From the godfathers of American Mafia history, the brutal and
blood-stained biography of Carmine Galante, the ruthless Bonnano boss
who rose from tenement street thug to masterminding the legendary global
heroin trafficking network, the French Connection - always with a cigar
in his mouth.
HIS WAR CRY: "I RULE EVERYTHING."
FOR HALF A CENTURY HE ALMOST DID.
The son of Sicilian immigrants, Camillo Carmine Galante was raised in
Manhattan's Little Italy and by all accounts born bad. At age ten his
home away from home was juvenile detention. By fifteen he was
terrorizing the streets of New York's Lower East Side, scoring high
marks for the "errands" he was running for his La Cosa Nostra elders.
When he turned twenty, Galante was already one of the mob's top
enforcers-a sadistic thrill killer and clinically diagnosed psychopath
with big dreams: whack his way into controlling organized crime the
world over, vowing to kill Mafia chieftains Tommy Lucchese and Carlo
Gambino and take control of their mob families.
Carmine "Lilo" Galante's rise to Mafia star was infamous: hit man for
the Luciano and Genovese crime families; named consigliere by Joseph
Bonnano; he wiped out eight members of the Gambinos; on behalf of
Mussolini he assassinated the publisher of an anti-Fascist newspaper.
"The biggest dope peddler in the country" according to law enforcement,
Galante helped orchestrate one of the largest heroin trafficking
operations on record--a power move too dangerous for his rivals in the
narcotics trade. The heads of the five New York families decided that
the psychotic Galante had to be stopped. On July 12, 1979, finishing his
lunch in a Brooklyn restaurant, Galante got what he'd dished out his
whole life: a shotgun blast to the face, his trademark cigar still
clenched in his teeth...
