Almost as soon as a powerful mob boss was shot and killed—seemingly assassinated—in front of his Staten Island home last week, the temptation to label it a mob hit was compelling.

That Wednesday evening, police have said, a driver slammed a pickup truck into a parked car outside the house of Francesco "Frank" Cali, the reputed leader of the Gambino crime family. That driver then apparently rang the doorbell, prompting Cali to exit the front door of his house and venture out onto the street, where, following a brief discussion, the gunman unloaded a torrent of bullets before fleeing into the night.


Cali was pronounced dead shortly after at Staten Island University Hospital.

Over the weekend, the saga started to come into sharper focus—but it also got considerably stranger.

As the New York Times reported, a 24-year-old Staten Island native named Anthony Comello was arrested in New Jersey Saturday, having apparently holed up at a family shore house in Brick. (He was reportedly slated to appear in an Ocean County court as early as Monday.)

Maybe this wasn't an old-fashioned whacking, after all: Though law-enforcement officials cautioned that the investigation was ongoing, some told the Times the killing could have been spurred by romantic longing gone wrong: Comello—who lived at home and did some construction gigs—may have had an interest in one of Cali's relatives, specifically a niece, according to the New York Post.


"I was shocked, initially, that it's alleged to be a private vendetta, or a private agenda," David Shapiro, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former FBI agent, told me over the phone, cautioning the motive wasn't yet certain. "That does surprise me."

The general idea seems to be that Cali nixed any potential relationship between Comello and his unnamed relative.

"The investigation is far from over. We do not believe this is a random act," the NYPD chief of detectives, Dermot Shea, stated on Saturday, according to Rolling Stone. "We are well aware of Mr. Cali's past. That will be a part of this investigation as we determine what was the motive for the incident on Wednesday evening."

Comello's fingerprints were reportedly lifted from a license plate that he had handed Cali prior to the shooting (it had fallen off a car at the gangster's home during the crash), seemingly gifting the world a piece of evidence that could link him to the crime. The beat-up truck was discovered around the time of his arrest in Jersey. According to the Daily News, Comello inched toward some kind of self-defense claim, and indicated he may have smoked weed prior to the shooting.

But Comello had no serious criminal background, according to a previous Times report summarizing the arrest, even if he was briefly investigated over "his strange behavior in a federal courthouse," and if, consequently, he had "any history of terroristic threats."


On Sunday, Comello's lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, told the Post his client would waive extradition from New Jersey to New York City, in order to confront the allegations—charges were expected to include murder—head on.

The folklore around the killing, it would seem, has just begun. And some in the Mafia may not be happy about that.

"I do think the days where the mob would be willing to tolerate allegations of family wars across the headlines of the New York Times are over," Shapiro said. "Those are bad for business. Notoriety and infamy do not work toward their benefit. It's better, now, to be under the radar."

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