The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder and the Birth of the American Mafia (33 page)

Giuseppe Catania. A giant of a man who worked with Morello as a counterfeiter, he talked when drunk—and was found nude, hacked to death, his head attached to his body by a single tendon, and trussed up in a potato sack on the Brooklyn riverfront.

Tommaso Petto, aka Petto the Ox. A Mafia strongman suspected of participation in the Barrel Murder, Petto died two years later in Pennsylvania, riddled with explosive bullets that had torn wounds “as big as teacups” in his body.

Benedetto Madonia
(above)
and Giuseppe Di Priemo
(inset)
both fell foul of the Mafia. Madonia, a senior member of Morello’s gang, was the victim of the brutal Barrel Murder. His brother-in-law Di Priemo vowed vengeance but met his own death, violently, a few years later—another of Morello’s victims, the police believed.

A reconstruction, from the
Evening Journal
, showing how Madonia’s body was found stuffed in its barrel, the throat cut, the torso drained, and blood still oozing between the staves. The police were certain that the murder was intended as a warning—but for whom?

Benedetto Madonia in death. This morgue scene, hastily snatched by a photographer from William Randolph Hearst’s sensational
Evening Journal
, shows Madonia after he had been stabbed more than a dozen times by members of the Morello gang, then all but decapitated with a single sweeping slash from a stiletto. The discovery of his body, stuffed into a barrel and abandoned on a lonely street, alerted New Yorkers to the existence of the Mafia.

Four pieces of evidence from the Barrel Murder case.
Above right:
the pawn ticket discovered by Flynn in a police evidence box that led the authorities to Madonia’s tin watch, stamped with the image of a train.
Above and right:
four scrawled pages from Joe Petrosino’s police notebook for April 1903. On the first spread
(above)
, Pietro Inzerillo admits to selling empty barrels from his store, but says he “does not know what the Maffia is.” On the second
(right)
, Morello admits that “they say I am the chief of the Mafia” but denies any involvement in Madonia’s killing.

Vito Laduca, counterfeiter, kidnapper, and “dread bulwark of the Black Hand.”

Giovanni Zacconi drove the “death wagon” that carried Madonia to East 11th Street.

Joseph Fanaro, the red-haired giant who lured at least two Morello victims to their deaths.

Carlo Costantino, who died riddled with syphilis—and still the lead suspect in the Petrosino murder.

Pietro Inzerillo, the confectioner who supplied the barrel in which Madonia’s body was stuffed.

Antonio Cecala, murderous frontman for the family’s green goods business.