Joseph Colombo /// Episode: 73 /// Part 2 | Forensic Files

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a beer, and let's talk some true crime. [Music] We are ready for part two of our
interview with Don talking about Joseph Columbbo. Just a little recap here. At the height of Joseph Columbo's influence
on June 28th, 1971, he was shot while standing inside a press barricade at Columbus Circle a few hours before an
Italian American civil rights rally. The shooter, Jerome Johnson, was immediately
subdued and handcuffed by police. Johnson had posed as a cameraman with official press credentials. Minutes
after Johnson was subdued, he was shot and murdered while still handcuffed and surrounded by a sea of New York Police
Department. >> Yeah. And Joseph Columbo would survive the the attack or the attempted
assassination. He would end up in a coma for roughly about seven years. >> Yeah. And we we know who the shooter is,
but the who was operating the strings, you know, on the puppet. >> What was the motive? And who and was
this a hit? Was this a lone gunman? Was this a hit? Was this a conspiracy by the
government? We're going to dive more into that right now. >> And the other thing too here, Captain,
we got Jerome Johnson who's killed after the shooting and his murder's unsolved as well.
>> So, hold on tight. Here it comes. Part two with Nick and Don. I agree with what Columbbo was trying to
do, trying to keep the FBI under wraps and holding them to the the set of laws that they've created and been a part of.
But don't we find this a little bit hypocritical? Because I mean, he's not really a lawabiding citizen himself. of
I I mean, if you were to take everything in hindsight and look at all of it, was
he the person that was supposed to be championing this cause? And you know, the the answer has to be yes, because
who else had the balls and who had the courage and who had the people and who had the people behind organized crime to
make something like this happen? But yes, when you're when you're looking at this through the mic, you know, if you
look through, it's depends on what scope you're looking through this. If you look
at through the microscope, you're saying, "No, this is not Joe Columbo's job. Joe Columbo is a criminal. Joe
Columbo could have killed people. We just need to attack and go after people like him." And then if you do, if you if
you if you cut him off from doing this, you know, did you have any community leaders at the time that would fight for
something like this? So I think because what was happening to him and to his family and the fact that he may have
been in this storm was the reason why he knew how hard you had to fight against these people to stop all this from
happening. And it's it's it's a it's it's really difficult because you have to compartmentalize how you believe who
you believe Joe Colbo was. Can you be the type of person that wakes up in the morning um goes to work uh collects
money on a number racket, let's say, and I'm just I'm just putting this all out as example. These aren't things that I
know that he was doing, but uh you know, collecting on lone sharking and then going in to the FBI and saying, "Hey,
you guys are you know, you're you can't come and search my home without a warrant and you shouldn't be wiretapping
my phone and you shouldn't, you know, have people sitting in a car watching people go to eat and that's not what
taxpayer money should be for." So, it's really it's a it's definitely a thing that leans into is he a hypocrite for
doing this? Um, but I have to say that, you know, the reason that he's doing this because I think he's he's a victim
of this. So, he has to he has to do this. I think he was backed into this. >> So, Joe Columbo decides to pick a fight
with Jay Edgar Hoover, one of the most powerful men in America. That takes some balls.
>> Yeah. Um, Joe had uh had no fear. That was definitely something a lot of people
had told me about him. Um, you know, he was short in stature, but he was very large in heart and strength. And this
was a guy that would he went after the probably the scariest human being in the United States at the time above the
president. Um, and when he did this, he did this with intelligence. Um he knew that the strength of the people and the
mob meaning the folks you know like Roman mob could change things in society. And what really probably
affected the FBI and and the Justice Department was when Joe made an example and he marched 200,000
people into Columbus Circle and then rallied and took tens of thousands of those people to the FBI offices and it
started getting to the point where it was the crowd control was not even legal to be handled by the police department
and Joe had to calm everyone down and send everybody home. and he started to see that, you know, Joe wasn't just
going after the FBI, he was going after them with a weapon that could not be um could not be silenced, which was the
voices of all these people and the action of all these people. So Hoover, as big and as powerful as he is, he is
only one person. And and after that rally, the first unity day rally in in 1970,
um President Nixon had to have uh they made a speech and it was at the attorney general, actually,
John Mitchell, who who made the announcement on national television that the words Lakota Nostra and Mafia would
no longer be used in any government uh paperwork or any government dialogue because it was defamatory against the
Italian-American people. And Joe's crime cry for this. But why he was fighting against those words so much was because
he felt that there if there's crime, there's crime everywhere. There's crime in the community amongst Latinos.
