Badges in Little Italy

Joseph Petrosino and New York's Italian Squad

Joseph Petrosino

Joseph Petrosino

Petrosino was born Giuseppe Michele Pasquale Petrosino on Aug. 30, 1860, to tailor Prospero and Maria Giuseppa Arato Petrosino in the hilly and charming southern Italian village of Padula, in the province of Salerno. He had two full siblings, sister Caterina and brother Vincenzo. Later, after his mother’s death and his father’s marriage to Maria Mugno, he gained three half-siblings, Antonio, Giuseppina and Michele.(8)

It is generally reported that the Petrosino family moved across the Atlantic in 1873.(9) However, immigration records show 55-year-old Prospero Petrosino and his son Giuseppe arriving in New York City on Nov. 8, 1872, aboard the Denmark from Le Havre, France.(10) Perhaps they scouted the city before the rest of the clan came over the following summer aboard a steamer-sailer from Naples.

In New York, Petrosino’s first name quickly became “Joe.” With his father’s naturalization early in 1878, Petrosino, still just barely a minor, also became a citizen.(11)

At age 18, Petrosino went to work for the City of New York as a street cleaner.(12) While the work could not have been fulfilling, he did make at least one important contact. That was Alexander “the Clubber” Williams.

Williams was one of the more colorful characters of the NYPD in the late 19th Century. Born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1839, he moved to New York as a boy and learned to be a ship carpenter in the employ of W.H. Webb & Company. He later went to sea, visiting ports as far off as Japan. Following the Civil War, he joined the New York Metropolitan Police, earning appointment by Police Commissioner John W. Bergen. Stationed in a then-brutal precinct centered around Broadway and Houston Street, Williams made it a point to pick a fight with the two toughest characters in the area. That fight ended, according to the New York Times, “when he picked up first one and then the other, and hurled them through a plate glass window.”(13)

The Times noted, “It is said that it was a dull day that did not find him with at least one row on his hands.”(14)

He moved through several precincts over the next few years, all the while working his way toward his “Clubber” nickname, and was promoted to roundsman (supervisor of patrolmen) on July 10, 1871. A second promotion, to sergeant, followed on Sept. 23 of that year. By the start of the following June, Williams was captain in charge of Twenty-first Precinct on East 35th Street. Williams was bounced from precinct to precinct over the next few years, settling in 1876 at the West 30th Street Station.(15) He would jokingly give that precinct, packed with nightclubs, brothels and other rich sources of police graft, a name it would hold for many years, “the tenderloin.”

Clubber Williams

When a reporter asked him how he liked his new post, Williams happily responded, “I like it fine. I have had chuck for a long time, and now I am going to eat tenderloin.”(16)

Williams chewed on the tenderloin for a couple of years before being appointed to the leadership of the city’s street cleaning department. There he happened to meet young Petrosino. What specifically caught Williams’ eye is not known. (One source suggests it was Petrosino’s natural leadership ability.(17) ) It probably wasn’t Petrosino’s appearance. He was a short man, stocky and homely. However, his positive physical and mental attributes were evident enough to a wise observer. Luigi Barzini, author, member of the Italian Parliament and acquaintance of Petrosino, provided this description:

He was a stout, strong man. His clean-shaven face was coarse-featured, and marred by light pocking; at first sight he did not attract. But in that butcher’s face there was the impress of a stubborn will and of courage, something that made one think of a mastiff.(18)

When Williams returned to the “tenderloin” precinct on June 15, 1881, he began making use of Petrosino as an informant and interpreter in cases involving Italians.(19) The young street sweeper had the ability to make sense of Italian language and customs that were incomprehensible to the largely Irish police force of the period. Williams was apparently delighted by Petrosino’s service and urged his superiors to hire Petrosino as a patrolman. Some rule bending was required, as Petrosino fell four inches shy of the five-foot-seven-inch department height requirement.(20)

Early Career

On Oct. 19, 1883, Petrosino put on the uniform of a New York police officer for the first time. He quickly found himself with friends in high places.

