Dead Man's Eyes: Hob superstition
There is an old belief, said by some to go back to the Old World, that when a person dies, the last scene he sees is forever imprinted on the retina of his eyes. In the case of an underworld hit, that often means the mob killers. Thus it is logical for hitmen to shoot out victims' eyes and so remove damaging evidence.
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The superstition was evidently heeded widely in New York City around 1900, a period coinciding with a number of Black Hand and Mafia murders. The origin of the belief, thought by some to be particularly strong in Sicily from where the mafiosi and numerous Black Handers emigrated, is most difficult to determine. But it affected non-Mafia killers as well. Dead Man's Eyes was explained to Monk Eastman, the infamous Jewish gang leader, after he noted that some murder victims were getting their eyes shot out. After his next murder, he recalled the custom, and, whether or not he believed it, decided to err on the side of caution. He trudged back up three flights of stairs to blast out the eyes of his latest corpse.
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Some observers of criminal behavior attribute the increase in eye shootouts around 1900 with the criminals' growing awareness of the miracles of scientific detection. Fingerprinting and other advances had proved effective, so it seemed possible a retina-picture development method might be found.
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For many years, doctors at the New York medical examiner's office explained to the press they had studied and studied the eyes of corpses and found no such image. Evidently the underworld acknowledges the lessons of medical researcheye shootouts have decreased in recent years.
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Dead Man's Tree: Chicago "murder notice" site
Even before Prohibition Chicago's 19th Ward was known as the Bloody Ward. As the Italian population exploded in size and encroached on the old Irish neighborhoods, armed political warfare ensued.
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Shut out of political influence by the old Irish power structure, the Italians rallied around Tony D'Andrea, a defrocked priest who concealed his criminal past as a whoremaster and counterfeiter. Eventually president of the powerful Unione Siciliane, D'Andrea ran for office in the 19th on several occasions against John "Johnny de Pow" Powers, the Irish boss of the ward, but continually lost the elections.
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With the onset of Prohibition, the mafiosi who moved into bootlegging in Little Italy, the heart of the 19th, felt they had to have their own men in power to guarantee the safety of their operations. The Genna brothers, the top Sicilian gangsters of Little Italy, backed D'Andrea in yet another assault on Powers for alderman of the ward.
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The Gennasas, indeed, the Powers forcesbelieved they could influence the balloting and so they reinforced their campaign with the murders of their foes' supporters. The militant arm of the Powers group countered in kind. A bizarre landmark of this political and criminal competition was a certain poplar tree on Loomis Street in Little Italy. It became known as "the Dead Man's Tree." Both sides took to announcing their intent to murder a certain enemy by posting his name on the tree. The postings served two purposes: often shattering the man's nerve and thus making him an easier victim, or, if nothing else, at least magnanimously according him the opportunity of getting his affairs in order. Virtually all the 30 men murdered in the D'Andrea-Powers war had their names posted on the Dead Man's Tree. That included Tony D'Andrea himself, who in 1921 was one of the last killed in the conflict.
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In the end, the Genna brothers discovered all the murders had been in vain. They found that all the men they could not vote out of office or otherwise murder could be bought. Not a single conviction was obtained in any of the slayings, but at least Little Italy gained a tourist attraction in the poplar.
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Death Corner: Chicago murder site
In the early days of the 20th century, Black Hand terror groups held sway in all the large Italian ghettos in the United States. The Black Handers, some mafiosi, some Camorristas and others freelance criminals, were extortionists who extracted money from fearful Italians under the threat of death for themselves or their families. Such terror tactics worked only if backed up by some actual murders. The Black Handers in Chicago recognized this truth and, to reinforce their intentions, made one location a regular murder site. "Death Corner,'' as the press called it, was surely an added factor in Black Hand terrorism.
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Death Corner was located at what was then the intersection of Milton and Oak Streets in the Little Italy section of the city. Over one 15-month period alone, from January 1910 through March 1911, 38 Black Hand murders occurred there. In this periodand for a considerable period of time thereaftera great many residents of Little Italy went blocks out of their way to avoid traversing the Death Corner. They also made excruciating efforts to pay up on the Black Handers' demands.
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See also:
Black Hand; Shotgun Man; White Hand Society
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Decarlo, Angelo "Gyp" (19021973): New Jersey racket boss
A longtime New Jersey boss of Mafia loan-sharking, gambling activities, and stolen securities operations,
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