Giuseppe Morello

In 1892 Giuseppe Morello arrived in New York from Cor­leone. Six months later his fam­ily arrived includ­ing his mother, step-father, four sis­ters, his brother Nicolo and his two step-brothers, Ciro and Vin­cent Ter­ra­nova. All four broth­ers shared the same mother, Angela Piazza. The fam­ily stayed in New York for around a year, but suf­fered from the lack of avail­able work. Morello trav­elled to Louisiana to stay with a cousin, and within two months the fam­ily fol­lowed him. The father and Morello worked for about a year plant­ing sugar cane before mov­ing on to Bryan, Texas. They worked in Texas as cot­ton pick­ers, but left after two years when the fam­ily was hit with Malaria. In 1896 they arrived back in New York.

Morello, who worked with his father as an orna­men­tal plas­terer, even­tu­ally opened a coal base­ment, but sold that after a year and around 1898 opened a saloon on 13^th Street, soon fol­lowed by a sec­ond saloon on Stan­ton Street. Due to bad busi­ness he closed the Stan­ton Street Saloon and sold the one on 13^th Street. He then opened a date fac­tory, and employed around fif­teen peo­ple, the busi­ness ran at a loss and was closed.

On June 11^th 1900, Morello was arrested along with Colagero Meg­giore. They were accused of sell­ing coun­ter­feit money and held on $5000 bail. The arrests had grown out of a Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion that began when coun­ter­feit $5 bills were being passed in Brook­lyn and North Beach. Morello and Meg­giore were believed to be the sup­pli­ers of the money, which was described as being printed on very poor paper with crude work­man­ship. Morello later walked free from court.

Giuseppe Morello’s next busi­ness move was the open­ing of a restau­rant at the rear of the 8 Prince Street saloon, his younger brother, Ciro, worked as a waiter. The front saloon was then owned by Anto­nio Russo, whilst Ignazio Lupo held his import busi­ness next door at 9 Prince Street.

In Jan­u­ary 1903 a coun­ter­feit­ing case called the “Mor­ris­town Fives” opened. Five dol­lar bills were being repli­cated in pre­cise imi­ta­tion to the cur­rency issued by the National Iron Bank, Mor­ris­town, NJ. Giuseppe De Primo was arrested in Yonkers on New Years Eve 1902, Morello and Lupo were charged with pass­ing coun­ter­feit money, but the other sus­pects refused to impli­cate them and they walked free.

Benedetto Madon­nia, brother-in-law to the jailed De Primo, was mur­dered in April 1903. The case became known as “The Bar­rel Mur­der” after Madonnia’s body was found cut and stuffed into an old bar­rel, in East 11^th Street. Morello and Lupo were again arrested, they were even­tu­ally cleared due to lack of evidence.

After the trial had fin­ished in June 1903, the whole Morello fam­ily were searched and hounded on a reg­u­lar basis. One night, Ciro Ter­ra­nova was trav­el­ling home from work with his brother Vin­cent, nephew Char­lie and Nick Sylvester when they were all arrested and kept overnight. On another occa­sion Ciro and Nicholas Ter­ra­nova were arrested whilst try­ing to locate a doc­tor for Giuseppe’s son, Charles. Fol­low­ing the Bar­rel Mur­der tri­als Morello gave up his restau­rant inter­est and briefly moved into the olive oil busi­ness at 628 138^th Street.

In 1904, Giuseppe Morello and Lupo started a real estate com­pany, The Ignazio Flo­rio Asso­ci­a­tion, they were involved in the con­struc­tion and sell­ing of prop­er­ties in Harlem. The com­pany office was based at 630 E138th Street, also the home of Giuseppe Morello. With the broth­ers as pres­i­dents and largest stock­hold­ers, the com­pany lasted for around four years but went out of busi­ness in 1908 and was later inves­ti­gated by the Bankers Asso­ci­a­tion of America.

On Feb­ru­ary 11^th, 1909, Giuseppe Morello relo­cated to 207 E107th street. His cur­rent home/office at 630 138^th Street was built by his failed real estate com­pany, the Ignazio Flo­rio Cor­po­ra­tion, and the build­ing had to be handed over to the com­pany receivers. After Morello moved from his home a meet­ing of the share­hold­ers was held and the 630 E138th house was sold. E107th street would be a wel­come area to Morello, num­ber 231 was one par­tic­u­lar address that con­tained many impor­tant names — Gio­vanni Rao who ran the feather shop on the ground floor and was father to Joey Rao, Steve LaSalle lived there and also Angelo Gagliano who ran a saloon at 277 E107th with Ippolito Greco. Fur­ther along on E107th was Sal­va­tore Romano the Morello fam­ily doc­tor, Romano’s mother had been the mid­wife for Morello’s mother in Corleone.

On April 29^th 1909, the Morello wife had another child,  just three months later Giuseppe Morello lost his father to old age.

On Novem­ber 15^th, 1909, secret ser­vice agents met with offi­cer Car­raro from the police and went to 207 East 107^th, here they arrested Giuseppe Morello in con­nec­tion with a coun­ter­feit­ing ring in High­land, New York. He was taken from his bed with a loaded .44 cal­i­bre revolver. Morello was placed in the front room with his son whilst the agents searched the house, Morello passed two let­ters to his wife to hide but Car­raro spot­ted them and informed the agents, they then found a fur­ther four let­ters hid­den inside a baby’s dia­per. In the result­ing court case Morello was sen­tenced on the first count to 15 years hard labour and a $500 fine. On the sec­ond count, 10 years hard labour and a $500 fine.

In Jan­u­ary 1911, almost one year after his impris­on­ment for coun­ter­feit­ing, Giuseppe Morello was reported to have spo­ken to the Attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the US author­i­ties. In the hope of short­en­ing his sen­tence he sup­plied infor­ma­tion about the mur­der of Lieu­tenant Pet­rosino. Morello later with­drew his state­ments and refused to sign them. The con­tents of the talks were never offi­cially released, but it was claimed that he had pointed to Carlo Costan­tino for the mur­der of Petrosino.

Later, seen as a chief strate­gist to Masse­ria, Morello was mur­dered dur­ing the Castel­lam­marese war.

630 East 138^th auc­tion, 1909

630 East 138^th sum­mons, 1909

116^th Street Morello killed

Angelina Morello plea. 1919

Angelina Morello plea. 1919 (2)

Angelina Morello plea. 1917

Giuseppe Morello let­ter 1913

Nicolo Ter­ra­nova telegram 1912

Bar­rel trial infor­mant 1903