“Clubber” Williams won appointment to inspector on Aug. 9, 1887. With that title came command over Manhattan’s East Side precincts from the Battery to 104th Street. That surely must have helped Petrosino overcome the police department’s anti-Italian prejudices (21) and secure a promotion to detective in 1890. Williams’ influence waned in the early 90s as the result of scandal, and his career with the police force ended with his 1895 retirement after the state legislature’s Lexow Committee found evidence of wrongdoing.

Patrolman Petrosino

However, native New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt (later governor of New York and the Twenty-sixth President of the United States) arrived on the scene just in time to become Petrosino’s new champion. Roosevelt, a Republican reformer and reportedly an admirer of Petrosino, served as president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners from 1895 to 1897. He promoted Petrosino to detective sergeant on July 20, 1895. Until that time, no Italian-American had held a position that high in the department.

As a detective, Petrosino apparently attempted to gain a few inches of height through the use of thick-soled shoes and a tall derby hat. The hat became a sort of trademark, and newsmen labeled him “the detective in the derby.” (22)

Solving crimes involving Italians was a difficult job. Though preyed upon by extortionists, kidnappers and bomb-throwers – criminals referred to at the time as “the Black Hand” – the Italian immigrant community was extremely reluctant to cooperate with the police. Aiding Petrosino in his work was his ability to blend in with the merchants and beggars of Little Italy. He repeatedly went undercover in the city’s seedier sections to acquire information against wrongdoers. His other detecting asset was a toughness that periodically crossed the line into brutality. When information would not come any other way, Petrosino could beat it out of some local lowlife. Barzini observed, “There was more of the wrestler than of the policeman in Petrosino. One sensed that he was better at thrashing the evildoer than at finding him.” (23)

One of the Italian detective’s more celebrated early successes was the Carbone case.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 1897, Angelo Carbone of Manhattan’s Baxter Street was arrested for stabbing Natale Brogno, 30, of 83 Bayard Street.(24) Carbone was apprehended near the corner of Leonard and Center, just a stone’s throw from the Tombs Prison, with a bloody knife in his hand and the injured Brogno lying beneath him. When Brogno died from a gaping belly wound just 30 minutes after reaching the Hudson Street Hospital, one-half mile away,(25) Carbone was charged with first-degree murder.

In criminal court in mid-December, Carbone admitted to fighting with Brogno but insisted he was innocent of murder. The defense was based upon the coroner’s assertion that the knife found in the defendant’s possession was too small to have been the murder weapon and upon the testimony of Carbone’s 12-year-old nephew, who claimed he saw another man run from the scene as Brogno collapsed.(26)

Assistant District Attorney McIntyre argued that Carbone was guilty of taking Brogno’s life whether he acted alone or in concert with some unknown person. Carbone had fought with Brogno and had used a weapon during that fight with the intent to kill his adversary, McIntyre noted.(27)

It was an open-and-shut case. The entire trial, including jury deliberations, consumed just eight hours.(28) The jury unanimously found Carbone guilty. On Dec. 17, Justice Frederick Smyth of the Criminal Branch of the Supreme Court sentenced him to die in Sing Sing Prison’s electric chair in the week of Feb. 7, 1898. At sentencing, Smyth expressed hope that Carbone’s punishment would serve as a warning to other Italians in New York. In response to the judge’s comment, Carbone said through an interpreter, “Your honor, why should I, who am an innocent man, be put to death to deter others from committing crime? I am not a murderer. I did not kill Brogno, and I have been unjustly convicted.”(29)

Carbone’s friends and family appealed the verdict and enlisted the aide of an attorney named Palmiere.(30) Captain “Chesty George” McCloskey, head of New York City’s detective bureau, took an interest in the case and assigned Joe Petrosino to look into it.(31)

Putting together the coroner’s statement with the testimony of Carbone’s 12-year-old nephew, Petrosino concluded that there was both a missing murder weapon and a missing murderer. He was tipped off that the man seen fleeing the fight location was Allessandro Ciaramello, a 51-year-old cousin of Carbone last known to be in Dover, Delaware.(32)

