Vincenzo Terranova

In 1892 Vin­cent Ter­ra­nova arrived in New York from Cor­leone with his fam­ily includ­ing his mother, father, four sis­ters, and his broth­ers Ciro and Nicolo. They were join­ing their brother Giuseppe who had arrived six months ear­lier. The fam­ily stayed in New York for around a year, but suf­fered from the lack of avail­able work. They trav­elled to Louisiana, the father and Giuseppe worked for about a year plant­ing sugar cane before mov­ing on to Bryan, Texas. They fam­ily 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.

Vin­cent, and brother Ciro, went to a New York school but helped the fam­ily plas­ter­ing busi­ness at evenings and week­ends. In April 1903 the “Bar­rel Mur­der” case began, Vincent’s elder brother Giuseppe was arrested, but 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, Vin­cent was trav­el­ling home from work with his brother Ciro, nephew Char­lie and Nick Sylvester when they were all arrested and kept overnight.

In 1906 Vin­cent was arrested for assault against a six­teen year old female, Ellen Krooman of Bath Beach. He was later ques­tioned and released, he was arrested again in 1908 in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of Dia­mond Sam Sicca.

Vin­cent was arrested in 1922 for vio­la­tion of the Sul­li­van Law. He was killed later that year  on May 8^th, on East 116^th Street. He was fired upon from a vehi­cle, he was reported to have returned pis­tol fire on one knee, before throw­ing his gun and falling dead. He was iden­ti­fied by his widow who had heard the shooting.