Information from this Crimefighters section and from additional research by the author
was used to help produce the August 2005 Order Sons of Italy report,
"Italian American Crimefighters: A Brief Survey."
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Copyright © 2005
All Rights Reserved
Thomas P. Hunt
New Milford, CT
thunt@onewal.com
<table width="480" border="0" cellpadding="8" align="center" cols="2"> <tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><img src="maf-log.gif" width="300" height="118" border="0" alt="The American Mafia"><h2> DISTINGUISHED CRIMEFIGHTERS </h2></td></tr> <tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href='/mafia'><h5><font color="#b0c0ff">Click Here to Return to Main Menu Page</font></a><br> <a href="#henn"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Police Chief David Hennessy of New Orleans </font></a><br> <a href="#petr"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Lieutenant Joe Petrosino of New York </font></a><br> <a href="#dima"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Detective Francis Dimaio of the Pinkerton Agency </font></a><br> <a href="#fias"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Detective Michael Fiaschetti of New York </font></a><br> <a href="#oldf"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Postal Inspector Frank Oldfield </font></a><br> <a href="#poli"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Detective Amedeo Polignani of New York </font></a><br> <a href="#ness"><font color="#b0c0ff"> Elliot Ness of Chicago </font></a> </h5></td></tr></table> <a name="henn"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <b>Police Chief David C. Hennessy of New Orleans</b> was ambushed by Mafia assassins on his way home from work late on the night of Oct. 15, 1890. Hennessy was less than a block from the house he shared with his widowed mother when shotgun blasts from across Girod Street knocked him to the ground. Two of his assailants then approached and fired into his midsection with high caliber rifles. The chief was still able to stand and return fire with his revolver. The assassins fled. Hennessy stumbled around the next corner and collapsed. When fellow police officers reached him, Hennessy reportedly said he had been shot by "the dagoes." <p>While the Sicilian/Italian underground bore the whole blame for Hennessy's death the following morning, many others in the New Orleans community had motive for acting against Hennessy. Among these were the Provenzano clan, who, despite their friendly stance toward the chief, may never have forgiven him for his role in the capture and deportation of their infamous leader, Giuseppe Esposito, in 1881. Many in the Democratic establishment also had reason to fear and despise the chief. In 1881, Hennessy killed Chief of Detectives Thomas Devereaux in a gunfight. Devereaux was well connected in the local Democratic party and was close friends with private investigator Dominick O'Malley (who was later known to be working for the Matranga Mafia organization). The corrupt old-line Democrats also may have feared the charismatic Hennessy because he was committed to the anti-immigrant, anti-political-machine reform platform of Mayor Shakespeare. The Matranga organization was likely infuriated when Hennessy backed the rival Provenzanos in a court battle resulting from a Provenzano attack against Matranga men in the summer of 1890. Finally, the chief apparently threatened to reveal some damaging information about affluent and influential Sicilian merchant Joseph Macheca (affiliated with the Matrangas) and his friends at the retrial of the Provenzanos late in 1890. Hennessy appears to have gained the information from Italian government sources. <p>Hennessy is credited with being the first law enforcement professional to identify the Mafia in America and attack it with some degree of success. He must also be viewed as law enforcement's first martyr in the fight against organized crime. <p><i>(At right: The location where Chief Hennessy was gunned down by Mafia assassins. The chief was returning home in the glow of electric streetlights on the raised sidewalk to the right. Mafia gunmen hid in the shadow of the long, sloping roof to the left.)</i> </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <a name="petr"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <b>Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino</b> achieved great success in the fight against Italian and Sicilian organized criminal groups in the United States. When he attempted to take the fight to the Mafia's home island, he was assassinated. <p>On a visit to Palermo in western Sicily to gather information on the identities of mafiosi who might have fled to the U.S., Petrosino was shot in the head at a garden in the Piazza Marina on March 12, 1909. He was 48. His visit to Sicily was supposed to have been a secret. But many sources agree that Police Commissioner Bingham released information about the trip through the New York Herald. Mafiosi in the U.S. were able to mobilize their Old World fellows to act against the lieutenant. Many believe Vito Cascio Ferro, a Mafia leader on both sides of the