Umberto’s Clam House served up murder for Crazy Joe Gallo

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“Joey, Joey. King of the streets, child of clay. Joey, Joey. What made them want to come and blow you away?” Bob Dylan, Joey

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Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry St. in Manhattan’s Little Italy is a living testimony to one of the most notorious mob hits in American history.

A bricks-and-mortar celebration of omerta, if you will.

This cozy joint earned a rep as a purveyor of “tasty dishes of calamari, scungilli, mussels” — and mobsters. The son of Umberto’s proprietor was a wiseguy himself, Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianniello.

On April 7, 1972, renegade mobster Joe “Crazy Joe” Gallo had just wrapped his 43rd birthday bash at the Copacabana (Don Rickles was performing) and was hungry. Crazy Joe and his crew (including his wife and daughter) stopped for a late-night nosh at Umberto’s.

There was a price on Gallo’s head. Hitmen caught up with him around 4:30 a.m. and parked five bullets in the Brooklyn-born criminal. He staggered into the street, collapsed and died.

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Joey Gallo was a big deal in the Big Apple’s criminal milieu.

Born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, Gallo had two brothers and the trio joined the fraternity of thieves and cutthroats.  After a bust in 1950, he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, although like much of the Gallo legend that too may be speculative.

“I could have worked my way up to head soda jerk at Whelan’s Drugstore, but what kind of life is that for a guy like me?” he once said as New York’s tabloids soon recognized good copy.

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In New York City, the Five Families kept watch for up-and-coming criminal talent. Gallo, who one detective said “had balls of steel,” fit the bill.

His underworld rabbis were the Profaci family and Joey didn’t disappoint. He was widely suspected to be one of the hitters who iced boss Albert “The Mad Hatter” Anastasia in a barber’s chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel on Oct. 25, 1957.

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Anastasia himself had a few screws loose and was blamed for the disaster at Appalachia in upstate New York when scores of underworld kingpins were busted.

Gallo even kidnapped his bosses for ransom in 1961. An extortion conviction and an eight spot in Attica followed.

By the time Gallo emerged from prison, the world and the gangland milieu had changed. For starters, Crazy Joe wasn’t the only mobster in Gotham who was a bit nuts.

His boss Joseph Colombo, who took over when Joe Profaci died of natural causes, was drawing too much heat and attention. Colombo took it upon himself to become a crusader for the Italian-American Civil Rights League.

The wacky wiseguy was frontman for the group he founded. He needed to be taken off the board and Gallo was reportedly behind the attempted murder at a 1971 rally. Colombo was paralyzed and died seven years later.

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Frank Sheeran, the subject of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, claimed Gallo likely got the green light from mortified high-ranking mobsters.

“[He was] putting too much attention on the alleged mob by all these rallies and the publicity they brought,” Sheeran said.

The Profaci/Colombo family has always been a poorly disciplined outfit. Sammy the Bull Gravano left the family for that very reason. Gallo’s friendships with celebrities and media savvy outlook was not favoured either.

This was not the way of luminaries like Frank Costello, Carlos Gambino or Russell Bufalino.

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Sheeran claimed in his autobiography, I Heard You Paint Houses, that he was the triggerman acting on orders from Buffalino. He later said underworld poohbahs were angry Gallo tried to whack Colombo in front of his family.

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“Right there in front of his family; they turned the man into a vegetable. So that’s the way it was going to be for Crazy Joey,” he said.

But witnesses claimed it was a four-man hit team that took out Crazy Joe.

“The stories that are out there say that there were three shooters, but I’m not not saying that,” Sheeran said. “Maybe the bodyguard added two shooters to make himself look better … I’m not putting anybody else in the thing but me.”

The New York Times’ superstar mob writer Selwyn Rabb reported that a wiseguy named Joseph Luparelli claimed he clipped Gallo with three accomplices. Sheeran was not in the mix.

Crazy Joe’s weeping widow said the killers were short and Italian. Sheeran stood 6-foot-4. He was undeterred.

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“Later on, I heard some Italian guy took credit for the whack they put on Gallo,” he said. “That’s okay by me. Maybe the guy wanted to be a celebrity. Probably the guy turned rat or something.”

NYPD mob crusader Joe Coffey and others believe it was the big Irishman who sent Crazy Joe to the morgue.

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For a gangster, Gallo was a study in contradictions. Charming, funny, warm and intelligent and at the same time a killer.

When prisoners rioted at Auburn, Gallo — who became a prodigious reader and painter in the joint — saved the life of a badly wounded guard. The officer later testified for Gallo at his parole hearing.

“[Gallo] was articulate and had excellent verbal skills being able to describe gouging a man’s guts out with the same eloquent ease that he used when discussing classical literature,” fellow inmate Donald Frankos later said.

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