Is the mob still active? It would have been easy until a few weeks ago to assume Italian-American mobsters were extinct, and that’s exactly how Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali liked it.
Investigators say Cali ran the Gambino crime family like a “ghost,” conducting business strictly in person to avoid wiretaps, and insisting that his underlings do the same. Yet Cali, 53, was splashed on covers of New York City tabloids in March after being shot six times outside his Staten Island home.
It was the first murder of a mob boss since 1985, when Gambino head Paul Castellano was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in midtown Manhattan by three trench coat–wearing men under orders from John Gotti, who watched the cinematic rubout from a car across the street… The Week