Giuseppe Catania

Giuseppe Cata­nia, a Brook­lyn gro­cer, was found mur­dered on July 23^rd 1902. At around 8pm, four boys went swim­ming at the Bay Bridge 73^rd Street. It was a pop­u­lar swim­ming spot, the banks had tall grass and reeds and the water was shaded by the trees. One of the boys spot­ted a potato sack a few yards from the bank. They cut the tightly sewn sack open to dis­cover another, tougher, sack. Even­tu­ally they made the grue­some dis­cov­ery that the con­tents of the bags was a body.

The body was badly bruised and the throat had been cut from ear to ear, the head had been bound to the knees so the body would fit inside the sacks. Detec­tives later found another sack close by that con­tained the man’s blood soaked clothes, they believed that the sacks had been tossed from a mov­ing cart down onto the river bank.

The police first thought that Cata­nia was the vic­tim of a twenty year vendetta. Cata­nia, then called Carus, had been a wit­ness at a mur­der trial in Sicily that resulted in the impris­on­ment of two men. The men had recently been released and broke their parole to travel to Amer­ica. One of the men Lavori Libo­rio, was arrested in con­nec­tion with the mur­der but was then deported when no charges could be brought against him.

The secret ser­vice, through their inves­ti­ga­tions, believed that Cata­nia had been a mem­ber of the Morello gang. They also believed the gang had dis­posed of him due to his habit of drink­ing and talk­ing too much. Ignazio Lupo was one of the last men seen with Cata­nia before his dis­ap­pear­ance, but the police and secret ser­vice never gained enough evi­dence to war­rant any arrests in the case.

Sal­va­tore Clemente, of the Frauto gang, later revealed that Giuseppe Morello and Dominico Pec­o­raro were behind the slaying.

The dis­cov­ery

Giuseppe Cata­nia shop

The sack and clothes

Cata­nia story