The 15 Most Extreme Acts Of Mob Violence

The over-the-top violence of the American mob has, over the years, provided those working in the entertainment industry with a rich reservoir of stories from which to draw from. The Godfather, Goodfellas and HBO’s The Sopranos would not exist without the real life workings of organized crime. In fact, the mob has even been the backdrop for comedies – for example, 88 Hits, a mockumentary about the most unorganized family in the organized crime world, from KoldCast TV. The situations on which these stories are based, however, involved some very real, very nasty individuals taking part in some very real, very nasty acts, like those on our list of the 15 most extreme acts of violence committed by the mob.

88 Hits, Episode 1: Building the Family

1. The St. Valentines Day Massacre

The first addition to our list is also arguably the most famous. On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, five members of the North Side Irish Gang, led by Bugs Moran, and two non-members, were lined up against the rear wall of the SMC Cartage Company on Chicago’s North Side and shot to death by two mobsters in police uniforms under the orders of Al Capone. Seventy rounds from two submachine guns and a couple of shotgun blasts turned the seven men into something that looked more like mush than human beings.

2. The Bombing of “The Chicken Man”

As the underboss of a Philadelphia organization led by long-time boss Angelo Bruno, Philip “The Chicken Man” Testa was generally regarded as being good-natured (by comparison), and was known to avoid violence whenever he could. Sadly, on March 21, 1980, Testa returned home from South Philadelphia when a nail bomb exploded on his front porch. Neighbors claimed that pieces of his body were scattered for blocks. Musician Bruce Springsteen, in the hit song “Atlantic City,” would later immortalize Testa. The song opens with the line, “Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night/now they blew up his house too.”

3. A Friend of Ours

For allowing undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone into the Bonanno crime family, Caporegime Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano paid a pretty steep price – his hands were removed. The act of allowing Pistone to shake hands with others in the organization, and going so far as to introduce him as a “friend of ours” (or a made man) when he wasn’t, was more than unacceptable. After Dominick’s hands were lopped off, his corpse was mutilated and his body left at the corner of South Avenue and Bridge Street in Staten Island. Joesph Pistone’s story was later chronicled in the movie Donnie Brasco.

4. Dead Canary

At one point during his “career,” Bruno Facciolo was a made man and a full member of the Lucchese crime family. He’s even been associated with the murder of Thomas “Two-Gun Tommy” DeSimone (who was portrayed by Joe Pesci in the movie Goodfellas). In 1990, however, he was lured into a garage by two detectives moonlighting as hitmen, stabbed repeatedly, then shot to death. A dead canary was then stuffed in his mouth because it was believed he was an informant – which, as it turns out, he wasn’t. Oops.

5. The Angelo Bruno Murder and Money in the Butt

On April 18, 1980, Philadelphia Mafia Consigliere Antonio Caponigro had “The Gentle Don,” Angelo Bruno, killed without the approval of The Mafia Commission. Because of this, a few weeks later Caponigro and his brother-in-law Alfred Salerno were taken to an isolated house in the mountains of upstate New York where they were tortured for days before finally being killed. About $300 was found stuffed up Caponigro’s bloody rectum as a sign that he had become far too greedy.

6. The Carmine Galante Murder

Carmine “Lilo” Galante was murdered moments after he finished eating his lunch at Joe and Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn. With a cigar still in his mouth, the 69-year-old mobster was blasted in the face and chest at point-blank range with a shotgun – which, as you might imagine, made a pretty big mess.

7. Just A Little Off The Top

On the morning of October 25, 1957, Albert Anastasia (then boss of the famous Gambino Crime Family) entered the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel (which is now the Park Central Hotel, on 56th Street and 7th Avenue) in New York City. Anastasia’s bodyguard parked the car in an underground garage and then conveniently decided to take a stroll. As Anastasia relaxed in the barber chair, two men rushed in, shoved the barber out of the way, and fired at Anastasia. After the first volley of bullets, Anastasia supposedly lunged at his killers. With bullets riddling his body, the stunned Anastasia actually attacked the gunmen’s reflections in the wall mirror rather than the gunmen themselves. More shots were fired soon afterward until Anastasia was finally killed.

