THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA

Today we think of the "mafia" as a synonym for organized crime, in reality at the beginning the American mafia was not that organized. In the early 1900s it was poorly structured. The symptom of this lack of organization was the brutal wars between the minor gangs waged against each other for domination over the various rackets. The gangs formed by the Italians compared to those of the Jews and Ir...

In the creation of these podcasts dedicated to the history of the American mafia we have given a lot of space to those who have fought against the most powerful criminal association in the world. This was the case of New York Police Lieutenant Joe Petrosino and Detective Frances Dimaio. In this podcast we are dealing with a policeman whose worth, the solved cases and the greening of his memory nee...

Starting from the twenties, the underworld in the United States of America and consequently the Cosa Nostra changed drastically. The cause of all this was to be attributed to Prohibition. In addition, as regards the American mafia, an important contributing cause should not be overlooked, namely the strong repression of the fascist regime against the Italian mafia, which took place in the same per...

The postal inspector Oldfield investigated the extortion report filed by the Italian-American merchant Giuseppe Amicone. Furthermore, thanks to a director of a post office, he learned that Sam Lima, the head of the criminal organization called the Marion Banana Society, sent large sums of money to Italy via the post office. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-h...

The cases we have dealt with related to the Black Hand happened in New York. But ignorance and fear and lack of collaboration all concerned the places in the USA where there was urban isolation and a deep, atavistic distrust of authority. However, there were also exceptions like the one in the Midwest. One of these, the subject of our narration today, concerns the story of a man who decides not to...

Theodore Bingham had a secret plan to defeat the Black Hand. it was the development of Petrosino's idea, namely to stem the flow of criminals who emigrated from Italy to the USA. To achieve this, the Police Department would undertake to send the Italian-American police officer to Italy where he would consult the criminal records of the offenders of emigrants to America. Become a supporter of this...

Petrosino was now aware that he was not just a simple employee of the New York Police Department. The policeman felt the responsibility. He probably became a celebrity was the most famous Italian American in the USA. He was troubled by the growing intolerance of Italians on the part of public opinion. In 1904 he began to work out a plan to stop the growing spread of Black Hand crimes. Become a sup...

In addition to the crime of the barrel which we have extensively discussed in previous podcasts, there are so many cases to which the Italian-American policeman devoted himself. As soon as he joined the police, Petrosino adopted techniques that are still part of the investigative activities of current use by the police all over the world. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.co...

In many of the podcasts you have listened to, the name of one of the greatest policemen of all time often recurs, whose exploits are now remembered and narrated. This is Joe Petrosino. He is not a literary policeman, fruit of the imagination of a skilled crime writer, but he lived and died as a hero. He was not only a great investigator but he represented the ransom for many honest Italian immigra...

The head of the New York agency of services, William Flynn had expressly stated that the best way to proceed is to continue to keep an eye on the butcher shop and the men of Giuseppe Morello's gang who frequented it. Moreover, the criminals did not know they were under observation and therefore further elements could be acquired regarding the case of the murder of the barrel. Become a supporter of...

Despite the arrests carried out by the New York Police Department against members of the Morello gang, the investigations into the crime of the barrel do not seem to bring decisive elements for the resolution of the case. The turning point came with the arrival of an anonymous letter. In which it was written verbatim: “I know who the man found in the barrel is. He came from Buffalo to get some mon...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em The case of the murder of the barrel passed to Detective Sergeant Arthur Carey. He was the first investigator with experience in homicide cases to conduct the investigation. The sergeant advanced a hypothesis, namely that he was an Italian and that the murder was probably linked to one of the many feuds that took place in Little Italy. For that case, th...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. On April 14, 1903, a barrel with the body of a man came to New York on East 11th Street. The victim had his throat cut from ear to ear, and his head was almost detached from the trunk with eighteen stab wounds to the neck. The body had been compressed into the barrel with the head resting between the knees. The suspects of this murder, who were also ar...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. With most of the Morello gang members effectively detained, the trial date was set for January 26, 1910 in New York at the Houston Street Federal Courthouse. The defendants were 9 and judge George Ray presided over the jury. An elderly magistrate who had already tried counterfeiting cases. Lupo and Morello had hired the lawyer Mirabeau L. Towns for the...

Once the secret service agents had a clear idea of ​​the organization that dealt with the counterfeiting and the sale of fake dollars, they began to plan the capture of the members of the Morello gang. The difficulty of the operation was due to the timing for proceeding with the arrest and searches. In fact, it was necessary to undertake the raids at the same time in several places in order not to...

In the summer of 1909, the secret services received complaints from banks and shop owners for the large amount of counterfeit currency injected. initially the investigations did not lead to concrete results. Then a turning point came when William Flynn went to Pittston, Pennsylvania to investigate. It was a very dirty and very violent coal city. There was the presence of many Italians and the flow...

In January 1909, media were procured for printing the counterfeit dollars. Therefore Comito and the men on the farm began printing Canadian $ 5 proof bills. Immediately after obtaining the first Cinà and Cicala prints, with printed proofs, rolled up in a newspaper, they left for New York to have their quality checked. After three days they returned with the new arrangements. The counterfeiters wer...

The character on which this case revolves is Antonio Comito. Born in 1880 in Catanzaro, before emigrating to New York in June 1907, he had worked as a typographer. Once in the United States of America he tells of living at 72 James Street. He found a job as a printer in a printing house on Park Row. Comito, despite being married in Calabria, a New Yorker with a partner named Katrina Pascuzzo. Beco...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. The crimes for which the Morello gang was suspected were numerous and varied. Most of these went undiscovered but three murders were initially attributed to New York's first Mafia family. In reality in all three cases the accusations failing to stand in the courts ended up exonerating the members of the coterie. In this podcast we will deal with two of...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. Ignazio Lupo was born in Palermo in March 1877. His family of origin was part of a Palermo mafia gang and he himself was part of a gang of extortionists. In 1898, following a quarrel in his shop, Salvatore Morello shot and killed a trader competing with him. As a result of this crime, on March 12, 1899, Lupo was sentenced to twenty-one years for premed...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em. Giuseppe Morello was another and dangerous, he used to wear a .45 caliber pistol on his belt and a knife tied to his left leg, the tip of which was covered with a small cork to avoid injury while walking. He arrived in the United States of America in 1982. He was born in Corleone in 1867. He escaped from Sicily because he was suspected of a murder and...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em Thanks to the investigations of the Secret Services aimed at the contrast and the falsification and spending of counterfeit banknotes in New York, the evidence was gathered that it operated "The most secret and terrible organization in the world" as the eminent New York Times wrote defining the mafia. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spre...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em It is not the American dream that pushes Italian migrants to reach the American shores. Therefore to understand the phenomenon it is necessary to ask two questions. Who were the migrants? Why were they willing to risk their lives, and that of their loved ones, by traveling in inhumane conditions in the third class of ocean liners for about two weeks? Be...

The activity of extortion always began with a latch letter of which a dark association called The Black Hand materializes. What was a letter of scrocco? It was an extortion letter that was delivered to Italian families who had a minimum of income aggredibile. The extortion letters were written with several dialects, from this it was deduced that they were certainly written by people from different...

Music by Syon (Thomas Nicosia) Prelude in Em In the early years of the twentieth century a wave of terror unprecedented in peacetime crossed the United States. The members of the secret organization threatened to kill the members of the Italian community if they did not agree to pay. The acolytes of the black hand burned or blew up the houses, kidnapped the children of the victims, so much so that...