Cosa Nostra News

At about 12:45 p.m. on the stifling hot and humid afternoon of Thursday, July 12, 1979, Carmine Galante, 69, was driven by his nephew James to the Joe & Mary Italian-American Restaurant in Brooklyn’s Bushwick section. That part of Brooklyn was a fading Bonanno stronghold . Galante often visited the restaurant, which was owned by his cousin, Giuseppe Turano, 48. Turano had tickets for a Saturday flight to Italy to meet his family on vacation. Galante went to the restaurant that day to have a “bon voyage” luncheon with him. The two men liked to eat in the open air , so a table had been set up on the restaurant’s back patio amid grape vines and tomato plants, which lent a modest pastoral setting to that small patch of Brooklyn. The nondescript restaurant, which consisted of two interior dining rooms , had seen better days. Dingy yellow curtains hung from the windows, lemon-colored oilcloths were draped over the tables. A Frank Sinatra album cover was propped on the front counte...

The short, stocky, balding man stepped out of the air-conditioned chill of the brown Lincoln limousine and into the scorching July afternoon in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Wearing a white short-sleeved knit shirt open at the neck and blue slacks (in which $860 in cash and Medicare and social security cards had been shoved), the man waved goodbye to the driver, who was his nephew. Then, sucking on his customary large Churchill cigar, the man strolled toward the nondescript eatery set between a law office and a pizza parlor on Knickerbocker Avenue. Dingy yellow curtains hung over the long front windows. A simple rectangular sign on top declared the place an Italian-American Restaurant and touted its takeout fare. Joe and Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant reportedly offered good food and was family-run, both of which appealed to the man, who was related to the owner. Bushwick, once a prosperous enclave, was a fading Bonanno stronghold at the time. The neighborhood, nestled bet...