Los Angeles herald., 1890-10-27
THE MURDER SOCIETY.
THE NEW ORLEANS MAFIA, AN Or
GANIzATION OF ASSASSINS.
How 1t Was Organized and How It Oper-
ates-The Numerous Crimes Committed
By 1t, Which Have Gone Unpunished.
New ORLEANS. Oct. 81, 1890.

NEW ORLEANS, Oct. Il, 1890.
''The Dagoes did it," were almost the
last words that Dave Hennessy, the
New Orleans chief of police uttered, as
friends rushed to assistance the other
night to find him lying mortally wounded
within few feet of his home, shot down
by assassins in the very heart of New
Orleans, and in one of the most densely
populated portions of the city.
The dread Malta. the Italian murder
society, which kills whomsoever gets in
its way, whose members are bound by
an oath which forfeits their lives should
they betray its secrets, had removed the
New Orleans chief of police for med
ding in its affairs and prying into it's
secrets.
1t had, as usual, warned him to desist,
but he was too brave man to do so,
and persisting, was killed just as so
many others have been killed in New
Orleans by this society of assassins.
The Malta was originally an Italian
political organization, which taught the
doctrine of assassination as a means of
getting rid OF Objectionable persons. To
prevent treachery, it became necessary
to bind it's members together with the
strongest oaths, and those who disclosed
the secrets knew that they were sacrifc.
ing their own lives by doing SO, that
some one would be chosen to kill them,
and that they would be tracked to their
death, wherever they went, and would
find no place where they could conceal
themselves. How many lives were thus
lost it is impossible to say, but the fire.
quent assassinations in Italy thirty
years ago show the activity of the Malta.
When the present kingdom of Italy was
firmly established, the government set
TO work to suppress the murder society.
There was only one way in which it
could be done-by great harshness,
cruelty and even brutality. Thousands
of lives were sacrificed, for the author
tiles showed no mercy to the Mafaists.
They finally succeeded in their great
Italy too hot to hold them, came to this
country. most of them settling in New
Orleans, where there was already large
Italian colony.
In 1875 the Italian government took
brigandage in Sicily in hand and by the
same harsh measures broke or nearly
broke it up there. The brigands found
their profession too dangerous, and
quite a number came over to this coun-
try, among them the famous brigand
chief, Giuseppe Esposito, credited with
over hundred murders. Esposito set
tied in New Orleans, and soon gathered
around him some forty members of the
old band, with which he had ruled al
most as king over the mountainous
districts of Naples and Sicily.
The energy of the Italian government
explains the transfer of this murder soci-
ETY. to America. Although generally called
the "Matia," the New Orleans society is
not really the old "Mafa" which flour
ished in Italy, but new association
founded on its principles, ard known
popularity by the name of the Stopa-
gherra or Stiletto society. Most of its
members belonged at one time or other
to the "Mafa," know how it was man
aged, and carry out its practices and
ideas.
OF such society very little, of course,
is known; for its secrets can only leak
out by the treachery OF member, and
that treachery is punished with death.
The police have been investigating it
for twenty years and have discovered
practically nothing about it. The late
Chief Hennessy nit upon the very sensi-
BILE idea of writing to the Italian gov
ernment, and asking from its criminal
department something about the men
and methods OF the Malta in Italy. He
found, in this way, that a number of the
members of the Malta society in Sicily
and Naples, and were unable to return
home because of their crimes there.
The fact that he was making these in
auiries leaked out in some way, and
the Malta, or rather the Stopagherra,
found it necessary to order the assassi-
nation of Hennessy in order to prevent
his going further and endangering the
lives OF its members.
The only information about the Stopa-
gherra is the testimony of an Italian,
that he was asked to join the society and
agreed to do so until he found that one
of it's chief purposes was murder. He
drew back at the last moment, but he
got some slight idea of the association.
He leaked a little to a friend, but has
refused to say word against the men
who wanted him to join.
The Stopagherra consists of a number
of members, most OF them Sicilians with
a criminal record at home and in this
country. 1t has no special meeting
place, but assemblies anywhere at the
house of one OF its members, generally
in very retired portion of the city, and
never twice at the same house, thus
rendering it impossible for the police to
follow it up. The great mass of its
members consist OF ignorant 'dagoes,"
but half dozen men of education and
standing, andl even wealth, are at it's
head, acting as council and directing
its affairs.
If the police know little of the inner
working of this society, they know how
it operates, and they know its crimes.
Chief Hennessy is the thirtieth victim
of the Malta in the last sixteen years,
and in not single case have the assas-
sins been punished for their crimes. All
these thirty assassinations have gone
altogether unavenged, and in two-thirds
of the cases the police have been with
out the slightest clew and have not
made single arrest. Their records
read simply:
6, dago found dead; no clew to
the murderer; killed by vendetta"
The Stopagherra protects its members.
Among the lower class of Sicilians,
where the stiletto is so frequently used,
man likes to have a society at his back,
which will protect him when he needs it
or oyoppa him if he is killed This the