There's crime in the community amongst the Jews. There's crime in the community amongst the blacks. If if one or two
people conspire to commit a crime together, well then at that point you have a conspiracy or you have an
organization. And it seemed that the Justice Department only wanted to lock up, go after and and sit and watch
Italian-Americans and mafia. And not only through the the Justice Department, but also through television media. Um,
we've seen plenty of films come out up until this point. And they were all aimed at the Italian-American community
and and mafia. And this is what people were being known for. any person that you saw on the street that was
successful that had a a nice jacket and a nice car and wore gold, they were mafia. They were like Kosinostra and and
Joe had a disdain for these two words and just felt that this was going to hurt his community for anyone to be
successful and take it seriously. So, um he went after Hoover and he went after the Justice Department first. This is
the biggest battle that he could have went after first. Um, he did this before he went after the media people, but he
was successful and and that was definitely I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall if Nixon was
having a meeting with John Mitchell and and Ed Jay Edgar Hoover discussing how they needed to take those words out and
not only take them out but bow down and tell it to national television that those words would no longer be used.
>> Now, this will play a big part in the attack that will happen later. But tell
us what Unity Day is. Unity Day was the rally that was held in Columbus Circle on 1970. Um, and it was
the first one was in in June on the 29th, I believe, in 1970. Um, this was this was what Joe wanted to do. He
wanted to show the force of the Italian-American people. um he had been setting up lots of uh picketing at the
FBI offices and then they started to realize that they needed to make a bigger statement. So, he decided that he
was going to tell people to close their stores, um, have people take a day off of work, and they were going to rally.
And for the f, you know, he had seen what the Sons of Italy had been doing, and he had seen what aid had been doing,
and a lot of the Italian-American organizations, but he knew the power of the Italian-American people within the
city. He knew that they were building the city. He knew that they were working in the education. He knew that they they
they were such a strong part of the New York community, but they had never really organized. So he wanted to create
unity day to unite all of these different Italian-Americans at one place at one time to show the strength of them
in New York so they could be taken a little bit more seriously because the problems were that he wanted to combat
with the Italian-American Civil Rights League went way beyond problems with how the Justice Department was treating
criminals. They also had an education department that was run by Steve Ielo who later became the educations are
under Ronald Reagan. And what Io and Columbbo were working on was the fact that with the almost 15th of the
population in the school systems or I think it was even more than that there was no Italian-Americans that had any
administrative jobs in the education systems in New York as a vice principal or principal and they wanted to see some
change. They wanted action, you know, just like affirmative action. They wanted to see Italian-Americans in
positions of power um so that they can they can have a voice and they they also wanted to help uh what was a major drug
problem that was going on in the city for a lot of the youths uh in Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx at the time. And as
Joe started to learn more and more going around as a community leader, he saw that if they could organize and if the
Italian-American Civil Rights League could be a strong force, they could start knocking these problems out that
the government may not be able to help knock out, but community can as a whole. And one of the major cases that they
helped with, um, there was a young lawyer that was fighting, I don't know if you're familiar with the 69 Corona
homes case, uh, where they were doing eminent domain and they were going to knock down these 69 homes in Corona,
Queens so that they could put up school system, but all the homeowners had told them there's this huge parcel of land
that they can use to just build the school and you don't have to take our homes from us. And they did not want to
leave. But these people had no representation. So, it was a young Italian-American lawyer that was
fighting this case, but on his own, showing up at city hall and and and trying to without any political power,
he wasn't getting any leeway. And he went and spoke in front of the league at a league meeting. And then they got the
support of the league and they got protesters and they went down to city hall and they ended up winning the case.
And that young attorney was Mario Cuomo who ended up becoming governor of New York. Later on
>> in 1971 there was that famous event that took place and Joe Columbo is attacked
and he is shocked. Can you take us through that day and any events leading up to that day?
>> Yeah. Leading up to that um was where a whirlwind of trouble started happening
for Columbbo. Um one of the things was that Joe Gallo was released from from prison uh after serving about a 10-year
sentence. And at this time Larry Gallow his brother had already passed away. So there was really no one in that
organization that could say anything to Joe Gallow to sway his opinion. And he probably had suffered from poor impulse
control. And he came home and he was making it well known that he had a problem with Joe. He had a problem with
his Italian-American Civil Rights League. And I think that he also wanted to hurt Colbo. Probably a coup or some
something to that effect. So there was a lot of um there was a lot of things leading up to this day that um were
against Joe. And another one was that um the league was bringing a lot of heat to
the organized crime families because they started to see like wow a lot of these figures that are helping out with
all this we believe are involved in illegal activities. So I had mentioned earlier that there was a gentleman that
mentored Joe as he was a little kid who was very close with Joe's father and Joe
continued a relationship with that man throughout his entire life. Um that that man was Carl Gambino and Carl Gambino
and Joe's relationship was that of a father-son relationship. And I think leading up to the the unity day, the
second Unity Day in 1971, which which shooting happened, that Carl had expressed to Joe that he needed to step
down from the league, that he he had chosen a path in his life already and he needs to follow that path without
bringing the attention of the news media because by this point, Joe was already on television shows. He was doing radio.
