Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (73 page)

Flynn gave the word to his men to pounce, and in seconds, both Morello and Vincent Terranova were in custody. Under Morello’s pillow, the cops found four loaded revolvers; under Terranova’s pillow – five. Certainly, if they were not sleeping, the two men would have put up a hell of a fight.

The noise Flynn’s men made in snagging the two Mafiosos awakened the rest of the apartment’s inhabitants. In seconds, three half-dressed men exited their bedroom, screaming and cursing in Italian. Morello’s wife, Lina, emerged from a third bedroom, her infant daughter in one arm and a huge knife in the other hand. It took two men to subdue Lina and relieve her of her weapon. Still holding her baby tight and incensed the agents had invaded her privacy, Lina spat on them in defiance.

The Italian men tried to create a diversion, so that evidence could be hidden and eventually destroyed. As two Italians started making a fuss, one of Flynn’s men spotted one of the Italians stuffing several letters into Lina Morello’s apron, which lay sprawled on the kitchen table. Thinking no one was watching, Lena grabbed her apron, pulled out several letters, and stuffed them into her infant’s clothing.

Holding the baby, Lina tried to leave the room. Two burly agents pounced on her and a fierce skirmish ensued. With Lina kicking, screaming and cursing, Flynn was able to search the infant’s clothing. There he found three letters and several more in Lena’s apron. They were all Black Hand letters waiting to be sent to their intended targets.

However, Flynn’s men did not fare too well in their battle with “Hellcat Lina,” as was evidenced by the several dozen cuts and bruises all over their battered bodies.

Flynn’s men fanned out and searched the other apartments at 207 East 107
th
Street. When the dust settled, they had arrested 14 Black Handers and counterfeiters (some men were both). As an added bonus, $3,000 in fake two-dollar bills was found in a paper bag under the bed in the apartment occupied by the Vasi brothers.

It was
a fine roundup for Flynn indeed. But one of the big fish was nowhere to be found: Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Saietta.

As the search for Saietta continued, other members of Morello’s and Saietta’s crew were arrested throughout the city. Domenico
Milone was arrested at a grocery store at East 97
th
Street; Antonio LoBaido, Frank Columbo, Giuseppe Mercurio, and Luciano Maddi were among the others snagged by the police.

Failure of communication within the New York City police department delayed Saietta’s arrest on the Highland counterfeiting charges. On Nov. 18, 1909, just three days after the arrest of Morello and his gang, Saietta was arrested for extorting a man named Manzella, a Manhattan store owner who claimed Saietta had ruined his business.

On Nov. 22, Manzella, not surprisingly, got cold feet and refused to appear in court for Saietta’s arraignment. The Manzella case was dropped, but Saietta was immediately arrested under a bench warrant dated April 21, which charged him with being in possession of counterfeit money way back in 1902. The bail was set at $5,000, which Saietta immediately posted.

As a result, Saietta walked out of court a free man. When the New York City police department finally got their communication wires uncrossed, they realized they had their man in the clutches, but they had let him escape.

On Nov. 26, the New York City police department issued an internal proclamation saying that any officer who could arrest Saietta in connection with the Highland counterfeiting case would immediately be promoted to first-grade detective. As it turned out, because of an unrelated case of a piano theft, Saietta fell right into Flynn’s hands.

The piano was stolen in Hoboken, N.  J. by a man who was described as an “Italian immigrant.” This man was traced to a home at 8804 Bay 16
th
Street, in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn. When the police arrived at that address, they found Saietta, who had rented the house under the name of Joe LaPresti. Saietta was arrested, along with fellow counterfeiter, Giuseppe Palermo. When the police searched the house, they discovered a loaded revolver, Black Hand letters, phony passports, and three bank books under the names John Lupo, Joseph LaPresti, and Giuseppe LaPresti.

