The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1923-12-06

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fired from a. passing automobile.
Thus prosaically was chronicled
killing which carried further toward
it's unpredictable end one of the most
persistent and murderously pictur-
esque Of all known vendettas, a raven
ing blood fedd, which had it's birth
full quarter century ago in the sunny
countryside near Palermo, Sicily, emf
grated under our easy laws to the
United States, and has Powered here
in uncounted murders on the lower
East Side and the Little Italy of Har-
lem.
From the Barrel Murder of
1909 Down to Those of To-day
All it's ramifications no outsider can
sincerely profess to know. Much of it
has gone on underground, but there
is ample ground for believing that the
famous Barrel Murder" which ex-
cited the city away back in 1908, the
activities of the Morello-Lupo counter
feiters, probably the most skillful
and dangerous gang ever known in the
country" the group of assassinations
which between 1911 and 1915 spread
out like a CORY spiders web from the
Murder Stable" in Harlem, as well
as the recent shooting down of Mo-
relic and then Salemi, were all links
in one chain of death that still re-
mains unbroken and unfinished.
The vendetta, according to the best
accounts available, began in 1898,
when one Ignazio Lupo, then petty
wholesaler of groceries and dry goods
near Palermo, later to attain grisly
fame as "Lupo the Wolf on this side
of the Atlantic, quarreled with and
killed one of his petty merchant GUS
toners, Salvatore Morello. Lupo, fed,
and in consonance with italian crimi-
nal practice, was tried although alb
sent, and sentenced to eighteen years
in prison. 1t developed afterward that
he had come to New York, but he was
never extFadited for the Palermo hom-
icide.
Lupo first emerged into the Ameri-
can police limelight in 1903, when,
along with Vito di Luca and a bulky
individual nicknamed "Petto the Ok"
he was accused of killing Benedetto
Madonna, the victim in the Barrel
Murder" so called because Madonio's
body was found in barrel at Avenue
ID and Eleventh street. Efforts We're
made to prove that Madonna, on be-
half of his brother-in-law, Gino di
Primo, then serving a sentence in
Sing Sing for counterfeiting, had tried
to collect $4,000 from the trio. But
the proof was insufficient, and the de-
PENDANTS went free. Three years later
the oxlike Petto was found dead with
sixty-two stab wounds in his body,
and two years later di Luca, having
returned to Italy, was shot there.
Lupo, however, survived, and in
1909 appeared again in the role of an
importer and wholesale merchant with
a store in Mott street, which went
into bankruptcy with liabilities of
100000 and no assets.
In the late fall of the same year
came the sensational roundup by Chief
Flynn of the Federal secret service of
band of thirty-six Sicilian counter
letters, headed by Lupo, now the
wolf" and his brother-in-law,
Giuseppe Morello. For years, it was
said, they had been flooding the coun-
try with spurious So and S. bills, and
by a combination of cunning and ter
rorization had set at naught all efforts
made to catch them.
Thirty Years for Lupo, but
He Got Out After Serving Ten
After a dramatic trial here in Feb
ruary, 1910, during which the pre-
siding Judge, the prosecutor and the
callous to anonymous death threats,
the wolf" got thirty years and his
partner, Morello, twenty-five years in
Atlanta, the severest sentences ever
pronounced in America for counter
feiting. AT the trial also was a kins-
man of the other Morello killed in
Palermo, who announced his intention
of trailing along till he "got" Lupo.
The latter, however, safely served ten
years of his time, was pardoned by
President Harding, went to Italy, and
was held up by the immigration Off
GERS of the port of New York when
he tried to return in May, 1922. to
Join his wife and children here. His
present whereabouts is unknown to
the writer.
Up TO the LltklS OIL the COuIlISIlS1ISIS
trial the reign of terror and vengeful
death had been confined almost wholly
to the Italian quarters of lower Man
haitian and Brooklyn. Then suddenly
1t moved up town, following possibly
a shift in the center of population and
it's attendant pickings, such as black
mail and other forced tribute.
Harlems Little Italy lies between
Third avenue and the East River, and
stretches approximately twenty blocks
north from Ninety-ninth street. 1t is
in its way a picturesque quarter.
Pushcart displays of vegetables, fruits
and vivid dry goods splotch thefstreets
with color. There are scores Of little
basement or cellar restaurants and
coffee houses, grinaily redolent of Old
World life. During the warmer months
the swarming population lives mostly
in the streets-streets where the
structure of the elevated drearily shuts
out light and air and pens in racket
streets walled high with dingy tene-
ment houses.