Pietro Inzerillo

Pietro Inz­er­illo, mar­ried with five chil­dren, from Mari­neo in Palermo, Sicily was a mem­ber of the Morello gang and the owner of a pas­try shop on 226 Eliz­a­beth Street — Dol­ceria Pas­tic­ce­ria. The café was a known hang­out for the gang.

In Jan­u­ary, 1903, Giuseppe Guil­am­bardo was arrested there dur­ing the coun­ter­feit­ing inves­ti­ga­tion known as the “Mor­ris­town Fives”. Four months later the Secret Ser­vice searched Inzerillo’s café when Benedetto Mado­nia, the Bar­rel Mur­der vic­tim was found. They found an inden­ti­cal bar­rel to the one used to carry Madonia’s body. The bar­rel was even­tu­ally traced to Wal­lace & Thomp­son bak­ery, where their books showed an entry of a sugar order by Inz­er­illo in Feb­ru­ary 1903.

On Fri­day 1^st May, 1903, Inz­er­illo gave his tes­ti­mony to the coroner’s court inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bar­rel Mur­der, he was then excused then rear­rested on a bench war­rant from the US Dis­trict Court. He was indicted along with Ignazio Lupo on a coun­ter­feit­ing charge. The charge dated back to 18^th Sep­tem­ber 1902 when Lupo had mailed a let­ter to Sal­va­tore Matise aka Andrea Polora in Canada. The let­ter was found to con­tain a sin­gle five dol­lar coun­ter­feit note. Inz­er­illo and Lupo were finally bailed from the coun­ter­fet­ing charge on June 25^th, 1903. They would later for­feit this bail, but the charges were even­tu­ally dropped.

Some­time after the bar­rel trial Inz­er­illo trav­elled back to Italy. When he returned to the US unsuc­cess­ful efforts were made to bar him from re-entering the country.

Inz­er­illo was attacked and hos­pi­talised on Decem­ber 27^th 1908. He was shot, along with employee Tony Kelly, whilst stand­ing out­side his candy store at 226 Eliz­a­beth Street. Camillo Conigharo, a for­mer employee of the store was arrested. The papers claimed Conigharo had been sacked from the store after the Christ­mas trade slacked off. Inz­er­illo was shot in face and abdomen, rushed to hos­pi­tal he claimed to know noth­ing about his attacker.

Inz­er­illo was seen with Morello and Lupo in 1910 when the Secret Ser­vice were track­ing the Morello gang in con­nec­tion with coun­ter­feit­ing.