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Angelo Bruno
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Angelo Bruno (May 21, 1910 - March 12, 1980) was a member of the U.S. Mafia who ran the Mafia's faction in Philadelphia.
Born in Sicily and emigrated to the USA in his teens, Bruno settled in Philadelphia. He was a close associate of New York City boss Carlo Gambino. He became the boss of the Philly Mob, as the Mafia faction in that city was known, in 1959. He was also the only sitting boss of a family outside of New York City to sit on The Mafia's ruling Commission.
Bruno was known as The Gentle Don because he preferred conciliation to violence. His leadership was regarded as successful in that his crime family avoided the intensified scrutiny by both the media and law enforcement which outbreaks of violence brought to other families. Bruno himself avoided lengthy prison terms despite several arrests, his longest term of imprisonment being two-years for refusing to testify to a Grand Jury.
To avoid receiving undue attention from the FBI and other authorities, Bruno did not allow his family to deal in narcotics, preferring instead to concentrate on more traditional pursuits, like bookmaking and loansharking.
Before long, however, factions within the family, angered by missed opportunities for profit, sought to take over the Philly Mob by betraying their aging boss. On March 12, 1980, sixty-nine-year-old Angelo Bruno was killed by a shotgun blast in the back of the head as he sat in his car. It is believed that the killing was ordered by Anthony Caponigro, Bruno's consigliere.
Caponigro was himself murdered just a few weeks later, as retaliation from the Commission in New York for carrying out an unsanctioned assassination of a family boss. Philip 'Chicken Man' Testa led the family for a brief period (one year), but was killed by a nail bomb at his home, the result of an attempt by Peter Casella, Testa's underboss, to become the boss of the Philadelphia mob. Through shrewd insight, Nicodemo Scarfo, a violent rising mob figure, took over Bruno's crime organization.
However, with the death of The Gentle Don, the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra soon began to fall apart thanks to informants, infighting and successful prosecutions of high-profile mobsters like Scarfo.