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'Clutch Hand' Confusion

By Thomas Hunt
Copyright 2002

While many details of Morello's life are documented, a number of major puzzles remain. We do not know, for example, the precise nature of the relationship between Morello and the infamous Black Hander and Mafia leader Ignazio Lupo. The relationship between Morello and later crime boss Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria is similarly cloudy. Some historians have also been confused by Morello's personal family history, by the appearance of a powerful Mafioso named Peter Morello in the Prohibition Era and by tales of an uptown abatoir in which the Morellos allegedly slaughtered their enemies.

I will attempt, as best I can, to resolve these issues here. Some questions will certainly remain, but many can be put behind us. And I believe most of the rest will prove to be inconsequential. For the few stubborn issues that remain both important and unresolved, perhaps drawing attention to them here will help other investigators in their research.

The birth date of Morello is in doubt. Most sources indicate 1870 as the probable year. But it is important to note that Mafia historians frequently draw information from each other. Eighteen-seventy may have started as someone's educated guess and through repetition became regarded as fact. David Leon Chandler places Morello's birth back in 1863 put provides little clue why he has done so. The 1863 date is certainly more convenient to the Morello family, which produced two older sons in the 1850s and would have had a long wait for Giuseppe in 1870. But there seems no other reason to prefer the earlier year. And the notorious unreliability of 19th Century recordkeeping provides little help.

Some Mafia historians have had some trouble tracking the number of Morello brothers and their ages. Allan May, among others, lists four brothers and two half-brothers. But May stumbled when he counted "Peter" as a blood brother of Giuseppe Morello. Peter was, in fact, the same person as Giuseppe. But more about that later. The supposed half-brothers, Ciro and Vincenzo Terranova, appear to be step-brothers to the Morellos, since they did not share a common genetic parent. The Terranova boys were born to Rosalia Terranova before her husband died. She later married the patriarch of the Morello clan, who had three grown sons. The Morello and Terranova boys often referred to each other as brothers or half-brothers, further clouding the issue. The Terranova boys were considerably younger than the Morellos. Vincenzo and and Ciro both appear to have been born close to 1890.

There is reason to believe - though I don't - that Nicholas Morello was actually Nicholas Terranova. On the occasion of Morello's assassination on a Brooklyn street, he was identified as a brother by Ciro Terranova. In his conversation with authorities, Terranova seemed to draw some distinction between Nicholas and his Morello step-brothers. But all official and personal documents found on Nicholas Morello's person identified him as a Morello. It may be that Terranova, stunned by the brutal slaying of his step-sibling, was not particularly careful with his words and was intending to describe his relationship to Nicholas rather than contrast it with his relationship to the other Morellos. Depending on how you interpret the details of this story and the various names recorded on official documents, you may decide to count Nicholas as a brother or a step-brother of Giuseppe.

The family details we all seem to agree on are these: The Morellos and Terranovas were born to established Mafia families in Corleone, Sicily. The Terranovas lost their father early in life and their mother married into the Morello Family. The entire clan moved to New York City on or around 1892, settling in East Harlem. The Morello father and oldest brother, Antonio, were killed in shootouts before 1900.

With brother Antonio leading the way, the Morellos seem to have quickly organized what became known as the 107th Street Mob in East Harlem. It grew into the most powerful and feared street gang of the region, extending its strength all the way into Brooklyn, and clashed on occasion with Camorrista mobs comprised of Neapolitan immigrants.

Upon Antonio's death, it appears that Giuseppe Morello became leader of the gang and came to the attention of Ignazio Lupo, Mafia czar of Manhattan's Lower East Side and also a power in Brooklyn. By 1900, Morello and Lupo were in business together, with the rest of the Morello-Terranova clan lending support.

There has always been much speculation about whether Lupo or Morello served as supreme boss at this period. Nick Gentile, who documented the early history of the New York Mafia in his Vita di Capomafia, makes it a point to call Morello "boss." But it is difficult to determine whether he intends to indicate the Lupo was Morello's subordinate.

Joe Bonanno, another Mafioso who decided to put the story of his life to paper, offers little help. He makes no mention at all of Lupo, while noting that Morello was well respected within the secret society by 1930. It is important to consider that Bonanno also makes no mention of the supreme boss of the Sicilian Mafia at the time (and repeated honored visitor to the New York mob), Vito Cascio Ferro. It is impossible that Cascio Ferro escaped Bonanno's notice. So we might be inclined to infer another reason for his absence from the Bonanno autobiography. Whatever the reason, it is possible that the same motivation lurked behind Bonanno's exclusion of Lupo.

