Part 8 (2/2)

Vito Laduca, counterfeiter, kidnapper, and ”dread bulwark of the Black Hand.”

Giovanni Zacconi drove the ”death wagon” that carried Madonia to East 11th Street.

Joseph Fanaro, the red-haired giant who lured at least two Morello victims to their deaths.

Carlo Costantino, who died riddled with syphilis-and still the lead suspect in the Petrosino murder.

Pietro Inzerillo, the confectioner who supplied the barrel in which Madonia's body was stuffed.

Antonio Cecala, murderous frontman for the family's green goods business.

Salvatore Cina: ”You are trying to get me to blow your d.a.m.n brains out.”

Giuseppe Calicchio. ”Professor” who printed $100,000 worth of forged bills.

Antonio Pa.s.sananti headed the Morello grocery racket and killed himself at age ninety-four.

Joe Petrosino. ”Short and heavy, with enormous shoulders and a bull neck, on which was placed a great round head like a summer squash,” the pockmarked policeman was the greatest Italian detective in New York. The destroyer of dozens of Black Hand bands, and renowned for personally arresting the head of the Neapolitan Camorra, Petrosino met his match-and eventually his death-at the hands of Morello's Mafia.

Murdered by the Mafia in Sicily, Joe Petrosino was brought home to New York for burial. A crowd said to have been twenty thousand strong lined up to file past his bier; thousands more, most of them Italians, lined the city's streets as his coffin was driven to Calvary Cemetery for burial.

Two of the forged Morello notes that set Flynn on the trail of the first family and led eventually to the capture and conviction of Morello himself. The notes are (top left) (top left) a U.S. $2 bill and a U.S. $2 bill and (below) (below) a U.S. $5 bill, both engraved by Giuseppe Calicchio. The man coerced into printing the notes was Antonio Comito a U.S. $5 bill, both engraved by Giuseppe Calicchio. The man coerced into printing the notes was Antonio Comito (top right) (top right), a timid Calabrian known to the Mafia as Comito the Sheep. Comito and his mistress, Katrina Pascuzzo (below) (below), were held in a remote house deep in the woods of upstate New York for eight months in 1908-9 while the work was carried out.

William Flynn started his career as a Manhattan plumber but rose to become the most brilliant detective in the country. As head of the New York bureau of the Secret Service, his dogged perseverance over more than a decade resulted in the conviction of nearly two dozen members of the Morello family, including the boss himself.

Ign.a.z.io Lupo. Known to terrified members of the Italian community as Lupo the Wolf, Giuseppe Morello's moon-faced brother-in-law was a pitiless killer, noted extortionist-and the brains behind the Mafia's first moves into money laundering and real estate scams.

Dapper Salvatore Clemente, a notorious counterfeiter, emerged as Flynn's top informant inside the Morello family. It was Clemente who, at the risk of his own life, gave Flynn the location of the Mafia's grisly ”private burial ground” on a farm upstate.

Calogero Morello, Giuseppe's eldest son, was murdered in a street brawl at the age of seventeen. Newspapers theorized that he died in a fight over the control of prost.i.tution. It took Clemente to reveal the real-much more disturbing-truth.

Harlem's infamous Murder Stable. A ramshackle rabbit warren on East 108th Street, the stable lay-charged the New York Herald New York Herald-at the center of a deadly vendetta that cost at least twenty-two lives, including those of several members of the Morello family. The stable was rumored to conceal a hidden Mafia torture chamber and killing rooms where victims were dispatched. Pasquale Greco (inset) (inset), brother of one of the stable's victims, told the Herald's Herald's reporter that he fully expected to be the next to die. reporter that he fully expected to be the next to die.

Nick Terranova a.s.sumed leaders.h.i.+p of the first family after Morello went to jail. He proved to be an able boss who tightened the Mafia's stranglehold on extortion rackets in the Italian districts. Receiving news of his nephew Calogero's murder, Terranova publicly vowed to ”butcher every one” of the gangsters responsible-then hunted down and killed the first two of the men himself.

Giosue Gallucci. A politically well-connected Neapolitan, Gallucci ran the Italian lottery in East Harlem until his falling-out with the Morellos. Ten bodyguards were killed defending him, but not even the boss's habit of wearing a chain-mail vest could save him from a.s.sa.s.sination.

