found a cool old article from ny times. . natale evola dies in june 1973. phil becomes official boss few months later. he choses nick m as underboss. galante gets out in march 1974. this article is about a teamster union. they kicj money up to phil, nick and phils brother carmine. the witness was a union guy who says when phil went to jail in june 1976 he made all payments to nick. this is at the federal rico trial of phil nick massino and like 10 other guys oh sal vitale in 1986.. so clearly rusty choose galante to be acting boss and it was only for a short time. from june 1976 till camine violates parole and gets locked up in dec 1977. 18months as acting boss then he gets released in 1979 and gets whacked.
A lot of Galante's power came from the fact that while he was not an original like Bonanno he was pretty damn close. He was also very tight with Vito Genovese. Like Genovese when he came back from Italy Galante didn't have to be boss to have power, he was a power unto himself. Some of the stuff that is commonly said about Galante I think was just legend like his having killed a few Genovese made guys after he got out of jail. I have never seen any of those guys that he allegedly killed identified, and if he did kill a few of their guys he would have been dead much sooner.
