Mafia: The History of the Mob by Nigel Cawthorne Read Free Book Online

finally admitted that he had received Black Hand threats too. They had come from Lupo the Wolf.

    Mugshots of Ignazio Saietta, aka ‘Lupo the Wolf’.
    After the bombing a meeting was called at 178 Park Row, above the offices of the Bollettino della Sera . Taking their cue from the White Hand Society, which had been formed three months earlier in Chicago in order to combat the Black Hand, those attending set up the Associazione de Vigilanza e Protezione Italiana. The editor of the Bollettino , Frank L. Frugone, became the association’s president and it soon had over 300 members. It did no good. On 1 February, the Senna Brothers grocery store at 244 Elizabeth Street was blown up and three nights later a bomb exploded in the hallway of La Sovoia restaurant and saloon at 234 Elizabeth Street. Then on 26 March the bombers hit Bononolo’s bank at 246 Elizabeth Street. The bomb blew a hole in the wall of Bononolo’s quarters, burying his wife and two daughters under the debris. All of the windows in the building above were smashed and the terrified tenants ran out into the street, where the crowds were crying, ‘Mano Nera!’
    Bononolo gave a shaky statement to the police:
‘This has happened because I did not heed their warnings. For five years, scarcely a month has gone by when I have not received one or more Black Hand letters. They asked for sums ranging from $1 to $1,000, but nothing ever happened, and recently I had paid no attention to their threats. This is to warn me. Next time I shall be killed.’
    Even so Bononolo was refused permission to carry a pistol. Meanwhile Pati had armed himself. He had made representations to the Mafia that he should be left alone, due to his connections to the Camorra.
    When some men arrived at the bank asking for money, Pati and his son shot and killed one of them. Pati was congratulated by the police as a ‘brave man and the first of his race to face the Black Hand issue squarely’, but then he secretly relocated – for fear of Mafia reprisals, it was said. In fact, he made off with the deposits after a run on the bank had been prompted by the Black Hand threats. It was then discovered that the man he had shot had actually been an innocent depositor, who was there to withdraw his money. Four years later, the police were still looking for Pati.
    In Chicago, the White Hand Society gained the support of the city’s leading Italian-language newspapers, L’Italia and La Tribuna Italiana Transatlantica , as well as the Italian ambassador in Washington and the Italian minister of foreign affairs in Rome. Its organizers declared ‘war without truce, war without quarter’ against the Black Hand and looked forward to the day when there would be Mano Bianca groups ‘in all the cities that contain large Italian colonies, which suspect the existence of Mafiosi or Camorristi in their midst’. Indeed, a group of leading White Handers had a shoot-out with some Black Handers in the Pennsylvania Railroad yards in Pittsburgh on 9 December 1907.
    By January 1908, the White Hand Society decided to claim that they had driven ten of the worst Italian criminals out of Chicago.
    However, the Mano Nera fought back. On 28 February, the president of Chicago’s White Hand Society, Dr Carlo Volini, received a sinister letter:
‘The supreme council of the Black Hand has voted that you must die. You have not heeded our warnings in the past, but you must heed this. Your killing has been assigned and the man waits for you.’
    Volini was not killed, but support for the Mano Bianca soon began to ebb away. The Italian immigrants no longer believed that they could be any more effective than the authorities. Then an Irish outfit calling themselves the White Hand Gang fought the Italians for control of the waterfront in Brooklyn. They disappeared after their leaders were killed in a docklands ‘speakeasy’. The police suspected Al Capone, who was visiting from Chicago.
    In July 1908, Petrosino’s men arrested