Giuseppe Petrosino and the Black Hand

"If Petrosino had died a president or an emperor, no deeper or truer show of feeling could have been manifested than was shown by the 200,000 citizens who lined the sidewalks." —The New York Times, April 13, 1909

It was a funeral as only New Yorkers do funerals.

The body of NYPD detective lieutenant Joseph Petrosino arrived in New York Harbor from Palermo aboard the Slavonics on Good Friday, April 9,1909. When the coffin was opened, the undertakers nearly fainted: Sent home unembalmed, the body was black and swollen, a final insult and warn­ing from Petrosino's mafioso enemies.

A day later grief and accusations echoed down Lafayette Street. Petrosino lay in wake inside the Republican League, the same place from which Petrosino's life­long friend and ally Theodore Roosevelt had helped launch both their legends. £

morto, il povero Pet-rosino! He's dead, poor Petrosino, as­sassinated by the Mafia, against whom he had battled all his adult life. Day and night they came, 11,000 mourners in

black suits and bowler hats, black lace dresses and squeaky grandmother's shoes, in butcher's aprons, in whipcord blues with gleaming brass buttons, trudg­ing the narrow stairway to the closed wooden coffin with its cross of pink and white carnations.

just after noon on Monday, April 12, New York stood still as Petrosino's coffin was carried from Old St. Patrick's Cathe­dral on Mott Street to a six-horse caisson. If the weight of the hermetically sealed metal container inside the wooden cof­fin did not buckle the knees of the NYPD pallbearers, the sight before them must have: a sea of humanity, lining sidewalks,

crowding onto root-tops, hanging from lampposts, leaning from window ledges. They tossed flow­ers, waved flags and wept. Every shop in the city closed, ev­ery school and of-

fice shuttered, every flagpole trimmed at half-mast. Five open carriages full of flowers, 3,200 policemen, including five platoons of mounted officers, 333 fire­fighters, all 60 of the city's Italian fra­ternal organizations, more than 3,000 marchers in the funeral cortege alone. On point marched the police band; behind it, in scarlet tunics and blue-gray trousers, strode the patriotic Garibaldi Guard. At every block they alternated "Nearer, My God, to Thee" with the Italian national anthem. Ten times police had to push back the crowd.

Nearly a quarter of a million people came to honor a detective who earned $2,700 a year at the time of his death. Giuseppe "Joseph" Petrosino was the poorest man ever to receive a public fu­neral in New York, a member of one of the most reviled nationalities to limp ashore in the promised land.

It was a funeral as only New Yorkers do funerals.

The story is too vast to be his alone. Petrosino was one of three men who de­fined American justice. The two others: New York's reform-minded police com­missioner and future president, Theo­dore Roosevelt, and Vito Cascio Ferro, the first Dapper Don, the true Vito Corleone,

who helped mythologize the ugly art of murder, defining the rules of organized crime decades before Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. Petrosino. Roosevelt. Cascio Ferro.

SHOE-SHINE BOY

The Petrosino clan of Salerno arrived in New York in 1873 with the wave of mostly northern Italian immigrants, skilled and semiskilled workers who could afford the passage and were desperately needed by the post-Civil War industrial revolu­tion. Thirteen-year-old Giuseppe, now Joseph, was short-legged, with wrestler shoulders, blacksmith arms, ham-hock fists and a bullmastiff head. His pow­erful constitution helped him survive a bout of smallpox that pitted his face. On sojourns to PS 23 on Mulberry Street, Joseph defended his Italian schoolmates against assaults by the neighborhood

Irish. He had a simple technique: Hit 'em till they drop.

At the age of 20 Petrosino ran a mod­estly profitable newspaper and shoe-shine stand on Mulberry Street outside Central Police Station, whose officers were his best customers. The station captain, Alexander Williams, had earned the sobriquet Clubber by using his nightstick to clear a saloon. It was Clubber Williams who had named the Tenderloin, the vice-filled area surrounding the 30th Street Precinct-the center cut of extracurricular income for the NYPD.

Petrosino's demolition of neighborhood thugs bent on taking his corner likely caught Clubber's eye. By 1880 Italian immmigra-tion to Manhattan was growing, with thou­sands fleeing the poverty and upheaval in Sicily. On the Lower East Side and in Italian Harlem uptown, murder, robbery, extortion and a crime of particular worry to the Secret Service, counterfeiting, had exploded.

