August 6, 1951
Loose and wild, the Two Tonys were desperados, living audaciously—and they died sprawled out in the front seat of a car somewhere near Hollywood Boulevard in one of the most infamous hits in mob history.
Tony Brancato was largely regarded as just a low-level hood from Kansas City, but that’s not how he saw it. As far as he was concerned, he was going places and Kansas City just wasn’t big enough to hold him. That’s why he headed over to the bright lights and fast times in Los Angeles to work for Mickey Cohen, one of the big cheeses out there in LA. His brother Norfia also worked for Cohen and there seemed a prospect that Norfia could get him a real sweet gig out there.
As soon as Tony Brancato hit the coast, he began to make himself unpopular, muscling in on other people’s rackets and generally stirring up a lot of noise. It wouldn’t do. Cohen had a lot of problems of his own, what with tax charges and a war with another LA mobster, Jack Dragna. For Cohen, control of the entire city was at stake, and he didn’t have time to babysit Norfia’s little brother.
So Tony Brancato struck out on his own for a bit, did a little freelancing, not really getting anywhere. Then he got the brilliant idea of bringing his old pal Tony Trombino down from Kansas City. Once Trombino hit the town, things started to come together and the two pals let loose, getting into everything: robbery, narcotics, murder. They were even suspected of the murder of Bugsy Siegel—but so were a lot of others. Leaving a trail behind them a mile wide, the Tonys didn’t care how they pulled off their jobs and it showed. By the end of their career they had been arrested a total of forty-six times.
The two Tonys never seemed to realize that there were some targets that should be considered off limits. One case in point: on May 28, 1951 the Tonys, and some other gangsters, held up the sports betting concern of the Flamingo Hotel. The total haul of the heist was $3,500. It was not much of a paycheque, but the truth was that with the Flamingo job, the Tonys had now officially bitten off more than they could chew.
The Flamingo had been built by Bugsy Siegel, and although by now he was well and truly dead, the joint was unquestionably a mobbed-up operation. Basically then, the Tonys had just ripped off the mob. After that Jack Dragna got into the picture and it was pretty much a done deal as far as the Tonys were concerned.
Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno was given the contract, along with Charlie “Bats” Battaglia. And on the night of August 6, 1951, the end came for the two Tonys as they sat in their car, waiting to hear the details of a big score that was supposedly coming their way. It was just a lure of course, something to dangle in front of the Tonys so they could get whacked.
The cops never found out who killed Brancato and Trombino until Fratianno flipped in 1977 and named the Tonys as just one of the hits he’d done. It’s to be hoped the Tonys enjoyed that $3,500.