In the early morning hours of April 7, 1972, Joseph Gallo, a notable figure in the Colombo crime family, was celebrating his 43rd birthday at Umbertos Clam House in Manhattan's Little Italy. The Italian-American mobster, also known as 'Crazy Joe,' was accompanied by his sister Carmella, his wife Sina, her daughter Lisa, and his bodyguard, Peter 'Pete the Greek' Diapoulas. The festive mood was shattered at approximately 4:30 a.m.
when a lone gunman entered the restaurant and opened fire.
The assailant, described as a stocky, middle-aged man with receding dark hair, fired approximately twenty shots. Gallo was struck multiple times in his back, elbow, and buttock. In an attempt to draw the gunfire away from his family, he stumbled towards the front door, overturning a butcher block table in the process. He collapsed in the street and was rushed to Beekman-Downtown Hospital in a police car, where he was pronounced dead around 5:30 a.m. His bodyguard, Diapoulas, was shot once in the hip but survived.
The brazen assassination was believed to be a retaliatory act in the ongoing conflict between the Gallo and Colombo factions of the crime family. The Colombo family leadership was convinced that Gallo had ordered the murder of their boss, Joseph Colombo, the previous year, an accusation the police did not substantiate. Despite numerous accounts and theories over the years regarding the identity of the shooter or shooters, the case of Joseph Gallo's murder officially remains unsolved.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Gallo's sister, Carmella, declared that 'the streets are going to run red with blood'. This vow for vengeance led to a retaliatory shooting at the Neapolitan Noodle restaurant in Manhattan, where Albert Gallo, Joseph's brother, sent a gunman to target Colombo family leaders. However, the gunman did not recognize the intended targets and instead shot four innocent diners, killing two of them. While Gallo's bodyguard, Diapoulas, was arrested for possession of a revolver after the Umbertos shooting, no one has ever been officially charged or convicted for the murder of Joseph Gallo.