Astonishingly, the Manhattan NYPD em­ployed not a single Italian-speaking officer. In 1882 Clubber sought out Petrosino-newly employed as a foreman of sanitation crews loading garbage scows on the East River-and urged him to gather intelligence about

crimes throughout the Italian Lower East Side, an early form of auxiliary police work. He learned to read faces and gestures, to follow an investigation and go unnoticed. When he later became the most famous police officer in New York, Petrosino refined the art of under­cover work, dressing as a blind beggar, a sanita­tion worker, a Hasidic Jew; his closet resembled the wardrobe room of the Metropolitan Opera.

By 1883 Petrosino had become so successful that Clubber received a dispensation-the only

one in NYPD history-to swear in Pet­rosino, who at five feet three inches was five inches short of the height require­ment. Manhattan now had one Italian-speaking officer for 100,000 immigrants and scores of vicious gangs.

On his first patrol the proud Petrosino was dismayed by his reception. Some hissed and whistled, calling out "We have parsley, see the parsley" (in the dialect of southern (continued on page 170)

BLACK HAND

(continued from page 90) Italy, the word for parsley is petrosino), a warning to the unsavory that Joe was in their midst.

That first night Petrosino made his presence felt. William Farraday, a laborer of African descent, had stumbled onto Canal Street—not exactly a corridor of brotherly love. Petrosino heard the man's screams and sprinted to his aid. Farraday "s Sicilian assailants jeered at the stout rookie and continued undeterred. Pet­rosino launched into a savage attack, leaving them bloody and battered before escorting the grateful victim to safer turf.

THE GODFATHER

The origin of the Sicilian Mafia has been shrouded in false, self-serving myths. Para­mount is the canard that the Mafia sprang to life in 1282 as a patriotic revolt—primarily in defense of its women—against occupying French troops. The truth is less glamorous.

Lemons.

Lemons are as likely the foundation of the Mafia's genesis as anything else. During the Napoleonic Wars the British Royal Navy supplied its ships with lemons and limes to combat scurvy. Its primary source of citrus was the hot dry hills of western Sicily. Brit­ish demand triggered an agrarian gold rush for lemons, limes, cheese, olive oil, wine, vinegar. Highway bandits who plagued the dusty hillsides had something to steal besides scrawny cows: lush produce going out, sacchi di soldi—bags of cash—coming in. Palermo's waterfront boomed, providing a labor pool to exploit and bountiful ships to loot. Although Garibaldi's Red Shirts liberated Sicily from French Bourbon rule and unified Italy in 1860, Sicily revolted against Roman author­ity. Soon enough enterprising thugs were sailing the citrus highway to New Orleans and New York.

A comprehensive portrait of Cascio Ferro comes from Com Nostra: A History of the Sicil­ian Mafia, John Dickie's brilliantly detailed examination of the evolution of organized crime. In 1862 Vito Cascio Ferro began life in Bisacquino, a hill town outside Palermo, developing an early aversion to work and an affinity for opera, gambling and fine clothes. He conquered his illiteracy by marrying the village schoolteacher. His charming, sophisti­cated image led to a job brokering goods for Baron Inglese, a powerful merchant. Cascio Ferro learned to skim cream from the top and became Don Vito.

In 1898 19-year-old Baroness Clorinda Per-itelli di Valpetroso was kidnapped for ransom, which her family promptly paid. The baron­ess named Don Vito as the mastermind. He told authorities the kidnapping was a "crime of passion": One of his men was enamored of the baroness, who spurned him. Although the young couple had never met. the courts, for reasons suspect, bought the story.

Cascio Ferro used his silver tongue to prevail when lesser mafiosi would have resorted to violence, and his legend grew. After a brief flirtation with Fasci Siciliani, a socialist-progressive peasant rights group, he began to fancy himself a man of the peo­ple: Denounce the moneyed elite and the

corrupt legal system, and everyone—even those you exploit—will adore you. By offer­ing a corrupt but benevolent alternative to the corrupt and brutal official government, Cascio Ferro perfected the romanticized image of the most vicious and predatory criminal organization the world has ever seen. Sicily was about to get its first capo <li tutti capi, or "boss of all bosses."

SILK SOCKS

The "Italian problem" exploded with the murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessey in October 1890. His dying declaration: "The dagos did it." A war of the oranges—like the battles in Sicily over citrus crops and shipping—had claimed 40 lives throughout New Orleans, lead­ing Mayor Joseph Shakspeare to call Ital­ians "vicious and worthless." The carnage was the result of power struggles between two Sicilian gangs: the Provenzanos and the Matrangas. Suspicion for Hennessey's murder fell on the latter.