Ciro Terranova. The Artichoke King was the longest lived of the Terranova brothers, dominating Harlem's vegetable rackets during World War I and living on into the era of Prohibition and bootlegging. Forcibly retired by a new generation of gangsters, he died impoverished and all but forgotten in 1938.

The murder of Vincenzo Terranova, as reconstructed by one New York newspaper. The oldest of the three Terranova brothers was heavily involved in bootlegging when he was cut down by sawed-off shotguns fired by five men in a car who caught him outside an ice-cream parlor on East 116th Street, in the heart of the Morellos' territory.

The porcine Joe ”the Boss” Ma.s.seria was ”boss of bosses” during Prohibition. His attempts to dominate New York's families led to war within the Mafia. It was a war Ma.s.seria was winning until he lost his chief adviser-Giuseppe Morello. Morello's murder was swiftly followed by Ma.s.seria's own.

Ralph ”the Barber” Daniello. A Camorra killer who took part in the Nick Terranova slaying, Ralph saved his skin by giving New York's police their first detailed look inside the city's Italian gangs. The Barber paid with his life for his betrayal, shot dead outside his Newark bar.

Giuseppe Morello's second wife, Nicolina Salemi, in middle age. A striking woman in her youth, Lina actively abetted her husband's Mafia career. She was possessed of a volcanic temper, said Flynn; during one raid she concealed incriminating evidence in her baby's diaper and attacked Secret Service agents with a knife.

Ign.a.z.io Lupo in old age. Returned to prison after resuming his career of murder and extortion, he served a total of twenty years, and by the time of his release in 1946 he was senile and had just days to live. ”I should like to be a boy again in Sicily,” he wrote, ”and die young, very young, and never know all these years of struggle and evil.”

The reality of gangster life The remains of Gaspare Candella, found in a barrel on 45th Street in Brooklyn on November 8, 1918. The Morello family had introduced the notion of the ”barrel murder” to New York fifteen years earlier; Candella's wounds were almost identical to those inflicted on Benedetto Madonia in 1903-indicating that he, too, had been a traitor to the Mafia.

There remained the prospect of escape. Tentative plans for freeing the leaders of the Morello family were mulled over for at least two years. It was a nearly impossible task; no man had broken out of the Atlanta prison since it had opened its doors, and the Terranova brothers quickly abandoned any idea of blasting or shooting their men free. An escape, it was decided, would be possible only with the a.s.sistance of several guards, and these men would have to be heavily bribed. The scheme was enough of a reality for a concert to be organized in Harlem to raise funds; Flynn discovered that ”a great number of tickets at $1.00 each had been sold.” In the end, though, even this idea had to be rejected. The Secret Service chief tipped off Moyer to the Terranovas' schemes, the prison authorities took action, and Lupo and Morello were separated and forbidden to a.s.sociate or talk. At the same time, the number of men guarding them was doubled. It was no wonder that Nick Terranova bitterly concluded that there was no prospect of getting Morello freed while Flynn remained with the Secret Service. He was just too powerful, Nick said, and had too great an influence in Was.h.i.+ngton.

THERE WERE OTHER WAYS of dealing with Flynn, of course. Ciro Terranova was overheard remarking that the Secret Service man ”had a very big pull, and the only way to stop him would be by bullet,” and the Chief's informants in Harlem brought word that other members of the Morello clan were debating the prospect of kidnapping his children, hoping to coerce him into supporting an appeal. At about the same time, two of Lupo's a.s.sociates visited him in jail and received firm orders, Flynn was told, that he should be a.s.sa.s.sinated. of dealing with Flynn, of course. Ciro Terranova was overheard remarking that the Secret Service man ”had a very big pull, and the only way to stop him would be by bullet,” and the Chief's informants in Harlem brought word that other members of the Morello clan were debating the prospect of kidnapping his children, hoping to coerce him into supporting an appeal. At about the same time, two of Lupo's a.s.sociates visited him in jail and received firm orders, Flynn was told, that he should be a.s.sa.s.sinated.

Had the Terranova brothers been determined to kill Flynn, they could probably have done so. The Chief lived in an isolated property in the far north of the city, and although he ordered his children never to venture more than a hundred feet from home, he felt unpleasantly exposed there. What saved the Secret Service man was Nick Terranova's prudence. The youngest of the brothers but also the most intelligent and the natural leader among the three, Terranova was certainly tempted by the prospect of striking back at Flynn. He realized, though, that any serious attempt would bring the authorities down on him-and, worse, would affect his brother's chances of parole. While there was any prospect of having Lupo and Morello freed by legal means, Nick decided, it would be foolhardy to kill their enemy. The endless series of appeals and legal efforts that the family launched after the men's conviction inoculated Flynn against attack.

