[Bunnny]

Angelo Bruno ran the Philadelphia crime family for 21 years, from 1959 until the night his own people killed him. They called him the "Gentle Don" because he kept the peace, stayed out of the papers, and made his money quietly through gambling, loansharking and union rackets instead of the violence that got other bosses locked up or shot. He held Philadelphia together for two decades. That ended on March 21, 1980.

Bruno was 69. He had just finished dinner, and his bodyguard John Stanfa drove him home and parked out front of his row house in South Philadelphia, near 10th and Snyder. Bruno sat in the front passenger seat with the window down, smoking, when a man came up behind the car and put a shotgun behind his right ear. One blast, at point blank range. He was dead before anyone else in the car moved. Stanfa caught some of the pellets and survived. A lot of people in that world always believed Stanfa knew what was coming and left the window down on purpose.

The photos below are the scene itself. Bruno slumped in the passenger seat, the shotgun wound to the head, the blood down the inside of the car. There is an older black and white press photo and a color shot from the murder scene.

The reason he died came down to money and drugs. Bruno had a hard rule that his family stayed out of the methamphetamine and heroin trade, which by the late 70s was where the biggest money was. His consigliere, Antonio "Tony Bananas" Caponigro, ran the Newark faction and wanted that trade opened up. Caponigro started planning a coup. He went to Frank Tieri of the Genovese family in New York, who told him he would clear it with the Commission, the ruling council of the American Mafia. Caponigro took that as approval. It was not.

Killing a sitting boss without Commission sanction is the one line you do not cross. Once New York confirmed the hit had never been approved, Caponigro was finished. On April 18, less than a month after Bruno, he was called to a meeting in the Bronx. He was beaten, stabbed, shot around 14 times and strangled. His killers stuffed dollar bills into his mouth and his backside as a message about greed, then left him in the trunk of a car in the South Bronx.

Bruno's murder tore Philadelphia apart. The 20 years of quiet were over. Philip "Chicken Man" Testa took the family and was killed by a nail bomb on his own porch about a year later. Nicky Scarfo came next, and the bodies piled up so fast under him that the old guard missed the Gentle Don. John Stanfa, the driver who lived through that night, came back and ran the Philadelphia family himself in the 1990s.

If the name is familiar from outside true crime, Harvey Keitel played Angelo Bruno in Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" in 2019, though the film skips over how he actually died.

[Johnny Wadd]

Bottom pic is Big Paul Castellano

[Bunnny]

Holy shit, you're right. I thought it looked a little different. That was outside a NY steak house, if I remember correctly.

[Johnny Wadd]

Originally Posted by aja_matias ↗

Holy shit, you're right. I thought it looked a little different. That was outside a NY steak house, if I remember correctly.

In front of "Sparks"

[jbloom]

After the shooting at 'Sparks'. The next day Howard Stern called for a dinner reservation and requested a 'non shooting table'

I lived outside Philly as a kid. I remember after this assassination people were bitchin' that the photo on the front page of the papers were disrespectful. And when his body was put in a body bag, they also complained that he was hoisted like a sack of potatoes onto the gurney. Go figure ! A murderer and Thief and they want him treated like the Pope.

[reubthadude]

Crazy death stare. One of the classics

[HeadlessHorseman]

Originally Posted by jbloom ↗

After the shooting at 'Sparks'. The next day Howard Stern called for a dinner reservation and requested a 'non shooting table'

I lived outside Philly as a kid. I remember after this assassination people were bitchin' that the photo on the front page of the papers were disrespectful. And when his body was put in a body bag, they also complained that he was hoisted like a sack of potatoes onto the gurney. Go figure ! A murderer and Thief and they want him treated like the Pope.

"A murderer and Thief and they want him treated like the Pope." Well they do it for politicians and most of the are murderers and thieves.

[HeadlessHorseman]

Sorry I meant: "A murderer and Thief and they want him treated like the Pope." Well they do it for politicians and most of them are murderers and thieves.

[Davis916]

It is all about respect. The Murder was loved and feared by the neighborhood.

[nerd]

Angelo Bruno's death pic is probably the most brutal one I have ever seen. I've basically seen them all because I'm an avid reader of 20th century Cosa Nostra.

Angelo was shot at point-blank range in the back of his head, behind his right ear, distorting his head and face.

It is unclear as to whether he yelled, realizing at the last moment what was happening, or if his mouth opened from the shotgun blast alone. What we do know is, the inside of his mouth was completely destroyed.

Whether or not he screamed, of all the hits recorded with photographs available to the public, what is known as Bruno's death scream is surely the most gruesome of them all.

Thanks for the memory, Angelo "the Gentle Don" (Annaloro) Bruno.