In the wee hours of the morning of Thursday, March 23, 1978, the body of Genovese crime family captain Pasquale (Paddy Mac) Macchiarole was discovered stuffed inside the trunk of his automobile. Police said he had been killed in typical gangland fashion.
Police located the brand new 1977 maroon-colored Lincoln Continental parked behind a supermarket at the corner of Skidmore Avenue and Rockaway Parkway in Brooklyn’s Canarsie section. As they approached the car, police said they smelled a foul odor. After officers jimmied the trunk open, they discovered the mafioso’s decomposing corpse.
Police said they went to the supermarket after members of the Macchiarole family received an anonymous phone call directing them to that location. The 56-year-old hoodlum had been missing for three weeks, since March 2.
Both federal and local law enforcement sources described Pasquale Macchiarole as “a man who had a reputation for violence on the street, who was hated by many and feared by even more.”
One detective said, “He was moving too fast and stepping on too many toes, not only within his own crime Family, but he was pushing his weight around, bullying members of New York’s other crime Families as well.”
“Word on the street is that he had also been attempting to muscle in on the gambling and loanshark rackets of other mobsters and was suspected of having plotted a takeover attempt of the entire Genovese Family by wresting control from his longtime partner and direct superior, Family boss Frank (Funzi) Tieri.
The coroner’s office later reported that Macchiarole had been repeatedly stabbed in the stomach and shot in the face and head. Three .25 caliber slugs were removed from his skull. His killers then wrapped their victim inside large black plastic bags and a canvas before stuffing him into the trunk of his car.
Judging from the condition of the corpse, which was in an advanced state of decay, homicide detectives on the scene said the victim had been dead for several days.
At the time of his murder, law enforcement sources said that only Family boss Frank Tieri would have had the power and authority to order the murder of such a highly-placed capo as Macchiarole.
Few people in gangland mourned the death of the volatile Paddy Mac.