The sudden gangster hit is one of the most exciting scores in the Game. The first was by J. Smoke on Crazy Joey Gallo, one of the best ever. Others followed.
August 9, 1976 - John Roselli (3) - J. Schinto
J. Schinto had a stylish career. In this case, her solo bobbed to the surface of Biscayne Bay, sealed in a oil drum and very much the worse for wear. Mr. Roselli had recently testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding Mafia involvement in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. Committee members were quick to claim that there was no connection between Roselli's talking shop in public and his sudden demise. J. Schinto knew better.
July 12, 1979 - Carmine Galante (4) - B. Beasom, Captain Cadaver
"In one of the most spectacular hits in mob history, Carmine Galante was taken out in broad daylight while eating lunch in the open-air garden patio of Joe and Mary's Restaurant in Brooklyn. Galante was finishing his meal when three masked gunmen erupted into the place and blasted him to death with two shotguns."
-- John H. Davis, Mafia Dynasty
Game legends B. Beasom and Captain Cadaver, both of whom could tell which way the wind blew, combined to call this one. The head of Brooklyn's Bonanno family, Galante had grown greedy, wanting the heroin trade in New York to himself; to that end, he had gunned down members of the Genovese and Gambino families. It is said that Big Paul Castellano of the Gambinos was behind this hit. He once said, "This life of ours, this is a wonderful life. If you can get through life like this and get away with it, hey, that's great. But it's very unpredictable. There's so many ways you can screw it up." Indeed, Big Paul himself would later be hit in front of New York's Sparks Steak House on orders from John Gotti.
March 21, 1980 - Angelo Bruno (4) - Binky Brown
With territory that included southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, Angelo Bruno was the last of the old time crime bosses. Perhaps too old-fashioned to condone drug trafficking and therefore out of step, Angelo was killed by a single shotgun blast to the head while sitting in his car in front of his home in Philadelphia. Game co-founder Binky Brown was hip to the undercurrents in South Philly, and he made the call. As he notes, "I happened to be following the Philadelphia mob war that year and thought I'd take a shot. Angelo took the shot for me." And the blast gave Binky the lead in dramatic fashion.
March 15, 1981 - Phillip "Chicken Man" Testa (5) - Pearl E. Gates
The elder sibling of Dr. Death, Pearl E. Gates showed glimmers of his brother's genius, and this was his finest hour. He described the hit in his own words:"The godfather of the Philadelphia mob, Angelo Bruno, had been shotgunned in March and two of his minor lieutenants were found stuffed in garbage bags just as I was making up my game list. Clearly a mob war was underway and it wasn't hard to figure out why. Atlantic City, on the border of the territories of the New York (Gambino) and Philadelphia (Bruno) crime families, had had nothing much worth stealing (except protection money for the Miss America Pageant). But casino gambling changed everything. All I had to do was pick a prominent loser. I fingered Testa, Bruno's would-be successor. Even though he was tough, having survived a poisoning attempt in prison, I couldn't imagine a moniker like "Chicken Man" for the boss of bosses. I was right; he was whacked with several pounds of finishing nails and TNT early one Sunday morning. He only had about $10,000 on him so it must have been a slow night (or maybe he made a posthumous donation to the police doughnut fund)."
Indeed, Testa double-parked a black 1980 Chevrolet Caprice Classic outside his south Philadelphia home at 2:55 a.m., stepped onto the porch, reached for the door and triggered the explosion that gutted the first floor, shattered windows and rocked the neighborhood.
May 11, 2002 - Joseph Bonanno a.k.a. Joe Bananas (1)
No hail of bullets here, no car bomb, but we must pay homage to a leader in this perilous profession who managed to die in bed. While head of a Mafia family in Brooklyn, Bonanno designed and made frequent use of the famous "double coffin," a two-story affair that held a loved one on the upper level and beneath, the body of someone who needed disappearing. That's innovative design! Nine gamesters scored the ace.
December 2, 1993 - Pablo Escobar (6)
Gangland hits went international with this one. It was December, but too early for Santa Claus when cocaine king Pablo Escobar was surprised on a Medellín rooftop, armed and barefoot, fleeing a police raid. As the bullets flew, eleven scored, including Ghostwriter who noted, "There's nothing like the thrill of hitting a moving target." Others applauding on the lawn were Better Late Than Never, Cereal Killer, El Chileno, Dr. Doornail, Dr. Tom(b), The Last Roundup, Necrophiliac Pimp, Nostradahmer, Plug Pullers and Uncle Morte.