He was, you know, speaking to reporters and it was just it he was while he wasn't getting arrested but not
convicted of anything, he was in in a little bit of a a heavy situation with with everything from the FBI to the, you
know, the state investigators. So Carl asked him to publicly step down and and and leave this in the hands of
his son Anthony and and Nat Maronei to let them run the organization. And Joe told him that he would. And Joe was
going to take a back seat and have his son and Natt Maronei run this organization. And leading up to that
rally, the rumors were also out that Joe Galla was going to do something to try to disrupt the rally. And there was
definitely a lot of things flying around in the streets of New York. And that day
prior to the start of the event, there was a gentleman Jerome Johnson who had press credentials. So he was in the the
press circle right next to the stage. And this is about two hours before the event started. Um he had a Bolex camera
and whether this weapon was on him or it was handed to him, many believe I believe that there was an accomplice, a
female woman that was also at the event that day. um this German pistol when Joe
turned around he pulled it out and shot it three times hit Joe all three times in the back of the head in the neck and
Joe immediately went down to the ground. Um you can imagine the pandemonium of about 15 20,000 people in this this
small congested area of Columbus Circle. Um many of them law enforcement. The shooter was tackled immediately by an
officer named Giuliani Skeozi who smacked the gun out of his hand and then he was held down to the ground by about
five to seven officers. You had FBI guys, you had um homicide detectives. I would even guess there was CIA there. I
can't confirm that, but I can confirm hom New York homicide uh police officers and FBI. And within about a minute or
two, while Jerome Johnson was handcuffed face down on the pavement, someone stuck
a revolver to his back and shot him twice in the back. He wasn't killed immediately. He actually lived until he
made it to Roosevelt Hospital. Joe was also taken to Roosevelt Hospital and with these three wounds, you know,
expected to die. They did emergency surgeries on him. Um, and he did survive. He lingered in a coma for seven
years following the shooting, but the shooting itself was fatal. Um, he ended up passing in 1978 upstate. Um, and
Jerome Johnson, again, he was silenced that day. So, we never knew who pro who put Joe Jerome Johnson to
shoot Joe Colombo. Who was the man behind this? Because there had to be a mastermind, especially after I learned
more and more about Jerome Johnson. this was not the type of person that would just walk into Columbus Circle and shoot
Joe Colombo for the sake of. And you know, in the book that I wrote, um the final chapter outlines four major
theories that were spoken of um about who would be behind the shooting of Joe Colo.
And I don't have a smoking gun, but I definitely have a loaded one because there's so much information that had
been put out by the media at that time that had no backing. There was no evidence to back any of the things that
the chief of detectives, Albert Seedman, was saying to the public. And every other week or so, he was saying he was
very close to making arrest. Very that he had sources. Seedman never revealed his sources. He never made an arrest.
And even what Seedman was saying and who Seedman was saying was behind the shooting, the head of the organized
crime task force, Dennis Holman from the FBI was countering what Seedman was saying, telling him that this was not
possible, that this was not that style of of of mob hit that he believed it was um for a specific amount of money. And
let me get into the the money on that situation because when Joe Columbo was shot,
a few things happened, right? You have the pandemonium. Imagine this. There's three bullets. Bang, bang, bang. The
Jerome Johnson gets tackled within a minute. Bang, bang. Jerome Johnson shot in the back. as the police are are
trying to secure a crime scene, what they could or the only thing that they could do with
so many thousands of people around there was they grabbed the guns that were used. There was another gun laying on
the floor. There was a briefcase laying next to Columbbo. And if you look online, you you can see a lot of these
photos. Uh Getty Images probably has them. Um, so when they went to the hospital, Giuliani Skiozi, who I
interviewed, the police officer that tackled Jerome Johnson and rode with him in the medical vehicle to Roosevelt
Hospital, he sat with Jerome Johnson in the room when they came in and placed a tow tag on him. And he also had these
two pistols and these two briefcases. And within those briefcases, Skozi knew that there was $40,000 in one briefcase.
