Tyrone Mr. Millionaire Palmer was 24 when he was executed inside Club Harlem in Atlantic City on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1972. A major cocaine and heroin trafficker and the Philadelphia-area contact for New York suppliers, Palmer was seated at a stage-side table with his bodyguard Gilbert Big Malik Satterwhite and several women when gunmen entered the packed showroom. Samuel Sam Christian has been identified in law-enforcement reconstructions and intelligence as the man who stepped close and shot Palmer in the face at point-blank range. The initial shot triggered a wider barrage of gunfire that killed four more people, wounded roughly two dozen others, and left the room devastated.

Investigators linked the attack to the Philadelphia Black Mafia and to a string of narcotics-related murders tied to territory and drug disputes. Christian was later added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted list and was arrested in Detroit in 1973, but prosecutors were unable to secure witness testimony from the hundreds present that night and no one was convicted for the Club Harlem massacre.