The Black Hand

by Stephan Talty

  As the crowd of mourners trudged toward the cemetery’s exit, they could hear Adelina’s screams behind them.

  17

  * * *

  Goatville

  Even with Petrosino buried, Manhattanites found it difficult to move on. Wild rumors flew about the city: The detective had been wearing a coat of armor in Sicily that had somehow been breached by the fatal bullets. Or he’d been posing as a British lord, wearing a blond wig, “Dundreary side whiskers,” and a monocle. “SLAYERS OF PETROSINO ARRESTED,” read a headline in the New York Journal. The killer was supposedly an Italian miner who had been located in Mount Kisco, New York. The arrested man, however, was soon set free.

  One of the more popular conspiracy theories, especially in the colonies, was that Petrosino’s enemies at the NYPD had sent him into a trap, hoping he would be killed. Why, many Italians wanted to know, had Bingham ordered Petrosino to Sicily, that nest of vipers, completely alone and unguarded? Why had he revealed Petrosino’s mission when it was supposed to be secret? “He went into a den of lions,” said Frank Frugone, publisher of the Bollettino della Sera and the president of the defunct protection league. “He had no chance.” Italians would be blamed, but many felt that other forces were at work and would inevitably escape punishment.

  Petrosino’s family embraced another theory: the detective hadn’t really died at all. According to this rumor, the murder had been staged so that Petrosino could disappear and continue to work undercover. The theory became so entrenched in New York that Deputy Commissioner Woods was forced to refute it publicly. “I only wish it were true,” he told journalists. “And while you might not expect me to tell you if it were, it really is not true. Petrosino is dead.”

  As the weeks passed, Commissioner Bingham grew defensive about his part in the tragedy. “He was eager to go,” the General said of Petrosino, “and looked upon it as a great opportunity. He had no fear.” The commissioner wrote to Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox, asking him to push for new laws, including one that would require all immigrants to carry identification cards, to register with the police in the cities where they lived, and to notify authorities of any change of address. This was followed by a newspaper interview in which Bingham spoke of the risks Petrosino had run; in it, he managed, not for the first time, to sound like a callous idiot. “All of those men [in the Italian Squad] take big chances and they know it,” he told the journalist. “It’s a wonder they haven’t all been wiped out before this.” The distancing—“those men,” “wiped out”—made Petrosino seem like a stranger, and the General’s expression of wonderment at the survival of any member of the Italian Squad was unfortunate. By now, Petrosino’s belief that the Italians finally had a commissioner they could trust looked terribly naïve. Bingham’s own role in the murder went unmentioned in the interview.

  In Italy, police arrested hundreds of men, mostly known Mafia members. Dozens and dozens of tips and letters poured in, but they contained a welter of contradictory “clues.” There were plenty of rumors but few or no witnesses willing to come forward. Before long, officials in Sicily began sending out worrying signals. “The police in Palermo,” noted the Washington Post, “seem to have reached the conclusion that neither the Mafia nor the Black Hand had anything to do with the crime. ‘Bad characters from America’ were responsible.” The report turned the stomachs of many Americans. Francis Corrao, the dashing young prosecutor in Brooklyn, fired back, telling reporters, “There is no question that the officials in Sicily are in league with the Mafia.” American newspapers began to snipe at Sicilians and their representatives: the island was “a land of shame, where a conspiracy of silence protects assassins.” Bingham sent three telegrams to the Palermo police demanding to know what progress they’d made, but heard nothing back. After that, he too began to accuse the Italians of complicity.

  Little was said of American responsibility for the assassination. Bingham’s baffling decision to send Petrosino alone, the revelation of his mission, the years of neglect that had allowed the Black Hand to grow: all were mostly passed over or forgotten. The journalist Frank Marshall White, the fiercest denouncer of Black Hand policies in New York, was one of the few who criticized the government. “Had Congress done its plain duty in checking the inroads of foreign criminals when that sinister visitation began,” he wrote in the Times, “Joseph Petrosino would not have been sent to his death in Sicily.” But it was a rare broadside; American anger was largely focused abroad.

