The Murder Stables

1909–1915. East 108^th street becomes the myth­i­cal cen­tre of a killing spree in Harlem, strik­ing fear into the local community.

Aniel­lio Prisco

Pasquarella Spinelli

Nel­lie Lenere

Ippolito Greco

East 107^th from 3^rd Av.

East 108^th from 3^rd Av.

Harlem, orig­i­nally named Nieuw Haalem after the Dutch city, was estab­lished in 1658. It was annexed to New York as it’s first sub­urb in 1873. In 1880 the New York Ele­vated Rail­road extended its Sec­ond Avenue rail north to the Harlem River. Served by cheap hous­ing and improved trans­port a wave of Ital­ian immi­grants began to move in to East Harlem. The con­struc­tion of new hous­ing was furi­ous, between 1870 and 1910 around 65,000 apart­ments were built in East Harlem.

The first killing at the stables

Pasquarella Spinelli lived at 239 E 109^th Street. Nick­named the “Hetty Green of Harlem” due to her wealth, she owned a sta­ble on E 108^th Street. Pasquarella had inter­ests in sev­eral other busi­nesses, includ­ing leas­ing ten­e­ments in Harlem and the man­age­ment of a pic­ture the­atre in 2^nd Avenue. The sta­ble, which was later to become known as “The Mur­der Sta­ble” was described in the press as “A ram­bling one storey struc­ture, built impar­tially of sheet iron, pack­ing boxes, dis­carded odds and ends of house wreck­age — doors for instance with hinges still on them yet. It is a rab­bit war­ren which shel­ters two or three junk shops, a wheel­wrights, a black­smiths, a board­ing sta­ble and a hay and grain store”.

On Octo­ber 29^th 1911, the daugh­ter of Pasquarella, Nel­lie Lenere, pre­sented her­self at E 104^th Street. sta­tion claim­ing “a man had met with acci­dent in her home”. The police found Frank “Chick” Monaco, a local char­ac­ter already well known to them. Monaco had been stabbed from behind twenty five times and had a steel safe on top of his chest. Nel­lie Lenere claimed she had killed Monaco as he tried to rob the safe. After the autopsy the police threw doubt upon her story claim­ing she was shield­ing the real killers, she had arrived at the police sta­tion with clothes too clean to have been involved in such a vio­lent strug­gle, and the safe had been placed on his chest after Monaco had been stabbed. Lenere was com­mit­ted to the Tombs by Coro­ner Fein­berg. She told how she had mar­ried Gae­tano Napoli­tano in a civil cer­e­mony in 1909, but he dis­ap­peared before they could arrange the church cer­e­mony. Lenere claimed that Monaco had vis­ited her pre­vi­ously say­ing he had located Napoli­tano. She was lured to a cot­tage in Westch­ester, where she was robbed and held for two days. Lenere was acquit­ted by the Coroner’s jury due to lack of evi­dence against her. Aniello Prisco, 37, nick­named “Zopo the Gimp”, a much feared crip­pled gang­ster in Harlem, was rumoured to swear revenge for the killing of his friend “Chick” Monaco.

Monaco’s friends later revealed that he had used his posi­tion within the fam­ily to black­mail the mother, Pasquarella. Monaco had demanded money under threat of telling the police about the busi­ness deal­ings of the fam­ily sta­ble, which included horse theft and extor­tion. Pasquarella’s men would steal horses from other sta­bles in Harlem, and when the own­ers were informed that their horse had been found and relo­cated with Pasquarella they were also told, in no uncer­tain terms, that they would be wise to con­tinue using Pasquarella’s ser­vices. This strong arm method saw that the sta­ble was never short of busi­ness. Monaco had a secret accom­plice in the sta­ble who would pass him infor­ma­tion on the busi­ness, he was Luigi Laz­za­zara, a part owner of the stable.

