The Colombo Crime Family, The ‘Little Brother’ Of The Five Families
Public DomainJoe Profaci, the first boss of what would become the Colombo crime family.
While the other gangs in the Five Families date back to before the Castellammarese War, the Colombo family didn’t come about until 1928. Then, Joe Profaci put together a bootlegging gang that would eventually grow into a powerful criminal enterprise.
Profaci, a Sicilian immigrant, was known to be personable but shrewd when it came to business. These traits would allow him to maintain control of his family for nearly 30 years. However, he didn’t always have an easy time of it.
The first sign of trouble came in 1959 when a brief internal war broke out in the family after “Crazy” Joe Gallo revolted against Profaci. However, Gallo soon found himself behind bars, and Profaci died of cancer in 1962, bringing an end to the feud.
New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images“Crazy” Joe Gallo was known to parade his pet lion around New York.
In the wake, Joseph Magliocco, Profaci’s brother-in-law, took over the family, though that fell through once he and Bonanno were caught making plans to assassinate other bosses. After Magliocco was ousted, Joseph Colombo took over the gang and renamed it after himself.
Colombo wasn’t always a popular boss, and that was made most evident in 1970 when he founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League to fight against the discrimination of Italian immigrants and their descendants. Many of the family’s mobsters worried his public protests would attract unwanted attention, and the other Five Families bosses forbade their members from attending the league’s demonstrations.
colaimages/Alamy Stock PhotoJoe Colombo (center) with his son, Joe Jr., in the 1950s.
In 1971, Joe Gallo made another play at taking over the Colombo family after he was released from prison. That June, Colombo was shot and paralyzed at a rally for his league, and he ultimately had to step down as boss. Gallo was shot down himself the following year. In the aftermath of the chaos, Carmine Persico emerged as the new head of the family.
However, for the 46 years Persico was boss, he was in prison for all but three of them. A long series of acting bosses took his place. In 1987, the position fell to Victor Orena — but he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted total control over the gang. So, in 1991, the Colombo family once again split into two factions. The third civil war lasted for two years, and two dozen Colombo mobsters either died or vanished during that time. In the end, Orena was sentenced to life in prison for murder, racketeering, and several other crimes, and a new acting boss took over.
Yvonne Hemsey/Getty ImagesColombo family boss Carmine Persico ruled from 1973 until his death in 2019.
The war had taken its toll on the Colombo family. There were reportedly just 75 members left in the mid-1990s, as so many men were killed or imprisoned during the fighting.
Persico died in jail in 2019, and his cousin, Andrew “Andy Mush” Russo, took over the family. He passed away in 2022, and as far as the public knows, no official boss has been named in his place.
After learning all about the Five Families, explore 200 years of New York’s violent underbelly. Then, take a deep dive into the American Mafia in the 1980s.
