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

a man they claimed was the Black Hand’s principal bomb-maker and they raided a saloon on East 11th Street which was supposedly the gang’s headquarters. But it soon became clear that the problem was far from over. Only a few days later the following letter appeared in The New York Times:
‘My name is Salvatore Spinelli. My parents in Italy came from a decent family. I came here eighteen years ago and went to work as a house painter, like my father. I started a family and I have been an American citizen for thirteen years. I had a house at 314 East Eleventh St and another one at 316, which I rented out. At this point the “Black Hand” came into my life and asked me for seven thousand dollars. I told them to go to hell and the bandits tried to blow up my house. Then I asked the police for help and refused more demands, but the “Black Hand” set off one, two, three, four, five bombs in my houses. Things went to pieces. From thirty-two tenants I am down to six. I owe a thousand dollars interest that is due next month and I cannot pay. I am a ruined man. My family lives in fear. There is a policeman on guard in front of my house, but what can he do? My brother Francesco and I do guard duty at the windows with guns night and day. My wife and children have not left the house for weeks. How long can this go on?’
    Dynamiting was a favourite Black Hand method of enforcement. There was a great deal of construction work going on in New York at the time and some of the workmen used to help themselves to sticks of dynamite. As late as 1917, long after strict laws had been introduced, the police commissioner warned that the ‘workmen at the 14th Street subway are getting away with two or three sticks of dynamite daily’.
    The Pittsburgh police did somewhat better than their New York counterparts. They were credited with ‘the break up of the best organized blackmailing bands in the history of the Black Hand’. In one of their raids, they had found ‘carefully written by-laws, with a definite scale of spoil division and with many horrible oaths’. On another raid they found what appeared to be a ‘school of the Black Hand’, where two young Italians had ‘actually been practising with daggers on dummy figures’.
    Giuseppe Petrosino, now a lieutenant, then learnt of a new, more sophisticated extortion method that was spreading through the community. A shopkeeper in Elizabeth Street told him that three men entered his shop and informed him that they knew he had received Black Hand letters. They offered him protection from the Black Hand threats for a small, regular fee. This was a typical Mafia tactic. U pizzu had arrived in New York.
    New York was treated to a colourful Italian visitor in the summer of 1908, when Mafia politician Don Raffaele Palizzolo visited the city. He was hailed as ‘the political boss of Palermo; indeed, the uncrowned king of Sicily’ and was greeted as an honoured guest by the Italian community. However, Palizzolo’s power was waning in Sicily, so his visit to New York was a fund-raiser. Although he posed as an enemy of the Black Hand and the Mafia, stories circulated that he was actually the ‘king of the Mafia’. Palizzolo’s freedom of action was curtailed when Petrosino shadowed him and he headed home sooner than planned. According to New York’s mayor, George B. McClellan, Palizzolo shook his fist at Petrosino, who had followed him to the pier, and shouted: ‘If you ever come to Palermo, God help you.’

    The Italian Squad of the New York City police force headed by Detective Lt. Petrosino (standing left in hat). They did undercover work against the Mafia. All members were Italian, with the exception of a single Irish cop who spoke Italian.
    Petrosino’s Assassination
    During 1908, New York police commissioner Theodore A. Bingham compiled a record of all Black Hand-related crimes. Some 424 cases had been reported, including 44 bombings. As a result, a new undercover squad was formed