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The Barrel Mystery

Chapter 29: FOOTNOTES:
By William J. Flynn
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American LiteratureCrime, Thrillers & Mystery

About This Book

A Secret Service chief recounts an investigation that begins with a body discovered in a barrel and unfolds into the methodical exposure of an organized criminal network. The account follows infiltration of social clubs, recruitment of a printer to produce counterfeit currency, and the coordinated use of extortion known as the Black Hand. It combines procedural detail on surveillance, letter-tracing, printing techniques, raids, arrests, and confessions with narrative case recollections, showing both investigative tradecraft and the tactics criminals use to intimidate victims and evade detection.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Highland is about seven miles from Ardonia, New York, where the reader will remember I had discovered Lupo was in hiding after he ran away from his creditors.

[2] Piddu is the Sicilian diminutive for Giuseppe, the Christian name of Morello.

[3] Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino of the Italian Detective Bureau, attached to the New York Police Department, was murdered in Palermo, Sicily, while on a mission for the Police Department then under the guidance of Commissioner Theodore Bingham. Petrosino had been an implacable foe of the Lupo-Morello gang. His murder has never been explained to the public.

[4] Carogna in the Sicilian dialect means a putrid, dead animal. Among the Sicilian criminals the word is used to designate anybody that brings harm to any gang of criminals.

[5] Commissioner Wood was at the time referred to here the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the Detective Bureau of New York under Theodore Bingham. It was Wood who sent Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino to Italy on the mission, in the carrying out of which the Lieutenant was assassinated. In reference to this murdering of Petrosino, who was the man who went to Sing Sing and got information from DePriema, which led to the identifying of the man murdered and found in the barrel, I wish to refer the reader back to that part of Comito's statement where Comito tells of his visit to Morello's house in East One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street, and especially to take note of the reference there made by Comito to "Michele, the Calabrian," and the conversation that took place between Morello and Cecala concerning the Calabrian. Then couple this with the reference made again to the Calabrian by Lupo (Page 113) in paying Michele's fare to Italy.

[6] Mirabeau L. Towns, attorney for the gang.

[7] Miloni was Treasurer of the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative Association. He was indicted and confessed. He is now in Italy a fugitive from justice.

 

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Spelling and hyphenation variants were standardized to the most frequently used, as follows: Black Hand(er) to Black-Hand(er), calibre to caliber, getaway to get-away, maccaroni to macaroni, post-office to post office.

Chapter XXVI, p. 239: "Schiavi tells of leaving Rio de Janeiro about February 23, 1909, on the steamship Gunther, and arriving in New York in the middle of February of the same year." This apparent error in dates has been retained as in the original since it could not be resolved.