On this day‬ in 1924 the future Colombo Crime Family boss, Joe Colombo was born in Brooklyn. He was born into the mob and followed his father into the Profaci Crime Family where he would go on to move up the ranks. Joe Colombo also held the contract to take out Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese in 1962, on orders of Joe Magliocco who succeeded Joe Profaci. Magliocco backed Joe Bonanno‘s bid to take over the Mafia Commission and wanted revenge on Gambino and Lucchese for their support for the Gallo brothers.

Colombo made a brave move however, and decided to give Gambino and Lucchese the heads up. Magliocco ended up retiring from the Profaci leadership and Colombo took over and renamed the family.

On this day in 1924, Joseph Colombo Sr. was born in the Bensonhurst neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York, entering a world that was already deeply intertwined with organised crime. His father, Anthony Colombo, was himself a mob figure who met a violent end, allegedly murdered alongside a female companion in the 1930s. Despite, or perhaps because of, this grim family legacy, Joe Colombo followed the same path, eventually becoming one of the most recognisable and controversial figures in the history of the American Mafia.

Colombo came up through the ranks of the Profaci Crime Family, one of New York's original Five Families whose roots stretched back to the reorganisation of the American underworld by Lucky Luciano in the early 1930s. He proved himself a capable and shrewd operator, earning the trust of the family's upper leadership over many years. That trust, however, would soon place him in one of the most dangerous positions imaginable.

In 1962, newly installed boss Joe Magliocco handed Colombo a contract that could have reshaped the entire landscape of the New York mob. Magliocco, who had taken the reins following the death of founding boss Joe Profaci, was aligned with Joe Bonanno in a conspiracy to seize control of the Mafia Commission. To clear the path, he ordered Colombo to arrange the assassinations of two of the Commission's most powerful members — Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese, both of whom had thrown their support behind the rebellious Gallo brothers during the internal Profaci war.

Rather than carry out the hits, Colombo made a calculated and extraordinarily bold decision. He went directly to Gambino and Lucchese and revealed the plot in full. It was a move that effectively signed Magliocco's death warrant as a boss. Hauled before the Commission and found guilty of treachery, Magliocco was permitted to retire on health grounds and died shortly afterwards in late 1963. Colombo, rewarded for his loyalty and nerve, was elevated to the position of boss and renamed the family after himself — a rare honour that cemented his place in mob history.

Joe Colombo's story did not end there, as he later became famous for founding the Italian-American Civil Rights League and suffered a near-fatal shooting at one of his own rallies in Columbus Circle in 1971, leaving him in a vegetative state until his death in 1978. His legacy remains that of a complex figure — a ruthless mob boss who navigated treacherous waters with remarkable cunning, and whose name still adorns one of New York's five organised crime dynasties to this day.