  In Palermo, Vito Cascio Ferro was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Petrosino, along with Paolo Palazzotto and thirteen others. But the case soon fell apart in the courtroom and all the defendants were acquitted. As Commissioner Ceola had predicted, not a single eyewitness came forward to testify as to who had killed the American. The very thing that Petrosino had decried during his lifetime ensured that his murderers would never be brought to justice.

  Tips and anonymous letters would continue to pour into the offices of the Palermo police for decades. In February 2013, Italian police were conducting a long-running drug sting, code-named “Apocalypse,” aimed at the Mafia in Palermo. As they listened in to their taps, the investigators were startled to hear one suspect, Domenico Palazzotto, begin to brag about the murder. “Petrosino?” the twenty-eight-year-old asked some compatriots. “He was killed by my father’s uncle. I’ll even show you the books. Our family has been Mafiosi for a hundred years.” Why was Petrosino murdered, according to this rising young mafioso? “He dropped in from America, to stir shit up here, to investigate the Mafia.” To be descended from the man who killed Petrosino would have been a mark of great pride for the young thug, but unfortunately for him, his facts were a bit confused. Italian police don’t believe that Domenico is related to the Palazzotto who was arrested for the murder. They’re convinced that this was simply a case of a man trying to burnish his credentials by claiming credit for a murder his clan had nothing to do with.

  For Italians, the murder can be compared, in some ways, to the JFK assassination for Americans: each a notorious execution with dozens of theories floating around as to who truly pulled the trigger. But there is one key difference. The motives of the various suspects in the JFK murder couldn’t be more different: the Mob, the CIA, the Cubans, the Russians. According to the conspiracy theorists, each group had a competing, and even contradictory, reason for wanting Kennedy dead.

  That isn’t the case with Petrosino’s death. There are many rumors as to who did it, but all of the suspects share only one motive: Petrosino’s work against the Black Hand and the Italian underworld. There are no competing theories. In this sense, it’s irrelevant who actually pulled the trigger that night in Palermo. Any of a thousand men could have done it, and their reasons would all have been nearly identical. Petrosino’s murder was that rare thing, a truly collective crime.

  …

  In New York, the carvers finished the monument to Petrosino, complete with a marble bust, and it was dedicated at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Father Chadwick, the NYPD’s chaplain, gave the benediction: “The man who sleeps here was a true son of the people,” he told the gathered bluecoats. “There is an irresistible conflict now going on between the forces of darkness, anarchy, and riot, and the forces of light, law, and order.” A speech by Chief Captain Richard Enright was more personal and lyrical: “Sleep on, brave Petrosino, noblest of the city’s dead. Sleep here in the bosom of a grateful city, within sight of its busy life, within sound of its manifold voices, enshrined in the hearts of a people you gave your all to save.”

  Other plans were being altered. The New York assemblyman who had intended to introduce a bill making bomb throwing a death penalty crime announced that, after further consideration, he’d decided to withdraw it. “I live in a Black Hand district,” he told reporters, “and I know what these fellows are capable of doing. On second thought, I will leave the bill to some of the upstate members to introduce.” The proposed law never came before the Assembly.

 
Fear of the Black Hand lived on. Detective Salvatore Santoro of the Brooklyn Italian Squad returned home two weeks after Petrosino’s death to find a notice of eviction from his landlord. Santoro and his wife and children were ordered to leave the premises by April 1. When he asked the landlord why he was being evicted, the man admitted that the Petrosino assassination had caused him to fear that his home would be blown up by the Society because it housed a member of the Italian Squad. Santoro was forced to find another place to live.

