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Mob boss Albert Anastasia murdered...
Mob boss Albert Anastasia murdered...
Item # 592097
October 26, 1957
THE RUSSELL DAILY NEWS, Kansas, October 26, 1957
* Mob boss Albert Anastasia assassination
* Murder Inc. head
This 6 page newspaper has one column headings on the front page: "Query Costello IN Gang Death" and "Anastasia Killing Baffles N.Y. Police".
Other news, sports and various advertisements of the day throughout. Minor margin wear, otherwise nice.
wikipedia notes: The fortunes of the family around this time were closely linked to those of another - that run by Frank Costello, and which is known today as the Genovese crime family. Vito Genovese was the power-hungry Underboss in the family and needed a way to remove the close ties between Costello and Anastasia, which provided solidarity in the National Crime Syndicate for the two bosses.
Genovese thus jumped on the 1952 killing of a Brooklyn man named Arnold Schuster, who Anastasia had killed for the most minor of indiscretions (acting as a prosecution witness against a bank robber Anastasia didn't even know), as evidence that Anastasia was unbalanced and a threat to the syndicate. With Gambino secretly siding with Genovese against his own boss, the wheels were in motion for the removal of Anastasia.
First, Costello was attacked and wounded outside his apartment building on May 2, 1957. The attack shook Costello to the extent that he soon announced his retirement from the head of his family, turning affairs over to Genovese. The alleged shooter was Vincent "Chin" Gigante.
Six months later, on October 25, 1957, Anastasia was murdered while sitting in a barber's chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel on West 56th Street. For many years, the murder was believed to have been committed by Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo. Later, Colombo crime family boss and Gallo foe, Carmine "Junior" Persico claimed credit. However, journalist Jerry Capeci in his online column "Gangland" claims that the murder was committed by a three-man hit team organized by Joseph "Joe the Blonde" Biondo, on the orders of Carlo Gambino. The team consisted of Stephen Grammauta, Stephen Armone and Arnold Wittenburg, a crew of Lower East Side heroin dealers.[4][3]
Anastasia's former Underboss Carlo Gambino took the reigns of the family, which from then on bore his name. Biondo was rewarded with the Underboss position, which he kept until his death in 1966. Grammauta eventually became a caporegime in the 1990s.
Category: The 20th Century
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