Carmine Galante, the reputed organized‐crime leader, was slain in a barrage of gunfire and shotgun blasts in an apparent underworld execution yesterday afternoon as he dined on the patio of a quiet, sunlit garden in a small Brooklyn restaurant.

Two other men — a Galante bodyguard and the owner of the restaurant — also were killed. The 17‐year‐old son of the restaurateur was seriously wounded in the attack by three ski‐masked gunmen at the Joe and Mary Italian‐American Restaurant at 205 Knickerbocker Avenue in the Bushwick section.

All three of the slain men were unarmed. Caught by surprise, they were shot at point‐blank range as they sat with an unknown companion at a small table on the narrow concrete patio. The fourth diner, whose identity was being sought, was unharmed. He was said to have hurried away after the shooting, and investigators said it was not clear if he had played some role in the execution scheme.

Mr. Galante, a short, baldish, husky 69year‐old man, was blown backward by the force of a shotgun blast that struck him in the upper chest and by bullets that pierced his left eye and riddled his chest.
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Son of Restaurateur Shot

He and his bodyguard, Leonardo Coppolla, 90, who was shot in the head, died instantly. The restaurant owner, Giuseppe Turano, 48, was shot in the head and shoulder and died later en route to Wyckoff Heights Hospital; his son, John, 17, was shot twice in the back in another part of the restaurant as he ran toward the patio when the shooting there began.

The killers, believed to be underworld “hit” men fulfilling a contract, ran out, joined several armed accomplices who had acted as lookouts and sped away in two or three cars. Three stunned diners in the restaurant fled ahead of the killers, whose getaway was witnessed by storekeepers in nearby shops and neighbors gaping from the windows of three‐story tenements overlooking the street.

“I was walking down the stairs when heard sounds like cherry bombs going off,” said Lisa Santiago, whose apartment overlooks the patio. She said she had counted six blasts.

The proprietor of a business nearby, who asked not to be identified, said: “I heard a whole lot of shots. I thought it was some firecrackers. When I saw a guy with a rifle, all I did was come back in my store. I didn't want to get shot.”

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“There was no warning whatsoever,” said one police officer. “They just walked in calmly and began shooting.”
Indicative of the surprise with which the killers struck, a cigar Mr. Galante was puffing when the barrage erupted was still clenched In his teeth when the police arrived at the blood‐spattered patio.

Near the three sprawled and bloody victims, a half‐finished lettuce and tomato salad, some rolls, a peach and half‐finished carafe of red wine were still standing atop the floral‐pattern oilcloth on the table.

The patio was littered with double‐O buckshot, a large‐size shotgun pellet, and a number of .45‐caliber shell casings. The police said shotguns had definitely been used in the attack, but they said they were unsure whether the bullets had been fired from pistols or automatic rifles.

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Law‐enforcement sources said that Mr. Galante, whom many authorities considered one of the most powerful organized crime figures in the nation, had been marked for a gangland slaying for a year or more because of his alleged aspirations to succeed the late Carlo Gambino. The body of Carmine Galante lay behind an overturned chair, at right, as a police photographer recorded the scene terday in the backyard of the Joe and Mary Italian‐American Restaurant on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn. the underworld ‘figure once known as “the boss of all bosses.”

Lieut. Remo Franceshini, the head of the Queens District Attorney's detective squad and former head of the Police Department's organized‐crime squad, said he believed Mr. Galante had been executed on orders from a rival for power in the underworld, Frank Tieri, who is described by law‐enforcement authorities as the head of a crime “family” organized by the late Vito Genovese.

Mr. Galante, who had served 12 years in prison on a narcotics charge and an additional 17 months for parole violation, had been free on $50,000 bail since March 23 pending a parole hearing. He has been described by the police as the head of the 200‐member crime “family” formerly headed by Joseph Bonanno.

