Kenji Gallo's Breakshot Reissued; Sequel Due

Kenny "Kenji" Gallo is back with a reissued updated version of Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia
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Kenny "Kenji" Gallo is back with a reissued updated version of Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia, his story about serving as a Colombo crime family associate. (He also had ties to the Luchese and Los Angeles crime families, when the latter still existed.)

Seeing the dead-end nature of "the life" he was living, Gallo, an Asian-American, flipped, wore a wire and testified against all three crime families, which resulted in him writing and publishing what easily is among the top must-reads in the American-Mafia nonfiction genre.

Kenji's story didn't end there, however. He still wore a wire, for years.






"I continued to wear a wire for a few years after I left New York and even after my book came out and guys knew. I actually met some guys at an Italian restaurant (that also happened to be filled with taskforce guys) for a meeting and told them that law enforcement was looking into some old murders. It was the chatter (law enforcement) picked up afterward that helped."

Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia is now available in an updated version featuring new material; the book is also now available in Amazon's Kindle format.

Kenji, who is going to be discussing his latest doings on the August 5th Jason Ellis show on Sirius, has left Hollywood and California for life on a small farm in Illinois.


In addition, Kenji is working on releasing a sequel to the first Breakshot book, which Publishers Weekly described as being "crammed with the kind of characters and detail that make pages turn and movie-makers salivate..."

Gallo, no stranger to this blog, was a known narcotics dealer and smut peddler affiliated with the Los Angeles family, as well as New York's Colombos.

Gallo informed on mob heavyweights like stone-cold killer/PC-illiterate Teddy Persico, among other organized crime members on both coasts. His memoir, co-authored with Matthew Randazzo V, was published in August 2009. (He did all that -- and still managed to direct 29 adult films in the 1980s-1990s, including entries 3 and 4 of the Babewatch franchise!)

Break Shot is Kenji's story of life as a Mafia associate. Included is Gallo's efforts to solve a homicide: the 1987 murder of Joe Avila, an Orange County, California restaurateur who also reportedly was one of the largest cocaine traffickers affiliated with Cosa Nostra.

Gallo eventually flipped and wore a wire against New York's Colombo and Luchese crime families, as well as Los Angeles's Milano crime family.

I didn't realize the significance of this photo the first time I used....


As to how much new material has been added to the widely-praised book, Breakshot, Kenji said:

"It occurred to me when I was proofreading this version for typos that many of those I wrote about are now dead. The whole 1970s Los Angeles Mafia family is now gone. 

"They tried hard to rebuild the family but the lack of a talent pool and the constant assault by the FBI made it an impossible task. That part of my life is over now too, but I am thankful that I was able to sit with those men of a bygone era and hear their stories. Soon the only record left will be those that learned from them."

The fact that Kenji infiltrated three Mafia families should mean Break Shot piques the interest of anyone who tries to keep up with Mafiosi and associates, as well as the places and happenings that evolved into what is left today of Cosa Nostra.

The simple fact that Kenji burrowed so deeply into the Colombo crime family, one of the most vicious in Cosa Nostra history (having shot it out during three wars, all of which were inter-family) is interesting in and of itself, in my book.

As Kenji himself has written:

"In addition to being the most murderous of New York's storied 'Five Families,' the Colombos are also the closest to being an actual family. Many Colombos are related by blood or marriage, with the crime family's leadership generally hailing from an insular circle of intermarried Brooklyn families... All of the Colombo bad apples tend to fall from the same family tree. Other wiseguys often called the Colombos 'inbred,' a diagnosis that fits many of the cross-eyed, evolutionary-chart escapees I worked with..."


We asked Kenji about that book cover, too....

Cool, cool cover!



He not only created and copyrighted it, but if you look closely at the top you'll see the New York skyline. Kenji is planning to offer t-shirts and other training apparel featuring the indelible image.

His coauthor, Matthew Randazzo V, is apparently on a hell of a streak of his own, having written 

As for the Breakshot sequel, it will be available in early 2017.

As for Kenji, he said he departed the West Coast about a year ago, and while he will revisit his old life in his next book, he's making a lot of headway building a new life for himself in Illinois.

"I felt that I had done enough and decided that it was time to completely change. I've been a Christian for a couple of years and I felt Los Angeles was not the best place for me. I felt that after I got this second chance I needed to do more with my life than mess around in Los Angeles."

"Today I am trying to motivate and inspire people to go after their goals."

"I wrote Breakshot not to glamorize the life but to let people inside and see what a waste the life was and is today. There are never any happy endings to those who stay in the life."

Over the years, Kenji has assisted a few guys who wanted out of "the life."

"I told them what they would face and even who to call. I just helped a guy last month."

Anyone seeking to reach out to Kenji can do so in one of many ways. There is his Breakshot blog.

He has another blog dedicated to the other side of his life (the better side, too. Congratulations, Kenji.)

And you can find him on social media: Kenny Kenji on FacebookKenjiOC on Twitter and Instagram.

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