Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre

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Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre Page 5

by Patricia A. Martinelli


  In 1925, Mike met and married twenty-year-old Pearl Pioppi, the vivacious daughter of another local farming family. Both the Mazzolis and the Pioppis no doubt saw the benefits of the match. Although marriages weren't always formally arranged in America, the same way they had been in Italy, the prospective couple usually respected their parents' wishes about their choice of mate. By the following year, Mike and Pearl were settled in their cozy bungalow on Piney Hollow Road with little Tessie. Although Mike was sometimes sorry that he never had a son, he adored his daughter.

  Pearl could be a handful sometimes, but that was all right with Mike-it took a woman with spirit to take care of all of the chores involved with running a farm. Pearl was not afraid to work in the fields from dawn until dusk side-by-side with her husband. She simply threw on a pair of old pants or tucked the back of her dress up into the front of her belt to keep it out of the way. Pearl did whatever she had to in order to help her husband make a home for themselves. Mike also appreciated the fact that her parents could afford to give them the wooded acres that he and his young bride cleared themselves. Once the land was ready, he knew Pearl's brothers would lend a hand when it came time to plant and harvest the crops. That was, after all, what family was all about.

  Pearl's father, Armando Pioppi, who had also married a strong-willed woman, was a native of Bologna in northern Italy. He was in his early thirties in 1901 when he boarded the steamship La Savoie at the port of Havre, France. A strapping young man who had spent years working in the fields, Armando had served for a time in the Carabinieri, the Royal National Police, in Italy. He had achieved the rank of highest petty officer, which was comparable to the rank of sergeant in the United States. Despite the opportunities offered by police work, Armando was eager to start a new life in a new land.

  He traveled with his eighteen-year-old wife, Theresa, a dressmaker, who had been born on February 18, 1882, in Por- retto, a region outside of Palermo in southern Italy. Almost immediately after their arrival in New York, the Pioppis planned to leave for Round Grove, a mining community outside of Chicago. Theresa's brother, Josef Biagi, was already established there and he had written to tell them the coal mines were in constant need of workers. Although Armando listed his occupation as farmer on the ship's manifest, he was willing to learn a new trade. He knew that the steady salary he would be paid as a miner would allow him to acquire his own land sooner rather than later.

  Naturalized as American citizens the year after they arrived, the Pioppis spent at least nine years in Illinois with their growing family. In 1910, their oldest daughter Carmeline was eight, their son John was six, and Pearl, whom Armando nicknamed "Pia," was four. That year, Armando was out of work for about six months, possibly injured on the job. Realizing he could no longer earn a living as a miner, he decided it was time for the family to return to New Jersey, where other relatives had settled, and buy their own farm. It is likely that the family moved to Piney Hollow Road not long afterward, because by 1920, they owned the property there free and clear of any mortgages.

  In 1920, Carmeline, who would have been eighteen that year, was no longer living with the family. She had married Louis Casselli and lived up the street from her parents, probably on a plot of land they had given her as a dowry. While fifteen-year-old Pearl attended the tiny one-room schoolhouse on Piney Hollow Road that had been built by local farmers for their children, her older brother John had left school by sixteen to help out on the farm. The newest member of the fam ily, Jino, born on October 5, 1918, was a little over one year old at that time.

  Five years later, Pearl had married and settled across the street with her husband, Mike, leaving her two brothers to labor on the family farm under their mother's direction. Like many of the farmers, whose hard work earned New Jersey the nickname "The Garden State," the Pioppis grew tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, corn, and a variety of other crops. Theresa, by all accounts, was not afraid to take charge of her husband, children, and the operation of their farm. As was typical of so many Italian women, she was the backbone of the family, working long days in the fields and keeping house at the same time. Like other Italian households, the husband was respected as the head of the family, but it was the wife who kept everyone and everything together.

