Personally, I've always thought that the Galante cigar in mouth photo was staged . Probably by the cops. I've read that Coffey cop was the guy who put the cigar there.

That's probably the most iconic image of lcn.
Who thinks it's true/ false?

Staged or Real? single choice
	Staged
	Died with cigar in mouth
	Don't know/ care
Votes accepted starting: 05/18/22 10:30 PM You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

Agree with you totally.

There was a story that Joe Coffey put the cigar there for the photo. Considering Coffey's love of publicity, he may have been the one to start that rumor.

100 percent staged. what are the chances of man getting shot like that.dont if Joe Coffey himself put the cigar he was a lil of a ego maniac,,woulnt surprise me if he did ,,,Coffey great detective,,,became a DIVA in nypd

He died with the cigar in his mouth. You can see he's actually biting down on it and it's in his teeth pretty firmly. He also had a zippo lighter in his hand, he may have been trying to light it when he was shot. Remember, his bodyguards also blasted him because the police found casings from 5 different weapons when only 3 gunmen entered. Bonventre probably ambushed him at close range as soon as he saw the other guys enter.

Joseph Coffey has repeatedly stated they he let people think he placed it there but that he actually didn't, in fact you can find him speaking about that at the end of this video about Galante (made by me actually): https://youtu.be/1PVPPZ8RIwE

Nope. Coffey denies it. I think one of his bodyguards was the first to blind side him while he was lighting the cigar, hence why he didn't have a chance to react, it was most likely Bonventre who was a stone cold killer in his own right.

Coffey was a known liar, I would not go by his version of things.

Can you givean example of him lying? He's always seemed pretty straight up and matter of fact to me.

I also don't know why he would lie about NOT putting the cigar in his mouth? If anything he would want to accept that to get credit for it. It's very plausible for Galante to have died with it in his mouth, I'm convinced the masked gunmen were more of a ploy to take attention away from the bodyguards. I think the bodyguards had a cue to take Galante out as soon as the gunmen entered, Bonventre probably blasted him while he was lighting the cigar because the lighter was still in his hand.

He took credit for solving crimes he did not solve, such as the Son of Sam case. Other cops or detectives would do the work and make arrests in high profile cases, but he would step in to do the perp walk and handle interviews, always taking credit he did not deserve. He was close friends with reporters and would leak stories to them, and they would write favorably of him. Look him up, research him a bit.

Well I already knew he was a media diva, that's painfully obvious. As for taking credit for cases, he was a high level investigator since the 70s, it's always the higher ups who feed off of the work of lower level people, and that's at every job. I mean you can't mention a single detective by name who solved any big case in history can you? All you know is that a person was arrested, you see the perp walk then see the appointed spokesperson speak about it.

not only that he gave on an interview on bill bonnano interview saying that there was never no attempt on to wack bill life or his son,he was wrong there was a shoout in Brooklyn where his men where outgunn and ultimately were force to leave NY,,,,Coffey good detective later on he just became too phony self rigious republican