Showing posts with label Castellammare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Castellammare. Show all posts

11 November 2019

Two killed at Castellammarese colony in Brooklyn

On this date in 1917...

Two men were shot to death at a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, street corner late Sunday afternoon, November 11, 1917. Authorities surmised that the double-killing stemmed from a Mafia feud.

The victims were residents of the neighborhood, largely a Sicilian colony populated by immigrants from Castellammare del Golfo: Antonino Mazzara, thirty, lived at 230 North Fifth Street, and Antonino DiBenedetto, forty-three, lived at 343 Metropolitan Avenue.

Witnesses saw the two men at about five-thirty that afternoon, speaking with two others on North Fifth Street just northwest of the intersection with Roebling Street. As two teenage girls walked by, they overheard an argument. They recalled that one of the men threatened, "If you don't tell us, we will kill you."

Moments later, there were gunshots. New York Police Detective James Kenny, walking home at the end of his workday, was on Roebling Street approaching North Fifth when he heard four rapid shots, a pause and then three more shots. As Kenny reached the corner, he saw two men on the ground and two others, with guns in their hands, running northwest in the direction of Driggs Avenue. He ran after the gunmen.

One fled through the hallway of a building and got away. Kenny caught up with the other at Driggs Avenue. He overpowered and disarmed the man, using a choke hold and an arm twisting move to bring him to his knees and cause him to drop his firearm. The gunman was later identified as Antonio Massino, twenty-seven, of 165 East 112th Street in Manhattan. Massino's firearm was a magazine-fed pistol. Reports indicated that its magazine was empty.

The sound of the shots brought hundreds of area residents onto the street and caused police officers Wagner, Clancey and Reilly of the Bedford Avenue Station to rush to the scene. Acting Police Captain James Green sent in reserves to disperse the crowd. An ambulance was summoned. Mazzara, shot through the heart, was already dead when it arrived. DiBenedetto, shot above the heart and in the neck, survived just a bit longer. He succumbed to his wounds within minutes of his arrival at Eastern District Hospital, then located about a half mile away on South Third Street.

Police Captain Daniel Carey and a number of detectives came out to search the area. In a vacant lot near the intersection of North Fifth Street and Driggs Avenue, beside a school construction site, they found two loaded shotguns and an empty guitar case. They concluded that the guns had been brought to the location in the case. But only geography linked the guns to the killings of Mazzara and DiBenedetto.

Manhattan police officials were notified of the murders and of the arrest of Massino. Manhattan Detective Marci was put on watch at Massino's building on 112th Street, in case his accomplice showed up. At about 2:30 the next morning, the detective observed a man approaching the building cautiously, looking up and down the street, and then dashing for the entrance. Marci placed the man under arrest. The suspect, identified as Giuseppe Martinnico, thirty-three, of 90 Main Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, was found to be in possession of a handgun very similar to the one found on Massino.

The two girls who witnessed the argument before the shooting were unable to identify the suspects. Police brought Antonino Mazzara's brother Joseph to the Bedford Station to look over the suspects. Joseph said he did not remember ever seeing the men before. Massino offered a weak explanation for running from a murder scene with a gun in his hand. He had armed himself after recently receiving two threatening letters, and drew the firearm to protect himself after hearing shots fired.

Sources:
  • Antonino DiBenedetto, New York City Extracted Death Index, certificate no. 21982, Nov. 11, 1917.
  • Antonio Mazzara, New York City Extracted Death Index, certificate no. 21983, Nov. 11, 1917.
  • "Double murder due to feud, police say," Brooklyn Standard Union, Nov. 12, 1917, p. 4.
  • "Two die in street after seven shots," New York Herald, Nov. 12, 1917, p. 14.
  • "Two killed in street battle," Brooklyn Citizen, Nov. 12, 1917, p. 2.
  • "Two men are held on homicide charge," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 12, 1917, p. 4.

05 July 2019

New Book about the Detroit Mafia


It gives me great pleasure to present to you my fourth work; Vìnnitta: The Birth of the Detroit Mafia. This book is probably the most difficult one I have attempted yet. It had its origins in the early research that I was doing into the Purple Gang and other Prohibition-era gangs in the city. By the autumn of 1999, I had begun to notice repeated yet vague references to a gangster named Sam Giannola, who I had never heard of before. Further investigation revealed to me the existence of the so-called “Giannola-Vitale War,” which had apparently taken place in Detroit from 1918–1921, a few years before the Purple Gang had even come to power. Accounts of this conflict were conflicting and intriguing, with some claiming that over one hundred men had been killed during its duration. I took my first stab at fleshing out the story of the Giannola-Vitale War in my first attempt at a book during the winter of 2000–2001.

As the years passed, my research uncovered a lot of different factors and stories behind the rise of the city’s Mafia family. Some names, such as Giannola and Vitale, may have been known to criminologists while others, such as Caruso and Mirabile, were not. It is my hope that this work will provide a thorough look at the turbulent first years of the Detroit Mafia, culminating with the conclusion of the Giannola-Vitale feud in 1921. Complete portraits of the three Giannola brothers are drawn for the first time, as well as rivals such as John Vitale, Pete Mirabile and the two Adamo brothers. A fresh examination is also given to the Castellammare feud between the Buccellato, Bonanno, Bonventre, and Magaddino families.  
Giannola protégé and future Mafia boss Giuseppe "Pippinu" Zerilli

Early Detroit Mafia boss Sam Giannola.


In addition to giving an in-depth examination of the Mafia, I have also tried to recreate life in Detroit’s old Italian quarter and illuminate some individuals whose lives were affected either directly or indirectly by the gangsters, from the undertaker who ultimately ends up preparing many of his friends for burial during the violent underworld feuds; the deaf-mute barber who risks his life to provide information about Mafia crimes to the police; a frustrated housewife who longs for a wealthier life and gets in over her head with the Mafia or the group of hard-working Italian-born police detectives who tirelessly tried to bring the mafiùsi to justice. 

