Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (52 page)

Camillo Galante was born on February 21, 1910, at 27 Stanton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Because both of his parents, Vincenzo, a fisherman, and his wife (maiden name Vingenza Russo), had been born in the seaside village of Castellammarese del Golfo in Sicily, Galante was a pure first generation Sicilian/American. Galante had two brothers and two sisters, and when he was in grade school, Galante ditched his given name Camillo, and he insisted he be called Carmine instead. Over the years it was shortened to “Lilo,” which was the name most of his associates called Galante. At least to his face.

Galante first got into trouble for petty theft from a store counter when he was 14 years old. But since he was a juvenile at the time, an account of this arrest is not in his official police record.

At various times, Galante attended Public High Schools 79 and 120, but he dropped out of school for good at 15. Galante was in and out of reform school several times, and he was considered an “incorrigible delinquent.”

From 1923 to 1926, Galante was ostensibly employed at the Lubin Artificial Flower
Company at 270 West Broadway. But this was a ruse to satisfy the law that Galante was gainfully employed, when, in fact, he was engaged in a very lucrative criminal career.

In December 1925, Galante was arrested for assault. However, money changed hands between Galante's people and crooked policemen, and as a result, Galante was released without serving any prison time.

In December 1926, Galante was arrested again, but this time he was found guilty of second degree assault and robbery, and sentenced to two-to-five years in prison. Galante was released from prison in 1930, and in order to satisfy his parole officer, he got another sham “job” at the O'Brien Fish Company at 105 South Street in the Fulton Fish Market.

It
was not Galante's nature to stay on the right side of the law.

On March 15,
1930, five men entered the Martin Weinstein’s shoe factory on the corner of York and Washington Streets in Brooklyn Heights. On the fifth floor of the building, Mr. Weinstein was in the process of getting his weekly payroll together, under the protection of police officer Walter De Castillia of the 84
th
Precinct.

The five men took the elevator to the sixth floor. While one man stood guard at the elevator, the other four men burst into Mr. Weinstein’s office. They ignored the $7,500 sitting on the table, and
they opened fire on Officer De Castillia, nine years on the force and a married father of a young girl. Officer De Castillia was hit six times in the chest, and he died instantly.

The four men walked calmly back to the elevator and joined their cohort, who was guarding the elevator operator
, Louis Sella. Sella took the five men to the ground floor. He later told the police that the men had exited the building, walked calmly to a parked car, got into the car and fled the scene. When the police arrived minutes later from the station house just two blocks away, the killers were nowhere to be seen. Sella described the five men as “early to mid-twenties, with dark skin and dark hair.” Sella said the men were all “very well-dressed.”

The police figured
that since no money had been taken, this was a planned hit on Officer De Castillia. On August 30, 1930, Galante, along with Michael Consolo and Angelo Presinzano, were arrested and indicted for the murder of Officer De Castillia. However, all three men were soon released due to lack of evidence.

On December 25,
1930, four suspicious men were sitting in a green sedan on Briggs Avenue in Brooklyn. Police Detective Joseph Meenahan just happened to be in the area. He spotted the men in the sedan, drew his gun, and he approached the sedan cautiously.

One of the men shouted at Meenahan, “Stop right there copper, or we'll burn you.”

Before Meenahan could react, the firing commenced from the green sedan. Meenahan was shot in the leg, and a six-year-old girl walking nearby with her mother was seriously wounded. The driver of the sedan had trouble starting the car, so the four men leaped from the sedan and tried to escape on foot. Three of the men managed to flee the area by jumping on a passing truck. But the fourth man slipped as he tried to get onto the truck, and he was apprehended by the wounded Meenahan.

That man was Carmine Galante.

When Meenahan brought Galante to the station house, a group of detectives, angry that one of their own had been wounded, started to give Galante the “police station tune-up.” Despite getting his lumps, Galante refused to give up the identities of the three men who had escaped.

Galante
was subsequently tried and convicted as one of the four men who had robbed the Lieberman Brewery in Brooklyn. On January 8,
1931, Galante was remanded to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. He was later transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, where he remained until his release on May 1, 1939.

While Galante was in prison, he was given an IQ test that revealed he had a
n IQ of only 90, which, even though Galante was well into his 20s, equated to the mental age of a 14-year-old. It was also noted that Galante was diagnosed as having a “neuropathic psychopathic personality.” A physical evaluation showed that he had a head injury contracted in a car accident when Galante was 10-years-old, a fractured ankle when he was 11, and that Galante was showing the early signs of gonorrhea, probably incurred at one of the many brothels controlled by the mob.

In 1939, after he was released from prison, Galante was again given sham employment at his old job at the Lubin Artificial Flower Company. In February of 1941, Galante obtained membership in Local 856 of the Longshoreman’s Union, where he ostensibly worked as a “stevedore.” However, Galante v
ery rarely showed up for work; one of the perks of being connected to the Mafia.

There is no record of the exact date, but Galante was
inducted as a made member of the Bonanno Crime Family in the early 1940s. Despite the fact his boss was Joe Bonanno, at the time the youngest Mafia boss in America, Galante, all throughout the 1940s, performed many hits for Vito Genovese.

While Genovese was in self-imposed exile in Italy (he was wanted on a murder charge and flew the coop before he could be arrested), Genovese became fast pals with Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini had a stone in his shoe in America called Carlo Tresa. Tresa was causing Mussolini much
agita by incessantly writing anti-fascist sentiments in his radical Italian-language newspaper,
IL Martello,
which was sold in Italian communities throughout America.

Genovese
sent word back to America to Frank Garofalo, underboss to Joseph Bonanno, that Tresa had to go. Garofalo gave the Tresa contract to Galante, who shadowed Tresa for a few days to determine the best time and place to whack him.

