Joseph Colombo, a 54-year-old Italian-American male, died on May 22, 1978. His death, which occurred at St. Luke's Hospital in Newburgh, New York, was officially attributed to cardiac arrest. However, this was a direct consequence of injuries he sustained seven years prior. Colombo had been in a state of near-total paralysis after being shot on June 28, 1971, at the second Italian Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle, an event he organized.
On that day, as he prepared to address the crowd,
a man later identified as Jerome A. Johnson, posing as a photographer, approached Colombo and shot him three times in the head and neck. The attack left Colombo in a semi-comatose state from which he would never fully recover. For seven years, he remained severely incapacitated, and his health steadily deteriorated until his eventual death.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, chaos erupted in the crowd. Colombo's bodyguards and others present quickly subdued Johnson. Moments later, while in the grasp of the crowd, Johnson himself was shot and killed by an unidentified individual who was never apprehended. This second shooting has remained an unsolved mystery.
The New York Police Department's official investigation concluded that Jerome A. Johnson was a lone gunman. Despite this, speculation and theories about a larger conspiracy have persisted. Many within the Colombo crime family believed that rival mobster Joe Gallo was behind the assassination attempt, given the ongoing conflict between their factions. Another prominent theory suggested the involvement of Carlo Gambino, the head of the powerful Gambino crime family. However, no evidence ever surfaced to definitively link either Gallo or Gambino to the shooting, and no arrests were ever made in connection with the assassination plot against Joseph Colombo.