Atlantic, organized and/or participated in the assassination. (On often retold story has Cascio Ferro excusing himself from a dinner party thrown by a local government official to do the deed. In the story, Cascio Ferro promptly returns to dinner afterward.) It is also known that several mafiosi from New Orleans and the American midwest traveled to Sicily just before the attack on Petrosino. <p>Petrosino joined the New York City police department in 1883, receiving an exemption from the height requirement from Capt. "Clubber" Williams. He rose through the ranks, reaching the detective sergeant level in 1895 under then-police commissioner (and later U.S. President) Theodore Roosevelt. Petrosino would be considered brutal by today's standards. He did not hesitate to use threats and force to extract information from street thugs. While his tactics would be frowned upon by many today, they were appropriate for the time and highly effective. Petrosino was placed in charge of the Italian squad, a group of Italian and Sicilian officers whose job was to check organized criminal activity in ethnic neighborhoods. <p>Petrosino's greatest successes came against transplanted Neapolitan criminals - those belonging to the Camorra. He was less fortunate in dealing with the Sicilian mafiosi, but may have been on the verge of acquiring some very effective tools in the form of documentary evidence from Italian police agencies. <p>Among Petrosino's more noteworthy adventures were: saving Angelo Carbone from execution by extracting a murder confession from another man; deporting Camorra leaders Tony Strolle and Enrico Alfano; and identifying both the victim and the perpetrators of the infamous barrel murder in 1903 (though the ring leaders, which included Ignazio Lupo, Vito Cascio Ferro and Giuseppe Morello, managed to escape prosecution). Many of Petrosino's cases were chronicled in a 1914 series of newspaper articles by A.R. Parkhurst under the title, "Perils of Petrosino." His career was also the subject of a number of pulp fiction volumes in the U.S. and Italy. </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <a name="dima"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <b>Pinkerton Detective Francis P. Dimaio</b> performed critical roles in the resolution of a number of high-profile cases from 1890 through 1920. (The photo at right was taken during his retirement, when Wild West historian James D. Horan documented Dimaio's contributions to law enforcement in several books.) <p>Dimaio's most recognized role was as a member of the "Who are those guys?" band that pursued Wild Bunch leaders Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Dimaio's pursuit occurred in South America, and it appears unlikely that he was ever within practical reach of Butch and Sundance. The detective was in Argentina on another matter when word came that the two outlaws had also arrived in that country. Dimaio mobilized local law enforcement and plastered Wanted posters everywhere. Butch and Sundance fled into the jungles as the rainy season arrived to prevent any pursuit. As conditions improved, word came out of Bolivia that the two outlaws had been shot to death. <p>But Dimaio's more significant efforts were against the Mafia in the United States. He went under cover, posing as an apprehended Sicilian counterfeiter, into the Orleans Parish Prison to learn the story behind the 1890 assassination of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy (above). Demaio succeeded in extracting useful information from one of the gunman. Terribly under weight and very ill from the conditions in the prison, Dimaio was extracted from there as the case against the Hennessy assassins began. He needed more than a year by the ocean in Atlantic City, NJ, before he was again fit for assignment. <p><i>(At left, Dimaio jokingly referred to this disguise as his "Mafia uniform." Using it, he was able to infiltrate Mafia organizations in Louisiana and Ohio.)</i> <p>Later on, Dimaio contributed to the break up of a Mafia blackmailing operation in the western Pennsylvania and Ohio region (see Oldfield below). He made it a point to learn Mafia methods and customs from Sicilian sources and used that information to infiltrate Mafia units in the U.S. As a regional supervisor of the Pinkertons, Dimaio supervised a group that aggressively targeted Mafia kidnapping in the Midwest. <p>Dimaio lived to a ripe old age, retiring to a hotel in Delaware. <p> </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <a name="fias"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <b>Detective Michael Fiaschetti</b> might be entirely forgotten if it had not been for a boastful 1928 autobiography entitled, "The Man They Couldn't Escape." In the book, Fiaschetti describes his adventures as a member and a commander of New York's Italian Squad. <p>Fiaschetti served under Lieutenant Petrosino and provides a window into the tactics of that great crimefighter. He notes his own preference for a collection of knowledgeable stool pigeons over the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes. He also scoffed at the code of omerta. Criminals on their deathbeds may not inform on the guy