The Terranovas felt no such compunction when it came to Antonio Comito. From the moment the Morello family learned that the printer was going to testify against their leaders, they became determined to murder him. The sum of $2,500 was offered to at least one crooked policeman in exchange for details of the Calabrian's whereabouts-the same figure that the Terranovas had put on the man's head. Soon afterward, Comito's worried uncle called Flynn to report that there were suspicious strangers hanging around outside his house, and a far worse panic erupted at the end of May 1910, when the hideously mutilated body of an Italian man in his thirties was dumped in the Paerdegat woods on the fringes of Brooklyn. The corpse was lying only a hundred yards from the spot where Salvatore Marchiani's dismembered remains had been hauled out of a rubbish dump in Pigtown, and it bore the characteristic marks of a Mafia killing. There were twenty-five knife wounds in all, seven of them in the abdomen and the rest to the face; the nose and one ear had been sliced off with a razor, and the remainder of the man's features were so ripped and torn that identification was impossible.

The first thought of the first policemen on the scene was that the dead man was Antonio Comito. Detectives hurried off to find the Terranova brothers and interrogated several members of their gang. Comito turned up, safe and well, soon afterward, but the NYPD continued to believe that the dead man-whom they never identified-had been a Mafia informant, and Flynn decided that it would be sensible to get his witness away from Manhattan. Within days, Comito found himself in a safe house near the Mexican border, and when he did return to New York after a year, it was only to collect $150 from Secret Service funds to pay for a steams.h.i.+p ticket home. Flynn was still sufficiently concerned to lend the printer a revolver for the duration of his short stay in the city, but Comito sensibly kept away from places where he might stumble across old acquaintances and sailed two weeks later, on July 1, 1911. Flynn heard sometime later that he had made it back to South America, where the Mafia held no sway, and had become a successful businessman. Whether he took Katrina Pascuzzo with him, or ever was reunited with his wife, remains unknown.

WITH THE FAILURE OF the appeal and their plans for escape, the reality of the sentences that stretched out before them struck both Lupo and Morello hard. Both men became morose, depressed. Disapproving comments in their prison files, noting that they laughed and joked with the other members of their gang, cease after 1911, to be replaced with worried correspondence from their families. the appeal and their plans for escape, the reality of the sentences that stretched out before them struck both Lupo and Morello hard. Both men became morose, depressed. Disapproving comments in their prison files, noting that they laughed and joked with the other members of their gang, cease after 1911, to be replaced with worried correspondence from their families.

Morello, his loyal wife, Lina, observed in a letter that she wrote to Moyer, was ”serving 25 undeserved years” and ”has no comfort because he is buried alive.” The boss suffered from indigestion and heart trouble, put on nearly thirty pounds, and grew increasingly angry, first at his family's failure to supply the constant drip of good news he needed to sustain his spirits, then at the failure of their efforts to produce results. ”You are wrong,” he told his wife in one letter, ”and do harm to my health, for I am worrying all the time. ... I alone know how much I am suffering.” There were regular complaints about the lack of letters from his relatives and children.

Lina, though, was finding life no easier than her husband. Deprived of Mafia money, she and Lupo's wife, Salvatrice, were forced to take jobs in the feather business down on 105th Street, work that brought in so little income that they were reduced to visiting their reviled enemy, Flynn, to beg for the return of p.a.w.n tickets that had been in Morello's pockets at the time he was arrested. The three Terranova brothers supplied Lina with a pitiful allowance of $4.50 a week and no doubt made a similar contribution to Lupo family funds, but with five children to support between them the two women struggled to survive. As late as 1916, the Secret Service suspected both wives of pa.s.sing counterfeit silver on their daily shopping expeditions in their attempts to make ends meet.