And then the other briefcase had another set amount of thousands of dollars, a little bit less. Um, Albert Seaman came
in that day, looked at Jerome Johnson's body, looked at Skozi, and he had his homicide detectives with him. And while
Skiozi said he never saw Seedman touch the guns, touch the money, when he walked out of the room, the money was
gone, and that money never made it into the evidence lockers. And Seedman always
said he knew how much the hit was for. It is my belief that Seedman knew how much the hit was for cuz he thinks
someone walked into Columbus Circle and dropped $40,000 there so Jerome Johnson would what? Shoot Joe Colombo in front
of thousands of people and I believe over a thousand police officers were there that day. Grab a
briefcase and walk off with the money. this theory and and what Seedman believes happened that day is very
pedestrian and I I I love his book Chief and I think he's been behind a lot of great investigations in New York City,
but this just never sat right with me. And this was also, you know, reading Chief and reading other books was one of
the reasons I wanted to write this story and talk about Joe Colombo because this
is a cold case. This is we're talking 40ome years ago. This is an unsolved murder in the streets of New York. While
the murder is solved in in the pedestrian sense that yes, Jerome Johnson is the shooter of Joe Columbo
and Jerome Johnson is dead. We don't know the plan. We don't know the blueprint of why all of this stuff
happened. And you know, when I learned about Cointelp Pro and I learned about Hoover and and the dirty tricks that he
was doing in the in the government against our own citizens, Hoover had learned all
this stuff from the CIA and he had learned what we were doing in Iran and he had learned what we were doing in all
these other countries with counter intelligence and he was applying it here to the US to make sure that our
political system was not affected. So if there was any political dissident, they
had tactics that would go in to disrupt those organizations. And there's documentation of these tactics.
Everything from sending letters to communists that there was organized crime people that wanted to bomb their
buildings to create tension between communists and organized crime people. And and these were all the things that
Hoover was doing. And I I have to think that if this is the stuff that I'm reading in actual FBI documentation,
what was the stuff that was said and spoken about and done that wasn't printed on an FBI document? And and this
was a lot of the the interesting stuff that I unders I I discovered doing the investigation side, which I did about
two years of investigation and interviews before I even started writing the book. And I just had to believe that
there was so much more going on for the the political and the government and the
FBI side for Joe Colo's murder than just to believe John Q public story that this
was a power struggle and Joe Gallow hired a black person. He met black people in prison and Jerome Johnson shot
him and then Jerome Johnson gets shot and then a year later Gallow dies and that's it. Case closed. Boom. Let's move
on. >> Wow. So let me get this straight. We have this attack. It takes place in front of thousands of people. Two guys
are shot. They're rushed to the hospital. One of them dies. There's two guns recovered. And then the money,
there's money, but it's lost. And Joe Columbo, he's a strong dude. Somehow he's shot he's shot in the head and yet
he survives. >> Yes, he had shot in the back of the head. Um, one of them was actually more
towards the lower throat area. Um, but yeah, he he was shot three times in the back of the head and he survived it. So,
just to get a clearer picture here, we have two people that have been shot. One is the shooter of the of the first
victim. Are they both taken to the same hospital? Are they both taken to Roosevelt?
>> Yes, both shooting victims were taken to Roosevelt. Joe upstairs to ICU immediately to have emergency surgery.
And as I was told, Jerome Johnson died either right at arrival or a few moments after arrival at Roosevelt.
>> So Joe Colomo survives the attack, but his shooter Johnson is dead. Now Columbo
lives for years. We don't know what Johnson would have said about this attack or who was involved or what the
motives could have been for for the shooting, but Columbo's still alive, but he's in a coma for years,
>> seven years after the attack. um seven years and and I wouldn't say that this
was just a coma because uh as Anthony has told me he had the ability to move his hands and fingers and I do believe
that there was communication that happened um with him and his family members throughout those seven years and
there were many surgeries as well. So, I'm I'm pretty sure that, you know, this was um something that even people in the
organized crime world and in the FBI were very afraid that Joel was going to recover from this and and come out and,
you know, he he needed for for a lot of people, he needed to be silenced. They needed this to be a murder. They didn't
need this to be a shooting that he ever recovered from. Because I I do believe that like a lot of the assassinations
that we have seen from Bobby Kennedy to JFK to Martin Luther King, when we see a
leader that has the control of the people and his opponents are trying to defame him and and trying to ruin his
name and ruin his credibility and they cannot. And this is what was happening for the 365 days before Joe's death. The
FBI and the Justice Department were going after him with everything that they had. He was in the newspaper almost
every single day leading up to that shooting. And arrests were made leading up to that shooting like never before.
But it was he was the teflon d. There was nothing that was affecting his power amongst the people. And when you have
the power of the people, you have all of the power. And and this is what I would
believe would be the breaking point for the Justice Department and for an organization like Cointelpro and for
Hoover to have to say this man has to go. This man needs to be taken out. Like the Black Panther leader, like Martin
Luther King, like anyone that has power that they cannot tap into. Don, do you believe had Joe Columbo been
able to see who shot him? He was shot in the back. If he would have been able to
see who shot him or if he would have not been in a coma, would he have been able
to tell us who was responsible for this attack or what organization was trying to take him down?