Pasquarella along with her daugh­ter Nelli, relo­cated from the home on E 109^th Sreet to be closer to the sta­ble. They moved in to a prop­erty at 334 E 108^th Street over look­ing the yard at 335 E 108^th Street. At around 5.30pm on March 20^th, 1912, Pasquarella left her apart­ment and crossed the street to the sta­ble. Nel­lie, who was still at home heard gun­shots and leapt to the win­dow to see her mother dead and two gun­men flee­ing from the sta­bles. She ran across to the road to find her mother with two gun­shot wounds. The police imme­di­ately realised the killing was in revenge for the death of Monaco only months before, the descrip­tion given by Lenere matched those of Monaco’s men. Gio­vanni Rava, who worked at the sta­bles, was arrested as a mate­r­ial wit­ness. Two days later, Luigi Laz­za­zara, 58, the part sta­ble owner from 339 E 108^th Street, was arrested in con­nec­tion with the mur­der. He was charged with open­ing a sta­ble door to allow access to the gun­men. Laz­za­zara had been a friend of the late Monaco and was reported to have been help­ing him black­mail the fam­ily, he was later dis­charged. The daugh­ter, Nel­lie Lenere, after wit­ness­ing the mur­der, feared for her own life. She fled to Italy and sent back false reports of her own mur­der to con­fuse her ene­mies. It was later thought that she returned to New York and went in to hid­ing. The friend of Monaco who had sworn revenge, Aniello “Zopo” Prisco, was tried on the charge of mur­der but was acquitted.

Back on the Lower East Side, a botched bur­glary took place on the night of April 13^th, 1913. The police were tipped off about a rob­bery in progress at John Simpson’s Pawn­shop, 164 Bow­ery. The rob­bers had torn a great hole in the back wall of the shop, they were star­tled by the police and man­aged to escape but left behind their tools. The rob­bers had been try­ing to get to the shops inner vault, a 30 by 18 foot room made of solid masonry with an elec­tric alarm attached. The police sur­rounded the block and arrested four men in an Ital­ian ten­e­ment at 150 Eliz­a­beth Street Inside the ten­e­ment they found sophis­ti­cated and expen­sive tools, such as an elec­tric drill and other items that they sus­pected were use in bur­glar­ies. Among the men arrested was Joseph Masse­ria, of 217 Forsyth Street. Using fin­ger­prints and study­ing the rob­bers meth­ods, the police linked the four men to twelve other bur­glar­ies in the area. Masse­ria had a pre­vi­ous record from Feb­ru­ary 1^st, 1907, when he had been con­victed of bur­glary and April 21, 1907, when he had been arrested over extortions.

Since the death of Pasquarella, the “Mur­der” sta­ble was now owned by Luigi Laz­za­zara, her once busi­ness part­ner. He had pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions for horse theft and unli­censed firearms in 1912. Lazzazara, 62, who lived at 339 E 108^th Street was found stabbed to death at 1am on Feb­ru­ary 20^th, 1914. Police­man Fla­herty saw three men strug­gling at the junc­tion of 1^st Av and 108^th Street, as he approached one man fell. The body was iden­ti­fied as the wealthy Laz­za­zara, an old friend of “Chick” Monaco and “Zopo” Prisco. Angelo Losco, a saloon keeper of 319 E 108^th Sreet was later arrested in con­nec­tion with the stabbing.

Ippolito Greco of 230 E107th, the cur­rent owner of the “mur­der sta­ble” was killed on Octo­ber 7^th, 1915. Greco a saloon keeper with Morello asso­ciate Angelo Gagliano at 227 E 107^th Street had been involved in the killing of Bar­net Baff. He received a mes­sage at the sta­bles one night to meet some friends at a saloon on E 108^th Street. As Greco left the sta­ble with four men, includ­ing his brother Vin­cenzo, he was shot and killed. The four men were arrested as wit­nesses, Gio­vanni Vis­erta, Nicola Vit­rano, Fran­cisco Inge­mato and Vin­cenzo Greco. The men told con­flict­ing sto­ries, Vin­cenzo Greco claimed to have fired his gun into the air to scare the killers, four cham­bers of his gun were found to be dis­charged. He was held on $300 bail as a mate­r­ial wit­ness to the coroner.

Dur­ing this four year period, since the first mur­der, there were numer­ous other killings in the vicin­ity of the sta­bles. The press linked these killings together under the same head­lines, it made for eas­ier report­ing and big­ger sales. They some­times also linked the killings and sta­bles with the big Bar­net Baff case of the same era. The truth is that most of these other mur­ders and shoot­ings were linked to a power strug­gle between Neapoli­tan and Sicil­ian gangs in New York.