  Although they could afford some of the luxuries that their neighbors might not have enjoyed, Theresa didn't work specifically for that reason. Work was not a chore. It was what she, her family, and her neighbors expected to do. Work made a person strong and able to cope with whatever life handed you. Work may have allowed them the chance to acquire some material goods, but more importantly, it was the way they could provide new opportunities for their children-something that would never have happened if they had stayed in Italy. Theresa had been raised to understand that life was work, and everyone humbly worked for the greater good of the family unit. You didn't brag about your accomplishments or the things you acquired; if you did, a jealous neighbor might overlook you with the malocchio, or "evil eye." Or, God might decide that you didn't deserve that new sofa and punish you by making a family member sick.

  Yes, work was the answer, whether you were trying to ease the pain of losing a child or surviving hard times. It was a philosophy that Theresa was quick to pass on to all of her children. Under her management, the farm prospered so much that on June 20, 1921, she applied for a passport to take young Jino to Italy to visit family. They sailed out of New York the following day on the Berengaria, a European-built steamship that had been recently purchased by the Cunard Line of New York. Like other Italian immigrants who had done well in America, she went for an extended visit. Theresa returned on November 21 of that same year as a passenger on the maiden voyage of the SS Colombo, which carried her and Jino from Naples to New York.

  The Mazzolis were another family who made a comfortable living operating their extensive truck farm that spread across acres on East Oak Road in nearby Landis Township. They had cleared the tree-lined land to create a farm, complete with a barn, outbuildings, and a rambling house to accommodate their large family. Frank Mazzoli, born on July 16, 1915, had grown up on the family farm. At five foot eight, he stood a little above average height and had light brown hair and blue eyes. When he first met Hilda Patella in 1935, he was immediately attracted to the tall, brown-eyed blonde. Born in Philadelphia on September 2, 1916, Hilda had moved to Landisville when she was just a girl with her mother, Eletta, stepfather Rudolpho Moretti, sister Lina, and her brother Bruno. Frank and Hilda were married in December 1936; he was only twenty-one at the time and she was twenty. It was the height of the Great Depression, a time when jobs were scarce. In an effort to find work, the newlyweds relocated for a time to Philadelphia, where Frank was employed by a masonry contractor. But Frank's family was in constant contact, demanding his help on the farm during the planting and harvesting seasons. Like a good son, he felt a responsibility to help out.

  For a time, Frank would rush home in the summer to work on the family farm, leaving his young wife and two small children in the care of other family members. The Mazzolis were living in South Jersey when Frank was drafted into the Army. Fortunately, on May 7, 1945, the day he was scheduled to be inducted, victory was declared by the Allied forces in Europe. Frank later worked at Palmonari's Bakery on Wheat Road in Vineland before accepting a job with the Rainear Dairy Company in Bridgeton. The Mazzolis moved around a bit before settling at the house on Jonas Avenue in Minotola in 1949. The small, white-frame house consisted of four rooms with an unfinished attic and basement. According to their oldest daughter, the two girls shared one bedroom while their young brother slept in the same room as their parents. The Mazzolis had planned to expand the house-until Ernie showed up at their door wielding his guns.

  Nola always thought Ernie was brash and arrogant, from the first time she met him at her grandmother's funeral. Her instincts were good. Despite her age, Ernie made a pass at her not long after the Mazzolis had moved to their Minotola home. After telling her father what had happene
d, the pretty girl added, "I don't like him coming around." Ernie was angry when Frank confronted him about the matter and later told her, "You're going to get it someday, Stringbean," on at least one of the rare occasions that they came into contact afterward. Nola recalled that Ernie used to try and flirt with her mother by telling Hilda he could be with any woman he wanted. Although Hilda wasn't impressed, other women apparently were attracted to his "bad boy" attitude. After his marriage to Tessie, he was occasionally seen riding around town with different female companions, exciting them with tales of his criminal past.

