"Castellano's Fall: The Brooklyn Bloodbath That Shattered the Gambino Empire"

Paul Castellano was never the street soldier type. Known as “Big Paul,” he came from money, influence, and blood ties to power—being a cousin and close confidant of Carlo Gambino. When Gambino died in 1976, Castellano was named boss of the Gambino crime family, bypassing the more traditional underboss, Aniello Dellacroce. This move created deep divisions inside the family from day one. Castellano ran the organization more like a corporate CEO than a mob boss. He favored white-collar crimes—extortion, bid-rigging, and infiltrating the construction industry—over the more violent, street-level rackets. He built a mansion in Staten Island modeled after the White House and surrounded himself with businessmen over gangsters, which further alienated the old-school mobsters. His increasing paranoia, refusal to attend meetings, and crackdown on drug dealing put him at odds with rising stars like John Gotti. The final blow came in 1985. Just before Christmas, Castellano was gunned down in front of Manhattan’s Sparks Steak House in a hit orchestrated by Gotti—his former underling. The execution was bold, public, and symbolic: the end of Castellano’s rule and the beginning of a new, more violent chapter for the Gambinos. His death marked one of the most dramatic power shifts in Mafia history.