Apartment in Little Italy

The owner of a dry‐cleaning shop in Little Italy, Mr. Galante lived officially in an apartment at 160 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, but law‐enforcement sources said he had lived for years with woman friend at 155 East 38th Street. The superintendent of the Waverly Place building said that in the eight years he had worked there he had never seen Mr. Galante.
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The shooting yesterday was the most sensational underworld slaying in New York since Joseph Gallo was gunned down on April 7, 1972, in a restaurant in Little Italy.

The slayings yesterday occurred at 2:50 P.M., according to accounts provided by the police and eyewitnesses in nearby shops and tenements on the block, Knickerbocker Avenue between Jefferson and Troutman Streets in a predominantly Italian and Hispanic section.

Although various witnesses were believed to have seen portions of what happened, many were reluctant to talk about the slayings and there were conflicting accounts about how many assassins were involved and how many cars they used. At least five; and perhaps seven or more. men, were involved, authorities said, although only three were believed to have fired the fusillade of fatal shots.

The police said the slaying had been carried out with swift precision. By one account, two men used a black Cadillac limousine to block off traffic on nearby Jefferson Street, apparently to insure smooth getaway, while five others pulled up outside the restaurant in one or two cars, variously described as a blue Mercury and a gray late‐model car.

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Deputy Inspector Martin Hayes said that three gunmen entered the restaurant while two others stayed at the front door, standing lookout and waving guns at passers‐by.

Only three customers, in addition to Mr. Galante and his companions, were dining in the restaurant, which is the width of two storefronts and has two indoor dining rooms, one behind the other, in addition to the outdoor patio in the rear. Yellow curtains hung across the front windows and just inside the door hung a picture of “The Last Supper.”

In the first room, the killers encountered John Turano, a Grover Cleveland High School student who has often worked at the restaurant, standing behind a counter and talking on a telephone. They ordered him to hang up and hurried toward the back, passing the mother and a 16‐year‐old daughter of the owner and cook‐counterman. In the second dining room, cloaked with brown wallpaper, they passed and ignored three diners at table and rushed out onto the patio.
Open Fire at Close Range

There, Mr. Galante, carrying $860 in cash and wearing blue slacks and a white, short‐sleeved shirt open at the neck, was seated with Mr. Cappolla, Mr. Turano and the unidentified diner in a modest but pastoral setting. Grape vines hung near the dining table and tomato plants sprouted from a small patch of ground nearby. Chest‐high wire fences separated the patio from adjacent backyards.

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The gunmen opened fire from a range of less than six feet, the police said.

Mr. Galante, struck in the eye and chest, was hurled backward onto the patio and fell on his back, his left arm slung across his chest and his right hand at his belt. A short black cigar protruded from his mouth, and blood streaked his face.

Half of Mr. Cappolla's face was blown away by a shotgun blast, the police said, and he also died instantly. Mr. Turano had part of the right side of his head and his right shoulder blown off, according to a witness in the hospital emergency room where he was pronounced dead.

'They Got My Father’

As the shooting on the patio erupted, the police said, Mr. Turano's son, ignoring the gunmen's warnings to stay put, began running toward the garden and was shot in the back twice, either by lookout man at the front or by the departing killers, who raced out and sped away.

A neighbor several doors away said he ran into the restaurant after the killers fled and found the wounded teen‐ager. “He shouted to me, ‘They got my father! They got my father!’ I looked at him and saw he had a big bullet hole in his side.”

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A blue Mercury believed used by the killers was found abandoned later in the afternoon at Ingraham Street and Gardner Avenue in a nearby factory district.

Other neighbors said that Mr. Turano's wife and daughter were in Italy on vacation and that Mr. Turano had planned to leave this weekend to join them. The police said they were told Mr. Galante had gone to the restaurant to have a “bon voyage” luncheon with the owner.
After the shooting, crowds gathered in Knickerbocker Avenue, a narrow, twoway street lined with three‐ and fourstory brick and shingle buildings with small shops on the ground floor and tenement apartments upstairs. A pizza parlor and a lawyer's office flank Joe and Mary's Restaurant.

While the neighborhood is somewhat rundown, the block on which the killings took place is in a portion of Bushwick that has remained fairly stable. Arson and decay have ravaged much of the Bushwick area in recent years, however.