  While the Mazzolis and the Pioppis labored tirelessly to make their farms successful and create a comfortable life for their families, Ernest Ingenito lived a different kind of life. Some of his experiences could be documented, such as the fre quent moves that the family made throughout his childhood. But it was difficult to determine just how true some of the stories were that he later told about those early days. Like Joseph Kallinger, the Philadelphia shoemaker who suddenly went on a violent crime spree at age thirty-nine, Ernie's perspective on his past may have been colored more by emotion than fact. Kallinger said that his parents had only adopted him to get free help in their shoe repair shop; Ernie said that he had been a "blue baby," born with a defective heart, who was believed to have been dead at birth. When he survived, he claimed that his young parents weren't ready for the responsibility of a sickly child. Kallinger stated that his adoptive parents regularly abused him; Ernie said his father once beat him so hard that he was unconscious for six hours afterward.

  Allegedly feeling lonely and unloved, Ernie apparently still had an eye for the better things in life. Some later accounts of his life said that was because he had been born and raised in poverty in rural Pennsylvania, but Ernie himself would have been the first to protest that was not true. If anything, he was trying to reclaim what he felt was rightfully his. According to Ernie, the Ingenito family had prospered in America, owning funeral parlors, a successful auto repair shop, and a number of other businesses in Wildwood and Philadelphia. While other members of the Ingenito family may have become wealthy after they arrived, there was no evidence that Ernie's parents or his paternal grandparents made a fortune in the United States.

  Ernie was born in Wildwood on May 27, 1924, the first child of Ernest Ingenito Sr. and his wife, Helen. Ernie's alleged health problems did not prevent him from growing into an average, inquisitive boy. By 1930, he was living in Wildwood Crest with his parents and his younger siblings, Ralph and Mary. The tiny resort town, located on a five-mile-long barrier island just south of Wildwood, was first developed in 1906. Then, as now, several thousand residents lived in the oceanfront community year-round, with the number multiplying dramatically during the summer months.

  Ernest Sr. was born on March 30, 1903, in Philadelphia. In 1920, he was living in the city's Ward 2 with his father Pasquale, mother Roffa, sister Ohanfia, and brother Alfred. Pasquale, born around 1861 in Serino, Italy, had arrived in America on April 20, 1893, from Naples on the San Giorgio, one of the many steamers that carried immigrants to the New World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Listing his occupation as stonecutter, he landed in New York, but ultimately drifted south to the City of Brotherly Love, where he earned a living as a grocer. Their house may have been mortgaged, but it was theirs-nothing short of a miracle to the Ingenitos, as it was to so many immigrants. Pasquale and Roffa were naturalized in 1902.

  In 1928, Ernest Sr. supported his growing family as an assistant funeral director. The family lived in a second floor apartment over the funeral home at 128 East Spencer Street in Wildwood Crest, where Ernest Sr. embalmed bodies in the basement. He may have worked for Louis and Benedetta Ingenito, who owned a funeral home at 207 East Rosemary Street. Unfortunately, no information was available on the Ingenitos' relationship to Louis and Benedetta, or if Ernest Sr. was related to a Pasquale Ingenito, who owned a garage in Philadelphia but maintained a house at 6200 Pacific Avenue in Wildwood Crest. The possibility of a relationship, though, very likely fueled Ernie's stories about his own family's alleged wealth.

  According to Ernie, both he and his younger brother Ralph were reportedly traumatized when they sneaked downstairs one day to watch their father prepare bodies for burial. What seemed to disturb Ernie more later in life, however, was that his family supposedly lost almost all of their money in the economic crash that followed Black Friday-October 25, 1929-the day the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. Perhaps it was easier for him to believe that this, rather than anything else, was the cause of the escalating tension between his parents, which ultimately led to their separation. Helen Ingenito, whose maiden name was Martin, was of Irish-German extraction. Some reports said that she later left her husband because she didn't understand his "Italian" ways. Other accounts stated that he was verbally and physically abusive, not just towards her but also their children. Whatever the reason, Helen eventually wound up in Wildwood with the kids, while Ernest Sr. moved back to Philadelphia. Although he is remembered by some as a kind, considerate person, his alleged mistreatment of his family would explain at least part of his oldest son's mindset, thinking that was how a man was supposed to act. After Ernie's first wife successfully escaped from him, it is then less surprising that he went to extreme lengths to try and keep his second family together. In his mind, it was just what a man was supposed to do.