8. A Banquet and a Bat

This is the second appearance Al Capone has made on our list – which should tell you a thing or two about why his name has become so synonymous with the idea of mob violence. Capone murdered John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, which he believed were siding with his enemies. This kind of murder is common in the mob. How the murders actually went down, however, is a thing of legend. Al invited the pair to a banquet in their honor, produced a gift-wrapped Indian club, and proceeded to bash their brains in. A version of the story was recreated in the film The Untouchables.

9. Danny Green is Blown to Bits

Daniel “Danny” J. Patrick Greene was an Irish gangster known for his association with Cleveland boss John Nardi. After a trip to his dentist to repair a loose filling, Danny left the office building and approached his car. The automobile parked next to his exploded. The explosion was thunderous, sent a ball of fire into the air, and created a blinding cloud of flame that bathed the already sunlit parking lot in a terrifying white light. Greene was instantly ripped to shreds. His clothing, except for his brown zip-up boots and black socks, was blown clean off his body. His left arm was torn free and was thrown nearly 100 feet away. A new movie and two new documentaries will arrive in 2011, feeding America’s unending appetite for mob stories with a grisly slice of Cleveland’s criminal past. “The Irishman” is due out next March.

10. Buried Alive

Anthony Spilotro was an Italian-American mobster and enforcer of the Chicago Outfit in Las Vegas during the 70’s and 80’s. Eventually, Anthony succeeded Marshall Caifano as the mob’s representative in Las Vegas where he reunited with childhood friend Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and began skimming money from the casinos. He and his brother Michael were eventually beaten and buried alive in an Indiana cornfield. A version of the incident was recreated in the movie Casino years later.

11. Do Your Research

Also known as “Big Tuna,” Antonio “Joe Batters” Accardo rose from small-time hoodlum to the position of day-to-day boss of the Chicago Outfit in 1943 (and ultimately the Final Outfit Authority in 1972). In 1978, while Big Tuna was on vacation, six burglars made the extremely stupid mistake of stealing some stuff from his house. Within a month, each of them were found strangled and their throats cut. I suppose the moral of the story is that if you’re going to steal stuff, a little research wouldn’t hurt.

12. The Murder of Anthony DiLapi

Also known as “Blue Eyes over the Bridges,” Anthony DiLapi was a Teamsters union leader and a soldier in the Lucchese crime family. In 1990, he had recently been released from prison and had opted to flee the mob for a life outside of organized crime. Lucchese captain Alphonse D’Arco couldn’t have cared less. On February 4, 1990, Joseph D’Arco and a crew of hitmen shot Anthony DiLapi to death in the underground garage of his apartment building in Hollywood, California. DiLapi was shot four times in the face and four times to the body.

13. Vegetabled

On June 28th, 1971, at the second Italian Unity Day rally, an assassin disguised as a photojournalist fired three shots from an automatic pistol into the head of Joseph Colombo (the boss of the Colombo Crime Family). Colombo’s son and several others wrestled the shooter to the ground. A second man stepped out of the crowd and shot the original assassin dead. The second assailant escaped without being identified. The crowd quickly dispersed, although some made a feeble attempt to continue the festival. Though Colombo was seriously wounded, he managed to survive the shooting and lingered in a coma without ever regaining consciousness for nearly seven years (he was “vegetabled,” in the words of fellow mobster Joe Gallo). He eventually died on May 22, 1978.

14. Goodbye Danny Walsh

Rhode Island bootlegger Danny Walsh was the last major Irish-American gangster in the region when he disappeared in 1933. It’s been said that he was murdered, stuffed into a barrel and dumped into the sea by a rumrunner off Block Island. Over the next several years, whenever an unidentified murder victim would pop up, it was immediately checked against the dental records of Danny Walsh. Despite efforts by law enforcement, however, Walsh’s body was never recovered.

15. Dutch Schultz and the Rust-Coated Bullets

Dutch Schultz was a Jewish-American gangster in the 20’s and 30’s that made his fortune as a bootlegger and various numbers rackets. In 1935, he was shot in the bathroom of the Palace Chophouse in New Jersey. He somehow managed to survive the shoot-out, crawled out of the bathroom and returned to the table where he was previously sitting to wait for an ambulance. Unfortunately for him, it was discovered that he was shot with rust-coated bullets, which were used to give him fatal poisoning on the off-chance that he survived the bullet wound. It worked, when he died 22 hours later.

88 Hits, Episode 2: The Family

88 Hits, Episode 3: Family Man

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Steven Novak is a writer, illustrator, graphic designer and admitted lifelong nerd with an embarrassingly large DVD collection. He is currently working and living in the Southern California desert. His most recent fantasy/action adventure novel, “Forts: Fathers and Sons,” is available everywhere books are sold.