>> I no, because I believe this this was the government. I think he would have known this and I think he would have I
think he would have went for the throat still with the same tenacity that he was
prior to the shooting. But I I don't think that he would have had I think it was the plan obviously was successful
because here we are 40some years later and and even after you know Hoover had passed away and they learned about
Cullen Telpo and they learned about all the illegal activities and the I don't want to say his name wrong but Senator
Keover or Coffover had had the hearings in 1978 where FBI members that were active in the 60s and the 70s had to
come and speak about the illegal activities. It was before one of those committee
hearings that seven men within a six-month period ended up dying before they spoke at those committee hearings.
So, we're we're talking about and I and I I hate to put tinfoil hat on here, but
this is very real stuff that has happened in the United States and with our government and with the power,
whether it be the military complex or the FBI that, you know, we can't we we cannot show the blueprint. Joe could not
come out of this coma and say, "This is what happened. A happened, then B, then C, then D, and it equals this." And and
I think that's the biggest problem with with any of the people that are out there today that they can't believe any
of these stories is because we don't have enough evidence. But even even with the evidence that we see sometimes we
just don't want to be distracted with our everyday lives to look at this kind of stuff and believe that it happened.
And I would say that that is relevant today with the situation of Julian Assange and Snowden. these people that
are telling you your government is doing illegal activity on you, spying on you,
and doing and we're all just waiting for the next iPhone to come out, keeping up
with the Kardashians, watching movies, watching football, getting involved in politics arguments, and leaving all this
very real stuff alone. >> They're very good at keeping us entertained so our minds don't wander.
Meanwhile, they're keeping tabs on us the whole time. >> Yeah. They either they Well, they either
keep you entertained or they keep you injured. And how they keep us injured is we're either financially injured or
we're injured by our health. And if if you're not, then you're entertained. So it's it's either one or the other that
keeps us kind of let's just say it's sedated by these drugs, the drug of injury or the drug of entertainment. And
and with that and and then also the easiest tactic that any ruler uses on its people is divide and conquer. And
we've seen one of the biggest divide and conquer situations here with this last political campaign, Trump versus Hillary
Clinton, where you have this nation versus against each other, you know, and here we are of thinking there's going to
be a change with what happens when we we I hope you know that there's really not
going to be a great change in what happens. They're just going to, you know, it's a two-party system and it it
creates a lot of uh news media hype and then here we go for another four years. >> I guess I'm lucky that I'm entertained
and not injured. Your book presents several good theories as to what actually took place and who took down
Joe Colombo. Could you go through one of those theories for us? One of the theories is the lone gunman theory that
uh Jerome Johnson was this uh wandery kind of you know in the weeds human being who oh wanted to be a filmmaker
and just wanted to be someone that people knew his name. He wanted his you know five minutes of fame and he had
done all these he was a criminal. He was he was arrested many times and at at I show evidence also in the book that it
was probably it's to surprise that he was even out in the streets and not locked up at the time of the shooting
because he must have there there's things that he was arrested for that he should have gotten jail time that he
didn't. So, um the lone gunman theory as I'm investigating that I'm starting to see more and more that there was
probably someone in the justice department helping him along. Um, and the lone gunman theory states that he
would have he had plane tickets to travel out of the country and he would buy rent this Bolex camera with $2,000
that he didn't have in Boston a few days before, drive down to New York City, take the Bolex camera in, he got himself
fake press credentials, um, and he had this German pistol and he goes and he shoots Joe Colombo and he was either
going to walk off or it was a su suicide mission goddess and and I I look at that
theory and I think this just doesn't add up. And then you can you could always go
and pull the insanity card and just say well insanity does not add up. Insanity is just insanity. There is no motive
needed. It is just because the man is crazy. But that doesn't add up either because he didn't make crazy moves. He
wasn't a lunatic. He wasn't someone that showed signs of a lunatic. was just someone that wanted to be someone. He
wanted to be a filmmaker. He had a lot of women that he slept with and used for different things. And this this is not a
lunatic. He was he was a um a charismatic dreamer. So the lone gunman theory never sat with me. Um, the other
theory was the the Gallo and Gambino theory, which was that Gallo had gotten the blessing from Carl Gambino to send a
shooter into Columbus Circle and kill Joe Colombo. Now with with this theory the the holes that are in it and
that's what I instead of saying why the one theory works more than the other mine was kind of the analization of
taking away why this doesn't work and the the first thing that I I noticed about the Gambino Gallow theory was just
that the commission let's say you know the organized crime commission they would sanction hits and if if Gambino
was sanctioning Joe Colbo to be murdered in Columbus Circle in front on 20,000. This is
against what the commission does. They put a law into effect um after the castle liberated wars that mob murders
would not be public murders anymore. And you could see if you looked throughout history that people were shot in a bar.