Living in such straitened circ.u.mstances, it is scarcely surprising that Morello's wife was upset by his surliness. ”Listen, Giuseppe,” she wrote at the beginning of July 1915, ”I am somewhat convinced that you do not care for me, because I can see that you are not as you were at one time.” Lina hoped that the fault might lie not with her husband but with the man who wrote his letters for him: ”That he might not be able to explain well, as I see other letters that other wives get that are different to mine.” In this, though, she was disappointed. Morello's real anger became clear when he scrawled a sharp letter to his brother Nick, criticizing the failings of each member of his family in turn. Lina was shown the correspondence, and she responded spiritedly: I remain somewhat surprised in reading your letter, especially that you are trying to forget the family. My feelings have been hurt, you are acting ungratefully.I have shed tears for two days, thinking of your unjust treatment. I thought of stopping writing to you, because my letters disturb you. On second thoughts, I decided to drop you these few lines, asking you whether or not you care for me to continue to write.

Morello must have hastened to apologize, for his wife's letters reverted to their usual affectionate tone thereafter; he was again ”My always adored Giuseppe” and her letters closed with ”many kisses from the heart, also from our children.” But even so, the comfort the boss drew from his letters was not remotely enough to make incarceration bearable. Early release was all that he and his men craved, and, once their appeal had failed, the members of the gang were willing to do almost anything to get it.

One by one, the men began approaching William Flynn. It was time to talk.

FOR FLYNN, WHO HAD BEEN so frustrated for so long by the Mafiosi's veil of silence, it was a happy time. He had antic.i.p.ated it, predicting to John Wilkie, on the day that the sentences were handed down, that Morello's men would barter information as soon as their situation appeared hopeless. He took satisfaction from being right. so frustrated for so long by the Mafiosi's veil of silence, it was a happy time. He had antic.i.p.ated it, predicting to John Wilkie, on the day that the sentences were handed down, that Morello's men would barter information as soon as their situation appeared hopeless. He took satisfaction from being right.

Morello, to everyone's surprise but Flynn's, was the first of the men to crack. The Clutch Hand offered to make a statement in January 1911, before his appeal was even halfway done. ”It was the privilege of a king,” the Chief explained, for a Mafia boss to ignore whenever it suited him the vow of silence that he and his followers had sworn to uphold with their lives.

Morello's aim was to trade information for his freedom, and he had a shrewd idea of what the authorities wanted to know: ”For weeks,” a reporter from the The New York Times The New York Times explained, ”a story has been going the rounds of the cafes and restaurants of the Italian quarters that Morello was willing, in exchange for his liberty, to name the a.s.sa.s.sins of Lieutenant Petrosino.” An Atlanta lawyer summoned to the penitentiary took down the boss's deposition, but the contents of his confession were never made public; when the statement was translated back into Italian for the boss to read, Morello appeared to take fright and refused point-blank to sign his name to it. According to at least two journalists, the unsigned doc.u.ment named Carlo Costantino as Petrosino's killer, and the Clutch Hand balked when he learned that other Mafiosi in New York had threatened members of his family. explained, ”a story has been going the rounds of the cafes and restaurants of the Italian quarters that Morello was willing, in exchange for his liberty, to name the a.s.sa.s.sins of Lieutenant Petrosino.” An Atlanta lawyer summoned to the penitentiary took down the boss's deposition, but the contents of his confession were never made public; when the statement was translated back into Italian for the boss to read, Morello appeared to take fright and refused point-blank to sign his name to it. According to at least two journalists, the unsigned doc.u.ment named Carlo Costantino as Petrosino's killer, and the Clutch Hand balked when he learned that other Mafiosi in New York had threatened members of his family.

Morello remained eternally tight-lipped thereafter, but it was not long before Lupo's lawyer indicated that he, too, might be willing to make statements. Then came Sylvester, then Cina. Calicchio would have talked if Flynn had asked him to, but the master printer had always been an employee, not a member of the gang, and he knew little. Cecala considered talking. Giglio did not get the chance; he dropped dead in the prison church, the first member of the group to die.

Flynn's interest in these lesser fry centered on the printing plates that had vanished when the Highland plant was broken up. The Chief wanted to locate them to forestall further appeals and also because he knew Nick Terranova hoped to resume the counterfeiting operation. The Secret Service was willing to trade a commutation for the plates, but not one of the men would talk about it. There was a savage irony, from the prisoners' perspective, that the one piece of information that could secure their release was the very sc.r.a.p of knowledge that they dared not divulge. Disclosing the location of the plates in a corner of Morello's private graveyard meant signing their own death warrants. Any attempt on Flynn's part to excavate the burial site would risk the disinterral of the Clutch Hand's victims-and hence bring the likelihood of murder charges.

The men kept their mouths shut and stayed in prison.

