Black hand gear

This article deals with a precursor / origin of the American Cosa Nostra ; for the criminal modus operandi see Black Hand (extortion) .

The Black Hand Gang (German: "Black Hand Gang") was a gang of Sicilian emigrants in New York City and belongs to the forerunners or the environment of one of the five families of the Cosa Nostra , which was later classified as the Genovese family .

history

Origins

Even the Mano Nera (German: "Black Hand") in Italy was active in the 1750s with blackmail and kidnappings. The focus was on Sicily and Naples in what was then the Kingdom of Naples . This black hand practice came to New York around 1890 with Ignazio Saietta , who was already a member of the Mafia in his hometown of Corleone in Sicily.

A typical procedure was the sending of threatening letters threatening kidnapping , murder , arson, etc. if a certain amount was not deposited or handed over at a handover location. The letters were signed with a black hand . The singer Enrico Caruso received such a ransom note; two blackmailers were arrested at the handover.

In New York, Saietta came into contact with another Corleone family, the Terranova and Morello brothers of the Morello family . He married Salvatrese Terranova in 1901 , and so began the collaboration between the Black Hand and the Terranova-Morello family, especially with regard to their counterfeit activities, which made up another branch of the Black Hand 's business. Whether Giuseppe "Joe" Morello acted as the deputy of his brother-in-law Lupo, because that was the real name of Ignazio Saietta (who used the maiden name of his mother for camouflage purposes), or even Giuseppe Terranova was the real strong arm of the now common family, can no longer be finally cleared up. In any case, other family members of the Morello Terranove clan were also hired for the Black Hand activities; so Giuseppe Morello brought Giuseppe Catania , the husband of another sister, together with Saietta.

Unione Siciliana

It must have been around this time that the Black Hander infiltrated the Unione Siciliana . This original interest and aid association apparently also offered its members insurance benefits. Saietta could now take the presidency by force. The Unione then developed into a mafia-like central body that soon gained members and collected membership fees by force.

As the first point of contact for non-English speaking Italians, this organization was also the ideal recruitment point for the gang and an ideal cover for criminal activities. When the Italian-American police agent Joseph “Joe” Petrosino searched the Unione's headquarters in 1901, sixty bodies were discovered. Saietta was arrested, but apart from the fact that he owned the building, there was nothing to prove to him. The house with the 60 bodies had since been known as the Murder Stable ; the image of the Unione was forever ruined. There is even the thesis that the Unione was founded by the Black Hand from the start .

However, the spread of counterfeit money initially continued undisturbed by these events. On December 3, 1902, Giuseppe De Primo was caught with fake US $ 5 bills, apparently made from a printing plate stolen from the National Bank of Morristown , New Jersey earlier that year. De Primo was tried on March 12, 1903 and later sentenced to five years in prison. Apparently to cover up the traces, Benedette Madonia , the inmate's brother-in-law, was murdered on April 14, 1903 . The body was found in a barrel, which is why this case went down in criminal history as one of the most famous cases of " barrel murder" due to its unsavory circumstances (Benedette had been stabbed; his genitals were in his mouth) .

The New York police arrested nine suspects: Giuseppe Morello , Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Saietta , Giuseppe Fontano , Tony Genoa , Giuseppe Favarro , Giovanni Pecoraro , Vito Lo Baido , Vito Cascio Ferro and Tomasso Petto , but could not prove anything. It was discovered by Petrosini that Vito Cascio Ferro and another suspect Paulo Marchese , who pretended to be Paul Di Cristina , had entered the United States illegally. Before they could be deported, however, both fled to New Jersey .

Five murders and one bankruptcy

In the following years, the Black Handers were assigned five more murders: Among them was the blackmailer Michael Savoan , who stupidly tried his luck with the tailor Andrea Gambino , who was himself a member of the Black Hand and shot Savoan on March 23, 1905. In the same year, the butcher Gaetano Costa from Brooklyn followed, who had apparently refused to pay Saietta protection money. On March 7, 1906, Saietta was arrested in connection with the kidnapping of the son of Italian-American banker Tony Bonzuffi , but was released on bail of $ 1,000. In the same year Vincenzo "Vincent" Terranova shot dead a man named Frederick W. Schneider , was also charged for this act, but acquitted.

In 1908 Di Primo was released from prison and deported to Sicily; the Black Handers now mistook him for a police informant and contacted Vito Laduca , an ex-member of the gang who had returned to Sicily in 1903, in Sicily. It was then, however, the body of Laduca that was found riddled with bullets in Sicily.

In 1908, "Diamond Sam" Sicco, who ruled the Italian lottery in East Harlem, was gunned down and later succumbed to his injuries. The culprit was again Vincent Terranova , who wanted to appropriate this business. On April 15, 1909, gang member Andrea Gambino was shot; the background to this internal murder is completely unknown to this day; only his last stay in Saietta's company is considered certain, which is why he is a suspected perpetrator. This murder may have happened in connection with the disappearance of Saietta.