People just disappeared. There was no more public display of murder until 1990s when um Paul Castalano was shot in
front of Spark steakhouse because John Gotti wanted to bring back the old school style of murder. Now, even that
in itself, a public display of murder is not what we're talking about here. We're
talking about Carl Gambino commissioning Joe Gallow to commission a nonorganized
crime figure, Jerome Johnson, a black man, to go into Columbus Circle with a gun. We don't know what this guy's
marksmanship is like and shoot this gun with 20,000 people standing around, including the women and children of
organized crime people and anyone in the Italian-American community and police officers. So for someone who is
respected and and probably goes down in history as one of the smartest organized
crime leaders in our history, Carl Gambino, for him to be involved in this plot, I cannot believe it. I just I
can't think something like like that should. It just doesn't add up. And not only me, but this is where the FBI um
the FBI leader Daniel P. Holdman was challenging uh Albert Seedman about the murder. So
there's there's a lot of stuff with that theory that just didn't add up to me. As
well, >> there's got to be a second motive here. I mean, Columbo does not strike me as
the kind of person that's very hard to get to. I mean, he's very public. He's out there all the time. Why does this
crime why does this murder have to take place in front of thousands of people? I
mean, is is there a second motive behind making it a public murder? >> Well, now I'll go and I'll just ask you
and I'll ask the listeners out there, where have we seen this before? you know, again, if if this is an organized
crime and and the the organized crime figures want to see Joe Colombo silenced, they're going to do this the
way that they've silenced other leaders and organizations as well, and they're just going to make him disappear. And
with the the Gallow motive and and um there's a book out there called The Five Families by Pete the Greet Theopoulos.
And I actually in my book, you can read a lot about what I'm going to cite from that book as well. The Gallas were just
as surprised that Joe Columbo was killed, Joe Gallo was, and his his his crew that day as well because they were
plotting to kill him. And they actually made an attempt two times before Unity Day to kill Joe Colombo. And they wanted
to kill him, but they wanted to kill him in the style that someone was killed before where it was like, you know, he
was shot on a street, he was shot on the way home. You know, you find you you scope him out and you find out what his
routine is. you find out what the clean they want to do a clean hit. They want to make sure because remember these
organized crime people, they they wanted to make sure when they killed someone, he was dead. So sending in a black
shooter that you don't even know how this guy holds a pistol in to kill a man in front of 20,000 people surrounded by
police officers, not knowing how his nerves are, it just does not add up. But if we go back and we look, like you
said, the second motive, this is polarizing to kill Joe Colombo was to make a statement to the Italian-American
community. You kill him at unity day in front of all of these people, national headlines. It's on the TV news every
single night. Now you just it's that's ethnic cleansing. This is this we are destroying everything that he has built
up until this day. And we are telling people or any leader who thinks he's going to be the next Joe Colombo, this
is the fate of your community. This is the fate when you don't do things according to
I want to say status quo, but when you don't, you know, you don't do things um in the way of the political system that
we have in place for you. >> Making this murder take place in front of thousands of people, it kind of puts
the it hands the shooter and the guilty party to the masses on a silver platter.
really it really just kind of solves it and wraps it all up for the rest of us for it causes us to believe that what we
saw is real. >> Yes. Because there's really, you know, who what plan is in place and again I I
have to say that the only plan that could be in place that Jerome Johnson felt he was going to get out alive was
if he was in cahoot with with law enforcement and he had an FBI agent telling him, "Look, you're going to go
in there. You're going to shoot this guy. We're going to cuff you. we're gonna throw you in the back of a car.
