yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

The Murder of Carmine Galante | Narco Wars


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

  • 1978, Carmine Galante goes back to prison for violating parole. They should have held him there, clearly, because he was consorting with criminal associates, violating parole. But Roy Cohn got him out of prison in record time.

  • So he got let out early '79. How that happened, I don't know.

  • He became very cocky and—amazingly, he goes on 60 Minutes and his lawyer, Roy Cohn, gets to interview him and present this simple Italian man who likes only to be growing tomato vines.

  • "I'm going to the country."

  • "Good. What are you going to do when you get to the country?"

  • "Well, I mean, I planted peppers last week. Now I'm going to plant tomatoes."

  • And this completely phony picture of this mob boss is ludicrous.

  • "You think that had an influence on the federal judge when he held that you were right and the parole commission was wrong?"

  • "I think so. I think so."

  • "He thinks a farmer ought to be able to seed, right?"

  • "I think so. I mean, it's very well known that that's what I do."

  • "When he made those stupid moves on 60 Minutes, act like an old man, it don't work. You don't fool nobody, man. Forget about your toma—tomatoes, wear an old hat, ripped sweater. You can't do this. You can't go public. Don't work that way. You don't—you don't supposed to do that."

  • He had his own rules, his own ways of doing things. He was earning money. He was also skimming money. But the Mafia operates to make money, and in order to make money, you have to follow the rules. If you don't abide by the rules, there are repercussions.

[music playing]

[rumbling subway train]

  • July 12, 1979, was a very hot day in New York, and a Cadillac was rumbling its way down streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn. There was a lot of street life going on. It was a typical day in Bushwick. This Cadillac makes its way down Knickerbocker Avenue and stops outside Joe and Mary Italian-American restaurant, run by cousins of Carmine Galante. And Galante, who was well known there, made his way to the back. And there was a backyard garden. The bodyguards he had taken with him that day were Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato. And the mood was set for a relaxing afternoon.

[music playing]

[car door slams]

[footsteps]

[gunshots]

[police dispatch]

  • I was in an unmarked police car by myself, and I happened to be just a couple of blocks away from Knickerbocker Avenue when I hear this job come over.

[police dispatch]

  • Early before 3 o'clock this afternoon, a blue Chevy pulled up here in front of Joe and Mary's restaurant. Three men got out wearing ski masks, armed. Shotguns. Automatic weapons.

  • And as I get there, I run into the backyard. I'm the first detective there. There were maybe three cops. I see the dead bodies.

  • There are multiple gunshot and shotgun wounds.

  • As a result of those wounds, would you say the death was instantaneous on both parts?

  • It would appear that the death was very rapid.

[dramatic music]

  • OK, let's go. Get outta the way.

[dramatic music]

  • My mother called me screaming, "They killed him. They killed him. They killed him." My mother was destroyed; she was just destroyed, 'cause she loved him. She never stopped loving him. She loved this man. It amazed me, but it was true.

[sad music]

  • It was almost surreal, the whole thing. I don't think he thought he would ever die. He's got that God complex. He just didn't think anything could ever—ever happen to him. I was very surprised he wasn't killed much sooner. And that's probably why I was so shocked when he died, because now you don't expect it anymore because it didn't happen for such a long time. Then there was the wake, which was a joke. It was a zoo—reporters, ba-ba-ba-ba.

  • For the FBI, it was a big mystery—why he was hit, who was the killer—that had to be pieced together.

  • There was no love lost. When he passed away, there were 40 people at his funeral. There's a reason for that. Nobody liked him.

[music playing]

More Articles

View All
Paul Giamatti on Human Engineering | Breakthrough
I’m Paul Gatti, and I am directing and doing the interviewing in an episode of Breakthrough called “More Than Human.” It was out of left field for me. I’ve obviously never done anything like this, but a guy that I know was helping produce at David Jacobso…
Common denominators: 3/5 and 7/2 | Math | 4th grade | Khan Academy
Rewrite each fraction with a denominator of 10. We have two fractions: 3 fifths and 7 halves, and we want to take their denominators of five and two and change them to be a common denominator of 10. Let’s start with 3 fifths. We can look at this visuall…
Principles for Success: "The Abyss" | Episode 4
Principles for success: an ultra mini-series adventure in 30 minutes and in eight episodes. Episode four: The Abyss. We progress forward until we encounter setbacks. Whether or not we get out of them and continue forward or spiral downward depends on whe…
How To Get Rich According To Warren Buffett
There are a million ways to make a million dollars. In this video, we’re looking at one of them, and the main character in this video is the legendary Warren Buffett, who made his fortune of over 104 billion dollars by investing in the stock market. After…
Diffraction and interference of light | Physics | Khan Academy
Take a look at these beautiful pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the reasons why it’s beautiful is because of these nice streaks that you get for all the stars. But why do you get them? Now, if you’re thinking that this effect happens beca…
The age of empire | Rise to world power (1890-1945) | US History | Khan Academy
So I have a map here of United States possessions in the Pacific and in the Caribbean today, and they’re kind of all over the place. I mean, some of them are pretty tiny. There’s Guam, which is just barely a little speck on the map, and American Samoa. An…