Petrosino hit the road. He followed Ciaramello’s trial for nearly a month through Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, along the way learning that Ciaramello had bragged to friends and relatives in those states about doing away with his enemy Brogno. Petrosino caught up with the fugitive in Baltimore on Jan. 26. When confronted, Ciaramello admitted his guilt, provided Petrosino with the murder weapon and agreed to return to New York.(33)

Electric Chair

Little more than a week before Carbone was scheduled to die in the electric chair, Ciaramello confessed to the murder of Brogno. He revealed that he Brogno had been enemies since he caught his wife with Brogno in Newark, NJ, in July 1897. The two men had a fight on Sept. 4, with Ciaramello coming out on the losing end against the younger, larger Brogno. Eight days later, when he spotted Carbone and Brogno battling on the street corner, he jumped into the fray.

“I rushed at Brogno,” he confessed. “I cared not what I did. I drew a knife and stabbed him twice in the side. Then he cried out and ran away. And now if I have to die, I will die like a man.”(34)

As it turned out, Ciaramello didn’t have to die. In April 1898, he was sentenced to life in prison, (35) while Carbone, removed from Death Row due to Ciaramello’s confession, awaited a new trial. On Nov. 15, Assistant District Attorney John F. McIntyre requested that Carbone be released. State Supreme Court Justice Henry A. Gildersleeve agreed, and the one-time condemned man walked out of Sing Sing Prison.(36)

Petrosino was acclaimed in the press for his diligent detective work. Forgotten by history is the fact that Carbone was emotionally shattered by the time he was released from Sing Sing in mid-November 1898. (37)

Upon request from the United States Secret Service, the Italian detective was sent to infiltrate Italian anarchist groups to determine if they were plotting against President William McKinley. King Umberto of Italy had been assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci in the summer of 1900, and the Secret Service was concerned about the President’s vulnerability.(38) Petrosino returned with a vague warning for the President to be careful. When McKinley was mortally wounded by a gunman at the opening of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, newspapers played up the detective’s earlier warning. They neglected to point out that assassin Leon Czolgosz could not be linked in any meaningful way with the organizations Petrosino investigated. Czolgosz was born to Russian-Polish immigrants and lived in the Midwest.(39)

Benefiting from the positive press, Petrosino moved around the city with what has been described as a “roving commission,” (40) lending a hand with any criminal matters relating to Italians. During this work, it appears he built upon some of “Clubber” Williams’ favorite law enforcement techniques:

The endless frustration of seeing the courts promptly release men whom he had arduously hunted down had made him hard and pitiless. The gangsters who had dealings with him bore marks of the “interrogation” for months; especially when he realized that the evidence in his hands would not be sufficient grounds for an indictment or a deportation, he never boggled at attacking them physically... He also did everything he could to make life difficult for them in New York; he arrested them whenever possible, he harassed their friends and customers, until the criminals finally found themselves completely cut off and so shifted their operations to more tolerant regions.(41)

Almost universally frowned upon today, Petrosino’s methods were more widely accepted around the turn of the Twentieth Century. In that era, a criminal’s confession – coerced or not – was often the only available evidence.(42) The methods had the added benefit of being an effective deterrent to crime. However, some outlaws simply could not be intimidated.

The Barrel Murder

On the rainy morning of Tuesday, April 14, 1903, cleaning woman Frances Conners was on her way to work. At about 5:30, she passed in front of a building at 743 East Eleventh Street near Avenue D. There she noticed what appeared to be a garment protruding from a sugar barrel placed on the sidewalk. When she approached, she discovered that a man’s lifeless body was within. Special Police Officer Joseph McCall, patrolling the opposite side of East Eleventh, heard Mrs. Conners scream and rushed across the street. He examined the barrel and summoned detectives.

When the corpse was removed from its container, it was found to have been doubled up, the knees meeting the shoulders. The throat had been sliced in two strokes from ear to ear, nearly severing the head from the torso. Some burlap had been placed over the neck wound. Eighteen other knife wounds were detected. There were no clues as to the victim’s identity save a small scrap of paper on which Italian words for “Come quickly” had been written.(43)

That was reason enough for Detective Bureau head George McCloskey to assign the “Barrel Murder” case to Petrosino.