The late chief had deep ties with the Provenzano gang, even appearing as an alibi witness in one of its murder trials. In New York, newly appointed detective Petrosino was quoted in the Times in the first of nearly 300 Petrosino stories.

The rival Matranga gang was targeted for Hennessey's murder. A jury acquitted all of the accused. Six thousand Louisianans, including hooded Klansmen, stormed the jail, shooting and killing 11 Sicilians.

Italians were lynched or assaulted in a dozen cities. Rumors abounded that Ital­ian warships were sailing for a siege of New Orleans. Though the stories were oudandish, Congress discussed bolstering the Navy.

Detective Petrosino became the Mafia expert of record, earning a national platform for his crusade.

The publicity brought him a new ally and friend: A fiery young politician with a squeaky voice and a face built for caricature, Theodore Roosevelt was on an equally lonely campaign to stamp out corruption in his beloved city. Raised on his father's crusade against Boss Tweed, he had found the perfect foot soldier in his battle to reform the city his family had helped define.

In May 1895, after serving as the youngest assemblyman in the state legislature, Roosevelt became president of New York City's Board of Police Commissioners. Two months later his investigation into NYPD corruption led to the reassignment of 11 officers and the retire­ment of nine detectives, the largest purge ever. Roosevelt promoted Petrosino to detec­tive sergeant, making him the city's highest-ranking Italian-speaking officer.

A well of pride—some say a touch of arro­gance—filled Petrosino. The frugal sergeant splurged on pinstripes and topcoats, becom­ing the Detective in the Derby, choosing the tallest chapeau to offset his stature as the shortest cop in New York.

Roosevelt opened a department pis­tol range—the first police academy—and launched his famous "midnight rambles" through the city's roughest neighborhoods, in defiance of his derisive nickname. Silk Socks. He rousted on-duty officers from saloons and gambling houses and gathered information on departmental corruption.

1'ctrosino never missed an opportunity to praise Roosevelt's reforms. Roosevelt recog­nized I'elrosino as the two-listed moralist he aspired to he and as a pipeline to the bur­geoning Italian vote. Though careful not to criticize superiors or fellow officers. IVtrosino was appalled by their corruption and shoddy discipline. He was disliked and mistrusted for his refusal to accept a dirty dime. They called him the wop. the dago and the guinea. Some Italian newspapers, financed or intim­idated by gangsters, branded him a traitor. Roosevelt pleached the gospel of good press, and I'elrosino learned to tip reporters to a sensational murder or spectacular bust.

Hundreds ol competing small gangs— alumni of Sicily's Mafia. Naples's Camorra, Calabria's 'Ndrangheta—plagued Little Italy and Italian Harlem. While IVtrosino refused to believe the hoodlums had the capacity for organization, several astonishing murder cases propelled him to fame.

On the evening of September 12, 1897, officers responded to screams on Baxter Street in Little Italy. They found 25-year-old Angelo Carbone, bloody knife in hand, stand­ing over freshly murdered Natalio Brogno. The two had argued inside the nearby Tri-nacria Caffe and then gone outside to settle their dispute.

Carbone offered a preposterous explana­tion to Sergeant I'elrosino: He had knocked Brogno down, and when he failed to rise, Carbone found a blade somehow imbedded in Brogno's back. Justice Frederick Smyth sentenced Carbone to death to deter Italians from being "too free with the use of knives."

Petrosino had moved into a small apart­ment in the Irish neighborhood, a cultural moat between him and Sicilian vendicatori. After supper in his favorite restaurant. Sau-lino's on Lafayette, he would retire behind closed curtains at home and practice his Verdi. Opera and the violin were his only interests outside the job. Being seen with Petrosino was tantamount to a death war­rant in Little Italy; every Italian hoodlum in New York was taught to recognize him on sight. To compensate, he became an accomplished disguise artist. He dressed as a street vendor, a city services employee or a priest and made the rounds of Elizabeth and Mulberry streets. He heard about Car-bone's hard work and familial devotion and the persistent word that the young man was about to die for someone else's crime.

Brogno, the stabbing victim, had enemies, particularly one Alessandro Ciarmello, a Sicilian with a volcanic temper who had been badly beaten by Brogno when he caught Brogno with his wife. Ciarmello was seen in the Trinacria Caffe the night of the murder but fled town soon after. Pet­rosino became obsessed; he took trains to New Jersey, Delaware and Philadelphia in search of Ciarmello.

