Leo Lauritano

Lauritano was a Brooklyn-based racketeer who ran a saloon at 115 Navy Street and also conducted a lucrative murder-for-hire business.

It was to Lauritano that Bronx boss Ciro Terranova allegedly ran to contract a hit on Joe DiMarco in 1916. A Lauritano gunman was also used just weeks later to perform a hit on Terranova's brother Nicholas, indicating that money, rather than loyalty, determined the targets of Lauritano's men.

According to testimony from hitman Johnny "Lefty" Esposito, Lauritano paid his gunmen a steady salary to keep them on retainer. (Esposito complained that Lauritano lowered his pay as a result of the accidental killing of Lauritano friend Charles Lombardi during the DiMarco hit.)

The Lauritano operation appears to be the earliest of Brooklyn's alleged murder-for-hire groups. In the early 1920s, authorities believed that a young Castellammarese Mafia family was working as hired killers for other underworld organizations. Two decades later, prosecutors discovered a Brooklyn-based gang of professional killers which became known as Murder, Inc.