William Flynn

Petrosino learned from William Flynn, chief agent of the New York office of the U.S. Secret Service, that a gang, led by Giuseppe Morello and his close associate Ignazio Lupo and suspected of engaging in counterfeiting and Black Hand crimes, had been under constant surveillance. Flynn’s men reported that Morello’s group was joined by an unknown man on the evening of April 13. At the morgue, the agents identified the barrel victim as the stranger they watched meeting with the gang.(44)

It took a couple of days for police to round up the suspected members of Morello’s Black Hand organization. Eight arrests occurred the first day, with four following the next morning. An additional arrest occurred some time later.

The suspects were: restaurateur Morello, 35, of 178 Chrystie Street; wine importer Lupo, 27, of 433 West 40th Street with a business address at 9 Prince Street; Tomasso “il Bove” Petto, also known as Luciano Perrino, and Giuseppe Lalamia, both of 47 Delancey Street; butcher Vito Laduca (also known as DeLuca) and Nicola Testa, both of 16 Stanton Street; Antonio “Messina” Genova of 538 East 15th Street; cafe owner Pietro Inzerillo, of 226 Elizabeth Street; Giuseppe Fanara of 25 Rivington Street; Domenico Pecoraro of 198 Chrystie Street; Lorenzo and Vito Lobaido of 308 Mott Street; Giuseppe Monti (or Moretti) of 418 East 11th Street; and butcher shop owner Giovanni Zarcone of 145 Hudson Avenue in Brooklyn.(45)

Petrosino also had some interest in Vito Cascio Ferro,(46) believed to be an underworld associate of Morello’s recently arrived from Sicily and living with a relative on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Some reports indicate that Cascio Ferro was arrested with the rest of the gang,(47) but his name does not appear in contemporary accounts.

Evidence against the group of suspects was sorely lacking. Of the murder investigation “trinity” – means, motive and opportunity – the statements of spying Secret Service agents hinted at means and opportunity, but still did not place any of the Morello mobsters with the victim at the time of the killing. Without the victim’s identity, Petrosino could only guess at motive.

Hoping that some semblance of a case would quickly present itself, Petrosino had the gang members booked on suspicion of homicide, extending to them 48 hours of the city hospitality in the police headquarters lockup. That gave the detective just a little bit of breathing room and an opportunity to try to cajole a confession or two out of the suspects.(48) By the weekend, when the suspects were re-arraigned at Jefferson Market Court and given another couple of days of free room and board, it was probably clear that third-degree techniques weren’t going to yield answers.

However, Petrosino had better luck in other phases of his investigation. While distinctive markings in the victim’s clothing and shoes could not be linked to any establishments within New York City, the details of the barrel were more helpful. The letters “W.T.” were stenciled on the barrel’s bottom. “G. 228” was stenciled on the side. The barrel also bore an address, 366 Third Avenue, written in lead pencil. Petrosino also studied the barrel’s contents - burlap, sawdust, cigar and cigarette butts and the peel of a red onion. Much of that appeared to be refuse gathered from the floor of a saloon or cafe.

Morello and Lupo

The evidence allowed the detective to link the barrel to the Elizabeth Street cafe that served as the Morello gang’s hangout. He discovered exactly the same burlap and sawdust within the cafe. The markings on the barrel were traced to the Wallace & Thompson company, which confirmed that it supplied sugar to the same establishment.(49)

At Chief Agent Flynn’s urging, Petrosino then took a photograph of the dead man’s face to Sing Sing Prison,(50) where several recently convicted Sicilian counterfeiters believed to be affiliated with Morello’s mob were doing time. The third convict to see the photograph, Giuseppe DePrimo, immediately identified it.

“Yes I know that man, of course I do,” DePrimo said. “He’s my brother-in-law. What’s the matter with him? Sick?”

As Petrosino explained that the man was dead, DePrimo appeared to faint backward on a bench. Later, DePrimo reportedly told Petrosino that the victim was Benedetto Madonia, a stone mason married to DePrimo’s sister. The Madonias had a home at 47 Trenton Avenue in Buffalo. The prisoner said his brother-in-law had gone into New York City to raise funds for a legal effort to move DePrimo from Sing Sing to a prison closer to family in Erie County.(51)

A motive for murder emerged. Authorities decided that Madonia had approached Morello looking for DePrimo’s cut of counterfeiting proceeds. When the gang boss hesitated, Madonia threatened to take information to the police, so sealing his fate.

