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New York Daily News - April 15, 1999

All in the Family?
Mafia Boss' Nephew sought in B'Klyn Slay

By Jerry Capeci

Carmine Galante, 22, was named in honor of his uncle, the murderous Mafia boss who was killed in 1979 his bloody execution memorialized by a photo of him with an after-dinner cigar still in his mouth. Now police believe young Galante is a murderer, too. Galante, of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, is wanted in the Easter stabbing death of Bill Manolis, a popular St. John's University freshman, police said yesterday. Galante, a muscular neighborhood bully with four arrests since 1996, charged into a crowded Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, bar minutes before closing and plunged a knife into the chest of Manolis, 18, police said. The stabbing which authorities believe is not mob-related allegedly stemmed from a dispute over a woman, police said. "The whole family is devastated," sobbed Manolis' aunt Elaine Colaitis, who said the killing has destroyed his mother, Maria, principal of Soterios Ellenas parochial school in Park Slope, and his father, George, an electrician. "Such a good boy, the whole community is devastated," Colaitis said. | "There were 4,000 people at his funeral. Archbishop Spyridon, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America, conducted the services. Such a senseless thing.

"According to several witnesses, Manolis exchanged loud words in the Bee-Kee-Nee Barwith a teenager who was upset that his ex-girlfriend was speaking to Manolis. The teenager left the bar, only to return with Galante who immediately charged Manolis and stabbed him in the chest, police said. As Manolis fell to the ground, the two men ran from the bar and fled in a late-model Toyota Camry, which was recovered a few miles from the bar. Two days later, Detective Patrick Cuomo arrested Rocco Castellano, 19, of Gravesend and charged him with murder as being the suspect who first argued with Manolis and fingered him for his killer. Castellano being held without bail is not related to slain Mafia boss Paul Castellano. "My client is an innocent young man who is wrongly accused," said his lawyer, Alan Abramson. Galante's uncle, the boss of the Bonanno crime family, was killed in July 1979 on an outdoor patio of a Bushwick, Brooklyn, restaurant. In 1996, the younger Galante pleaded guilty to drug possession and received five years' probation. He was arrested at least twice more on charges of petty larceny in the next two years. Although those cases were dismissed, his probation wasn't revoked, according to court records. The Brooklyn district attorney's office was unable to explain why Galante's probation wasn't revoked.

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