- 1978, Carmine Galante goes back to prison
for violating parole.
They should have held him there, clearly,
because he was consorting with criminal associates,
violating parole.
But Roy Cohn got him out of prison in record time.
- So he got let out early '79.
How that happened, I don't know.
- He became very cocky and--
amazingly, he goes on 60 Minutes and his lawyer, Roy Cohn,
gets to interview him and present
this simple Italian man who likes only
to be growing tomato vines.
- I'm going to the country.
- Good.
What are you going to do when you get to the country?
- Well, I mean, I planted peppers last week.
Now I'm going to plant tomatoes.
- And this completely phony picture of this mob boss
is ludicrous.
- You think that had an influence on the federal judge
when he held that you were right and the parole commission
was wrong?
- I think so.
I think so.
- He thinks a farmer ought to be able to seed, right?
- I think so.
I mean, it's very well known that that's what I do.
- When he made those stupid moves on 60 Minutes, act
like an old man, it don't work.
You don't fool nobody, man.
Forget about your toma -- tomatoes, wear an old hat,
ripped sweater.
You can't do this.
You can't go public.
Don't work that way.
You don't-- you don't supposed to do that.
- He had his own rules, his own ways of doing things.
He was earning money.
He was also skimming money.
But the Mafia operates to make money,
and in order to make money, you have to follow the rules.
If you don't abide by the rules, there are repercussions.
[music playing]
[rumbling subway train]
- July 12, 1979 was a very hot day in New York,
and a Cadillac was rumbling its way down streets
of Bushwick, Brooklyn.
There was a lot of street life going on.
It was a typical day in Bushwick.
This Cadillac makes its way down Knickerbocker Avenue
and stops outside Joe and Mary Italian-American restaurant,
run by cousins of Carmine Galante.
And Galante, who was well known there,
made his way to the back.
And there was a backyard garden.
The bodyguards he had taken with him that day
were Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato.
And the mood was set for a relaxing afternoon.
[music playing]
[car door slams]
[footsteps]
[gunshots]
[police dispatch]
- I was in an unmarked police car by myself
and I happened to be just a couple of blocks
away from Knickerbocker Avenue when I hear this job come over.
[police dispatch]
- Early before 3 o'clock this afternoon,
blue Chevy pulled up here in front of Joe
and Mary's restaurant.
Three men got out wearing ski masks, armed.
Shotguns.
Automatic weapons.
- And as I get there I run into the backyard.
I'm the first detective there.
There was maybe three cops.
I see the dead bodies.
- There are multiple gunshot and shotgun wounds.
- As a result of those wounds, would you say the death was
instantaneous on both parts?
- It would appear that the death was very rapid.
[dramatic music]
- OK, let's go.
Get outta the way.
[dramatic music]
- My mother called me screaming, "they killed him.
They killed him.
They killed him."
My mother was destroyed she was just destroyed,
'cause she loved him.
She never stopped loving him.
She loved this man.
It amazed me, but it was true.
[sad music]
- It was almost surreal, the whole thing.
I don't think he thought he would ever die.
He's got that God complex.
He just didn't think anything could ever--
ever happen to him.
I was very surprised he wasn't killed much sooner.
And that's probably why I was so shocked when he died,
because now you don't expect it anymore because it didn't
happen for such a long time.
Then there was the wake, which was a joke.
It was a zoo--
reporters, ba-ba-ba-ba.
- For the FBI it was a big mystery-- why he was hit,
who was the killer--
that had to be pieced together.
- There was no love lost.
When he passed away, there was 40 people at his funeral.
There's a reason for that.
Nobody liked him.
[music playing]