(Flynn knew – but seems not to have revealed until years later – that the actual story was more complicated. When he previously rounded up the Morello gang for counterfeiting, he attempted to have the members turn on each other by dealing harshly with several of them and then being overtly kind to DePrimo in the presence of the others. The gangsters logically concluded that DePrimo sold them out.(52) By the time Madonia arrived in town, the Black Handers had determined that the only cut DePrimo was entitled to was one across his throat. Unlucky Madonia served as proxy.)

By April 22, prosecutors still didn’t have anything resembling a sound homicide case. On that date, Madonia’s stepson Salvatore (53) appeared in yet another arraignment of the suspects. Salvatore closely examined the faces of all the accused and said he did not recognize any of them. Magistrate Peter Townsend Barlow ordered the prisoners released.

Lupo experienced a brief moment of freedom and was then rearrested by the Secret Service on a charge of counterfeiting.(54) Before the rest of the gang members could be discharged, Coroner Gustave Scholer ordered them held as witnesses for an inquest into the Madonia slaying. Scholer had some trouble assembling a jury for the inquest. He told the press that the gang’s violent reputation was the obstacle, and, while doing so, he used the frightening term “Mafia.”

“I think the men are afraid to serve on the jury owing to the Italian case,” the coroner said. “I think they fear the Mafia Society, and if they find that they have enough evidence to hold them for the grand jury they [the jurors] might sustain some injury from the gang.”(55)

A coroner’s jury on May 8 attributed Madonia’s homicide to a person or persons unknown but called for the detention of Morello, Laduca, Petto, Fanara, Inzerillo, Genova and Zarcone as accessories to the crime. Zarcone had not yet been arrested, and a warrant was issued for him. The prisoners were committed to the Tombs prison without bail.(56) The other suspects were released.

During a grand jury review, the Madonia homicide case became focused on Tomasso Petto alone. Madonia’s stepson identified a watch pawned by Petto on April 14 as having belonged to Madonia. That eventually led to Petto’s indictment on first-degree murder.(57) But, while the grand jury did its work, Petto was freed on bail. After the indictment, police went out to locate Petto and made an arrest. They nabbed the wrong man.

Vito Cascio Ferro

Petto and Vito Cascio Ferro had left the city. Cascio Ferro traveled to New Orleans and later boarded a ship back to Sicily. He was rumored to have taken with him a photograph of Petrosino, swearing to kill him someday.(58) It seems Petto moved out to the Pittston, Pennsylvania, area and took up a Black Hand extortion racket in the Italian mining community there.(59)

At what should have been Petto’s arraignment, it was revealed that the police had mistakenly arrested 29-year-old Giovanni Carlo Costantino (also known as Giovanni Pecoraro – it is not known if he was related to the Domenico Pecoraro arrested earlier), a man whose husky build was very similar to Petto’s. When Costantino proved his identity, he was released, and the barrel murder perpetrator was never brought to trial.(60)

Though the barrel murder case could in no way be considered a victory for law enforcement, it provided Petrosino with two important tools, tremendous publicity and an increased awareness of the interrelationships between various regional Sicilian criminal bands. Petrosino had been skeptical about alleged cooperation between Black Hand extortionists and the Sicilian Mafia.(61) But he was beginning to piece things together.

Building the Squad

In January 1905, following a rash of bombings in Italian neighborhoods, Police Commissioner William McAdoo put Petrosino in charge of a five-man squad of Italian-speaking detectives. The city’s first “Italian Squad” included non-Italian Maurice Bonoil, of French descent but fluent in the Sicilian tongue. Another member’s Irish-sounding name, Hugo Cassidy, was only slightly altered from his given name of Ugo Cassidi. Also on the squad were Peter Dondero, George Silva and John Lagomarsini.(62)