KCTV Filmmaker Series: Blake Calhoun

If you try and pinpoint the beginning of web television, you most likely end up somewhere in 2007. Sure you can point to Red vs. Blue in 2003, but machinima is a whole other genre. There was SamHas7Friends in 2006, but that series mostly flew under the radar. It was not until mid-2007 when the space was legitimized by a handful of filmmakers defining the medium with their own style of storytelling. That summer, an independent filmmaker from Dallas, Texas decided to take on the emerging medium by telling the tale of an assassin with daddy issues.

Web television was born from the core principles used in independent film – keep it contained, use resources available to you, call in favors, get creative. So it’s not a surprise that a multi-talented indie filmmaker like Blake Calhoun would take his knowledge base and business know-how to the web space – the micro-indie. In 2007, after watching web television blossom, Calhoun and Mike Maden sought to create a more polished, intellectual brand of web entertainment. They aspired to go beyond the web comedy one-off and bring their craftsmanship to short-form storytelling. In a market focused on comedy, Calhoun and Maden decided to tell the story of a contract killer who is haunted by her line of work and reminisces about the days when she was just daddy’s little girl: Pink. Having worked with both Natalie Raitano (V.I.P.) and Sheree Wilson (Walker, Texas Ranger) on his feature film Killing Down, Calhoun was able to secure a solid cast as he set out to complete the project by summer’s end. The months and years that followed the launch of Pink, in September of 2007, earned him a Webby, a Streamy, an agent (UTA), a buyer (Generate), distributors, a debut in Times Square… and the list goes on. Not bad, Calhoun, not bad at all.

Pink launches big-time at Times Square

It was a big accomplishment for a female-driven drama to find so much success in a male-driven comedy world. But it was proof that, like any medium, people want to be engaged, and they want to follow the journey of captivating characters. Calhoun admits that, overall, his projects not only focus on complicated characters, both male and female, but they tend to live in dark worlds. For example, his second web series, 88 Hits, a Spinal Tap-esque mockumentary, follows a family in the organized crime world who miss the good old days and are just trying to do right… by their standards. “My films, strangely, are all about trying to find happiness in life: Pink, and then 88 Hits, and even my first little gangster movie, Thugs,” recalls Calhoun.“I did an action film in 2006 called Killing Down. It’s about a guy who was tortured in Nicaragua during the Contra conflict in the late 80s. It’s not about trying to figure out who did this to him, but him trying to find happiness in his life… I’m a happy guy, so I don’t know where that comes from.”

With a healthy list of credits in several mediums, Calhoun is not choosing sides and he’s not slowing down. In 2010, he’s releasing Spilt Milk (an indie feature) and Exposed (a web series for Warner Bros. Television). He’s learned something that the music business has learned the hard way: the only way to survive the business of entertainment in modern times is to diversify, become the triple threat… or was that quadruple threat? With a slate that includes commercials, corporate videos, feature films, shorts and web series, his secret is to always have something in the pipeline and wear many hats.

When I asked Calhoun what inspired him to become a filmmaker, he revealed that he never dreamed of being Steven Spielberg and didn’t make Super 8 movies as a kid. “It just sorta happened,” says Calhoun. “I never had an epiphany one day where I had to be a filmmaker. I think you get that feeling where you just want to create. You gotta keep creating content. It’s a weird little disease that you get. You can’t get rid of it.”

Movies That Inspired Me:

Sex, Lies and Videotape – El Mariachi – Clerks – Reservoir Dogs – Pulp Fiction

Filmmakers That Inspired Me:

Danny Boyle – Quentin Tarantino – Paul Thomas Anderson – Martin Scorsese

If, like Blake Calhoun, you’re drawn to the dark side, you might want to check out: 10 Greatest Film Assassins from Movie History

Marti Resteghini is VP of Network Programming and Acquisitions here at KoldCast TV. Formerly, as vice president of development and production at Warner Bros.-based production company, HDFilms, Resteghini oversaw the development, production and distribution of feature films, television and new media content across multiple platforms. In this post, Resteghini produced many high-profile Web series including “Chadam,” “Creepshow: Raw,” based on the 1980s cult classic feature film, and Crackle’s “The Jace Hall Show.”