An 86-year-old man who was decapitated after being struck by a truck in Brooklyn was revealed to have been a former mobster-turned-baker once known as “Tony Cakes.”
Antonio Conigliaro, was hit by a 31-year-old Department of Transportation truck driver at 3.30pm on June 12 when the 86-year-old was crossing the street “against the don’t walk sign in a marked crosswalk,” NYPD told The Independent in a statement. The incident occurred at the intersection of 92 Street and Dahlgren Place in Bay Ridge.
Conigliaro was once a “soldier” of the Genovese Crime Family and was also called “Tony Cakes,” “Tony Watches” and “Little Tony,” a 2005 federal indictment revealed. He pleaded guilty to the racketeering charges and was sentenced to 13 months in prison, records show.
Years later, he transitioned from crimes to cakes. The once acting mob captain also owned a “cheesecake distribution dessert business,” court records show.
“Later on in life he became known as Tony the Dessert Man,” Mathew Mari, Conigliaro’s friend and former lawyer, told the New York Post, which first reported on Conigliaro’s background.
One police source remarked on the ironic end to Conigliaro’s life, telling the New York Post: “He spent his life looking over his shoulder, but he forgot to look both ways before crossing the street.”
Conigliaro was pronounced dead on the scene, while the Department of Transportation (DOT) driver was not arrested, police said, adding that the investigation into the incident is ongoing.
One source told the outlet: “Now we know why that DOT guy was crying… he’s probably asking for witness protection.”
The Genovese crime family is one of New York’s so-called Five Families of Italian-American mafiosi, whose power reached its height between the 1940s and the 1970s.