  But long before he reached that point, Ernie had established a pattern of having difficulty interacting with others. He later stated that he was small for his age and became the target of school bullies. There is no evidence to support this claim anymore than there is proof of the story that he was a blue baby. He did fail several grades and was older than some of his classmates. As a result, there may have been some instances of his terrorizing other children. When he was older, Ernie admitted that he always tried to avoid fighting in school, because he knew, if pushed, he would probably hurt someone.

  Ernie had his first brush with the law at age ten, when he was arrested for theft in Wildwood. At thirteen, he apparently used the dissolution of his parents' marriage as an excuse to run even more wild. Now that Ernest Sr. had moved to Philadelphia, the threat of any physical punishment was removed. Ernie knew his mother would never strike him. He basically ignored everything she had to say and spent most of his days on the boardwalk in Wildwood. He had little interest in school, where he was a poor student, and preferred to play hooky and hang out with a gang of teenagers who indulged in petty theft and shoplifting. That was not enough for Ernie, however. He was soon ready to graduate to more serious crime. Since she couldn't control her oldest son, Helen sent Ernie to his father in Philadelphia in 1939, where the two Ingenito men lived at 22648 South 16th Street. However, absence had failed to make his father's heart grow fonder. Between tension at home and his problems in school, Ernie once again began to seek out other boys who preferred to learn more about burglary and theft than reading and science. That same year, his police record indicated that Ernie, now fourteen, was sentenced to six months at the Thomas Shallcross School in Philadelphia, a residential facility for delinquent boys, because he was truant from school. This didn't seem to bother Ernie. When he wasn't working at an assigned job, he enjoyed playing baseball and football with the other boys. Later that same year, he returned to Shallcross for an additional seven months on another charge of truancy, but again his stay seemed to have had little effect.

  After he was released, Ernie broke into an American Store on September 19, 1940, and stole merchandise valued at $20. Arrested and charged with burglary and larceny, he was sentenced to probation on October 11 by Municipal Court Judge Felix Piekarski, who could have handed down a much more severe sentence. The judge's leniency apparently persuaded Ernie that he had fooled the system, because on October 29, about two weeks after his court appearance, the sixteen-yearold climbed through a window of the Warburton Hotel. Arrested and charged with burglary, Ernie was sentenced to one month in the Holmesburg House of Correct
ions in Philadelphia. Later that year, he served another month at Holmesburg for truancy. The overcrowded medium-security prison opened in 1927 in northeast Philadelphia and initially housed adults who committed petty crimes and juvenile offenders who were disobedient to their parents or were truant from school. Built on the banks of the Pennypack Creek, Holmesburg was notorious for many years for the excessive punishment handed out to inmates by the staff. Unfortunately, there were no records available to show what happened during Ernie's brief stays at the prison.

  In November 1940, Ernest Sr. asked authorities to send his son to the Pennsylvania Industrial School at Huntingdon, another reformatory, hoping that they might be able to instill in him some measure of self-discipline. By May 1941, Ernie was transferred to Camp Hill, another juvenile reformatory. Paroled in December 23 of that same year, Ernie returned to his mother's house in Wildwood. Any hope of resuming his old life on the streets of the resort town was dashed, however, when his mother became ill. As a result, Helen decided to take her two younger children and move to Florida where her sister lived and she could enjoy a milder, year-round climate. Although she and Ernest Sr. would never live together again as man and wife, she did not file for divorce until 1943.

  Rather than return to Philadelphia to share uncomfortably close quarters with his father, seventeen-year-old Ernie eloped to Elkton, Maryland, with Doris Breslin, a sixteen-year-old from Wildwood who soon became pregnant with his child. After the marriage, the young couple moved in with Doris's family, but the confines of domestic life proved to be too much for him. Within months, there were reports of violence against Doris, who soon realized that the man she had married was no prize. Like many women in similar circumstances, she kept the incidents of abuse quiet, but wasn't sorry when she was given an unexpected reprieve. After two years of turmoil, Ernie received his draft notice in the mail.

 

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