King of the Godfathers: "Big Joey" Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family by Anthony M. DeStefano

self-importance.
    Salerno was part of a NYPD investigation that used wiretaps and bugs to discover that the Gallos were unhappy with the way they were being treated by their boss Profaci. According to Salerno’s account in his own book The Crime Confederation, the Gallos became angered when Profaci asked them to kill a gambler named Frank “Frankie Shots” Abbatemarco in November 1959. Abbatemarco was killed, but his gambling interests went to Profaci and his friends while the Gallo crew got nothing.
    The Gallo gang engineered a bold kidnapping of five key leaders of the Profaci family and had also targeted Joe Profaci himself, although he escaped. Salerno said the kidnappings were never reported to police, although informants kept Brooklyn detectives up to date. The hostages were held for two weeks as Commission emissaries tried to broker a settlement. Joey Gallo, the hothead, didn’t want to negotiate but was ordered to take a trip to California by his older brother Larry, a move that led to a release of the hostages.
    In early 1962, the Commission met to deal with the Profaci-Gallo dispute and it was Bonanno who convinced the members to allow Profaci to remain as head of the family. There had been a push by Gambino and Lucchese to get Profaci to retire. But Bonanno said the families had to trust each other to take care of their internal problems. A truce lasted for about six months, but Salerno said he and his fellow investigators discovered that Profaci was quietly working to strike back at the Gallos. After Larry Gallo escaped a strangulation attempt at the Sahara Lounge on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, a full-fledged war broke out, unlike anything seen since the days of Masseria and Maranzano in the 1930s. The Gallo brothers went to the mattresses, barricading themselves in two apartments on President Street in Brooklyn, armed to the teeth with rifles and shotguns. In his telling of the Gallo War, Salerno counted no fewer than fourteen attempted assassinations and killings involving Profaci and Gallo loyalists. The war continued even after Profaci died in June 1962.
    With the death of Profaci, his underboss and brother-in-law Joseph Magliocco tried to get the Commission to ratify him as the new boss. He had the support of Bonanno, who no doubt saw a continuation of the alliance Bonanno had with the late Profaci. The Commission, however, denied Magliocco approval. Bonanno chalked that up to the fact that the Gallos had support on the Commission from the Gambino-Lucchese faction. Still, Magliocco persisted and intrigue continued.
    Both Joseph and son Bill Bonanno, in their separate accounts of Magliocco’s struggle for power, believe this was a significant episode in the Bonanno family’s growing disillusionment with the New York mob scene. Joseph Bonanno said that his son Bill, at a time when he was seeking guidance about his marital problems, stayed briefly with Magliocco, his wife’s uncle. The Magliocco estate was a walled compound on Long Island that at this time in 1963 was heavily fortified and guarded, much the way Vito Corleone’s home was depicted in the Godfather.
    In a classic mob maneuver, Joseph Bonanno related that Magliocco appeared to have planted his own spy, a mobster close to Gambino and Lucchese. According to the elder Bonanno, both Magliocco and Bill Bonanno met this spy at a Long Island railroad station one particular day.
    “Magliocco and the man briefly exchanged a few words,” Bonanno recalled. “Magliocco used this man to keep tabs on his enemies and to let him know what Gambino and Lucchese were saying about him.”
    Sixteen years after his father’s account of that brief encounter, Bill Bonanno related a somewhat different, more sinister version of that day at the Brentwood railroad station. The man who got off the train and spoke with Magliocco was Sally Musacio, a relative by marriage to the aging Magliocco. According to Bill Bonanno, Magliocco asked, “Is everything set?” When