A ranking of the most notable mob funerals in NYC history

Publish date: 2024-05-07

New York City’s top gangsters have been memorialized in ceremonies that ranged from lavish to low-key. Here are some of the most notable and how they stack up:

1. John Gotti, 2002

The “Dapper Don” got a send-off that matched the style and swagger with which he ruthlessly ruled the Gambino crime family before dying of throat cancer in prison. His funeral procession featured 20 limos carrying elaborate flower displays and 21 more filled with family and friends. Weeping mourners screamed “Goodbye John!” when the hearse passed by Gotti’s Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens.

RATING: 5 bullet holes

2. Joseph ‘Crazy Joe’ Gallo, 1972

Actor Jerry Orbach, who played Gallo in the movie “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” was among the mourners at Gallo’s 1972 wake after the renegade Colombo mobster was rubbed out while celebrating his 43rd birthday at Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. As he lay in an open casket at the Guido Funeral Home in Brooklyn, sister Carmella vowed, “The streets are going to run red with blood, Joey.”

RATING: 4 bullet holes

3. Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante, 2005

Infamous for faking mental illness by shuffling around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe and slippers, the Genovese crime family boss died in prison while serving a 12-year sentence for racketeering and murder conspiracy. During a funeral Mass at St. Anthony of Padua Church in the Village, his brother, the Rev. Louis Gigante, railed against the feds for denying Vincent medical care behind bars, saying “there wasn’t a day he didn’t suffer.”

RATING: 3 bullet holes

4. Albert Anastasia, 1957

A mere dozen mourners attended the funeral for the Lord High Executioner of “Murder, Inc.” — but more than 200 onlookers lined the fence outside Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery for a glimpse of his interment. Denied a funeral Mass by the Catholic Church, Anastasia — blamed for 63 deaths he either carried out or ordered — was buried in a plain steel coffin in ground blessed by his brother Salvatore, a priest who skipped the service.

RATING: 2 bullet holes

5. Paul ‘Big Paul’ Castellano, 1985

Hundreds of mourners attended an open-casket wake after the head of the Gambino crime family was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in 1985 on the orders of upstart underling Gotti. But the Cusimano & Russo Funeral Home in Brooklyn announced the wrong date for his funeral to avoid media, leading to a secret service that even the FBI missed.

RATING: 1 bullet hole