Special thanks to Scott Burnstein, James Buccellato, Thomas Hunt, and Richard Warner for helping to bring this work to fruition. 

Copies of Vinnitta can be purchased at the following links;

A link to a recent review of Vinnitta;

A link to a related article;

13 November 2018

Bosses meet on eve of Apalachin convention

On this date in 1957...

Magaddino
On the eve of a scheduled Mafia convention at the Joseph Barbara estate in Apalachin, New York, underworld bosses and cousins Joseph Bonanno and Stefano Magaddino met November 13, 1957, at a private home nearby in Endicott, New York. The two men debated through the night.

The meeting and the content of the discussion were recalled by Bonanno in his autobiography, A Man of Honor.

Bonanno, boss of a Brooklyn-based Mafia family and the current chairman of the Mafia Commission, criticized the decision of western New York underworld boss Magaddino to set up the meeting while Bonanno was out of the country and unable to speak in opposition. Magaddino argued that Bonanno was upset over nothing. Magaddino reminded Bonanno that, when he left the U.S., he entrusted his underworld authority to Magaddino.

Bonanno noted that Joseph Barbara, called upon by Magaddino to host the large gathering, was in poor health and had misgivings about local police cooperation since he hosted a Commission meeting one year earlier.

Bonanno
Magaddino insisted that Barbara was just making excuses: "I never ask him for a favor. When I do, he tries to get out of it. Joe feels all right."

Bonanno also suggested that rival New York bosses Tommy Lucchese and Vito Genovese used appeals to Magaddino's vanity to manipulate him into quickly scheduling the convention. Bonanno reasoned that Lucchese and Genovese wanted national Mafia recognition of their ally, Carlo Gambino, who was just installed as a crime family boss following the assassination of Albert Anastasia. Recognition of Gambino undermined the leadership claims of rival factions in the former Anastasia organization.

Magaddino left Bonanno and headed to Apalachin around midday on November 14. (Bonanno claimed he did not go to the convention.) A police roadblock had already been set up around the Barbara estate and Mafiosi trying to leave the site were being stopped and taken to a New York State Police barracks in Vestal for identification.

See also:

07 February 2017

Future Buffalo mob boss arrives in NYC

On this date in 1909: Seventeen-year-old Stefano Magaddino of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. San Giorgio

Magaddino's immediate destination was the home of his brother Gaspare, on Brooklyn's North Fifth Street near Roebling Street. The area was already a fair-sized colony of immigrants from Castellammare del Golfo. (It would later become the base of power of the Bonanno Crime Family.)

Magaddino frequently traveled around the U.S. His 1913 marriage in Brooklyn did not settle him down. Within a few years, he moved his family to South Philadelphia but continued to spend considerable time in New York City. He also traveled to Buffalo, Chicago and possibly Detroit.

Shortly after the start of Prohibition, Magaddino relocated to the Buffalo area. Almost immediately, he was selected boss of the western New York Mafia (previous boss Giuseppe DiCarlo died July 9, 1922). Magaddino remained the chief of the underworld in western New York and nearby Canada for more than fifty years.

Stefano Magaddino appears on Line 15 of this page
of the S.S. San Giorgio passenger manifest.

Read more about Magaddino and the Mafia of Western New York in 
DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime by Thomas Hunt and Michael A. Tona.

Preview DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime, Vol. I, to 1937 on Amazon.com.

21 December 2016

Death of the Mafia's "Buffalo Bill"

On this date in 1932:

A longtime leader in the Mafia of Western New York, Benedetto Angelo Palmeri died of natural causes at the age of 54. Widely known as Angelo and referred to by the Italian community as "Don Nitto," 

Palmeri had been ailing for months with symptoms of hypertension and kidney inflammation. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, Dec. 21, 2016, Palmeri stepped out of his home at 295 Jersey Street in Buffalo and climbed into his automobile. He was scheduled to meet a friend.

A pedestrian happened to observe Palmeri slump behind the steering wheel and summoned assistance from the firehouse across the street. Firemen took the unconscious and dying Palmeri out of his car and attempted without luck to revive him. Though no autopsy was performed, officials decided the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage.

Palmeri was well known for his tendency to wear cowboy hats and holstered sidearms. This fashion statement, combined with his Western New York hometown, caused the press to refer to him as "Buffalo Bill."

Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Palmeri reached the United States in 1906. His brother Paolo, who also became an important U.S. Mafioso, crossed the Atlantic to join him in New York City a few years later. Angelo Palmeri moved on to Buffalo in 1911 and became a top lieutenant, business partner and valued friend of regional Mafia boss Giuseppe DiCarlo. He helped to establish a Mafia foothold in Niagara Falls, New York, and paved the way for Stefano Magaddino's arrival in Western New York in 1922.

News of Palmeri's death elicited great sorrow and grief within the Italian colony of Buffalo's West Side. The Buffalo Evening News wrote:

His death Wednesday brought sincere expressions of sorrow from hundreds of American citizens of Italian ancestry whom he had befriended in times of need... To the police he was known as a man who had close contact with many illicit enterprises, who had such power that he was able to bring peace between warring liquor runners – but to the citizens of the lower West Side he was their individual welfare department, a man who could and would aid them when pride kept them from appealing to the organized charities... Especially sad were the members of upwards of a score of families whose only source of food each Christmas for years had been Angelo B. Palmeri.

Click here to read a brief biography of Bendetto Angelo Palmeri on the book website of DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime by Thomas Hunt and Michael A. Tona.