Finally, Petrosino located him in Balti­more. Posing as a health inspector, he talked his way into the house where Ciarmello was staying. He engaged him in conversation, then seized him after kicking an ax away. Through whatever method of persuasion Petrosino employed, Ciarmello admitted to a grudge against Brogno and more. When Brogno and Carbone had gone outside, Ciarmello had followed. When Brogno was

staggered by his opponent's blow, Ciarmello leaned from a darkened doorway and planted a knife in his back.

Two weeks before the scheduled execu­tion, Carbone's conviction was overturned, and Ciarmello soon assumed his spot in the electric chair.

According to Arrigo Petacco, Petrosino's Italian-language biographer, six months after solving the Brogno murder Petrosino made one of his most sensational cases. Unfortunately, Petacco does not cite his sources, nor does the story appear in any of the daily newspapers of the time. While perhaps apocryphal, the story is typical of the police work ascribed to Petrosino: Just before Christmas 1898, a Sicilian laborer, Antonio Sperduto, was found vomiting and incoherent in the Bowery. He had obviously

been poisoned and was missing a sizable amount of cash. As he told Pelrosino, the day of his poisoning Sperduto had visited an Italian steam­ship office to inquire about passage from Italy for his wife and children. Working long days, starving himself and saving every penny, Sper­duto could finally afford its fares.

At that point I'et-rosino interrupted and finished the story, to Sperduto's astonishment. He explained how a man had approached Sperdulo, claiming to recognize him from their village in Italy. Learning of Sper-duto's success, he offered to celebrate with him over drinks. It was nearly the last drink of Sperduto's young life.

Sperduto was the first survivor who could point Pelrosino to the existence of a rumored network of

thugs wlu» preyed on scores of immigrants desperate to reunite with their families. Disguised as a laborer, Petrosino went to work digging the city sewer system, where gangsters plumbed Italian crews for vic­tims. A year later Petrosino arrested the principal members of the Poison gang, which had also allegedly bilked insurance companies through a variety of scams. During the arrest—so the story goes—the gang's leader, Giuseppe Giuliano. fought Petrosino. They tumbled down four flights of stairs onto Park Street, where Petrosino shoved Galliano's head inside a sewer drain and nearly killed him.

As the year 1900 arrived Italian gangsters were making low friends in high places at an unprecedented rate, and politicians were finding money and votes in the urban under-

belly. In Sicily, Vito Cascio Ferro was consoli­dating his criminal empire and extending his tentacles across the AlJantic.

Two men were ready to up the ante. New York's governor, Theodore Roosevelt, was headed to Washington as William McKin-ley's new vice president, and he would soon launch the most sweeping reform movement in history. In Manhattan, Joseph Petrosino was about to write a dramatic chapter in American police work.

On July 29, 1900, Italian American anar­chist Gactano Bresci assassinated King Umberto I of Italy in retaliation for the mas­sacre of Italians in Milan protesting the price of bread. The Secret Service, under the leg­endary William Flynn, traced Bresci's roots to a flourishing anarchist group in Paterson, New Jersey. The outraged Italian ambassa-

dor demanded that McKinley investigate any possible American-based conspiracy.

Vice President Roosevelt had the perfect man for the job. Posing as a laborer named Pielro Moretti, Petrosino moved into Ber-toldi's Hotel, favored by Enrico Malatesta— Ernie Headache—editor of an anarchist newspaper and the group's leader. Pet-rosino's undercover skills were keen. His ruddy face and burly frame smacked of working-class immigrant. He spoke every Italian dialect, from floral Tuscan to collo­quial Sicilian. A man who rarely smiled, he was amiable and charming when the task required. Petrosino spent three months assembling a file on the group and eventu­ally gained access to a list of world leaders marked for death. One name in particular caught his eye: William McKinley.

1'etrosino slipped into Washington and called on Roosevelt, who hustled him in to see the president. Petrosino begged McKinley to increase security and avoid public appear­ances until he dismantled die group. McKin­ley would have none of it; he was the people's president, a man without enemies. Two weeks later McKinley greeted a throng at Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition. His small security detail was on edge: Petrosino's warning had unnerved everyone but the president.

