On this day in 1991 Joey Naples, a capo in the Pittsburgh Crime Family (Youngstown, Ohio faction) was killed in a contracted mob hit at the age of 59.

Joey was killed by a single bullet from a high-powered sniper rifle, and the hit was said to have been orchestrated by Lenny Strollo in a power move to take over the Youngstown operations.

During his mob life Joey was a major player in the gambling rackets in Youngstown, and became a member of the Pittsburgh family in the early 1980’s. He had an older brother and younger brother who both suffered the same mob fate.

Sandy Naples was probably the most notorious mobster in Youngstown, but was killed by a shotgun blast at the age of 54 in 1960, whilst with his 28 years old girlfriend.

His younger brother Billy Naples took over most of Sandy’s rackets but he was then killed by a car bomb in the same decade.

On this day in 1991, Joey Naples, a capo in the Pittsburgh Crime Family operating out of Youngstown, Ohio, was shot dead in a contracted mob hit at the age of 59. The killing was carried out with cold precision — a single bullet from a high-powered sniper rifle — and served as a stark reminder that in the world of organised crime, loyalty and position offered no permanent guarantees of safety.

The man believed to have orchestrated the hit was Lenny Strollo, a ruthless operator with his own ambitions for control of Youngstown's lucrative criminal operations. For Strollo, removing Naples was not simply an act of violence — it was a calculated power move designed to consolidate his grip over the rackets that had made Youngstown one of the most mob-influenced cities in America outside of the major metropolitan centres. The city had long been a battleground for criminal dominance, sitting within the orbit of the Pittsburgh family whilst maintaining its own deeply entrenched underworld culture.

Joey Naples had been a significant figure in Youngstown's gambling rackets for years, formally aligning himself with the Pittsburgh Crime Family in the early 1980s. Pittsburgh itself had historical ties stretching back through decades of organised crime, with connections to the broader American Mafia network that had been shaped by giants such as Lucky Luciano during the consolidation of La Cosa Nostra in the 1930s. For a city like Youngstown, those wider structures provided both protection and constraint for men like Naples.

What made Joey's story particularly tragic — or perhaps inevitable — was that violent death was practically a family tradition. His older brother Sandy Naples was arguably the most notorious of the three, a feared figure in Youngstown's underworld who was killed by a shotgun blast in 1960 at the age of 54. In a scene that might have been lifted from a Hollywood script, Sandy was gunned down whilst in the company of his 28-year-old girlfriend. His younger brother Billy subsequently stepped in to absorb much of Sandy's racket empire, only to meet his own end in the same decade when a car bomb settled matters permanently.

Three brothers, three violent deaths — the Naples family embodied the brutal and inescapable cycle that defined mob life in mid-century America. Joey Naples remains a compelling figure in the history of Youngstown's criminal underworld, a city whose mob legacy continues to fascinate historians and crime enthusiasts alike.