Saietta, realizing he should have used the phony passports while he had a chance to leave the country, offered the arresting officer a $100 bribe as payment for letting Saietta escape arrest. The police officer refused the bribe and received his promotion to first-grade detective instead.

*****

The counterfeiting trial of
the Black Handers commenced on Jan. 26, 1910, in a federal courthouse on Houston Street. It turned out to be a raucous carnival show, showcasing crying clowns as the main act.

The judge was the honorable George Ray, and there were eight defendants, including the stars of the show: Joe “The Clutch Hand” Morello and Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Saietta. They were represented by attorney Mirabeau Towns, who was born in Alabama and went to law school in Atlanta, Ga. Towns was notable by the fact that he sometimes presented his court addresses in verse, which could not have pleased Judge Ray too much.

There were 60 witnesses in all put forth by the state. The main witness against the counterfeiters was a timid little man named Antonio Comito, who was kidnapped by the Black Handers, and along with his wife, forced to do the actual printing of the counterfeit bills in Highland. Comito told the court he and his wife personally printed $46,000 worth of counterfeit bills.

Comito also said when New York City Police Lieut. Joseph Petrosino was killed, Saietta had commented, “We did a fine job with Petrosino in Sicily.”

The trial came to its conclusion on Feb. 19, 1910, and it took the jury only 1½ hours to come back with eight guilty verdicts.

At the eight
mens’ sentencing, the theatrics began.

Giuseppe Morello was the first defendant called before Judge Ray for sentencing.

According to published reports
,
“Morello was cringing before the judge. He held out his left hand, deformed from birth, for the inspection of Judge Ray. This was the hand that Morello was averse to showing to the jury that had tried him. He was the father of a family, he said (through an interpreter), and if the dear court would only suspend his sentence, he would go to Italy at once.

“But Judge Ray told Morello that he might serve 15 years and pay a fine of $500 on the first count against him, and serve 10 years and pay another $500 on the second count against him. Morello didn’t wait for the interpreter to tell him the bad news. He dropped into a faint, and he had to be picked up and carried to the pen by the deputies.”
              Big, bad “Lupo the Wolf” was next in line for sentencing.

Newspaper reports said, “Was Lupo the brave and nervy criminal that he had been supposed? Not for a moment. He began to weep before he reached the bar, and by the time Judge
Ray had finished asking him what he had to say, he had used up one whole handkerchief with his tears. His thick, fat body shook with emotion as he told the court how the murder charge against him (in Italy) was all wrong, and he had been hounded by the police in two countries.

“Judge Ray, getting in words between Lupo’s sobs, told Lupo that he had passed sentence on himself as to the old murder case when he fled from Italy instead of standing trial.”

Judge Ray then told Saietta, “I believe you and Morello were at the head of this undertaking. You have been convicted. I sentence you to 15 years and a fine of $500 on the first count and 15 years and a similar fine on the second count.”

Still crying like a baby, Lupo was led back to his cell to finish his blubbering in private.

Judge Ray then passed sentence on the remaining six men; giving the eight convicted criminals a total 150 years in prison.

The incarceration of Saietta and Morello effectively ended the Black Hand extortion letter scheme in America, but it did not end their lives of crime.

*****

With Morello and Saietta
both behind bars for the foreseeable future, Nick Terranova took control of their old gang. With counterfeiting out of the question and the Black Hand letters a thing of the past, Nick, with the help of his brother, Ciro, branched out into other criminal endeavors, including loansharking and the very profitable numbers rackets. Ciro also expanded the family’s importing business and soon became known as the “Artichoke King,” because he got a piece of the sale of every artichoke that was imported into the United States.

And Italians love their artichokes.

Of course, a murder or two was always in the cards, especially if a dupe was reluctant to pay his debt, or if an enterprising gangster decided to move in on their territory. This, in fact, happened in 1915, when trouble came in the form of Neapolitan Cammora gangster Don Pelligrino Morano, the boss of the rackets in Brooklyn.

