Joseph Colombo
Boss of the Colombo Crime Family (1923–1978)
Joseph Anthony Colombo Sr. (Italian: [koˈlombo]; June 16, 1923 – May 22, 1978) was an American mobster who rose to the position of boss of the Colombo crime family and founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League.
Colombo was born in New York City, where his father was an early member of what was then the Profaci crime family. In 1961, the First Colombo War unfolded, instigated by the kidnapping of four high-ranking members in the Profaci family by Joe Gallo. Later that year, Gallo was imprisoned, and in 1962, family leader Joe Profaci died of cancer. In 1963, Bonanno crime family boss, Joseph Bonanno made plans with Joseph Magliocco to assassinate several rivals on The Commission. Magliocco gave the contract to one of his top hit men, Colombo, who revealed the plot to its targets. The Commission spared Magliocco's life but forced him into retirement, while Bonanno fled to Canada. As a reward for turning on his boss, Colombo was awarded the Profaci family. His only prison term would come in 1966, when Colombo was sentenced to 30 days in prison for contempt of court by refusing to answer questions from a grand jury about his financial affairs.
“Joseph Colombo” enters the record as boss of the Colombo Crime Family (1923–1978). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joseph, Colombo and Boss can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q640717. The Library of Congress control number is n2013001472. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1978, 1961 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Colombo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.