One of the squad’s earliest adventures found Petrosino on the wrong end of an arrest. The detective sergeant rented some rooms at 175 Waverley Place on Manhattan’s West Side in order to keep an eye on a group of suspected Italian criminals. Petrosino went under cover for the case and played the part of an Italian thug a little too well. His Waverley Place apartment was raided by police led by Captain John O’Brien, and Petrosino was hauled off to the station house before he could identify himself.(63)

In October, 1905, Petrosino began putting the city press to use. Without revealing the source of his statistics, he told the New York Times, “There are thousands of Black Hand robbers and assassins in New York and Brooklyn, and they are a rapidly growing menace to public safety. They are the descendants of generations of brigands from Reggio-Calabria and the Palermo province of Sicily... From one to two dozen Italians come into this office every day to show me letters from Black Hand thugs and ask for protection.”

Petrosino charged that Italian officials were granting passports to their nation’s criminals in order to export their problem to the United States. He called on the federal government to collect the undesirable aliens and send them back across the Atlantic.(64) The squad was dealing as best it could with the extortion, bombings, kidnappings and murders in the Italian communities but, Petrosino argued, the small group was overmatched.

Petrosino found an enthusiastic audience in General Theodore Bingham, who became police commissioner in January of 1906 (and who also had a tendency to inflate statistics when it suited him (65) ). When city alderman protested to the new commissioner regarding Petrosino’s brutal methods of interrogation, Bingham defended his leading Italian detective.(66) In November, Bingham expanded Petrosino’s squad into the “Italian Legion” of the NYPD. Under Petrosino’s direct command were 25 men in Manhattan. An associated office was created in Brooklyn, consisting of 10 men under Detective Sergeant Antonio Vachris.(67) It is generally believed that Petrosino was promoted to the position of lieutenant at this time, but it seems likely his apparent elevation occurred months later when Bingham eliminated the detective sergeant rank from the department.(68)

Membership in the new police organization generally was kept secret.(69) It was no secret that Commissioner Bingham was greatly satisfied at having a police branch loyal only to him and reporting only to him. He spent the next few years trying to establish a larger secret service within the NYPD and to find non-political funding for its operation.

With a small army at his disposal, Petrosino promptly moved against two of the leading members of the Italian underworld in America.

Enrico “Erricone” Alfano was generally recognized as the head of the Camorra criminal society in Naples when he and some underworld associates were accused in June 1906 of murdering Gennaro and Maria Cuocolo. The Cuocolos, rivals to Alfano, had been judged by a Camorra council to be traitors. After charges were lodged against Alfano, he fled to Rome, obtained a false passport and sailed for the United States. He disembarked in New York disguised as a member of the ship’s crew.(70)

Enrico Alfano

Petrosino personally made the arrest of Alfano on April 17, 1907, bringing along a police colleague and a journalist from the New York Times. Alfano reportedly put up a bit of a struggle, but that just made for a better news story. After the arrest, Petrosino explained to the newsman that Alfano was chief of a band of brigands and was wanted for murder in Italy.(71)

Alfano was deported on May 9 and later stood trial in the Court of Assizes at Viterbo, Italy, along with 40 other suspected Camorra members. After a trial lasting 17 months, Alfano was convicted on July 8, 1912, of the Cuocolo murders and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The Italian Squad commander was a little more subtle in his confrontation with Sicilian Mafia big shot Raffaele Palizzolo the following year.

Palizzolo, an influential member of the Chamber of Deputies from Palermo and a dominant figure in Sicily’s Mafia underworld, was charged in an Italian court late in 1899 with ordering the murder of a political opponent, Emanuele Notarbartolo. A former bank director who had worked to keep Palizzolo’s hands off his establishment, Notarbartolo was found dead of 23 stab wounds in the back of a railway carriage in February of 1893. Palizzolo was convicted in 1902 and sentenced to 30 years behind bars.(72) However, the Mafia chief succeeded in winning a new trial and was acquitted in summer of 1904.(73)

On June 8, 1908, 63-year-old Palizzolo and his companion Gaetano Ferlazzo arrived in New York City aboard the steamship Martha Washington and went to stay with their friend Orlando Domenico at 213 East 105th Street.(74) Palizzolo received a hero’s welcome wherever he went, and he addressed crowds and the press as if he was the spokesman of the Italian people. With reporters, he refused to discuss the Mafia but acknowledged he had a considerable political machine in Palermo.(75)