Twelve minutes into the glad-fest, Polish immigrant Leon Czolgosz raised a .32-cali-ber Iver Johnson revolver hidden in a hand­kerchief and fired twice. Among Czolgosz's possessions were newspaper articles about Gaetano Bresci and the Paterson group. He was a rabid supporter, espousing the most violent antigovernment rhetoric.

tight days later, McKinlcy died. Pet-rosino learned the news from reporters outside Central Station on Mulberry. Unchar­acteristically, he burst into tears. "I warned him," he bellowed. In the wake of the trag­edy, Petrosino gained national acclaim as the man who had nearly saved a president, and Roosevelt ascended to the bully pulpit of the presidency.

WETTING THE BEAK

The flashpoint in the war against orga­nized crime occurred in New York on April 14, 1903. The spark, naturally, was a grisly murder.

An Irish house­keeper spotted a wooden barrel near a lumberyard at East 11 th Street and Avenue D. Inside she discovered the muti­lated body of an Ital­ian male. By day's end New York was rocked by the Body in the Barrel murder.

Petrosino examined the body, clothing and barrel, carefully recording the tiny clues. The Italian Shcrl<x:k Holmes had taught himself the rudiments of crime-scene analysis. The initials on the barrel, W&.-T, denoted (he Wal­lace & Thompson bakery. It supplied sugar to local retailers, including Caffe Pasticceria on Elizabeth Street, a hangout for the clever and vicious Morello gang. Petrosino and Secret Service agent William Flynn had the gang—headed by psychopath Giuseppe "Clutch Hand" Morello, whose shriveled left arm sported only an enlarged little finger— under surveillance for counterfeiting.

Petrosino entered Caffe Pasticceria and confronted the manager, Pietro Inzerillo, an illiterate Morello soldier. Petrosino found a mate to the barrel that had borne the muti­lated body, plus wood shavings and cheap

Toscano cigar butts matching those in the barrel coffin.

An anonymous tip identified the deceased as Benedetto Madonia and led Petrosino to Madonia's brother-in-law, Giuseppe DiPrimo, in Sing Sing. DiPrimo described how he had sent Madonia to Morello to collect money he owed them. When Petrosino revealed Madonia's demise, DiPrimo clammed up.

Chief of Detectives George McClusky led a dramatic raid that netted a dozen suspects. It took several burly cops to subdue Tommaso "the Ox" Petto, a bodybuilder who was Morel-lo's chief assassin and one of Madonia's mur­derers. Also arrested: gang leader Morello and his right hand, Ignazio "the Wolf" Lupo.

However, two other Morello associates slipped through the net. One was Giuseppe Fontana, a Sicilian capo on both sides of the Adantic. Fontana had been a defendant in the most sensational Mafia trial to date, for the assassination of Marquis Emanuele Notarbartolo, director of the Bank of Sicily. Following his release after a 10-year court batde, Fontana decided it was a good time to visit America. With an introduction from Vito Cascio Ferro, Morello's gang welcomed him with open arms.

The man who likely ordered the Notar­bartolo killing—the tall, distinguished Cascio

Ferro himself—also dodged capture during the barrel murder sweep. When he arrived in Manhattan in 1901, the biggest capo in the new land, gangsters kissed his hand as a hol­low Man of Honor. He peddled the hokum of the Mafia as a respected secret society, institu­tionalizing the blood oath and enforcing the code of silence—omerta.

Cascio Ferro is represented as dapper Don Fanucci in The Godfather: Part II. In rakish fedora and overcoat, Fanucci tries to "wet his beak" by extoring Robert DeNiro's young Vito Corleone. The pizzo, or wetting of the beak, was coined by Cascio Ferro and represented a shift in Mafia tactics. Instead of bleeding a businessman into ruin, Don Vito introduced leeching on the installment plan, offering pro­tection and benevolence for weekly payments. Kiss my ring, wet my beak and I'll save your ass—from me: a monstrous but effective lie that transformed organized crime.

Fictional Vito Corleone also mirrors Vito Cascio Ferro; a Pagliacci-loving padrone putting honor above profit, an alternative government providing justice when justice fails. This is true of the real Don Vito: wise and benevolent—when not bombing family grocery stores, extorting labor, corrupting governments and murdering police officers. Before Petrosino could implicate him in the

barrel murder, Cascio Ferro fled to Sicily via New Orleans, reportedly with a photo of Petrosino in his breast pocket and revenge on his mind.

