On this day in 1977 Frank Bompensiero who was 71 at the time, was shot to death at close range with a silenced .22 caliber handgun while standing in a phone booth.

The order came from Jimmy Fratianno who was a close associate to Bomp.

On the evening of 10th February 1977, Frank "Bomp" Bompensiero stepped into a telephone booth near his San Diego home and never walked out. The 71-year-old mobster was shot at close range with a silenced .22 calibre handgun, the weapon of choice for a clean, quiet hit. For a man who had spent decades as one of the most feared figures on the West Coast, it was a fitting, if brutal, end — the same cold efficiency he had so often delivered to others was now visited upon him.

Bompensiero had been a made member of the Los Angeles crime family since the 1940s, serving under a succession of bosses and earning a fearsome reputation as a reliable and ruthless enforcer. Born in Milwaukee in 1905 to Sicilian immigrant parents, he had gravitated towards organised crime from an early age, eventually establishing himself in San Diego where he ran a network of illegal gambling operations and acted as the family's primary representative in the region. His loyalty, at least as far as the bosses were concerned, was never seriously questioned — until it was.

What Bompensiero's associates did not know, and what would only become fully apparent after his death, was that he had been secretly cooperating with the FBI for several years prior to his murder. Facing serious federal pressure and with few options remaining, Bomp had turned informant, feeding information to federal agents while continuing to operate within the mob. It was a dangerous double life, and one that could only end one way.

The order for his execution came from Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno, at the time acting boss of the Los Angeles family and a man Bompensiero had long considered a trusted ally. The irony was considerable — Fratianno himself would later become one of the most significant government witnesses in American mob history, ultimately cooperating with authorities and testifying against numerous organised crime figures across the country. The two men, in a sense, chose the same path; one simply chose it too late.

Bompensiero's murder served as a stark reminder of the mob's unforgiving internal logic — betrayal, whether real or suspected, carried only one sentence. His story has endured as one of the more compelling examples of the paranoia and treachery that defined the American underworld during the turbulent 1970s, a decade that saw federal pressure begin to crack the once-impenetrable foundations of La Cosa Nostra from within.