who shot them, Fiaschetti argued, but that's only because there's no way that could benefit them (and it could be dangerous for the loved ones they leave behind). But, if given a choice between being sent up the river and ratting on a criminal confederate, Fiaschetti said nearly every underworld character would sing. <p>Fiaschetti battled kidnappers, black handers and lottery racketeers during his career. While he was not directly involved, the death of the powerful Giosue Gallucci, racket king of Italian East Harlem, occurred during Fiaschetti's tenure. </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <a name="oldf"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <b>Frank Oldfield</b> became a postal inspector around 1900 during the McKinley Administration. At the time, the Postal Inspection Service was the highest ranking federal law enforcement agency. Oldfield was among the more active and successful members of the USPIS force. <p>Working primarily out of the midwest, he mobilized local government agencies against a growing ring of Mafia black handers in Ohio known as the Society of the Banana. While many of the underworld group's illegal activities were outside of his jurisdiction, the Society's practice of extorting money through mailed threats brought the case to Oldfield's desk. He succeeded in breaking up the ring, led by Salvatore Arrigo, Francesco Spadera and Salvatore Lima, by 1909. <p>During his investigation of the Society, Oldfield tracked down branches in Indiana, Illinois, New York, California and Oregon, and established links between the Arrigo-Spadera mob and the alleged assassins of both New Orleans' Police Chief David C. Hennessy and New York Detective Joseph Petrosino. <p>In addition to his important work against the fledgling Mafia in America, Oldfield was highly regarded for rooting out corruption in the postal service. </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <a name="poli"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <b>Amedeo Polignani</b>, an original member of the New York Police Department's Bomb Squad, was a remarkably daring detective of the 1910s and 1920s. As the youngest member of New York's detective force, he went repeatedly under cover to expose anarchists and gangsters. <p>In 1915, after a number of other officers had died in similar attempts, he managed to infiltrate a gang of anarchist bombers. He foiled an anarchist plot to bomb St. Patrick's Cathedral and kill some of New York's powerful entrepreneurs (Carnegie, Vanderbilt...). After a later prolonged undercover assignment, he was able to expose a vast Italian numbers racket in Manhattan. <p>Polignani had reached the rank of detective lieutenant at the time of his death in 1932. </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <a name="ness"></a> <table width="90%" align="center" border="4" bordercolor="#272737" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <table width="100%" align="center" border="1" bgcolor="#203040" bordercolor="#505760" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> While <b>Elliot Ness</b> was not quite the one-man show depicted on television and radio and in the movies, he was a key player in the government's assault on Al Capone's Chicago crime empire. <p>Ness led a band of eight young men, titled the "Special Prohibition Unit" but remembered as "The Untouchables" for their refusal of enormous bribe offers. The group conducted a frontal assault against Capone's bootleg brewery operations while other government agencies picked away the crime lord's underbosses and allies and assembled the tax evasion case that would jail Capone in 1931. <p>Ness later led a municipal police force as Cleveland's Director of Public Safety in the late 1930s. In the job, he thoroughly modernized the city's police department while cracking down on corruption, violent labor activity, gambling and contraband alcohol. News headlines largely ignored his successes, however, and focused on the decapitation murder cases in the Kingsbury Run area that stymied Ness and on his anti-labor image. Ness saw additional bad press as the result of a drunk driving accident in 1942 and was forced to resign his post. <p>In 1947, former safety director Ness ran as a Republican for mayor of Cleveland. He lost the Nov. 4 election in a landslide to Democrat Thomas A. Burke, having sacrificed much of his personal wealth in the campaign. <p>Ness died on May 16, 1957, just before his autobiographical "The Untouchables" was published. The book, which somewhat exaggerated Ness's importance in the Capone fight and glossed over his failings, became enormously popular and spawned the myth of Elliot Ness. </td> </tr> </table></td></tr></table> <p><br><center><a href="#top"><font color="#a0c0ff">Return to Top of Page</font></a></center><p><br> <table align="center" width="90%"> <tr valign="center"> <td align="right"><p><br> <i class="NOTE"> Copyright © 2005-06<br> All Rights Reserved<br> <a href="mailto:thunt@onewal.com?subject=Mafia website">Thomas P. Hunt<br> New Milford, CT<br> thunt@onewal.com</i></a> </td> </tr> </table> <center><a href='/mafia'><h5>Click Here to Return to Main Menu Page</h5></a></center>