You're gonna do a little bit of time in jail and then we're gonna send you to live in Ohio for the or in Kansas for
the rest of your life. So, yeah, you have to believe the lone gunman theory, but his psyche doesn't add up to the
lone gunman theory. So, it it it definitely was, like I said, a successful and wellthoughtout plan by
whoever put this into place. If it is not the insane shooter who walks into Columbus Circle and just wants to kill
someone and get on the news and die because, you know, if you look at all the other
assassinations that were were set up like this, all we ever get is is breadcrumb trails. We never really get
to where, you know, from JFK, Martin Luther King, we just we get breadcrumb trails. We get stories that have
changed. We get so many things that you can, you know, it depends on how you perceive the conversations
because they're all hearsay. We don't know these conversations that happened behind closed doors with the people that
were involved. All we get is a story that is told to us. And it's the same thing here in the Columbbo shooting. We
we have a story which is made up of multiple stories which is made up of multiple motives. But if you were to
look at the government side and the CIA side, you know, they win in so many different ways with this shooting, they
put a muzzle on the Italian-American community. They placed the blame on Joe Gallow and organized crime, which allows
them to appropriate more funds to fight organized crime because it went to the street into a public display. Then they
create a war amongst the mobsters because you have the Columbos versus the gallows again and that's going to create
a street war which again appropriates more money to fight organized crime, bigger government. So that the same
things that Joe was saying was happening. They kind of just said, "Oh, really? You don't like this? Well, let's
pump steroids into it and let's make it even bigger than it was before. Let's make the let's make what we're doing
blatantly obvious, but we're going to use the evidence of this war and the evidence of this shooting as our
platform to do all of this. And if you take that micro archetype and you say, well, where has government done this
before? Look at Vietnam. Look at any false flag operation that had happened. And in the book, if you read back, there
are so many small stories leading up to this shooting that show the evidence of what was like a false flag where they
plant evidence into a crime scene so they can get a grand jury hearing. With the grand jury hearing, they know they
can get these men into a room, get indictments for small, you know, they they would use all of these small
inciting incidents to create what they needed and to make it put it on a platform on a bigger scale and and allow
them to get the funds so they can make more arrests so they can make the government bigger and bigger.
>> Joe Columbo's in this coma for seven years now. How does he pass away? Do is this a pull the plug situation or does
his health take a turn >> a a post there was a surgery and um the complications of that had led to his
death in 1978. So there were there were many before but um it was it was at the point where there was you know as time
grew I think there may have been more medical advancements on different things that they can do to try to because this
is neuro this is in the bullets in the brain and um I I think it was just complications after the surgery that
caused him to fail where there was no actual plug to pull or anything. >> You were able to write this book with
the help of his of Joe's oldest son Anthony and the Columbbo family. Could you talk about Anthony and the Columbbo
family? >> He is definitely his father's son. Um, you know, and and as he's telling me and
describing his father, I'm seeing it in him. And especially when I think of anything that would be family related.
Um, Anthony is still married to his childhood sweetheart. Uh, he has a very close relationship with all of his
children. Um, so as the leader of the household and and a person that is so family orientated, he adopted all that
from his father. And I I think that uh Joe learned that probably from his father and the tradition of family uh
never left the Columbos is when it came from Anthony then Joe Columbo and then Anthony who I worked with of course
they're named after you know their father the first son. Um so yes, a lot like his father and definitely a leader.
Um his his leadership qualities as a boy even was recognized by his father and why his father appointed him to be the
leader of uh the vice president of the Italian-American Civil Rights League. He wanted Anthony to work in politics and
he I think he was priming him for that with the league and introducing him to politicians at a very young age and you
know pushing him right into public speaking. Uh Anthony has had so much media experience at a very young age
that this this is only because of the identity of his father that lives in him. So I I definitely say there's a lot
of comparisons between Joe and his son. >> Was there any apprehension on your part
going into this? You are writing a book that's dealing with a powerful event that could implicate some powerful
organizations. You know, we have the FBI and the the crime families. Was there any apprehension on your end?
>> Um, I think you don't there's no real line that you cross going into something
like this. Like this is definitely something I'm passionate about. And I'm passionate as a writer and I believe
stories need to be told no matter how graphic, no matter um, you know, how popular they are or unpopular they are.
So I think you you know as this story happened and you know in the beginning do I believe the FBI did it? you know,
okay, well, I'm I'm I'm just in the shallow end of the water. And all of a sudden, you end up and you're in the
deep end with what you're saying, which is, yeah, there's some real heavy people
and some big players involved in the story that I'm telling. And you don't really respect it in the beginning, but
then once you're in it, you have to have the same respect for storytelling uh as
you do or just, you know, go uh swing a hammer or get behind a desk and do something else. So I I think that uh I
just it just came to be what I w what I wanted to tell and keep telling. So I didn't have any apprehension in the
beginning, but I definitely felt the the gravity of the situation as I got further and further.
>> Well, I want to thank you, Don, for coming on the show and talking about your great book, Columbbo, the Unsolved
Murder. >> Nick, I I appreciate you. This was great and I I hope I did well for you and for
the show and I really appreciate you making you picking this and making time for me.
