Raffaele Daniello

Orig­i­nally named Alphonso Pepe, Ralph Daniello fled Italy in 1906 after he arrested for attack­ing a woman and was sus­pected of a recent murder.

In May 1917 Ralph “The Bar­ber” Daniello, of 1926 Pacific St, Brooklyn, a mem­ber of the Brook­lyn based Navy St gang, had been in court charged with rob­bery and abduc­tion. He was released before elop­ing to Reno with his new love, Ms Amelia Valve from Prospect Street, South Brook­lyn. He sent let­ters to his for­mer Navy St crew ask­ing for money to be sent to him, but his requests were ignored. The police even­tu­ally tracked Daniello down in Reno and brought him back to Brook­lyn to face a new mur­der charge.

When the indict­ments were brought against Daniello on the charge of mur­der, grand lar­ceny and per­jury he began to tell the police every­thing he knew about the Navy St crew and their recent involve­ment in a string of New York mur­ders. When the police realised the extent of Daniello’s con­fes­sions he was sent to the office of Edward Swann the DA. For the next ten days Daniello told his story of the mur­ders span­ning the last ten years.

On Novem­ber 27^th Daniello was arraigned with John Espos­ito, Alle­san­dro Vollero and Alphonso Sgroia, and other mem­bers of the Navy St gang who had been arrested on Daniello’s con­fes­sions. Also arraigned as mate­r­ial wit­nesses were Ciro Ter­ra­nova, Vin­cent Ter­ra­nova and Nicholas Arra, all were held on $15,000 bail.

Accord­ing to the tes­ti­mony by Daniello, Sicil­ians and Neapoli­tans were formed loosely in three main bands and con­trolled the rack­ets across New York. The bands were based in Harlem, down­town Mul­berry bend and the last band cov­er­ing Brook­lyn and Coney Island. He went on to con­fessed to his gangs involve­ment in the killings of both the DeMarco broth­ers, Nicholas Ter­ra­nova with Charles Ubri­aco and the “Chuck” Naz­zaro killing in Yonkers.

On Novem­ber 30^th 1917, the Grand Jury under Judge Nott handed out twelve indict­ments against the killing of Joseph DeMarco and Charles Lom­bardi. Five indict­ments had already been handed out against the mur­der of Sal­va­tore DeMarco, and another four in the case of “Chuck” Naz­zaro. Since the begin­ning of Daniello’s con­fes­sions the police had been watch­ing New York’s ports to make sure no gang mem­bers escaped con­vic­tion. Edward Swann sent Henry Renaud, head of homi­cide, off to Chicago to arrest some of the indicted. Swann also began work­ing with Harry Lewis, the Kings County DA, to secure fur­ther con­vic­tions in Brook­lyn. The tri­als that fol­lowed com­pletely smashed the Navy St gang, the pro­tec­tion that they enjoyed was demol­ished from the tes­ti­monies of their own men.

After Daniello tes­ti­fied at the trial of Vollero, he was moved to a dif­fer­ent prison due the abuse he received. Daniello was given a sus­pended sen­tence in view of the tes­ti­mony he had given.

His free­dom was short lived when he was later arrested for assault­ing a man in Coney Island, Daniello claimed he had shot the vic­tim think­ing that he had been sent from the Navy Street gang on a vendetta. Daniello was sen­tenced to five years in prison.

In 1925, after his release he was shot in his saloon, near Metuchen. New Jersey.