The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder and the Birth of the American Mafia (35 page)

Giosue Gallucci. A politically well-connected Neapolitan, Gallucci ran the Italian lottery in East Harlem until his falling-out with the Morellos. Ten bodyguards were killed defending him, but not even the boss’s habit of wearing a chain-mail vest could save him from assassination.

Ciro Terranova. The Artichoke King was the longest lived of the Terranova brothers, dominating Harlem’s vegetable rackets during World War I and living on into the era of Prohibition and bootlegging. Forcibly retired by a new generation of gangsters, he died impoverished and all but forgotten in 1938.

The murder of Vincenzo Terranova, as reconstructed by one New York newspaper. The oldest of the three Terranova brothers was heavily involved in bootlegging when he was cut down by sawed-off shotguns fired by five men in a car who caught him outside an ice-cream parlor on East 116th Street, in the heart of the Morellos’ territory.

The porcine Joe “the Boss” Masseria was “boss of bosses” during Prohibition. His attempts to dominate New York’s families led to war within the Mafia. It was a war Masseria was winning until he lost his chief adviser—Giuseppe Morello. Morello’s murder was swiftly followed by Masseria’s own.

Ralph “the Barber” Daniello. A Camorra killer who took part in the Nick Terranova slaying, Ralph saved his skin by giving New York’s police their first detailed look inside the city’s Italian gangs. The Barber paid with his life for his betrayal, shot dead outside his Newark bar.

Giuseppe Morello’s second wife, Nicolina Salemi, in middle age. A striking woman in her youth, Lina actively abetted her husband’s Mafia career. She was possessed of a volcanic temper, said Flynn; during one raid she concealed incriminating evidence in her baby’s diaper and attacked Secret Service agents with a knife.

Ignazio Lupo in old age. Returned to prison after resuming his career of murder and extortion, he served a total of twenty years, and by the time of his release in 1946 he was senile and had just days to live. “I should like to be a boy again in Sicily,” he wrote, “and die young, very young, and never know all these years of struggle and evil.”

The reality of gangster life

The remains of Gaspare Candella, found in a barrel on 45th Street in Brooklyn on November 8, 1918. The Morello family had introduced the notion of the “barrel murder” to New York fifteen years earlier; Candella’s wounds were almost identical to those inflicted on Benedetto Madonia in 1903—indicating that he, too, had been a traitor to the Mafia.

There remained the prospect of escape. Tentative plans for freeing the leaders of the Morello family were mulled over for at least two years. It was a nearly impossible task; no man had broken out of the Atlanta prison since it had opened its doors, and the Terranova brothers quickly abandoned any idea of blasting or shooting their men free. An escape, it was decided, would be possible only with the assistance of several guards, and these men would have to be heavily bribed. The scheme was enough of a reality for a concert to be organized in Harlem to raise funds; Flynn discovered that “a great number of tickets at $1.00 each had been sold.” In the end, though, even this idea had to be rejected. The Secret Service chief tipped off Moyer to the Terranovas’ schemes, the prison authorities took action, and Lupo and Morello were separated and forbidden to associate or talk. At the same time, the number of men guarding them was doubled. It was no wonder that Nick Terranova bitterly concluded that there was no prospect of getting Morello freed while Flynn remained with the Secret Service. He was just too powerful, Nick said, and had too great an influence in Washington.

THERE WERE OTHER WAYS
of dealing with Flynn, of course. Ciro Terranova was overheard remarking that the Secret Service man “had a very big pull, and the only way to stop him would be by bullet,” and the Chief’s informants in Harlem brought word that other members of the Morello clan were debating the prospect of kidnapping his children, hoping to coerce him into supporting an appeal. At about the same time, two of Lupo’s associates visited him in jail and received firm orders, Flynn was told, that he should be assassinated.

Had the Terranova brothers been determined to kill Flynn, they could probably have done so. The Chief lived in an isolated property in the far north of the city, and although he ordered his children never to venture more than a hundred feet from home, he felt unpleasantly exposed there. What saved the Secret Service man was Nick Terranova’s prudence. The youngest of the brothers but also the most intelligent and the natural leader among the three, Terranova was certainly tempted by the prospect of striking back at Flynn. He realized, though, that any serious attempt would bring the authorities down on him—and, worse, would affect his brother’s chances of parole. While there was any prospect of having Lupo and Morello freed by legal means, Nick decided, it would be foolhardy to kill their enemy. The endless series of appeals and legal efforts that the family launched after the men’s conviction inoculated Flynn against attack.

The Terranovas felt no such compunction when it came to Antonio Comito. From the moment the Morello family learned that the printer was going to testify against their leaders, they became determined to murder him. The sum of $2,500 was offered to at least one crooked policeman in exchange for details of the Calabrian’s whereabouts—the same figure that the Terranovas had put on the man’s head. Soon afterward, Comito’s worried uncle called Flynn to report that there were suspicious strangers hanging around outside his house, and a far worse panic erupted at the end of May 1910, when the hideously mutilated body of an Italian man in his thirties was dumped in the Paerdegat woods on the fringes of Brooklyn. The corpse was lying only a hundred yards from the spot where Salvatore Marchiani’s dismembered remains had been hauled out of a rubbish dump in Pigtown, and it bore the characteristic marks of a Mafia killing. There were twenty-five knife wounds in all, seven of them in the abdomen and the rest to the face; the nose and one ear had been sliced off with a razor, and the remainder of the man’s features were so ripped and torn that identification was impossible.

The first thought of the first policemen on the scene was that the dead man was Antonio Comito. Detectives hurried off to find the Terranova brothers and interrogated several members of their gang. Comito turned up, safe and well, soon afterward, but the NYPD continued to believe that the dead man—whom they never identified—had been a Mafia informant, and Flynn decided that it would be sensible to get his witness away from Manhattan. Within days, Comito found himself in a safe house near the Mexican border, and when he did return to New York after a year, it was only to collect $150 from Secret Service funds to pay for a steamship ticket home. Flynn was still sufficiently concerned to lend the printer a revolver for the duration of his short stay in the city, but Comito sensibly kept away from places where he might stumble across old acquaintances and sailed two weeks later, on July 1, 1911. Flynn heard sometime later that he had made it back to South America, where the Mafia held no sway, and had become a successful businessman. Whether he took Katrina Pascuzzo with him, or ever was reunited with his wife, remains unknown.