  The raids on suspected Society hangouts continued, and the mayor, worried about reprisals, told Commissioner Bingham that it might be best if he took a vacation “until the agitation over the Black Hand war had come to an end.” Bingham refused. One night, the commissioner was driving toward his office at 300 Mulberry Street when he passed a dark alleyway. A single shot rang out. The bullet “passed so close to [Bingham] that it was regarded as marvelous that he was not shot down.” The projectile lodged in the woodwork of a building across from the alleyway; policemen swarmed the area looking for clues.

  A deluxe benefit for Adelina was scheduled at the Academy of Music, featuring thirty-five famous actors and vaudeville stars. But the organizers ran into difficulties. “We received every assurance that the theater, although one of the biggest in the city, would be sold out,” said George M. Cohan, who was producing the event. “At the last minute it began to be mysteriously whispered about that dire calamity would follow anyone having anything to do with the enterprise.” Performers received menacing letters; many canceled. On the night of the show, there was a slew of empty seats. Officials who’d reserved tickets failed to show up, costing the organizers thousands of dollars. Even Mayor McClellan, who’d arranged for several seats, sent his regrets. A humiliated Cohan told the press that the benefit raised only half of what it was supposed to.

  The response of the federal government, after much chest-beating about a new war on the Black Hand, was muted. The single concrete action came when government officials asked the post office to be on the lookout for Society letters. The suggestions in Bingham’s letter to the secretary of state were never implemented and were probably not seriously considered.

  …

  Meanwhile, the society continued its work as if nothing had happened. In 1911 an Italian grocer with a shop on Spring Street received a letter with the usual demand for money. “Petrosino is dead,” it read, “but the Black Hand lives on.” He brought the letter to the police station. Soon after, the tenement where he lived was set on fire. Trapped residents ran to the rooftop to escape the flames. “The screams of women and children and the noise of the fireballs,” wrote a journalist at the scene, “awoke most everyone living on the block.” Men and women jumped off the roof to escape the blaze, dying as they struck the pavement below. Others were found dead at the foot of a ladder leading to the roof. Nine people perished in the flames, including six children, among them two infants, both one year old. The outrages, and Petrosino’s murder, cemented an image of the Italian that still persists today. “The killing,” wrote two historians, “more than any other single happening, convinced the American people that organized crime in America was a major import from Italy.”

  Adelina, brokenhearted, found she could no longer stay at 233 Lafayette. It wasn’t considered safe for her to live there alone; already there was a guard posted outside her door day and night. She decided to move to Brooklyn. She carried with her every scrap of paper relating to her husband, every article about his life, his service gun, the gold watch sent by King Victor Emmanuel III, every possession of Petrosino’s, every condolence letter. Adelina had internalized the anxiety over her husband’s death. Years later, when her daughter married a policeman—and an Irishman at that—Adelina was terrified. “She felt that history could repeat itself,” says her granddaughter. “She was against the marriage from the beginning.”

  The NYPD continued to take the threat against her seriously. More than fifty years after Petrosino’s death, long after every criminal he’d fought was either dead or approaching senility, Pay or Die, the 1960 film about his life, premiered, with Ernest Borgnine in the lead role. Family members arrived on the red carpet with a full police guard; a detective sat near them in the theater as the film played. Gene Kelly had beaten Borgnine to the screen with a Society feature; ten years before, he’d portrayed a character vaguely based on Petrosino in a film called Black Hand, his first non-singing, non-dancing role. The movie was undistinguished, but Kelly’s performance received glowing reviews.

  …

  If there was one man above any other who wanted to avenge the death of Joseph Petrosino, it was his friend Anthony Vachris, the head of the Brooklyn Italian Squad. He was willing to go to Sicily to find the killers. “Vachris is a bull-necked, hard-knuckled man . . . who does not know what fear is,” declared the Brooklyn Eagle, echoing Roosevelt’s comments about Petrosino. “He has been threatened over and again with violence in many shapes, and he has been told that he may be found some day in a bag or a barrel, but he laughs all the threateners to scorn, for he would like to find any gosh-blamed, dog-gasted Dago who would do him.”

