Next time you’re waiting for your latte at the Starbucks in the Park Central Hotel on Seventh Avenue and 55th Street, imagine the place as it was on October 25, 1957: a blood-splattered barber shop with a mob boss’s body on the floor.
That was the scene there that autumn morning, when the hotel was known as the Park Sheraton. Albert Anastasia, head of Murder Inc., was inside, sitting in a chair awaiting a haircut.
Suddenly two men, their faces covered, burst into the shop, pushed the barber out of the way, and pumped a volley of bullets into Anastasia.
He lunged toward his killers, then hit the ground.
Officially, his murder remains unsolved. But it’s believed that Vito Genovese ordered the hit, carried out by Crazy Joey Gallo and one of his brothers.
Joey Gallo’s murder, outside Umberto’s Clam House, was just as gruesome.
Tags: Albert Anastasia, Crazy Joe Gallo, famous crimes in New York City, infamous mob hits, Joey Gallo, mob boss murders, mob hits, mob hits NYC, Murder Inc., New York in the 1950s, Park Cental Hotel, Park Sheraton Hotel, Starbucks crime, Vito Genovese
Ephemeral New York 
April 4, 2011 at 8:51 am |
Plus that horrible Bob Dylan song, Joey, have no idea why Dylan was glorifying a known killer. Must have been his favoritism for the underdog. Ha! Joey Gallo as underdog, that will be the day.
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/joey-bob-dylan-and-jacques-levy
April 15, 2011 at 12:02 pm |
Those were killings mafioso style. Nowadays they wouldn’t even dare to do that kind of assassination. It was meant to send a message usually back in the day, but today the mafia has lost most of it’s influence and doing kills execution style like this would only bring a huge load of heat on the family involved. It’s not like that anymore. Private investigators n.y. have noticed they now run legitimate businesses that occasionally dabble in the criminal, but mostly little stuff, like contraband clothing and such.
April 30, 2013 at 5:46 pm |
[…] Anastasia was murdered on October 25, 1957 as he sat in a barber chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel (now the Park Central Hotel, located at 870 7th Ave in Manhattan). The site of the attack is currently home to a Starbucks. […]
March 13, 2017 at 6:01 am |
[…] also a Starbucks inside the former barber shop on West 55th Street where Murder Inc. mobster Albert Anastasia was riddled with bullets while waiting for a […]