Jerry Orbach and the Murder of "Crazy Joe" Gallo

I no longer think that Frank Sheeran murdered Joe Gallo. For my current thinking about that murder, see my later blog article Jerry Orbach and the Murder of Joey Gallo.

However, I will not delete this article here, since a best-selling book and a feature movie portray Sheeran as the murderer.

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In 1971, when Jerry Orbach (Jake Houseman) was 36 years old, he starred in the movie The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Orbach played the role of a Mafia gangster nicknamed "Kid Sally", who was based on an actual Mafia gangster named Joseph "Crazy Joey" Gallo. 

About three-and-a-half months after the movie was released (December 22, 1971), Gallo was murdered on April 7, 1972, in Manhattan. Gallo was murdered while he and some of his friends were celebrating Gallo's 43rd birthday. The birthday party had begun in the Copacabana nightclub and then had moved to Umberto's Clam House in Manhattan's Little Italy. While the party was in this second restaurant, a Mafia gangster named Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran walked into the restaurant and shot Gallo to death.

About three decades later, Sheeran told his life story to a lawyer named Charles Brandt, who wrote Sheeran's biography, titled I Heard You Paint Houses, published in 2004. This biography was turned into a feature movie, titled The Irishman, which was released in 2019. 

At the first restaurant during that birthday celebration, Gallo encountered Sheeran and Sheehan's mob boss, Russell Bufalino. Gallo mocked Bufalino for wearing a lapel pin demonstrating Gallo's support for the Italian-American Civil Rights League. After that encounter, Sheeran followed Gallo from the Copacabana nightclub to Umberto's Clam House and then murdered Gallo there.

The following video clip is the scene in The Irishman movie that depicts the encounter in the Copacabana nightclub. Sheeran is played by the actor Robert DeNiro, and Bufalino is played by the actor Joe Pesci. 

Jerry Orbach and his wife Marta were with Gallo in the Copacabana and also in Umberto's Clam House. Ever since Orbach had acted in the movie, he had spent a lot of time socializing with Gallo. Marta Orbach was writing a biography of Gallo. 

When Joe Coffey, the detective investigating the murder, arranged to question Jerry Orbach, Orbach brought along his lawyer, who informed Coffey that Orbach would not answer any questions at all. Years later, Coffey told the book's author, Brandt, that he might have solved the murder in 1972 if Orbach had cooperated in the investigation. Since Orbach did refuse to cooperate, the murder was not solved until the book was published in 2004.  

For more information, see the book's 2016 edition, pages 213-225 and 309-315.