All right, a big thank you to Don for taking the time out and talking with Nick for the show. This is really
interesting. The crime family, the whole five crime family thing is is very uh fascinating to me. And then this whole
case in general, I mean, you have possibly a lone gunman and that he's killed right after. It's very similar to
like a Kennedy assassination. >> Yeah. We, you know, we heard Dawn talking about the different conspiracy
theories, right? But he really only went into one of them, the lone gunman theory
that he went into to detail about. Uh, of course, that doesn't seem like super likely, right? because we have the
shooter who's killed immediately afterwards and that makes sense because you know the re retaliation from Joe
Colombo's guys >> right is I mean it's a public event too >> but what throws a whole wrinkle in that
theory is the money you know why why is there money the money makes that definitely make a whole lot of less
sense some of the other theories that he discusses in his book is the also the Gallow theory uh the general thought
here is that Joe Gallow hated Columbbo wanted Columbo out of power and when Gallow went to prison, he made a lot of
connections and associates in the African-American community and that he somehow teamed up with them and that's
why we have Jerome Johnson as the shooter. Another theory is the Gambino theory. Uh there's also the Brat theory.
Uh and Brat stands for the black radical attack team. And of course there is the
FBI CIA theory. Oh >> yeah. which is a very interesting angle. And I I've been listening to this book
on audio tapes. Well, I call it audio tapes. I guess it's audiobooks, but uh it's definitely interesting. Something
that I've been diving into this week. >> And a real quick update here. Uh Joe Gallow. Um you know, whether or not Joe
Gallow had anything to do with Columbbo's shooting. Columbo would end up outliving crazy Joe Gallow. Yeah,
Gallow was shot several times in 1972 in a New York City restaurant. Uh this is when a gunfight broke out. He and his
bodyguard were there. They were attacked in between seafood courses uh by several
mob members. Crazy Joe Gallow was killed at the age of 43. >> So of course the recommended reading is
>> Columbbo the unsolved murder by Don Capria and Anthony Colombo. Um, and again to this is this is Anthony Colomo
telling his whole story about his father and his family to Dawn and because there's a lot of things that don't come
out in the news about this shooting. You know, we hear about the shooting, we hear about the mob boss, but this is a
guy that was a great husband. He was a great father. He was a community leader. Uh, and he was gunned down. He was
murdered and >> he was also fighting for equal rights. >> Yeah. And the whole thing is unsolved.
And at the time at the time of the case, you have the the one of the lead detectives who has an opinion on what
took place and then you have the leader of the of the he's like the mob detective and they have two different
versions of what they think happened and how it went down. So that that's caused
to want to investigate this further. So check out Columbbo the Unsolved Murder and you can do that by going to our
website true crimegar.com and click on the recommended page. And as you can see, sometimes we release one show a
week, sometimes it's two a week. One week we did three. Quit guessing how many shows we're going to come out with.
Quit refreshing on your on your device there. Just >> quit refreshing. >> Just subscribe so they're already there
waiting for you when you're ready to listen. And so hopefully us putting out two episodes this week helped you
through your work week and your commute because you guys mean a lot to us. >> All right. Now, you did the lead in, so
you have to do the lead out. Let's hear him try it. >> All right. Be kind. Be good.
>> No. >> Okay. Try it again. What is it? >> Until next time. >> Until next time. Be kind. Be good.
>> That's terrible. Until next time. Be good. Be kind. And don't litter. >> It's close enough, bro.
[Music]

Joseph Colombo /// Episode: 73 /// Part 2

Part 2 of 2

Being the leader of one of New York's five crime families does not come without problems. Joseph Colombo was the boss of the Colombo mafia but he was also a family man and a community leader. Coming up through the ranks was tough though. Joseph's father was killed by a rival gang when he was just a teenager. In 1970 he created the Italian-American Civil Rights League. Joe arranged for the community to picket against J Edgar Hoover and the FBI as they harassed and used questionable tactics to arrest Italian-Americans. In 1971 Colombo was gunned down at a rally in one of the most publicized assassinations in New York's history. The shooter was quickly hand cuffed and shot in front of police. Jerome Johnson shot Colombo but who shot Johnson? Was it the police, was it one of Colombo's men or was it the FBI? Author and director Don Capria joins us in the garage to discuss the biggest conspiracy in New York mafia history.

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Brief Summary

Don Capria discusses Joseph Colombo's assassination attempt and the conspiracy theories surrounding it, highlighting organized crime and government involvement.

Key points

Unity Day Rally. Joe Columbo organized a rally to unite Italian-Americans and combat discrimination.
The Assassination Attempt. Columbo was shot at the Unity Day rally, leading to a seven-year coma.
The Mystery Shooter. Jerome Johnson, the shooter, was killed shortly after the attack, leaving questions unanswered.
The Disappearance of Evidence. $40,000 in cash goes missing after a murder investigation.
Colombo's Survival. Joe Colombo survives a shooting but remains in a coma for years.
Public Murder as a Statement. The murder of Joe Colombo sends a message to the Italian-American community.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

So, hold on tight. Here it comes.

Teasing the upcoming part two of the interview.

3:57WatchAug 25, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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