Petrosino made sure the press got a front row seat for chapter one of the real God­father saga. He learned that after the Ox had dismembered Madonia's body, he sold the victim's pocket watch. Petrosino found it in a pawnshop and convinced Madonia's rela­tives lo testify. In court, gangsters lapped their feet during the family members' testimony, an open threat on their lives. They crumbled.

Police had also committed a fatal error. Petto the Ox had lied, and in an era of poor mug shots and no fingerprints, another defendant, Giovanni Pecoraro, was mistaken for Petto. When Pecoraro revealed his true identity in court, he threw the trial into dis­array. Charges were dismissed. Morello and Lupo were convicted of counterfeiting, and their sentences were quickly overturned.

However, Petrosino had learned of Cascio Ferro and Foniana. He knew the Mafia had penetrated the highest levels of commerce and government in Sicily. America could be next.

THE UNTOUCHABLES

When the barrel murder case unraveled in 1903, Petrosino had been a cop for 20 years and had seen New York's Italian population grow from 25,000 to 500,000. most of them WOPs (Without Papers), the greatest ethnic immigration in modern history. Despite the failure to convict Morello, an uneasy calm descended on I jttle Italy as Pelrosino's efforts put fear in the gang and nudged neighbor­hood sentiment in his direction.

Not for long. Extortion letters began to flood property owners and businessmen, threatening to murder them or kidnap their children if payment was not rendered. Each bore an imprint of La Mano Nera—die Black Hand. Newspapers pounced, writing in slav­ish prose about a monstrous secret society of Italian killers and extortionists. The term Black Hand virtually replaced Mafia in the national press. By any name, the game was growing deadlier. Children were snatched in schoolyards; people who refused to pay were stabbed or shot while leaving their homes. Then the bombings started.

An "infernal mechanism" exploded outside a pharmacy al Park and Mulberry. It was a paper bag filled with black powder and deto­nated by a linen fuse. It rattled windows and nerves but little else—a mere opening salvo.

Bomb making improved: olive oil cans filled with black powder, then dynamite sticks—"Italian sausages"—stolen from sub­way construction. Soon they came wrapped with nails, ball bearings and shards of metal. Cloth fuses were replaced with wind-up clocks as umers.

For years Petrosino had been pleading with higher-ups for a squad of Italian-speaking detectives. In January 1905 bureaucratic police commissioner William McAdoo was forced to consent. Petrosino picked five dedi­cated, incorruptible officers from other pre­cincts and launched his untouchables.

Many in the department and the city bureaucracy hated them. Why an Italian squad? There was no Jewish or Irish squad. Petrosino and his men were ostracized at the morning lineup, the arena for shared

intelligence. Petrosino was forced to rent a small apartment at 175 Waverly for his headquarters.

He got his first break against the bombers when one Salvatore Salena almost blew him­self to bits. Salena, whose hobbies included poisoning Thoroughbred horses for extor­tionists, led Petrosino to his boss, Giuseppe Bonavcntura. Fetrosino followed Bonaven-tura day and night, nearly exhausting his repertoire of disguises.

Late one night Bonaventura entered an East 11 th Street tenement owned by Fran­cesco Spinelli, who had refused an exorbitant extortion demand to prevent the kidnapping of his young son. Inside Spinelli's tenement lobby, Bonaventura pulled a bomb from his overcoat and lit the fuse.

Petrosino crashed through the door and tackled the younger, tidier Bonaventura, pinch­ing out the fuse a second before detonation. A savage fist light ensued. A bloody, exhausted Petrosino battered Bonaventura unconscious with the butt of his service revolver.

Afterward, Petrosino created the New York Bomb Squad, the nation"s first, as he taught himself and his men to defuse the increas­ingly sophisticated devices. Between 1904 and 1906 more than 300 Black Hand mur­ders were recorded. Thanks to rising con­fidence in the Italian Squad, as many as 35 Black Hand crimes were reported in a day.

In January 1906 Petrosino's crusade received another boost. Theodore Bingham, a former military man and Roosevelt's chief of White House protocol, became New York's police commissioner. He considered the war on the Black Hand precisely that: a war. He promoted Petrosino to lieutenant—the equivalent of a captain today—and boosted the Italian Squad to 25 officers, with a branch in Brooklyn headed by Petrosino's protege Antonio Vachris.

Scarcely a week passed when they did not rescue a kidnapped child, break up a bomb­ing group or solve a sensational murder. Pet­rosino used the newspapers to control die PR war. He blasted the courts for freeing vicious criminals. He called New York a dumping ground for Italian criminals and demanded stricter immigration laws.

