NYC - Little Italy: Umbertos Clam House | In May 2000, Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy reopened in this new location at 178 Mulberry Street—two blocks down from the original at 129 Mulberry St, which closed in 1996. Best known as the setting for the gangland murder of Crazy Joe Gallo on April 7, 1972, it is still run by Bobby Ianiello, brother of alleged Genovese family capo Matty the Horse, who has been in prison since 1985 for IRS violations.
"Crazy" Joey Gallo was a member of the Profaci family (later known as the Colombo family). He was also a friend of the late actor Jerry Orbach. He did some work for Carlo Gambino (whose family would later bear his name), and iscredited by most sources to be the assassins of Murder, Inc. leader and gangster Albert Anastasia in 1957. In the late 1940s and 1950s, failed in an attempt to overpower mafia boss Joseph Profaci to take control of the Profaci family. Arrested and convicted of extortion in 1961, he would spend the next ten years in prison.
Upon his release in 1971, Gallo battled Profaci's successor Joe Colombo and the now renamed Colombo family. Gallo was one of the first mafiosi to predict a shift of power in the New York streets from the Italian mafia to black gangs, and he started becoming friends with members of the black gangs. Colombo was shot in June 1971 by a black gunman named Jerome Johnson, believed to be an associate of Gallo.
According to the standard account of his death, Gallo was celebrating his 43rd birthday with his family when three gunmen burst in and opened fire. Gallo was hit five times and died after stumbling into the street while his killers sped away in a car. The gunmen were never identified or convicted. A differing account of the hit was offered by hit-man and union activist Frank Sheeran in a series of confessions made before his death. Sheeran disputed there being three gunmen and claimed that he was the lone trigger-man in the hit.