Petrosino and his men took interest in Palizzolo’s visit. The Italian Squad commander told the press he accepted Palizzolo’s word that he was not the leader of a criminal society. But Petrosino secretly had the newcomer watched. When Palizzolo made contact with local Mafiosi, Petrosino paid him a visit. No newspaper reporter was brought along to document the interaction, as Petrosino convinced Palizzolo that it was time for him to return home. Palizzolo sailed back to Italy on Aug. 2.(76)

Petrosino had neglected his personal life in order to focus attention on his crime-fighting career. That changed abruptly after the Italian Legion was established. The 46-year-old Petrosino married Adelina Vinti, 37, on April 7, 1907, in old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mott Street. On Nov. 20 of the following year, the couple had a baby girl and named her Adelina Bianca Giuseppina.(77)

Into the Lion's Den

In February of 1909 the Times announced, “Police Commissioner Bingham has a secret service of his own at last.” The newspaper report explained that Bingham had acquired private funding for the police organization and speculated that wealthy Italian businessmen or prominent industrialists, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, might be footing the bill. “I have money and plenty of it,” the commissioner boasted, “and it didn’t come from the city.”

Lieutenant Petrosino was placed in charge of the new service. The newspaper noted that Petrosino had been missing from police headquarters for some weeks:

...It was given out that his health had failed and that he was taking a vacation. But the lieutenant is not on a vacation. In fact he is doing some of the most important work which has ever been assigned him... Where he is just now is another secret... He may be on his way to Europe... The report that he was on his vacation was exploded a few days ago when he appeared at 300 Mulberry Street. He had a long conference with Deputy Commissioner Woods and his chief. Then he disappeared again.

When the Times reporter asked Bingham about Petrosino’s location, the commissioner answered, “Why, he may be on the ocean, bound for Europe, for all I know.”(78)

The story went on to describe the NYPD’s interest in a clandestine cooperative effort with Italian authorities to stop the flow of criminals across the Atlantic and to return fugitives from Italian justice. Similar stories appeared in other papers in New York and around the world.

The steamship Duce di Genova, on which Petrosino traveled under the assumed name of Simone Velletri, was at the moment nearing the Italian coast. It docked at Genoa on Feb. 21. By then, anyone who might have been interested was aware that Petrosino was on a “secret” mission to Italy.(79)

Petrosino met with government officials in mainland Italy and then moved on to Sicily on Feb. 28. There he reached out to members of the underworld, offering bits of Bingham’s nest egg in exchange for information.(80) While he signed in at Palermo’s Hotel de France under the assumed name of Guglielmo DeSimone,(81) he made no secret of his identity when speaking with local police leaders. Word of his presence in the Mafia’s capital city apparently leaked.

On the evening of March 11, Petrosino wrote into his notebook an entry with a familiar ring to it: “Vito Cascio Ferro, born in Sambuca Zabut, resident of Bisacquino, Province of Palermo, dreaded criminal.”(82) Since the note made no mention of their earlier acquaintance, it is not clear whether Petrosino recalled Cascio Ferro from the Barrel Murder case. Cascio Ferro seems to have remembered Petrosino.

On the following evening, the 48-year-old dean of New York’s Italian detectives was shot to death at the iron fence of the Garibaldi Garden in Palermo’s Piazza Marina. A heavy Belgian revolver with a single empty chamber was found by his body. Investigators determined that the weapon belonged to one of the assassins. Petrosino’s Smith & Wesson handgun was discovered back in his hotel room.(83) In the lieutenant’s coat pockets were found postcards addressed to his wife, a gold watch and chain, some banknotes and a checkbook, and a metal badge bearing the number “285.”(84)

Though there must have been eyewitnesses at a streetcar station nearby and in the various buildings overlooking the Piazza, police found no one who could identify the shooters. A waiter at the Caffé Oreto named Geraci recalled that two men approached Petrosino while he was eating, and he waved them away.(85)