March 5, 1996 - José Santacruz Londoño (5) - Razor
On a darkened highway outside Medellín, Colombian police intercepted fugitive Cali cartel billionaire José Santacruz Londoño, who had recently escaped from prison, and let their trigger fingers doing the talking. Holding a spotlight for the authorities was Razor, picking up career solo #10 and five points in a hail of hot lead.September 10, 1998 - Rafael Munoz Talavera (6) - 2 Dead Crew, Uncle Milton
Rafael Munoz had his Jeep Cherokee armored, but it didn't help. The Mexican drug lord, who once got caught with 21 tons of cocaine in a California warehouse and beat the rap, couldn't beat this. Authorities in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican-U.S. border found him in the backseat of his Jeep, riddled with slugs in the head and chest and wrapped in a plastic bag. 2 Dead Crew, who has an affinity for gunshot victims in motor vehicles (see below), made the call, as did Uncle Milton, who in 1994 soloed on the IRA's Dominic "Mad Dog" McGlinchey.
February 10, 2002 - Ramon Arellano Felix (7) - 2 Dead Crew, Ghostwriter, Pocketful of Posies
Mazatlan, bright sun, Carnaval, hey, we're there. But not on the afternoon of February 10th, no thank you. The first parade was just hours away and families were setting up chairs along the beachfront boulevard. But in the touristy Zona Dorada, police saw guns through the windows of a VW Bug. They followed and the ensuing shootout left three men dead on the sidewalks. One was Ramon Arellano Felix, drug trafficker and fixture on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, as well as on the lists of 2 Dead Crew, Ghostwriter and Pocketful of Posies.
The most violent of the brothers in the Arellano Felix cartel, Ramon was the gang's chief enforcer, orchestrating the slayings of about 300 police, prosecutors, judges, rivals (often with their wives and children) and the cherry on the sundae, Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, shot to death in a fusillade of bullets at the Guadalajara airport in 1993. The hitters (members of the San Diego Logan Heights street gang who Ramon had contracted for the job) confused the cardinal's big shiny car with that of rival gang leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera and killed Cardinal Posada, his driver and five other people. Whoa, lo siento.
In Mazatlan to personally kill another rival - "El Mayo" Zambada - Arellano died when a policeman he had mortally wounded managed to squeeze off a last return shot. And in a final twist, gamesters were left hanging when his body was spirited away from a local funeral home and cremated. Only with the capture of his brother, Benjamin, and DNA tests on a blood stain in Mazatlan did authorities confirm he was indeed dead.
And in the 'hood...
September 13, 1996 - Tupac Shakur (8)
September 7th, following the Tyson/Seldon fight in Las Vegas, Tupac Shakur was on his way to a non-violence benefit with Death Row Records president Marion "Suge" Knight at the wheel. A white Cadillac pulled alongside and opened up on passenger Tupac, who took four slugs in the drive-by. It was the second time he'd been shot in two years, and this one took. While it wasn't particularly stylish, it was a heck of a lot of points in a wild & wooly finish to the rapper's career. Rookie Clean Underwear was the style king on this one, because he alone had Marion Knight on his list and almost had two hits at once. Also scoring: Blunt Instrument, Bury Pranksters, Death Warmed Over, Dinner with Jack Klugman, Gratefully Dead, The Great Beyond, Last Gasp, Lincoln's Brain (logging in with a 6.0 QPA), 9-Jack-9, Plug Pullers, Scorpio, L. Smith, 2 Dead Crew, Winterkill and Yule Iggy.March 9, 1997 - Biggie Smalls (8) - P. & E. Hepner, 2 Dead Crew
Many suggested that this was a tit-for-tat slaying and two lists were hip to that undercurrent as they tasted the street wine of success with eight huge points on 280-lb. rapper Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G., who had been blamed for Tupac's slaying. While seated in his truck, Biggie was boosted from the driver's seat directly into the Hereafter by a gunman with a penchant for sitting targets and no fear whatsoever of the six off-duty L.A. cops who were supposedly bodyguarding His Royal Bigness. Signifying their foresight were the aptly named 2 Dead Crew (who had also tallied on Tupac!), and P. & E. Hepner. The hit forshadowed 2 Dead Crew's next rapper, Big Pun, who died of natural causes, but in a really big way.
On to '79 Heavies