What is known today as the Colombo Family originally started as the Profaci Family of South Brooklyn. It was headed by a wily veteran Sicilian mafioso named Giuseppe (Joe) Profaci.
The second smallest borgata of New York’s infamous Five Families, with a formal membership of 150 soldiers and an estimated 750 associates, they were nonetheless a notorious bunch active in all underworld rackets and arguably the most violent Cosa Nostra Family to ever operate in the United States.
From approximately 1960 forward, they littered the streets of New York City with dozens and dozens of bodies while waging three successive internal gangland wars for power over the next forty years.
This is the story of the first of those conflicts.
The Gallo-Profaci War that was seeded in late 1959 and would start in earnest in late 1960 and later rage through 1963 claimed scores of lives and left many more wounded, as gunmen from both sides went out daily to stalk their prey. Joe Profaci and his soldiers and associates, who outnumbered the Gallo brothers and their gang five to one dominated the warfare.
At the height of the warfare, the Gallo gang had holed up at their headquarters at 51 President Street, in the Red Hook neighborhood, down by the docks of the Gowanus Canal in South Brooklyn. This was where they “hit the mattresses,” all living together within this compound for their mutual safety.
In fact, one entire block of President Street would be cordoned off with cars and makeshift blockades. 51 President Street had chicken wire on the windows to prevent against Profaci forces lobbing a hand grenade or Molotov cocktail through a window. Guards armed with high-powered rifles watched the entire street from the rooftop 24/7 to prevent sneak attacks.
This was the mob landscape of 1961-1963. It was in this atmosphere that carloads of gunsels from both factions would roam the streets daily searching each other out for assassination.
