On the night of April 8, 1962, Anthony “Tony Bender” Strollo, a mobster who had spent decades in the shadows of America’s criminal elite, walked out of his home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He told his wife he’d be out for a short while. He never came back. No one ever saw him again—no body, no grave, no final word. He was erased, consumed by the silence he had helped impose on others.
Strollo’s disappearance was no random vanishing act. It was the final chapter in a life woven with betrayal, shifting loyalties, and death. Before his own mysterious end, he had been in the company of two high-profile targets: Frank Costello, who survived a bullet to the head, and Anthony Carfano, who did not. That strange pattern—the presence of Tony Bender in the moments before men fell—casts his story in eerie light. It makes his own disappearance feel like both irony and inevitability.
A Trusted Operator in a World of Wolves
Anthony Strollo was no mere trigger man. Born in 1899, he carved out a reputation as a trusted figure within the Genovese crime family. He had the ear of Vito Genovese himself, a ruthless and calculating boss who wanted nothing less than total control of the New York underworld. Strollo could handle numbers, street rackets, and delicate conversations with equal finesse. He knew how to sit with power and walk away alive.
But he also had ties to Frank Costello, the refined and politically connected “Prime Minister of the Underworld.” Costello represented a very different kind of leadership—less blood and more brains. Strollo, adaptable and opportunistic, navigated between these men like a chameleon. That made him valuable. It also made him dangerous.
In the Mafia, the man who plays both sides isn’t seen as clever. He’s seen as a traitor waiting to reveal himself.
May 1957: The Night Frank Costello Fell from Power
On May 2, 1957, Frank Costello returned to his apartment building on Central Park West. As he entered the lobby, a young Genovese loyalist stepped out from the shadows—Vincent “The Chin” Gigante. Gigante raised a .38, squeezed the trigger, and fired. The bullet ripped into Costello’s head.
It should have been the end of the Prime Minister. It wasn’t. The bullet grazed his skull, knocking him to the ground, but sparing his life. Costello survived, shaken but alive.
In the Mafia, though, survival isn’t the same as victory. Costello read the handwriting on the wall. His enemies were emboldened, his allies uncertain. He retired soon after, ceding the throne to Genovese without a fight.
And in the shadows of that power struggle? Anthony Strollo. He had been seen with Costello shortly before the shooting, his name drifting around like cigarette smoke after the gunfire. Did he know what was coming? Did he tip the balance? Costello never pressed the question, but the air around Tony Bender began to feel poisonous.
September 1959: The Ride That Ended in Blood
If Costello was lucky, Anthony Carfano was cursed. Known as “Little Augie Pisano,” Carfano was old-school Mafia: flashy, loud, and connected to a bygone era. By the late ’50s, Genovese saw him as a liability. Carfano wasn’t just living in the past—he was living recklessly, and recklessness had no place in Genovese’s empire.
On the night of September 25, 1959, Carfano left the Copacabana Club with Janice Drake, a showgirl and widow of boxer Abe Simon. Carfano trusted the company of Anthony Strollo that night. He got into his Cadillac. He never got out alive.
Somewhere in Queens, the ride ended in bullets. Carfano and Drake were shot dead, their bodies slumped in the front seat, the Cadillac reeking of cordite and spilled blood. Strollo, somehow, wasn’t in the car when the guns went off. Once again, he had been with a man just before he was killed. Once again, death brushed past Tony Bender but didn’t touch him.
For the underworld, the pattern was impossible to ignore.
A Dangerous Reputation
By the early 1960s, Strollo’s name carried an unsettling weight. He was a man always near the storm but never struck by lightning. To some, he looked like a Judas goat—leading men to slaughter without getting his hands dirty. To others, he was a survivor who knew how to vanish at the right moment.
But one man was not impressed: Vito Genovese. After wresting control from Costello, Genovese was paranoid and merciless. He saw traitors everywhere, and Strollo, with his double ties and suspicious track record, fit the profile too neatly.
It didn’t matter that Strollo had made the family millions through gambling dens, loansharking, and rackets. In Genovese’s eyes, he was no longer useful. Worse—he was dangerous.
And dangerous men don’t get to retire.
April 8, 1962: The Night Tony Bender Vanished
That night in Fort Lee, the spring air was cool. Strollo put on his coat and stepped outside, telling his wife Edith he had business to handle. Maybe it was a late-night meeting, maybe just a drive to clear his head. He got into a car and disappeared into the darkness.
He never came home.
No body was discovered. No one claimed responsibility. No crime scene was ever identified. Tony Bender simply ceased to exist, as though swallowed by the underworld he had served all his life.
But everyone knew what had happened, even if they couldn’t prove it. Vito Genovese had ordered the hit. Strollo’s usefulness had ended, his loyalties were suspect, and Genovese wanted him gone. In the Mafia, disappearances are a cleaner kind of murder. No witnesses, no evidence, no trial. Just silence.
The Message Behind the Murder
Strollo’s vanishing wasn’t just about eliminating a man. It was about sending a message. Genovese wanted every associate to understand that divided loyalties, half-measures, and suspicious coincidences would not be tolerated. If Tony Bender, a man once considered trusted, could vanish overnight, then anyone could.
Fear is currency in organized crime, and Genovese spent it generously.
The Legacy of a Ghost
More than sixty years later, the story of Anthony Strollo still echoes. His name surfaces whenever historians talk about Mafia treachery, about the strange coincidences that precede violent ends. He is remembered not for the rackets he ran or the money he earned, but for the fact that he was always near death—until it finally claimed him.
Frank Costello lived to old age, dying in 1973 of a heart attack. Anthony Carfano died in the front seat of a Cadillac, bullets tearing through his world of glitz. And Tony Bender? He vanished into thin air, leaving only speculation and the unmistakable stink of a Mafia execution.
In the end, Anthony Strollo was a man who walked others to their graves, only to find his own waiting quietly in the dark.