Island of the Damned by Alix Kirsta Read Free Book Online Page B

East River in Manhattan. I quickly got wise to the angles and before long I was either drunk, or half drunk, all the time. I’m not kidding when I say that I saw more drunken men on Welfare Island than I ever did on Broadway which I once covered for police news for a New York newspaper. It was nothing to go wandering around the prison and get invited in for a ‘snifter’ or two by a couple of convicts who had a party in their cells. And some of these guys had the best liquor money could buy. It was brought into the prison by keepers or prison employees.”
    Clark’s experiences suggest that Joey Rao was not the first “overlord” of Welfare Island. “Jimmy the Wop was a tough geezer from the East Side. He looked as handsomely evil as any mobsters in the movies. Jimmy was boss of his dormitory and ruled his section of the workhouse with an iron hand. I saw him arouse and heckle keepers and slug prisoners who dared to disobey his commands .….it was common knowledge that he was the chief drug peddler. It was against prison rules to have money on your person but I saw him with as high as $500 in his possession. His nook in the dormitory was pretty classy. He had a dresser, a mirror and many other comforts. I am not exaggerating when I say he gave a party nearly every night. Steaks – booze – singing. No one ever stopped him.”
    If the New York authorities needed any evidence that Joe Rao’s rule over Welfare Island was not a one-off phenomenon, Clark had supplied it. A thorough review of official records dating back several years also indicated how many early warning signals had been overlooked – or ignored – by their predecessors prior to 1934.
    The most serious event that took place at the prison before the 1934 raid was in 1932, when a prisoner, 36 year-old George Holshoe, was stabbed to death in a brawl which sparked a huge riot at the jail. The murdered man was one of the leaders of a band of Irish prisoners who at that time were locked in an ongoing feud with the Italian gang of prisoners. Joe Rao had arrived at the prison on January 7th 1932, and by October had earned the nickname “the Harlem Terror” being by then a feared leader of the Italian group. On the morning of October 22nd, representatives of the two factions, including George Holshoe and Joseph Bendix from the Irish group, together with Joe Rao, Patsy Cuomo, and Frank Mazzio from the Italian gang, had gone to Warden McCann’s office to discuss their grievances. In the midst of the discussion, Holshoe, who became outraged at a comment made by Frank Mazzio, leapt up and hit him. Rao darted forward trying to intervene and got hit too. A scrum ensued and suddenly a knife appeared and was plunged into Holshoe’s chest just as Warden McCann rushed over to separate the men.
    Crowds of prisoners who had congregated outside McCann’s open office door immediately took sides with the two gangs and began fighting, using their fists, knives, rocks, broken furniture, lead pipes and anything else that came to hand. As Holshoe lay on the ground, dying from deep wounds to the chest and back, the riot escalated. Guards who tried to control the rioters were shoved aside; Warden McCann’s orders to stop were ignored. Word spread to several hundred prisoners exercising outside in the yard: they rushed in and joined the riot. After McCann reported the emergency New York’s police headquarters, more than 350 policemen, armed with machine guns and tear gas bombs were rushed to the island in boats. They managed to corral several hundred rioting convicts and lock the ring leaders into solitary confinement. Three planes circled overhead and a squad of patrol boats surrounded the island to prevent attempts by prisoners to escape by swimming away.
    Although it was impossible to establish who had killed George Holshoe, Joe Rao, as well as Frank Mazzio and Patsy Cuomo, were held for questioning, since they were in close physical proximity to Holshoe when he was