Paul "Big Paul" Castellano

Castellano ran the largest Cosa Nostra family in the country for nine years and was shot dead on a Manhattan pavement six weeks before he was due in court on charges that would probably have finished him anyway.

He was Carlo Gambino's cousin and brother-in-law, and he inherited the family on Gambino's death in 1976 over Aniello Dellacroce, who had the loyalty of the crews that did the actual work. That split never closed.

The businessman

Castellano's interests ran to meat distribution, poultry and construction, and he preferred them to the traditional rackets.

It made the family money and it made him unpopular. He lived in a house on Todt Hill that the crews called the White House, took a percentage without being seen, and was regarded by the men under Dellacroce as somebody who had never been close to the work. The complaint was not that he was weak. It was that he was remote.

16 December 1985

Dellacroce died of cancer on 2 December 1985. Castellano did not attend the wake, which the crews read as exactly the insult it was.

Two weeks later, on the evening of 16 December, Castellano and Thomas Bilotti were shot outside Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street. John Gotti took the family within weeks and was convicted of ordering the killing in 1992 on the testimony of Salvatore Gravano.

Castellano had been a defendant in the Commission case. He was killed before it came to trial, and the eight men who did stand trial were convicted the following November.