranking mobsters, including the retired Joseph Bonanno.
The hit team was allegedly composed of several individuals, with FBI informants naming Dominick 'Sonny Black' Napolitano, Dominick 'Big Trin' Trinchera, and Anthony 'Bruno' Indelicato, the son of another powerful capo, as the gunmen. Following the assassination, Indelicato was reportedly seen being congratulated by a high-ranking member of the Gambino family. For his role in the murder, Anthony 'Bruno' Indelicato was later convicted in the historic Mafia Commission Trial in 1986 and sentenced to prison. While several others were implicated, Indelicato was the only one of the principal conspirators to be brought to justice for the triple murder. The bodyguards who betrayed Galante were initially rewarded, but Cesare Bonventre was later murdered in 1984. Baldo Amato is currently serving a life sentence for an unrelated double-murder.
