Stopping at the Joe & Mary Italian-American Restaurant to rectify a mob matter, say "bon voyage" to his cousin and owner of the restaurant Joe Turano (also a mob member who does a business in hi-jacked meat), who is scheduled to leave the next day for a vacation to the island of Sardinia, 69-year-old Galante feels comfortable and safe surrounded by family and friends and makes the mistake of lingering on the umbrella shaded patio of the establishment after finishing a lunch of fish, salad, and red wine. He will not make 70!
Death Scene
Authorized by a vote of the heads of the Cosa Nostra that takes place at a meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, and tipped off by an unknown local, a hit team of four men wearing ski masks arrives at the restaurant in a stolen blue Mercury Montego at 2:40 in the afternoon. As security, one individual guards the double-parked car with a .3030 M1 carbine while his three heavily armed associates rush into the restaurant, beginning their bloody fun. Attempting to warn the diners outside with his shouts, 18-year-old John Turano, the restaurant owners' son, is shot twice in the back as he tries to arm himself with a .38 revolver kept in a storeroom next to the kitchen ... he will survive his injuries, but his father and some of the clientele will not be as fortunate.
The Patio
Bursting upon the men outside, one of the assassins fires a double barrel shotgun into Galante, killing him instantly with thirty pellets of buckshot in the chest, a death that comes so quick that the gangster's trademark Churchill cigar is still in his mouth when police show up later to investigate the crime. More carnage quickly follows! "What are you doing?" are Joe Turano's last words as he is blown off his feet by a shotgun burst that damages major blood vessels in his lungs, neck, and heart, and takes off significant portions of his face and right shoulder. As Turano dies, mobster Leonard "Nardo" Coppolla makes the error of trying to rise from his seat at the table and takes a .30 automatic round to the face, five more bullets to the chest, and then just to make sure he is out of commission, has the top of his head blown off by another explosion of shotgun lead. And in a final moment of Italian "hail and farewell," the murderers send four more shotgun blasts into the already dead Galante, then mayhem complete, they flee the restaurant and drive off into Brooklyn. In on the hit or just lucky, the two bodyguards which Galante has brought over from Sicily to protect him (a job they are miserable failures at), Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato, do nothing while the hit is taking place inches from where they are sitting, and for their incompetence, both men are spared by the killers.
Lucky
Unlike many Mob crimes, the murders will eventually be solved and the killers are all identified as Bonanno soldiers hired by capo Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato ... Louis Giongetti, Dominick Napolitano, Dominick Trinchera, and the capo's son, Anthony Indelicato ... all will eventually be killed themselves, or are safely put away behind bars.
Galante
A gruesome mess, for sure Galante should have ordered the spaghetti and then scrammed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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