It had all the makings of an old school mob hit: Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, the reputed head of the Gambino crime family, was shot to death outside his Staten Island home.

The murder struck many as a throwback to another era, when mafia families warred for control of lucrative rackets. It’s been more than three decades since the last targeted killing of a mob boss in New York. These days, the bosses are more likely to die of old age, as one did behind bars last week.

But Cali’s death in a hail of bullets on a quiet Staten Island block served as a reminder that, though diminished, the mob in New York has never gone away.

“It will always exist, and New York will probably always be ground zero for the mob,” said organized crime historian Christian Cipollini.

Cali, 53, lived in the hilly Todt Hill section of Staten Island, a neighborhood with a history of mafia ties.

The last crime family head murdered in the city – Paul Castellano, a Gambino family boss gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan in 1985 – lived just down the road. Two miles away, another house was featured in The Godfather, standing in for mafia don Vito Corleone’s home.

The neighborhood, with sweeping views of the New York skyline, is full of stately homes going for as much as $4m, many with private driveways set behind gates.

The old Castellano mansion, known as the White House, is one of the most ornate, decorated with fountains and gold finishings.

But Cali’s home was less flashy, a two-story red-brick house on Hilltop Terrace.

“He was a discreet man,” said one neighbor, who declined to give his name. “He stays home everyday with his family, with his wife and children.”

The neighbor said he heard shots on Wednesday night and then saw a blue car peel away. “I hear boom, boom, boom,” he said, declining to give more details. “It is dangerous for me.”

The alleged mob boss was shot at least six times after coming out of his home and exchanging words with his assailant, police say. A pickup truck had crashed into Cali’s Cadillac SUV, a collision that may have been staged to lure him out of the house.

“We thought those days were over,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday. “I guess old habits die hard.”

There have been no arrests, but Cali’s organized crime ties are a “focal point” of the investigation, said Dermot Shea, chief of detectives at the NYPD.

A neighbor who gave his name as Thomas said he was watching TV when he heard shots ring out. “I heard five, six or seven gunshots,” he said.

The neighborhood is home to a number of people with mob ties, locals said, but they rarely make waves.

“Nobody was expecting that because it’s a safe neighborhood,” Thomas said.

“There’s so many mob members out here ... They’ve been here for over 40 years, before I was even born,” he said. “They don’t bother nobody. They do what they do and we do what we do. So for this to happen yesterday was crazy.”

Another woman said she was not surprised to hear about the mob murder.

“They all live up there,” she said of Todt Hill, recalling that she was the last person to wait on Castellano before his own murder more than three decades ago. “Please, I got subpoenaed to court and everything. I stay out of this,” she said before climbing in a car and driving off.

A number of mafia members moved to the wider open spaces of Staten Island from the crowded neighborhoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn starting in the 1950s and 60s, said Cipollini, not unlike middle-class families who made the same upwardly mobile move.

“The upper management bosses never live where they work,” he said. “These guys are human, so they’re raising families and want to keep them away from that work.”

These days, Staten Island has been trying to combat its reputation as a hotbed for mob activity, which leaders say is outdated.

When MTV announced a reality show called Made in Staten Island, produced by the star of Mob Wives and featuring young people trying to avoid mafia lives, outraged residents started a petition against it.

The show portrayed the borough as a “cesspool of gangsters, meatheads and low lives”, the petition said. “It is built on the premise that kids from Staten Island all grow up surrounded by the mafia in their lives; this is far from the truth.”

The Gambino family is best known for the exploits of its famed boss John Gotti, who died in 2002.

“John Gotti was the poster boy of the mob. Frank Cali was the complete opposite,” said Cipollini, the author of Murder Inc.: Mysteries of the Mob’s Most Deadly Hit Squad. “Frank Cali was the quiet mob boss.”

Cali was believed to have a hand in the food service business, he said, one of the ways New York mobsters have found to stay in business long past their heyday.

They have largely been pushed out of the waste hauling and concrete industries they once dominated, and Latin American cartels have more control in the drug trade, while Russian gangsters control cybercrime. Still, the mafia has persisted.

“They’re always going to have a hand in narcotics, and there is still evidence that there are industrial rackets they try to strong arm into. And they’ll always control the illegal gambling,” Cipollini said. “There will always be the basic shakedown.”