In The Rise of the Mafia in New York, Giuseppe Selvaggi quotes an old-time Mafioso he calls Zio Trestelle. Trestelle insists that Ignazio Lupo was in a superior position to Giuseppe Morello and was "the first guy to set up organized crime" in New York. The statement is, of course, an exaggeration. The Mafia did not invent organized crime and, depending on one's definition, the gangs in New York who could trace their existence practically to the birth of the American republic could be considered organized crime. But Trestelle clearly intends that we understand Lupo's importance in the city's underworld.

Among secondary sources, Donald Cressey seems to prefer Morello as supreme boss. But Cressey makes a major blunder in his reporting of Morello's career (I'll go into it later on) and this may simply be another. Police Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, who served as a thorn in the side of the growing Mafia and Camorra groups in the city through the early 1900s, at one point identified Lupo as the "treasurer" of the Mafia society in New York. That appears to indicate that someone else held the position of "president," but perhaps Petrosino was not referring to a corporate structure. He may have been attempting to indicate the individual who held all the money of the group.

Virtually every other credible Mafia history source goes on record as backing Lupo as boss. Herbert Asbury, Ed Reid, Virgil Peterson, Bill Brennan, Sid Feder and others point to Lupo as the anointed king of New York crime.

The federal government, too, appeared to view Lupo as the boss. When the courts handed down sentences against both men for a 1909 counterfeiting conviction, Lupo was given 30 years while Morello was given 25. The court, however, noted that the lengthy sentences were the result of considering the criminal histories of the men. At the time, and probably because of his newspaper-friendly "Lupo the Wolf" monicker, was the better known and more feared of the two.

Interestingly, Stephen Fox chose not to place either Lupo or Morello in a subordinate role to the other. And, upon reflection, this position makes a great deal of sense. Morello's initial power base was in East Harlem, while Lupo's was in lower Manhattan. Both extended their reaches into the other's geographic territory, but that seemed to occur only after an arrangement had been reached between the two men. It may very well be that the Lupo-Morello relationship was a partnership. When Lupo married into the Terranova family, he was incorporated into the clan as another step-brother. It is unlikely that Lupo or Morello was ever in a position to give an order to the other partner. But we can probably never know for certain what the early hierarchy was.

A great deal of confusion surrounds the existence, location and use of what became known in the press as the Murder Stable. Sources agree only on the most basic details: There was a property with a stable on it within the control of the Morello-Terranova clan in East Harlem in the early 1900s, and the Mafiosi used the location to introduce rivals, traitors and uncooperative extortion victims to their Makers.

But the rest of the Murder Stable story has, like so much of American Mafia history, become the stuff of legend. Upon reading some accounts, one can almost see Paul Bunyan residing on the premises, hacking people to bits with his great ax.

Craig Thompson and Allen Raymond indicated in Gang Rule in New York City that the stable was located on East 108th Street and that it was owned by Ignazio Lupo and Ciro Terranova. The Thompson-Allen story changes later on when it seems that the Morello brothers are in control of the stable. Gang Rule states that 23 men were killed on the site from 1900 to 1917. While Terranova was certainly involved with Lupo-Morello criminal enterprises in 1900, he was unlikely to be the owner of any significant property - he was just 11 years old.

In The Frank Costello Story, Bill Brennan accepts the Thompson-Allen location for the stable on E. 108th but hands complete ownership of the building to Terranova, neglecting that Mafioso's young age, and ups the body count to 30.

Oddly, Herbert Asbury, whose The Gangs of New York was published a dozen years before the Thompson-Allen book, insisted that the Murder Stable was much farther north. He wrote that the structure was on East 125th Street, which seems an out-of-the-way location for the time. Sid Feder jumped on that bandwagon and insisted that E. 125th was the right location. Asbury refused to put a number on the killings which took place at that location, but he noted that it ranked second to the "Bloody Angle" of Chinatown in terms of blood spilled. Asbury further noted that the Lupo mob had been credited with 60 murders in all.

Well, Asbury never should have used the number "60" because that seems to have prompted both David Leon Chandler and Carl Sifakis to announce that 60 bodies were found at the site of the Murder Stable. Both of those authors, however, moved the stable back down into East Harlem, placed it at #323 East 107th Street and gave sole ownership to Lupo. The authors also added the wrinkle that the bodies were found by authorities tearing the structure down. Chandler states that the U.S. Secret Service did the dismantling (seems unlikely). Sifakis decides to put the date of the stable demolition in 1901 but offers no explanation for how Lupo came to be so far uptown at that point or why government officials would have siezed such a structure at such an early date.

