On September 25th, 1959 Anthony Carfano, AKA Little Augie Pisano, was found shot to death in his Cadillac near New York’s LaGuardia airport. Little Augie had spend the night with model Janice Drake at the Copacabana nightclub on East 60th Street and 5th Avenue. They followed up their clubbing with dinner at Marino’s restaurant on Lexington Avenue with several associates. While eating Little Augie received a phone call. When he came back to the table, he appeared clearly nervous and left immediately with Janice Drake. 45 minutes later both were found shot to death on a quiet Queens Street.

Little Augie had fallen victim to the power struggle that surrounded the ouster of Charles “Lucky” Luciano after his deportation to Italy. Little Augie had stayed loyal to Luciano’s acting boss, Frank Costello after he was forced to relinquish power to Vito Genovese. Genovese never trusted Little Augie after this power struggle. It is suspected that Genovese and his associate Meyer Lansky were behind the order to have Little Augie whacked. It probably didn’t help that Little Augie was possibly moving in on Lansky’s gambling operations at the time. The shooters were never identified.