Joseph 'Mad Dog' Sullivan

Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan was a mafia hitman. He started committing robberies at age 12. Sullivan carried out scores of murders for the Five Families, and was given three life sentences.

After four years in Attica, Sullivan did the impossible and escaped from the notorious prison. In 1971, he found a way to leave the prison. He was captured weeks later in Greenwich Village, carrying a sawed-off shotgun.

Sullivan allegedly earned the nickname "Mad Dog" from fellow inmates at Attica. Winning parole in 1975, Sullivan began working for the Genovese crime family. He single-handedly executed a dozen members of an Irish-American criminal organization headed by Mickey Spillane during the summer of 1976, which was half of Spillane's entire crew. Michael J. Spillane was killed in 1977. Sullivan was one of the Genovese crime family's most vicious, lethal and efficient hitmen. The FBI believes that Sullivan murdered at least 35. The FBI considered him to be a sophisticated and professional assassin that never made mistakes, always got the job done, and always killed his target. Sullivan was sent to prison in 1982. He died there in 2017 aged 78.

One of Sullivan's intended targets was Carmine "Cigar" Galante, head of the Bonnano crime family. For much of the summer of 1978, Sullivan tried to carry out the hit on Galante, but failed. Only the efforts of a team of hit men did what Sullivan couldn't — they shot Galante to death at a Brooklyn restaurant.