Veteran political exile Carlo Tresca had survived more than half a century as a militant firebrand before his murder in New York during World War II. When he was 25, an Italian court sentenced him to either 18 months’ solitary confinement or 10 years’ exile for his journalism and union organizing. Tresca bolted to Switzerland, where he shared a room with future dictator Benito Mussolini, and then emigrated to the land of the First Amendment.

Over the next four decades, he organized strikes in New Jersey silk mills, New York hotels, and Minnesota iron mines. His weekly, Il Martello (the Hammer), exposed corruption and demanded a better life for working men and women. The NYPD long thought him a terrorist: The New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell fondly called Tresca the town anarchist and dismissed the Bomb Squad as “nice boys.” “Whenever there is a bomb, they come to see me. They ask me what I know, but I never know anything. So we have wine,” Mitchell said.

After Mussolini seized power in 1922,Tresca persistently campaigned against him and the local fascists who harassed Italian political exiles living illegally in America through either blackmail or denunciation to immigration authorities. Moreover, his disillusionment with the Soviet Union prompted Il Martello’s insightful coverage of Stalin’s tyranny. Thus, Fascists and Stalinists had between them organized at least three serious attempts on Tresca’s life before World War II, not counting the odd occasional assault. But by 1943, the militant editor and union agitator, though still fierce and brave, was a gentle, white-haired grandfather, “plagued by nostalgia” when recalling such headlines as TRESCA CONFIRMS BOMB PLOT AIMED AT ROCKEFELLER.

On January 11,1943, Tresca lunched with his mistress, Margaret De Silver, her son Harrison, and novelist John Dos Passos. Over spaghetti, veal scaloppini, cheese, bread, and wine, he denounced Generoso Pope Sr., publisher of New York’s Italian language daily, Il Progresso Italo Americano, whose enthusiasm for fascism until December 7, 1941, had long made him a Tresca target.

At about 7:45 p.m., parolee Carmine Galante briefly reported to the State Division of Parole at 80 Centre St. As Galante left, a parole officer tailed him to find whether he was violating parole by associating with known criminals. When Galante evaded him by driving away in a black Ford, the officer noted its license-plate number: IC9272.

At about 9:30 p.m., Tresca and an acquaintance, Giuseppe Calabi, left his office at 2 W. 15th St. for a nearby restaurant. With streetlights dimmed for the wartime blackout and gasoline-and-rubber rationing nearly eliminating private automobile traffic, the streets were dark and empty. As Tresca paused beneath a streetlight, someone moved soundlessly from the shadows and shot him in the back. Tresca turned. Another round, in the forehead, killed him before his body hit the pavement. Calabi cried for help. A local clothier called police, who arrived within five minutes. Calabi described the killer as about 35 years old and no more than five feet five inches tall, with his hat pulled over his eyes.

Two passersby saw a man run into a black Ford bearing license IC9272, already moving west on 15th Street. Police found the car the following day. They traced it to one Charles Pappas, whose address on the registration was an empty lot. Police arrested Galante later that day as a parole violator after finding him with known criminal Joseph Di Palermo, aka Joe Beck. Although Galante fit the killer’s description and several witnesses placed him in the black Ford with the IC9272 plates, he was never interrogated about Tresca’s murder.

Tresca’s eulogists denounced Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan for his unenergetic investigation of the killing. Strangely, the assistant district attorney in charge of the case had a history of fascist sympathies and connections, ranging from praising Mussolini in his college thesis to receiving scholarships from Generoso Pope. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show the NYPD, FBI, and Manhattan DA’s office had quickly concluded Galante shot Tresca. Yet Tresca’s murder remains officially unsolved for lack of evidence. His admirers believe the proof was not found because authorities didn’t strain themselves looking for it. Most speculations now center on Pope’s suave, soft-spoken associate, Frank Garofalo, whom mob boss Joseph Bonnano also considered his own “right-hand man,” who had allegedly threatened Tresca as early as 1934, and whose mistress was then an assistant United States attorney.

Galante, a killer implicated in nearly 100 murders, became one of the American underworld’s most powerful men as boss of the Bonnano crime family. But on July 12, 1979, while he was dining at Joe and Mary’s Restaurant in Bushwick, several people wearing ski masks charged his table. Galante went down, cigar in the mouth and seven slugs in the chest. His killers, too, have never been found.