Tommaso Petto

Tom­maso Petto was a killer for the Morello gang. He was arrested by Pet­rosino in rela­tion to the Bar­rel Mur­der case in 1903. On Sat­ur­day 25^th April, Tom­maso Petto, was for­mally charged with com­mit­ting the mur­der. Petto, when arrested on the 15^th, had been found in pos­ses­sion of pawn ticket num­ber 27696 from P. Fry Col­lat­eral Loan Office 276–278 Bow­ery, dated April 14^th 1903. The ticket had been traced to a watch in the shop that had belonged to the mur­der vic­tim. Petto was removed from the House of Deten­tion and taken to the Crim­i­nal Courts build­ing and arraigned before Coro­ner Scholer where he was com­mit­ted to the Tombs pend­ing an inquest. Due to a lack of evi­dence in the Bar­rel case Petto was never con­victed, he was even­tu­ally released on Jan­u­ary 29^th, 1904

Dur­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion in August, 1904, into a kid­nap­ping case that involved Vito Lad­uca a wit­ness claimed claimed he had seen a man wait­ing for Lad­uca on two occa­sions, the descrip­tion matched that of Tom­maso Petto.

It is thought that Petto moved from New York to Penn­syl­va­nia, when he was sub­se­quently stabbed out­side his home in Wilkes­barre, he was found with 62 wounds.