Rosario Michael Black Sam Nastasi, 79, was fatally shot while playing cards at a Brooklyn social club in the early hours of December 5, 1991. The attack also wounded his girlfriend, Kay Duggan, and investigators treated the scene as a planned ambush rather than a spontaneous street crime.

Contemporaneous reporting linked the killing to the escalating Colombo Family War, the internal struggle between factions loyal to imprisoned boss Carmine Persico and acting boss Victor Orena. Federal prosecutions later described how both sides formed armed hit teams, conducted surveillance, and used murder plots as tools in the feud; testimony in at least one Persico-faction trial referenced the murder of Black Sam Nastasi as part of proving the war’s existence and brutality, even though those defendants were not tried for his killing.

If anyone knew Nastasi, Duggan, or saw activity around that club in December 1991, please share what is known.