MAFIA kingpin Albert Anastasia was relaxed as he sat down in a barber shop chair for a haircut in Midtown Manhattan.
Just a few seconds later, however, the mobster nicknamed ‘Lord High Executioner’ met his own grisly end, a harrowing picture showing his bullet ridden body lying on floor.
According to reports at the time of the hit, two gunmen with their faces covered by masks burst into the Park Sheraton Hotel barber shop just before 10.30am.
Strangely – or perhaps not – his bodyguard was off taking a walk at the time at the time of the October 1957 shooting.
The hitmen fired 10 bullets at the 55-year-old Anastasia and after the first volley the stunned Mafia mobster, he actually attacked the gunmen’s reflections in the mirror.
Anastasia was gunned down in a hail of bullets before he finally slumped onto the floor and the shooters fled, reported the New York Times.
Despite 11 witnesses, the weapons being found nearby and descriptions of the hit men being circulated, no-one was ever charged with the murder.
The build up to Anastasia’s death began with his rise to become one of the bosses of what became Gambino the crime family.Umberto ‘Albert’ Anastasia was born in Calabria, Italy in 1902 and entered America in 1919 with three of his brothers after jumping ship in New York from the freighter they were working on.
Raised on the tough streets of Lower Manhattan, he began working as a longshoreman – or docker – but it wasn’t long before he has a first major brush with the law.
Anastasia was sentenced to death for murdering another longshoreman but dodged the electric chair after a retrial.
His career in crime began in the longshoremen’s union, at the time heavily influenced by the mob, who used it as a front for criminal activity on the New York waterfront.
Anastasia was soon rising up the ranks and became an associate of infamous mobster Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who made him part of his Murder Inc. crew of assassins.
MURDER INC.
The "homicidal gangster troop" - as they were once described - carried out hundreds of killings between 1931 and 1940.
In the following years, Anastasia was charged in three murders – in 1928, 1932 and 1933 – but in each case, witnesses either disappeared or refused to testify.
Two other high-level Mob informants died before their testimony helped bring Anastasia to trial for other murders, in 1941 and 1942.
During the war, he joined the US Army as Murder Inc was being hit by police investigations and was rewarded with US citizenship.
Five families had been running the New York's Italian-American Mafia - the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese.
They governed their affairs through what was known as The Commission, which decided who could be a crime family boss and mediated conflicts.
FATAL FEUD
Luciano rose to the top the Five Families and rewarded henchman Anastasia with the position in his crime family under Vincent Mangano.
But Mangano and Anastasia had a long standing feud which erupted into open conflict.
Anastasia was allied with the new overall leader of the Commission, Frank Costello, but Costello was under threat from the boss of one of the Five Families, Vito Genovese.
Genovese had the backing of other mobsters including underboss of Anastasia’s own organization, Carlo Gambino.
He offered Gambino the chance to run Anastasia’s organisation if he backed him in taking out Anastasia and another mob boss Frank Costello, effectively dooming his own boss.
Genovese himself was jailed soon after the hit with Gambino taking over Anastasia’s empire.
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