Because Saietta had been involved in organizing fraudulent bankruptcy with his company since 1908 at the latest. His headquarters and business were then at 210 Mott Street . In the meantime, US $ 700,000 had been accumulated there in unpaid bills. However, a large part of the missing $ 50,000 merchandise was found on December 4, 1908 on the piers of New York - ready for shipping to Italy. In addition, properties valued at $ 110,000 were discovered in Harlem.

Apparently Lupo had dived to Baltimore and Buffalo and went to Ardonia in January 1909 . However, he used the time to take care of the new business with counterfeit money of better quality. In the same year there was a meeting between Lupo, his brothers-in-law from the Terranova-Morello clan and Vito Cascio Ferro ; It may have been about problems with the counterfeit money ring that they raised together and about the murder of Joseph Petrosino , the Italian-American policeman who discovered the sixty bodies and was now on the trail of the gang's counterfeit money. This was then also murdered on March 14, 1909 in Sicily during an investigation. Allegedly Lupo is said to have promised the murder and even visited Italy; It remains unclear whether he was actually directly involved in the murder.

End or transition

On November 1, 1909, Lupo rented a house in Bath Beach under the alias "Joe La Presti" . Eleven days later, on November 12th, he turned up at his creditors' office with his lawyer Charles Barbier, claiming that he himself had been blackmailed and had therefore been in hiding for a year. Lupo was arrested on November 15, 1909 and taken into custody on November 17; first the allegation was only on extortion of Salvatore Manzella , but successfully ran on November 22 for him in the sand because Manzella did not appear before the authorities. Lupo was released, but immediately arrested again because of a long-ago counterfeit case from 1902. He was able to avert this accusation by paying a fine of US $ 5,000. However, the police had meanwhile tracked down the distribution of the new, better counterfeit money. On January 8, 1910, Secret Service officials found a revolver, letters, passports and bank papers in a house in the names of John Lupo , Joseph La Presti, and Giuseppe La Presti .

The trial for the spread of counterfeit money began on January 26, 1910, and the verdict was reached on February 19, 1910: Lupo received 30 years and a $ 1,000 fine, his brother-in-law Giuseppe Morello 25 years and a $ 1,000 fine . The other accomplices: Giuseppe Calicchio , 17 years old, fine of 600 US dollars; Giuseppe Palermo , 18 years old, $ 1,000 fine; Nicola Sylvestro , Cantonio Cecala , Vincenzo Giglio, and Salvatore Cina each with 15 years and a $ 1,000 fine. Lupo and Morello were also sent to an Atlanta labor camp.

This could be the final point under the Black Handers , because when Saietta was released in 1920, on the one hand the power vacuum had already been filled, on the other hand the Black Hand's "business model" was no longer up-to-date, as the beginning alcohol prohibition opened up new business areas for organized crime . The incipient distribution struggles, which then reached their first climax in Chicago, where it was also about the control of the Unione Siciliana , and the war of Castellammare put the first lines under the old Black Hand Gang .

Entire clans of Mustache Petes were defeated in this distribution battle; so z. B. the Aiellos around Giuseppe Aiello and the Genna family in Chicago or the Morello Terranova clan in New York City, to which Saietta belonged. However, it was precisely from the Terranova-Morello environment that new characters began to profile and organize themselves, which would then rise to become the most powerful mafia family in New York, which was later classified as the Genovese family .

Members

• Domenico Lo Baido
• Giuseppe Calicchio
• Giuseppe Catania , brother-in-law of the Morellos and Terranovas
• Cantonio Cecala
• Salvatore Cina
• Giuseppe Favarro
• Vito Cascio Ferro (1862–1943)
• Giuseppe Fontano
• Andrea Gambino († 1909)
• Tony Genoa
• Vincenzo Giglio
• Giuseppe Morello (1867-1930), his assassination was one of the prelude to the Castellammare War
• Giuseppe Palermo
• Giovanni Pecoraro
• Tomasso Petto
• Giuseppe De Primo (dates unknown)
• Vincent Terranova (1887-1922)
• Ignazio Saietta , leader of the gang and president of the Unione Siciliana
• Nicola Sylvestro

Films and documentaries

• 1973: killers also have to die
• 1974: The Godfather - Part II ; The role of "Don Fanucci" is based on the Black Hand Gang founder Ignazio Saietta

Web links

• New York's Black Hand: Part 1 on www.mobsters.8m.com (English)
• New York's Black Hand: Part 2 on www.mobsters.8m.com (English)
• Arne Molfenter: New York in the grip of the "black hand" . Spiegel Online (one day), January 19, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ignazio Lupo on www.gangrule.com (English)
2. ↑ www.onewal.com ( Memento of the original from April 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)