Asbury, who unknowingly contributed to the vast escalation of Murder Stable victim totals, offered another tidbit to describe the brutality of Giuseppe Morello. Morello, the author wrote, tortured and murdered his own stepson when he was suspected of betraying Mafia secrets. For some reason, most later writers have discarded this story. But any day now, some Mafia historian may assert that Morello brutally wiped out 60 of his own children for crying too loudly!

We may never be able to get at the truth of the Murder Stable. Considering the most common mode of transportation at the time involved horses, there were probably stables on every property owned, rented and even visited by Morello and Lupo. Since those men had ruthless reputations and their enemies had a habit of disappearing, it is only natural that the neighborhood folk would develop the Murder Stable legend.

After serving 10 years of his counterfeiting sentence, Giuseppe Morello was released from Atlanta Federal Prison. At the same time, some Mafia historians report the emergence of a new Morello brother, Peter, also known as Don Piddu or "the Clutch Hand." In fact, Peter and Giuseppe were the same person. Morello had apparently decided on the new identity while in prison.

In some Mafia histories, Peter Morello was an arch-enemy of soon-to-be boss of bosses Joe Masseria. Chandler makes the most of this plot line, having Morello join former Lupo lieutenant Umberto Valenti in an all-out war against the rebellious Masseria. But the story is terribly clumsy, as Chandler is at a loss to explain the close relationship between Masseria and Morello step-brother Ciro Terranova (despite the fact that he has Masseria assassinate Terranova's brother Vincent) and the future close relationship between Masseria and Morello himself.

At one point, Chandler finds his own story so unwieldy that he is forced to have Morello surrender to Masseria not once but twice in order to fit the war theory to the known historical events.

It is far simpler to argue that Valenti, unhappy that he had been passed over for leadership in the post-Lupo era, and his supporters splintered off from a main Terranova-Morello-Masseria organization and warred unsuccessfully against that organization. Such an argument need not steer around obstacles like obviously close relationships and the assassination of Vincent Terranova.

As the 1920s concluded, a civil war within the American Mafia was about to erupt. Masseria had established himself as boss of bosses earlier in the decade but then committed the unpardonable crimes of meddling in the internal affairs of Mafia Families across the United States.

Facing a challenge to his leadership from a Mafia group largely made up of immigrants from Castellamare del Golfo, Sicily, and led by Salvatore Maranzano, Masseria became somewhat paranoid. He began to see conspirators everywhere and to act against these perceived threats. First he put his nose into Chicago business, taking sides with Al Capone against Mafia leader Joe Aiello. Then he moved against a leading Detroit Mafioso named Gaspare Milazzo, supporting that leader's assassination, and extorted a vast sum from the titular Brooklyn Castellamarese leader who thereupon mysteriously disappeared. When Masseria learned that his ally in the Bronx, Gaetano Reina, was secretly supporting Maranzano, Masseria had him killed and installed a more loyal replacement. That act precipitated open warfare with Maranzano's group and its supporters around the country.

In a last ditch effort to halt the conflict, Masseria announced that he was stepping down as boss. He named Giuseppe Morello as the new boss of bosses and committed himself to serving Morello as a soldier. Cressey's error occurs with this event. In what may have been merely a typing error, he asserts that Maranzano rather than Masseria endorsed Morello as boss of bosses. In light of the revelations in Bonanno's autobiography, this proves to be ridiculously false.

Some Mafia historians speculate that Morello was the power behind the throne all along through the 1920s (as well as earlier during his partnership with Lupo), that Masseria was boss in name only and was actually doing the bidding of his elder. If Morello had, in fact, been the top boss throughout the Prohibition Era, as this theory suggests, he kept himself very well insulated. No one seems to have had any clue of the man's authority throughout the 1920s.

It appears far more likely that Morello was a puppet ruler. Masseria had hoped to benefit from the old man's prestige while continuing to pull the strings. But there also appears to be a solid relationship between the two men. The fact that Masseria and Morello had a tight bond was established by a visit to their offices recalled by Bonanno, who considered himself their enemy. Masseria was reportedly content to sit back and allow Don Piddu to speak to his guests during a critical meeting.

Unfortunately, Masseria had pulled the "I'm going to retire" routine just once too often in his career (it was also the ploy used to expose and eliminate Valenti), and the Castellamarese saw through it. They initially swore allegiance to the new boss of bosses and then had him gunned down in his offices.

Whether Morello had ever held the role of genuine boss of bosses remains in doubt. But he was certainly as influential as he was enigmatic. And he sat at least close to if not in the underworld throne for much of his Mafia career. Family history, precise roles in the hierarchy, transient alliances and every detail relating to the Murder Stable may be murky, but Morello was without question one of the primary shapers of the American Mafia.