On January 11, 1943, Tresa was walking along Fifth Avenue near 13
th
Street, when a black Ford sedan pulled up alongside him. The Ford stopped and Galante jumped out, with a hot gun in his hand. Galante blasted Tresa several times in the back and in the head, killing the newspaper editor instantly. Amazingly, Galante was seen by his parole officer fleeing the scene, but due to the wartime rationing of gasoline, the parole officer was unable to follow the black Ford containing Galante and the smoking gun.

No arrest was ever made
in the Tresa slaying.

In 1953, Bonanno sent Galante to Montreal, Canada to tak
e control of the Bonanno Family’s interests north of the border. Besides the very-lucrative Canadian gambling rackets, the Bonannos were heavy into the importation of heroin, from France into Canada, and then into the United States – the infamous French Connection.

Galante supervised the Canadian drug operation for three years. But in 1956, the Canadian police caught wind of Galante's involvement. Not having enough evidence to arrest Galante, they instead deported Galante back to
the United States, classifying Galante as “an undesirable alien.”

In 1957, Genovese called for a big summit of all the top Mafioso in America, to take place at the upstate New York Apalachin residence of Joseph Barbara, a captain in the Buffalo crime family of Stefano Magaddino. In preparation for this meeting, on October 19, 1956, several New York crime bigwigs were summoned to Barbara's home to go over the guidelines of the proposed meeting; the prime purpose of which was to anoint Genovese as the Capo di Tutti Capi,” or “Boss of all Bosses.”

After the meeting ended, Galante, driving back to New York City, was nabbed for speeding near Birmingham, New York. Because his driver's license had been suspended, Galante gave the police a phony license. He was immediately arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison.

However, the tentacles of the Mafia also reached right into the police department in upstate Birmingham. After a few mobbed-up New York City lawyers made the right phone calls to upstate New York, Galante was released within 48 hours.

However, a state policeman, Sergeant Edgar Roswell, took note of the fact that Galante had admitted to the police that he had stayed the night before at the Arlington Hotel as a guest of a local businessman named Joseph Barbara. This prompted Roswell to pay special attention to the Barbara residence in Apalachin, New York.

O
n November 17, 1957, at the insistence of Don Vito Genovese, Mafia members from all over America made their way to the Barbara residence. These men included Sam Giancana from Chicago, Santo Trafficante from Florida, John Scalish from Cleveland, and Joe Profaci and Tommy Lucchese from New York City. Galante's boss Joe Bonanno decided not to attend, and he sent Galante instead.

Sergeant Roswell took note of the fact that, on the day before, the nearby Arlington Hotel had been booked to the rafters with suspicious-looking out-of-towners. Roswell asked the right questions at the hotel, and he was able to confirm that the man who made the reservations for these men was Joseph Barbara himself. Roswell drove to the Barbara residence
, and he spotted dozens of luxury cars parked outside, some with out-of-town plates.

Roswell called for back-up, and in minutes, dozens of state troopers arrived with guns drawn. The troopers raided the Barbara residence and chaos ensued.

Men wearing expensive suits, hats, and shoes bolted from the house. Some were immediately arrested, and others made it to their cars and drove off the property before roadblocks could be put in place by the police.

Several Italian gangsters
jumped out of the house windows, and they hightailed it through the thorny woods. One of these men was Carmine Galante, who hid in a cornfield until the police had left the Barbara residence. Then Galante made his way back to Barbara's home, and he made arrangements for safe passage back to New York City.

The next day, when the news of the raid on Barbara'
s house hit American newspapers blowing the lid off the misguided idea that the Mafia was a myth, Galante went into the wind, or in mob terms, he “pulled a lamski.”

On January 8, 1958, the
New York Herald Tribune
wrote that Galante had run to Italy to hook up with old pal Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano, who was in exile in Italy after serving nine years in an American prison on a trumped-up prostitution charge. Another report said that it was not Luciano Galante was with, but rather Joe “Adonis” Doto, another mob boss in exile. On January 9, the
New York Journal American
said Galante was not in Italy, but in Havana, Cuba, with Meyer Lansky, a longtime member of the National Crime Commission who had numerous casino interests in Cuba.

In April 1958, it was somehow leaked that Galante was now back in the United States and living somewhere in the New York area. The local law went to work, and in July, Galante was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics while he was driving near
Holmdale, New Jersey. He was charged with taking part in a major heroin deal, one of many drug deals Galante had been involved with throughout the years. Also arrested in the case were Vito Genovese, John Ormento, Joe Di Palermo, and Vincent Gigante.

Galante, again making use of his cadre of New York attorneys, was released on $100,000 bail. Galante's lawyers were able to delay further legal proceedings for almost two years. It wasn't until May 17, 1960, that Galante was formally indicted, and again released on bail.

On January 20, 1961, Galante's trial finally began. The judge, Thomas F. Murphy, revoked Galante's bail, ordering Galante to be put right into the slammer.

However, Galante's luck held up when, on May 15
,
a mistrial was declared. It seemed the foreman of the jury, a poor chap named Harry Appel, a 68-year-old dress manufacturer, had the misfortune of falling down a flight of stairs in a building on 15
th
Street in Manhattan. After the medics arrived and Appel was taken to a nearby hospital, it was determined that Appel had suffered a broken back. No one had seen Appel fall, nor did the hurt and frightened Appel say that anyone had pushed him.

However, although they had no definite proof, law enforcement believed that Appel had been pushed by a cohort of Galante's, with a warning not to say anything to anybody, and they would allow Appel and members of his family to live.

Galante, now feeling alive and chipper, was released from prison, secured by a bond of $135,000.