The Assassination of Bonanno Street Boss Carmine Galante
July 12, 1979, on the mean streets of the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn New York, acting boss of the Bonanno family just walks into a restaurant. The restaurant belonged to his cousin Guiseppe Turano, the name Joe and Mary’s Restaurant. On a sizzling sweltering summer afternoon, Galante enters the restaurant with his bodyguards known as the “The Zips”, Mafiosi from Sicily that he had for protection. The two were identified as Baldo Amato and Cesare Bonventre. The bodyguards were good looking Italians, but could kill on the drop of a dime. Galante believed that American mobsters had become too soft. The three enter the restaurant and made their way to the courtyard of the restaurant in the back patio. Galante sits down, facing the back of the building so he could keep his eye on who sig coming or going. Galante and his group finished the meal and where waiting for coffee and dessert, then Galante lights a cigar.
Three unknown and masked men enter the restaurant through the front. They made their way into the back patio and began to spray bullets at the table where Galante and his party are sitting. Galante is assassinated along with the other two sitting at his table. It is later discovered that “the Zips” made no attempt to aide their boss. Bonvetre and Amato fired rounds at the three sitting at the table. It is believed that they were in on…
