Carmine The Cigar Galante, 69, was shot dead on the patio of Joe and Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on July 12, 1979. He was dining with cousin and restaurant owner Giuseppe Turano and Bonanno capo Leonard Coppola when, about 2:45 p.m., three ski-masked men ran onto the patio and opened fire with shotguns and handguns. Galante, Turano, and Coppola were killed at the scene; a photograph from the aftermath reportedly showed Galante with a cigar clenched in his mouth.

Galante’s two Sicilian bodyguards, Baldassare Amato and Cesare Bonventre, were present but unharmed; reports say they did not protect him. The assassination has been described as sanctioned by the Mafia Commission because of Galante’s push to dominate the heroin trade and his alleged ambition to become the boss of all bosses. Philip Rusty Rastelli, then the official Bonanno boss in prison, and retired Joseph Bonanno are named in accounts as having approved the plot. FBI informants identified Dominick Sonny Black Napolitano, Dominick Big Trin Trinchera, and Anthony Bruno Indelicato as the gunmen.

Indelicato was later convicted in the Mafia Commission Trial in 1986 for his role in the triple murder. Cesare Bonventre was reportedly murdered in 1984; Baldassare Amato is serving a life sentence for an unrelated double murder. Know anything about that day in Bushwick or the people involved?