April 7, 1972

April 7, 1972, marks the killing of Joey Gallo at Umberto's Clam House in lower Manhattan. The book sets the death against the hours surrounding a birthday celebration and returns to it through conflicting accounts of how many gunmen were involved. Its later reconstruction favors a lone gunman and identifies Frank Sheeran as the suspected shooter, while distinguishing that claim from what the cited witnesses and reporting independently establish.

The Night and Its Timeline

Gallo’s birthday party at the Copacabana began at 11 p.m. on Thursday. By 5:20 Friday morning, Gallo was dead. The interval connects a night of celebration with the killing without, by itself, establishing the exact time or sequence of the attack. The book also places Sheeran and Russell Bufalino in New York that night, but that detail does not independently establish their presence at the party or at the scene of the shooting.

The Lone-Gunman Account

A later account by journalist Jerry Capeci drew on the original news coverage. Capeci recalled being at Umberto's Clam House during the early hours of April 7 and reported that Al Seedman, then the New York City chief of detectives, told reporters that one gunman had carried out the killing. This contemporary account challenges a version involving three shooters; it supports the number of gunmen, not their identity.

Later Identification and Dispute

A further account in the book describes a New York Times journalist who had witnessed the shooting and wished to remain anonymous. Eric Shawn showed her a small photograph of Sheeran from the early 1970s. She said she had seen the man before and wanted to obtain the book. Her recollection supports the presence of a lone gunman and links Sheeran to someone the witness recognized, but the described exchange does not report her explicitly identifying him as the shooter. Capeci later said that, if forced to choose who killed Gallo, he would choose Sheeran; that judgment is presented as an assessment, not as a finding established by the eyewitness account.

Significance and Limits

The book’s reconstruction brings together a reported statement from the night, later journalistic review, and an eyewitness recollection. These strands strengthen the case against the three-gunmen version, while leaving a distinction between evidence for a lone gunman and proof of that gunman’s identity. April 7 is therefore both the date of Gallo’s death and the point around which the book’s later investigation tests Sheeran’s claimed role.