On this day in 1943 Carlo Tresca, the publisher of an anti-fascist newspaper in New York, was crossing Fifth Avenue at 13th Street on foot when a black Ford pulled up beside him. A gunman in a brown coat jumped out and shot Tresca in the back and the head with a handgun, killing him instantly. Carmine Galante allegedly pulled the trigger, under Genovese orders as a favor to Italian President Benito Mussolini.

On the cold evening of January 11, 1943, Carlo Tresca stepped off the pavement on Fifth Avenue at 15th Street in Manhattan, unaware that he had mere seconds to live. A black Ford sedan crawled to a halt alongside him, a gunman in a brown overcoat leapt from the vehicle, fired two shots at close range — one into Tresca's back, one into his head — and was back in the car before bystanders could fully comprehend what had happened. Tresca was dead before he hit the ground. He was 63 years old.

Tresca was no ordinary victim. An Italian-born anarchist, labour organiser and firebrand journalist, he had spent decades making powerful enemies on both sides of the Atlantic. As editor and publisher of the anti-fascist newspaper *Il Martello* — "The Hammer" — he had spent years attacking Benito Mussolini's regime in print, exposing fascist sympathisers operating within New York's Italian-American community, and naming names with a fearlessness that few dared to match. In doing so, he had made himself a target not only for political extremists but for organised crime figures with a vested interest in keeping him quiet.

The prime suspect for pulling the trigger was Carmine Galante, a ruthless enforcer who would later rise to notoriety as a powerful figure in the Bonanno crime family and earn the nickname "The Cigar" for his ever-present stogie. Galante was widely believed to have carried out the shooting on the orders of Vito Genovese, the ambitious and calculating underboss who had famously fled to Italy in 1937 to escape a murder charge and had spent years cultivating a close relationship with Mussolini's government. The theory long held by investigators and historians alike is that Genovese arranged Tresca's murder as a favour to Il Duce himself, silencing the journalist's relentless transatlantic criticism of the fascist regime at a moment when World War Two hung in the balance.

Despite years of investigation, no one was ever charged with Carlo Tresca's murder. Galante was questioned and released, Genovese remained untouchable for years to come, and the case officially remains unsolved to this day — a fact that speaks volumes about the reach and influence of organised crime in mid-century America.

Tresca's assassination stands as one of the most politically charged mob killings in American history, a stark reminder that the boundaries between organised crime, political power and international fascism were far more blurred than most people cared to admit.