Vito Cascio Ferro

Vito Cascio (1902)

Vito Cascio Ferro (born January 22, 1862 in Palermo , † summer 1943 ) alias Don Vito and Vito Cascioferro , was a well-known Sicilian and member of the mafia who started the so-called War of Castellammare in New York City .

Life

Vito Cascio Ferro was born to Accursio, who was an early supporter of anarchism in Europe, and Santa Ippolito. As early as 1884 - in early adulthood - Vito was working as a debt collector, but this was soon followed by arson , extortion and kidnapping .

To avoid police persecution, he left Italy and arrived in New York City on September 30, 1901, from Le Havre , where he lived in an apartment on 103rd Street with his sister Francesca and her husband , before moving to an apartment of his own on Morgan Street .

He worked with Ignazio Saietta and his Black Hand Gang , who also - coming from Europe - had anarchist roots; Of which, however (measured by the activities) nothing was left (if it ever existed at all), because apart from extortion, this group had now raised a large-scale counterfeit ring with other Italian emigrants. These emigrants are the Morello gang , who can be regarded as the forerunners of the La Cosa Nostra clans in New York City, which were later classified as the “ Genovese family ” .

In 1909, Cascio Ferro was arrested on suspicion of murder by the New York police officer Giuseppe "Joe" Petrosino , who can be regarded as a pioneer in the fight against organized crime in the USA.

Cascio Ferro was acquitted, returned to Sicily, got further involved in the activities of the local Cosa Nostra and was soon known as Don Vito. In the same year Joe Petrosino, who wanted to carry out a secret operation in Sicily, was murdered, but this was revealed by the press in the USA. Ferro was arrested for the murder, but was able to show an alibi . However, he is said to have later admitted the murder to other mafiosi; at least this assertion helped him to advance his claim to be “ Capo di tutti i capi ” (Italian: boss of all bosses).

For this purpose he sent, among others, Salvatore Maranzano to New York City, which triggered the so-called War of Castellammare there. This deportation of Sicilians had already begun in the 1910s and continued into the 1920s; among them were Carlo Gambino , Salvatore Maranzano, Joseph Bonanno , Joseph Magliocco and Vincent Mangano . Many were probably of the opinion that this was Don Vito's preparation for his own return to the United States, but nothing came of it.

The Don , who had already been arrested 69 times for various offenses , was sent to prison for 50 years after his 70th conviction in 1929 by the Prefect Cesare Mori , where he also died.

There are three theories about its end. According to the first common one, he died of a heart attack in 1945 ; after the second, he was killed in an Allied bombing raid in 1943. The author Arrigo Petacco published a variation of the second representation in his book on "Joe Petrosino" in 1974; According to her, Cascio Ferro died of thirst in his cell in the summer of 1943 after being left there while the rest of the prison was evacuated on the occasion of the Allied landings in Sicily .

literature

• Giuseppe Carlo Marino: I Padrini. Newton & Compton, Rome 2001.
• Arrigo Petacco : Joe Petrosino. L'uomo che sfidò per primo la mafia. Mondadori 2001, ISBN 88-04-49390-9 .

swell

1. ↑ Vito Cascio Ferro on www.gangrule.com (English)