Giuseppe Fanaro

Giuseppe Fanaro was a known mem­ber of the Morello gang. He claimed to be a wine and oil mer­chant based in Riv­ing­ton Street, and had pre­vi­ous charges for coun­ter­feit­ing in the Win­ter of 1902. He was arrested on the night of the Bar­rel Mur­der in 1903.  He had been involved in an argu­ment out­side the saloon at 8 Prince St, when the police inter­vened. He pro­duced a firearms license to explain the pis­tol he was car­ry­ing but was arrested on dis­or­derly con­duct. About fif­teen min­utes after Fanaro was locked up he was bailed out. He was fined $10 the fol­low­ing morn­ing in the Tombs police court.

On Mon­day 20^th April, Fanaro was dis­missed from the Bar­rel Mur­der trial due to lack of evi­dence, he was then called as a wit­ness. He was dis­missed from court and arrested again for per­jury. He had claimed in court to not know Mado­nia, but the Secret Ser­vice had been trail­ing him and had records of him with Mado­nia on the days lead­ing up to the killing. He was given bail at three thou­sand dollars.

On 20^th Feb­ru­ary, 1908, a body was dis­cov­ered in Brook­lyn. Sal­va­tore Marchinne was found with his nose removed, tongue cut out and his body cov­ered in stab wounds. In his pocket was found a note addressed to Anto­nio Ganci say­ing ” Times are hard here now in Palermo. Give my regards to Fanaro. And remem­ber one thing — cau­tion !” — the note was from a man named Can­taldo in Sicily.

Anto­nio Ganci, a coun­ter­feiter, was arrested when he pre­sented him­self to Hamil­ton Avenue police sta­tion on Sat­ur­day 22^nd Feb­ru­ary. He explained the pres­ence of his let­ter in the dead mans pocket by say­ing he was unable to read, and often called on Marchinne to read his mail. The police also arrested Fanaro, Ganci’s brother in law, at 158 Ninth Street. Fanaro described him­self as a long­shore­man work­ing in Brook­lyn for a fruit import­ing com­pany. No charges were filed. It was thought that Marchinne was killed by the Mafia in rela­tion to a mur­der case in Sicily before Marchinne had come to America.

In Novem­ber 1913, Fanaro was walk­ing home early one morn­ing when he was shot by four men. He was taken to hos­pi­tal where he later died.