Morano, not satisfied with controlling only Brooklyn, started moving in on the Terranova territory in Greenwich Village and in East Harlem. To thwart the competition, the Terranova gang wiped out Cammora gang member Nick Del Guido. Morano responded when he whacked
Goise Gallucci, a Harlem politician, who was also a made member of the Mafia and very close to the Terranovas.

After a peace summit was offered by Nick Terranova but spurned by Morano, bodies began piling up in both the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Suddenly, Morano had a change of heart and he said, sure, he’d meet Nick Terranova to discuss their differences. Morano told Nick Terranova he’d guarantee his safety if Nick agreed to meet him at Vollero’s Café on Navy Street in downtown Brooklyn, not far from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Nick Terranova arrived at
Vollero’s Café with his bodyguard, Charles Ubriaco. After they exited their car, Morano’s men filled them with lead, rendering them quite dead.

Unfortunately for Morano, there was a turncoat in his crew, who ratted him and his cohorts to the cops. As a result, Morano and seven of his men were convicted of the murders of Nic
k Terranova and Charles Ubriaco and sentenced to life in prison. This “life sentence” lasted only three years, when Morano, pulling strings in two continents, was deported back to Italy (in those days, no matter what crime you committed, there was always a politician to be bought for the right price).

As for Ciro Terranova, he was not such a tough guy after all and certainly not qualified to run a gang. In the early 1920’s, Terranova hooked up with up the new Italian sheriff in town: Joe “The Boss” Masseria, who had taken over all the Italian rackets in New York City. In 1931, Masseria’s second-in-command, Lucky Luciano, decided to take out his boss and side with Salvatore Maranzano in what was called the Castellammarese War.

First, Luciano lured Masseria to the Nuova Villa Tammaro Restaurant in Coney Island. As Bugsy Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, and Joe Adonis rushed into the restaurant to finish off Masseria, Ciro Terranova sat outside at the wheel of the getaway car. When the killers emerged triumphantly, Terranova, his knees knocking, was unable to get the car into gear.

Annoyed and disgusted, Siegel pushed Terranova aside and drove the getaway car himself.

When the news got back to Luciano about Terranova’s lack of courage, he banished him from the mob. Terranova became a pariah in New York City crime circles and was unable to earn enough money to eat a decent meal. Soon, whatever money Terranova ran out, and he died a broke and a broken man on Feb. 20, 1938.

As for Saietta and Joe Morello, even though they were sentenced to 30 years and 25 years in jail, respectively, by the early 1920s they were both out on the streets, causing murder and mayhem again.

There is some disagreement as to how it actually came down, but in 1920 Joe Morello, having served only 10 years of a 25-year sentence, was released from prison. There were reports that as early as 1911, Morello had tried to cut a deal with the government in exchange of information about the murder of New York City Police Lieut. Joseph Petrosino. However, there is no concrete evidence to back up this theory, but the fact remains, Morello was released from prison early for no stated reason.

After first trying to gain control of the rackets again and failing, Morello, like Ciro Terranova, joined the forces of Joe “The Boss” Masseria. Masseria, knowing Morello was a capable and willing killer, made Morello his bodyguard and a top captain in his crew.

Unfortunately for Morello, he got caught in the crosshairs of the Castellammarese War.

On Aug. 15, 1930, while
Morello was counting money in an apartment at 352 East 116
th
  Street with two other mobsters, Sebastiano Domingo, known as “Buster from Chicago” and another unnamed assassin burst into the apartment and began firing their guns. Morello’s two confederates were killed instantly. But “The Clutch Hand” would not go down without a fight.

Three decades later, Mafia turncoat Joe Valachi said “Buster from Chicago” had once told him, “Morello was tough. He kept running around the office
, and we had to give him a few more shots before he went down.”

In all, it took eight bullets to send Giuseppe Morello into the hereafter; mostly likely downstairs, where there is plenty of fire and no air-conditioning.