Roosevelt heard the plea. In 1907 the president introduced an immigration bill that allowed deportation of foreigners with criminal records in their native land. But the deportation had to occur within three years of arrival. Smart lawyers found loopholes and engineered delays until the statute of limita­tions ran out.

The Italian Squad harassed and battered criminals who had outwitted the law. They shuttered businesses, raided hangouts and humiliated gangsters in front of cohorts and neighbors. Petrosino compiled photo arrays, rap sheets and gang profiles, the first data files on organized crime. He begmdgingly realized the gangs were organizing. Some, particularly the Morello gang, were in consort with Cascio Kerro in Sicily, who sent new members when­ever Petrosino busted the old ones.

Petrosino was 48 and weary, his survival a testimony to toughness, good fortune and a fearsome reputation. He slept on his desk and went months without seeing his brother or family. There is no indication he had ever been with a woman: Safety concerns

deterred thoughts of marriage and children.

In December 1907 he was dining at Sau-lino's, where the owner's daughter, Adelina, had served him for years in a private room. She was 38 and a widow. Petrosino looked up. "We're both alone. Maybe we should get married." A week later, with the Italian Squad in attendance, they exchanged vows in her father's restaurant. They retired to his apart­ment, and die next day he returned to work.

In June 1908 Raffaele Palizzolo, a for­mer deputy to parliament convicted in the murder of the director of the Bank of Sicily and freed on a technicality, arrived in New York. Thousands of Sicilians cheered. Com­missioner Bingham welcomed him, initially unaware of his involvement in the Marquis Notarbartolo assassination.

Palizzolo—Cascio Ferro's emissary— described his visit as a crusade against the Black Hand and declared it a myth manufactured by police. He also called for "organization and unity." His audacity was breathtaking: a convicted murderer spouting Mafia code words on New York streets and in American newspapers. While Petrosino pub­licly declared him a good man, he shadowed Don Raitaele everywhere.

Palizzolo spread the twisted gospel of Cascio Ferro, the baron of half of Sicily's 100 crime families. Petrosino circulated through Don RafTaele's adoring crowds to arrest known criminals. Finally, Petrosino cornered him. Whatever he did or said sent Palizzolo packing back to Sicily. Cascio Ferro was enraged.

Several Italian newspapers and city bureaucrats launched a chorus of protest. One politician dubbed Petrosino the Dentist for the teeth he had dislodged from recalci­trant hoodlums.

Petrosino pushed back. He boasted that his men had reduced crime and violence in the Italian sections by 50 percent.

Bingham created an NYPD secret service to wipe out the Black Hand. Its anonymous members would be accountable only to Pet­rosino and Bingham. When city officials refused funding, Bingham raised $30,000 from private sources, rumored to be the New York Stock Exchange, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

On February 9, 1909 a Jewish merchant, Simone Velletri, boarded the Dura di Genova bound for Italy. He was in fact Joseph Pet­rosino on a clandestine mission designed by Bingham and thrust upon the reluctant lieu­tenant shortly after his wife had given birth to a daughter, also named Adelina. His mission was to enlist the Italian authorities in a trans­atlantic cooperative to end the Mafia threat once and for all.

It was a disaster from the start. While he was still at sea, a story appeared in the Her­ald: "Petrosino has gone to Italy, specifically to Sicily, in order to obtain important informa­tion bearing on Italian criminals." The source was Commissioner Bingham himself—who foolishly confided in a reporter.

By the time Petrosino arrived in Italy, the story had appeared in the Herald's European edition. Not that it mattered. Two members of the Morello gang, Antonio Passananti and Giovanni Pecoraro—the man who had derailed the barrel murder case when mis­taken for Tommaso "the Ox" Petto—had arrived in Sicily before Petrosino.

From Palermo, Pecoraro sent a telegram to New York: "I Lo Baido work Fontana." Lo Baido was Pecoraro's code name. Work is a Mafia term for murder. Fontana was Giuseppe Fontana, Cascio Ferro's new con­duit to the Morello gang. Simply: Pecoraro was to murder someone and was report­ing to Fontana and MorelJo. Morello sent a cryptic reply: "Why cut his whiskers off?" At his Bisacquino villa, Cascio Ferro received Pecoraro and Passananti warmly: He would have to approve the "work."

Petrosino was ill and homesick from the moment he sailed. A meeting in Rome with the aristocratic commissioner of police went poorly: He thought Petrosino crude and pushy.

