On March 19, 1978, 38-year-old Nino Martini was found dead in Brooklyn, New York, his body discovered stuffed into the trunk of a car in the East New York area alongside Michael Mandelino. Both men had been shot multiple times in the head; reports describe the killings as execution-style. The victims were reportedly wrapped in plastic and bound, and the disposal mirrors methods later attributed to the DeMeo crew, a violent faction tied to the Gambino crime family that investigators and historians have linked to murder and body disposal.

Mandelino has been described in accounts as accused of setting up Peter LaFroscia for a robbery; Martini is described as having no involvement in that alleged betrayal and as a collateral victim because he was close to the wrong person on the wrong day. Wider investigations into an international car-theft operation connected to the Gambinos drew federal attention in the 1980s, and a crew member, Vito Arena, later cooperated with prosecutors about murders for Roy DeMeo. By June 1989 multiple members of DeMeo’s crew were convicted of racketeering, and Anthony Senter and Joseph Testa were found guilty of racketeering and multiple murder counts and received life sentences.

Who knew Nino Martini, or has information about his last days or the circumstances that brought him to East New York on March 19, 1978?