Gennaro Gallucci

Gen­naro was born in Italy in 1857 to Luca Gal­lucci and Anto­nia Cav­allo. Brother to the famous gang­ster Gio­sue Gal­lucci, Gen­naro arrived in New York in Decem­ber 1908. He had escaped prison in Italy after serv­ing 23 years of his life sen­tence for mur­der­ing two men. On Sep­tem­ber 14^th, 1909, Gen­naro was arrested for car­ry­ing con­cealed weapons, the police tried to have him deported but the courts unaware of his full back­ground released him with a sus­pended sen­tence. He lived with his brother Gio­sue and sister-in-law Assunta at 318 E109th Street, a three story brick house with an attached sta­ble and a bak­ery shop at the front.

On Novem­ber 14, 1909, Gen­naro was shot dead at the fam­ily home. He had been din­ing in the back room of the bak­ery when he was called to the front shop and mur­dered. Dr Toart of Harlem Hos­pi­tal pro­nounced Gen­naro dead at the scene. The police arrested his brother Fran­cisco Gal­lucci, of 146 Hes­ter St, and his sister-in-law Assunta Gal­lucci, whom Gen­naro had been din­ing with. They both told the police that Gen­naro had been killed by a lone gun­man who had entered the build­ing look­ing for him, how­ever Cap­tain Carey dis­missed their story as no wit­nesses or evi­dence could sup­port it. The police believed the killing may have been con­nected to Gennaro’s black mail­ing threats, the Gal­lucci bak­ery had been shot up only a few months pre­vi­ous when bul­lets smashed through the bak­ery win­dow. In let­ters that were later sent to the police, some infor­mants claimed that Gio­sue Gal­lucci had been respon­si­ble for the mur­der of his own brother.