The detective in the derby

Italian authorities were immediately suspicious of Cascio Ferro,(86) who had become one of the most revered and feared Mafiosi in Sicily, and two Sicilian hoodlums recently returned from American, Antonio Passananti and Carlo Costantino. (This was the same Costantino who was arrested in Tomasso Petto’s place in the Barrel Murder case.) Police learned that the three men had visited together just days before Petrosino’s assassination and that Costantino had exchanged cryptic telegrams with Giuseppe Morello, back in New York, during the same period. Costantino was arrested on March 13 at his home in Partinico, a village southwest of Palermo. Passananti and Cascio Ferro remained at large. A dozen other suspects were brought in for questioning.(87)

Cascio Ferro was caught on April 3.(88) Police concluded that Passananti had evaded them by traveling back to the United States under the alias of Lo Baido.(89)

By early April, Palermo Police Commissioner Baldassare Ceola was satisfied that Cascio Ferro, possibly with assistance from Black Handers in the U.S., devised the plan for Petrosino’s assassination and carried it out along with Costantino and Passananti. Ceola communicated his findings to Palermo’s Criminal Court.(90) Rather than resulting in the prosecution of the alleged Petrosino assassins, Ceola’s report appears to have triggered his own dismissal. In mid-July, the Italian government ordered him into retirement. Subsequently, all the suspects gained their freedom through bail or probation. The case against Cascio Ferro and Costantino fell apart over time, and charges were quietly dropped in 1911.(91)

The Petrosino assassination remains officially unsolved.

According to legend, Cascio Ferro later bragged about killing the police lieutenant. He claimed it was the only time he killed someone by his own hand. The Mafia leader was reportedly dining with a member of the Chamber of Deputies on the night of March 12. He excused himself from the meal, borrowed a carriage from his host, and arrived at the Piazza Marina in time to deliver the coup de grâce shot to the side of Petrosino’s head. He then returned to finish eating and to nail down his alibi.(92)

New York Mourns

“Petrosino was a great man, a good man,” former President Theodore Roosevelt told the press upon learning of the assassination. “I knew him for years, and he did not know the name of fear. He was a man worth while. I regret most sincerely the death of such a man as Joe Petrosino.”

With its flags all at half-mast, the Cunard Line steamship Slavonia entered New York harbor on Friday, April 9, carrying Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino’s remains. The coffin was lowered from the steamer to a police boat. It was placed on the forward deck and draped with the Stars and Stripes. At Pier A, a select squad of police officers loaded the coffin into a waiting hearse. Led by two companies of mounted police, it was then driven to the Republican League club rooms at 233 Lafayette Street. Petrosino’s widow Adelina, who resided in apartments over the club rooms, cried deeply as she met the hearse.

Petrosino gravesite

Petrosino’s body had to be moved to a new coffin. The old one of Italian walnut had been fractured in transit by the outward pressure of its own zinc lining. The coffin was then positioned under a large, silver candelabra in a spacious clubroom, which had been draped with purple velvet and filled with floral wreaths. A police honor guard stood at the head and foot of the coffin.

Only Petrosino family members and their close friends were permitted into the room on the first day. The public was admitted on Saturday and Sunday, and tens of thousands filed past the bier.

An estimated 200,000 New Yorkers lined the route of funeral cortege on Monday. A hearse draped in white and pulled by six horses carried the flag- and flower-covered coffin slowly through the city streets. Adelina and other relatives rode in three carriages. Two companies of mounted officers met the hearse at old St. Patrick’s Cathedral as the police band played “Nearer, My God, To Thee.”

After a Mass of Christian Burial, the mounted companies led the way uptown. They were followed by police and fire officials, a regiment of 1,000 foot police, five open carriages of flowers and the hearse. Next were Petrosino’s pall bearers, relatives and police administrators. Local Italian societies and marching bands brought up the rear. Much of the procession halted into saluting formations along Second Avenue, as the horsemen, the hearse and the mourners turned onto the 59th Street Bridge and passed into Queens.

At Calvary Cemetery, the mounted companies formed up at the graveside and presented arms while “Taps” was played. The only New York police officer to be killed in the exercise of his duty overseas was lowered into his grave, as his widow wailed in grief.(93)