Joseph Colombo (1914 - 1978)
Joseph Colombo, at the time of his installation of mob boss, was the youngest out of the five families. He was also the youngest to be assassinated. Many of the underbosses and soldiers considered him a fink and an opportunist for his rise to power. This opportunism and the idea of forcing his men to hold down legitimate jobs and brining attention to denying the existence of organized crime or his involvement brought along his ruin.
Colombo started out as a hit man for Joseph Profaci along with the Gallo brothers and the team was responsible for several murders. After Profaci was slain, Joseph Magliocco inherited the position, but not for long. Colombo was very ambitious and was given orders during the Banana wars to carry out the assassinations of some of the most powerful men in the underworld, namely Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. When Colombo brought news of Joe Bonnano's attempts to take over the underworld to the other mob bosses, gained their respect. After the conflict was over, and Bonnano was forced into retirement, Colombo was given the top job. But all would not continue to run so smoothly for Colombo. He wanted his men to hold down legitimate jobs, like being butchers or salesmen. Colombo was a salesman himself for the Cantalupo Realty Company in Brooklyn. The problem with all this was his men didn't like it, they thought it was foolish to hold down these jobs. The one benefit to being a mobster is you don't hold down a 9 to 5 job with the rest of the crumbs, you work on your own time, just as long as you're bringing in the money.
It wasn't just the façade of legitimacy that bothered the men, but also his creation and involvement of the Italian-American Civil Rights League. Colombo gained national attention by picketing through Columbus Circle in New York City to gain support for all Italian-Americans in fighting the stereotype of mob involvement. Problem was, he was a Mafia Don, and even though some people considered him a hero for what he was doing, the other mob bosses thought he was an idiot, including Gambino whose life was saved by Colombo a few years earlier.
Gambino had finally had enough. He went to Colombo to stop all the rallies and the attention that he was getting. Colombo refused to stop, though, and this would angered Gambino, who was considered the most powerful Mafia boss to ever exist in modern American crime. He had carefully carved out a piece of each family by personally placing one of his allies at the helm. When Colombo refused to follow Gambino's requests, it doomed him. On the second annual Italian-American Civil Rights League march, Colombo showed up early to help organize. As more people showed up, an African-American named Jerome A. Johnson stepped out of the crowd and shot Colombo in the back of the head three times. The crime boss fell to the ground while his bodyguards killed Johnson.
The connection of Johnson to any of the crime families was unclear to the police investigating the murder. At first they figured Johnson to be deranged until they found out that Johnson new the Gallo brothers, who had been assigned to do away with Colombo. Joe Gallo, knowing that none of his men would be able to get close to the crime boss, needed help. Through his connections to the black gangsters in Harlem, Gallo set up the hit.
The assassination was not entirely successful though. Colombo was still alive, but was in a coma. He remained that way, living as a vegetable for the next seven years.