  Days after his friend’s assassination, Vachris stood before reporters and asked that the commissioner send him to Italy. “I feel certain that I can land the gang responsible for the death of Petrosino,” he insisted. “I know of nothing that would suit me better than to be sent over there with a squad of secret service men. That is what must be done to avenge the death of our comrade, and I shall ask leave to go.” Bingham, who could hardly refuse any offer to catch Petrosino’s killer, gave his permission. Vachris grew a beard and acquired documents identifying him as John Simon, a Jewish businessman. He boarded a ship headed for Liverpool, along with Detective Joseph Crowley, an Irish detective who’d learned Italian while patrolling the Brooklyn colony. The NYPD didn’t want to make the same mistake they had with Petrosino; the two detectives would watch out for each other while abroad. The pair sailed for Europe on April 12, 1909.

  The secrecy of the mission was preserved. “John Simon” and his partner arrived safely in England, then boarded a ship for Italy. Once installed in the capital, they removed fresh disguises from their suitcases. From now on, they would go about Italy dressed as peasants. The pair began their investigation, visiting Rome, Genoa, and Naples, and interviewing anyone they could find with a connection to the case. The Italian police warned them that their lives were in danger, but they carried on regardless. Agents of the Italian secret service stood guard while the Americans sat in court offices poring over criminal records. But as with Ceola and his investigators, Vachris made little headway into solving the murder itself.

  Vachris felt that the answers to the killing lay in Sicily, but when he told his Italian keepers that he intended to visit the island, they were aghast. “They said it was madness,” he recalled, “and meant certain death.” Vachris and Crowley argued with police officials, but to no avail. So the two returned to their rooms one afternoon, changed out of their disguises into new outfits, and snuck past their guards out of the hotel. Consul Bishop, who was readying for his return to America, helped smuggle the pair into Sicily. In Palermo, they made their way to the Piazza Marina and had their picture taken at the spot where Petrosino had been gunned down.

  They also took up Petrosino’s unfinished work and began gathering more penal certificates. Here, Vachris and Crowley made significant progress. They collected more than 350 documents pertaining to men who were living illegally in New York. Italian officials promised that they would comb through the files and send hundreds more.

  But in the middle of their Sicilian investigation, a telegram arrived at their hotel in Sicily. Commissioner Bingham had been fired and a new regime had assumed control at the NYPD. The detectives were ordered back to Manhattan immediately. The two hurriedly packed their bags and caught the next steamship for America, the Regina d’Italia. It landed in Jersey City on August 11.

  Bingham’s firing is cloaked in mystery.
It was rumored that he’d done the unthinkable and raided the taverns and Tammany strongholds in the “Sullivan wards” of Manhattan. In fact, this is exactly what happened: Bingham had ordered his men to close down a dive at 6 Mott Street owned by Paddy Mullin, a friend and ally of Big Tim. When asked by a politician if Big Tim had approved the move, Bingham scoffed. “The Sullivans! They can’t even get the time of the day from the department.” Mayor McClellan relieved the commissioner of his duties soon after.

  Bingham, being Bingham, didn’t go quietly. He accused the mayor and his Tammany bosses of “waste, rascality, and general cussedness” and stumped for the opposition fusion ticket in the next election. “Oh, the Mayor made a great mistake when he fired me,” Bingham told crowds at one anti-Tammany rally. “Not because it was Bingham, but because he could have done it like a white man, asking for my resignation, and thereby effectively shutting my mouth. Now, I’ll admit, my policy is to drive him into the ground good and hard and break him off good and short.” Despite his bluster, the General’s career in government was over; his reputation had never recovered from the Petrosino affair.

  Despite their early departure, Vachris and Crowley could be well satisfied with their Italian trip. They hadn’t uncovered the identity of their friend’s assassin, but they’d completed his mission. They had hundreds of penal certificates packed away in their luggage, and Vachris was convinced that the Italians would cooperate in sending many more. Scores of Society men would be deported and many leading gangs crippled. It could spell the end of the Black Hand terror in Manhattan.