"To my baby and you," Petrosino wrote to his two Adelinas, "I give you thousands and thousands of kisses." The last words they would ever receive from him.

Thanks to the Herald article, he was rec­ognized in Palermo, yet he persisted. He carried a revolver, $2,000 in cash and the names of 2,000 gangsters who had immi­grated to New York with fraudulent papers. Petrosino intended to uncover their crimi­nal pasts so they could be deported. He also wanted to build a network of contacts, lawyers mostly, to supply intelligence about

Sicilian criminals. Wary of Sicily's vast cor­ruption, he stuck to contacts and informants developed in America.

On March 12,1909 Petrosino dined at Caffe Oreto near central Palermo's waterfront. He spoke briefly with two men, signaling that he would meet them outside. At 8:50 he walked alone along Piazza Marina toward damp, lush Garibaldi Garden. The cobblestones were slick with rain, and heavy clouds blocked the moon. He met the two men from the restau­rant and another soon joined them.

There were four shots. Petrosino was hit in the right shoulder, throat and cheek. A brave young Italian sailor sprinted toward the gun­shots to find Joseph Petrosino dead on the sidewalk. His notebook listed a final entry: "Vito Cascio Ferro, fierce criminal."

When news reached America via transat­lantic telegraph it triggered outrage. A new suspect was named every few days: the Sicil­ian cops, the anarchists, the Camorra. Three weeks after the murder—before the body arrived home—Sicilian commissioner of police Baldassare Ceola arrested 15 suspects, including Cascio Ferro as the mastermind and possibly the third gunman.

Cascio Ferro claimed he had spent the eve­ning at the estate of the Honorable Domen-

ico De Michele Ferrantelli. a politician with strong Mafia connections, particularly to Cascio Ferro. During his eight-month incar­ceration Cascio Ferro paid for a private cell and catered meals. Commissioner Ceola was recalled to Rome. Charges were dropped for insufficient evidence.

POSTMORTEM

It took five and a half hours for the funeral procession to wend up Broadway to 57th Street and the Queensboro Bridge, then to Calvary Cemetery on Long Island. As taps drifted over the grave site, Adelina—married just over a year and widowed a second time— sobbed uncontrollably. Her weeping rattled even those who hated Petrosino. Among the bereaved was a white-haired black man, Wil­liam Farraday, the African American Pelrosino had rescued from muggers on his first patrol.

Adelina received a $ 1,000 annual pension, the first for an NYPD officer's widow. Sup­porters organized a benefit: Italian perform­ers canceled, frightened by Mafia threats, and Adelina took refuge in her brother's house.

William Flynn pursued Morelloand l.upo with a vengeance. Unable to pin murder or conspiracy on them, he won convictions for counterfeiting. Lupo sobbed and convulsed and Morello fainted when handed long sentences in the dreaded Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

The Morello gang expanded during his incarceration, led by Joe "the Boss" Masseria, a Morello hit man who improved gang orga­nization and drifted away from Sicily's control. In 1926 Cascio Ferro sent Sicilian capo Salva-tore Maranzano to instill his code of conduct and organize family structures. Masseria was not happy: It triggered the worst Mafia war in American history. Maranzano convinced Masseria's top lieutenant. Lucky Luciano, to murder his own boss. Luciano then whacked Maranzano, ending the war. Luciano created the seven-family commission, completing the organization of the U.S. Mafia and curtailing the waning influence of Cascio Ferro.

Although Cascio Ferro had endured 69 felony charges without a conviction, his string ended in 1926 when Mussolini's "Iron Prefect," Cesare Mori, was sent to wipe out the Sicilian Mafia. Cascio Ferro received a lifetime sentence for a murder he likely did not commit.

Cascio Ferro allegedly made several Mafia-style confessions—cryptic admissions without admitting—thai he had murdered Petrosino. He died in his cell of heart failure in 1942.

Theodore Bingham's disclosure about I'elrosino's trip ended his career. The mis­sion was foolish and ill planned: The Mafia would have learned of Petrosino's presence in other ways. Bingham's successor, William Baker, disbanded the Italian Squad in 1910, destroying its dossiers and photos and argu­ing it had no right to collect information on men not yet convicted. Crime in the Italian neighborhoods doubled in a year, validating Petrosino's claims about the success of the Italian Squad.

Today the New York City Police Depart­ment confers the Lieutenant Joe Pelrosino Award to the most outstanding officer on the force each year.