- IN TRUTH, AS EVEN Flynn conceded, any man connected to the Morello family had good reason to hold his tongue. The betrayal of Mafia secrets had long been an unforgivable sin-the most unforgivable sin, perhaps, one punishable by death-and with Morello scheming in Atlanta and the Terranova brothers thirsting for revenge, the Mafia's search for possible traitors was pursued with vigor and savagery from the moment the Clutch Hand was jailed. Flynn conceded, any man connected to the Morello family had good reason to hold his tongue. The betrayal of Mafia secrets had long been an unforgivable sin-the most unforgivable sin, perhaps, one punishable by death-and with Morello scheming in Atlanta and the Terranova brothers thirsting for revenge, the Mafia's search for possible traitors was pursued with vigor and savagery from the moment the Clutch Hand was jailed.

Comito, the great betrayer, remained beyond their reach, but other informers were identified and hunted down, among them several whose ident.i.ties Flynn had never revealed, even in court. The first to be found was Sam Locino, the Pennsylvania counterfeiter whose statements had given the Secret Service its break in the hunt for the Morello gang. Not long after the Clutch Hand's trial concluded, Locino was returning to his home in Pittston when he heard a rustling from some bushes as he crossed a vacant lot. Flynn's informant span around and was. .h.i.t by two bullets fired by a man who had crawled out from the undergrowth. Locino was very lucky; the shots merely grazed his skull, and the killer ran rather than making sure his man was dead.

Others were less fortunate. Luigi Bono, a middle-aged Italian from Highland, fled back to New York for fear of the Morellos' vengeance and opened a small grocery store on Houston Street. Soon after his return to the city, Bono was badly frightened by some incident or warning and began returning home not along the street but across the rooftops to his tenement. This precaution was not enough to save him; on November 17, 1911, the grocer's body was found huddled against a fence on a nearby roof, a deep and ugly gash behind one ear. Bono had been struck down from behind by a man wielding an ax; one ear and his tongue had then been severed from his head, and what appeared to be ritual incisions were carved into his chest and legs. On his body, Flynn recorded, the police found a card that read: ”This man was Morello's enemy.”

It is not surprising, in such circ.u.mstances, that the Secret Service found it harder and harder to persuade its informers to talk. Even Nick Sylvester, who had been so desperate to cut his fifteen-year sentence that he quietly pa.s.sed Flynn details of the location of the printing press, produced little or no worthwhile intelligence when he was finally released from jail. Flynn could still rely on his existing informants to a great extent; several, especially Charles Mazzei, continued to supply information from the fringes of the Morello family at great risk to themselves. But something more was needed, and it was not until October 1910 that Flynn found what he had been looking for: an informant who had access to the Morellos' innermost councils.

HIS NAME WAS Salvatore Clemente, and he had been known to the Secret Service ever since 1895, when he had earned an eight-year jail sentence for counterfeiting. Short but dapper, well turned out, with a handsome, open, smiling face that radiated bonhomie, Clemente was an ideal informant in almost every respect. He had a lengthy record, sufficient to establish his criminal credentials. He was also a Sicilian, born in 1866 and acquainted with practically every counterfeiter in New York. He was a close friend of the Terranova brothers, for whom he was a valued sounding board and confidant. And he had no wish to return to jail. A second lengthy prison sentence in the early 1900s had given Clemente his fill of life behind bars, and when the Secret Service picked him up again during the autumn of 1910, he was only too willing to deal with Flynn. The two men came to an agreement that October: Clemente's freedom and a small retainer, in return for reports from inside the Morello family. Salvatore Clemente, and he had been known to the Secret Service ever since 1895, when he had earned an eight-year jail sentence for counterfeiting. Short but dapper, well turned out, with a handsome, open, smiling face that radiated bonhomie, Clemente was an ideal informant in almost every respect. He had a lengthy record, sufficient to establish his criminal credentials. He was also a Sicilian, born in 1866 and acquainted with practically every counterfeiter in New York. He was a close friend of the Terranova brothers, for whom he was a valued sounding board and confidant. And he had no wish to return to jail. A second lengthy prison sentence in the early 1900s had given Clemente his fill of life behind bars, and when the Secret Service picked him up again during the autumn of 1910, he was only too willing to deal with Flynn. The two men came to an agreement that October: Clemente's freedom and a small retainer, in return for reports from inside the Morello family.

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