The Morello Gang

Hail­ing from Cor­leone, Sicily, the Morello/Terranova fam­ily were the first Ital­ian organ­ised crime fam­ily to enter New York.

Ignazio Lupo 1910

Vito Cas­cio­ferro

Nicholas Ter­ra­nova

Ciro Ter­ra­nova

Gio­vanni Pec­o­raro

Vito Lad­uca

Tom­maso Petto

Cina Lupo and Cecala

116^th Street Morello killed

In 1892 Giuseppe Morello arrived in New York from Cor­leone. Six months later his fam­ily arrived includ­ing his mother, step-father, four sis­ters, his step broth­ers Nicolo, Ciro and Vin­cent Ter­ra­nova. All four broth­ers shared the same mother. The fam­ily stayed in New York for around a year, but suf­fered from the lack of avail­able work. Morello trav­elled to Louisiana to stay with a cousin, and within two months the fam­ily fol­lowed him. The father and Morello worked, for about a year plant­ing sugar cane before mov­ing on to Bryan, Texas. They 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.

Morello worked with his father as an orna­men­tal plas­terer. The younger step-brothers, Ciro and Vin­cent, went to a New York school but helped out dur­ing the evenings and week­ends. Morello even­tu­ally opened a coal base­ment, but sold that after a year and around 1898 opened a saloon on 13^th Street, soon fol­lowed by a sec­ond saloon on Stan­ton Street. Due to bad busi­ness he closed the Stan­ton Street Saloon and sold the one on 13^th Street. He then opened a date fac­tory, and employed around fif­teen peo­ple, the busi­ness ran at a loss and was closed. Ignazio Lupo arrived in New York in 1898, he was flee­ing arrest in Palermo after killing a cus­tomer of his dried goods whole­sale busi­ness. Lupo opened a store on E72nd Street with a cousin named Sai­etta. After falling out with Sai­etta he moved his busi­ness to Brook­lyn, sell­ing olive oil, cheese and wine.

On June 11^th 1900, Giuseppe Morello was arrested along with Colagero Meg­giore. They were accused of sell­ing coun­ter­feit money and held on $5000 bail. The arrests had grown out of a Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion that began when coun­ter­feit $5 bills were being passed in Brook­lyn and North Beach. Morello and Meg­giore were believed to be the sup­pli­ers of the money, which was described as being printed on very poor paper with crude work­man­ship. Morello later walked free from court.

In 1901, Lupo moved his busi­ness from Brook­lyn back to Man­hat­tan. He opened a saloon at 8 Prince Street and had an import shop next door at 9 Prince Street. In 1902 Lupo sold the saloon to Giuseppe Romano, a bar­ber from First Avenue.

On July 23^rd 1902, at around 8pm, four boys swim­ming at the Bay Bridge 73^rd Street made the grue­some dis­cov­ery of a body in a potato sack. The body was even­tu­ally iden­ti­fied as Giuseppe Cata­nia, a Brook­lyn gro­cer. The secret ser­vice, through their inves­ti­ga­tions, believed he had been a mem­ber of the Morello gang. They also believed the gang had dis­posed of him due to his habit of drink­ing and talk­ing too much. Ignazio Lupo was one of the last men seen with Cata­nia before his disappearance.

Giuseppe Morello’s next busi­ness move was the open­ing of a restau­rant at the rear of the 8 Prince Street saloon, his younger brother, Ciro, worked as a waiter. The front saloon was now owned by Anto­nio Russo, whilst Lupo held his import busi­ness next door at 9 Prince Street.

Benedetto Madon­nia, brother-in-law to the jailed De Primo, was mur­dered in April 1903. The case became known as “The Bar­rel Mur­der” after Madonnia’s body was found cut and stuffed into an old bar­rel, in East 11^th Street. Morello and Lupo were again arrested, they were even­tu­ally cleared due to lack of evidence.

In rela­tion to a 1902 coun­ter­feit­ing case, Lupo was charged by a Grand Jury on Thurs­day 30^th April 1903 and held on $5000 bail. Pietro Inz­er­illo was also arrested on a bench war­rant from the US Dis­trict Court. He was indicted along with Lupo on the 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 coun­ter­feit­ing charge on June 25^th, 1903. They would later for­feit this bail, but the charges were even­tu­ally dropped.

After the Bar­rel trial had fin­ished in June 1903, the whole Morello fam­ily were searched and hounded on a reg­u­lar basis. One night, Ciro Ter­ra­nova was trav­el­ling home from work with his brother Vin­cent, nephew Char­lie and Nick Sylvester when they were all arrested and kept overnight. On another occa­sion Ciro and Nicholas Ter­ra­nova were arrested whilst try­ing to locate a doc­tor for Giuseppe’s son, Charles. Fol­low­ing the Bar­rel Mur­der tri­als Morello gave up his restau­rant inter­est and briefly moved into the olive oil busi­ness at 628 138^th Street. Lupo also gave up his import store at 9 Prince Street and opened a new store at the seven storey build­ing that was 210–214 Mott St. It was reported to be “one the most impres­sive import stores in the neigh­bor­hood, many of the locals could only dream of shop­ping there”.

In 1904, Ignazio Lupo joined the Morello fam­ily when he mar­ried one of the Morello sis­ters. Giuseppe Morello and Lupo started a real estate com­pany, The Ignazio Flo­rio Asso­ci­a­tion, they were involved in the con­struc­tion and sell­ing of prop­er­ties in Harlem. The com­pany office was based at 630 E 138^th Street, also the home of Giuseppe Morello. With the broth­ers as pres­i­dents, and largest stock­hold­ers, the com­pany lasted for around four years but went out of busi­ness in 1908 and was later inves­ti­gated by the Bankers Asso­ci­a­tion of America.

Lupo was arrested on March 7^th 1906 after he was iden­ti­fied by John Boz­zuffi, an Ital­ian boy who had been kid­napped and held on 59^th Street. Lupo was sent to the tombs in default of $1000 bail.

In Novem­ber 1908, Lupo claimed bank­ruptcy against his import busi­ness. On Mon­day 30^th Novem­ber the store was closed under order of the US Court. The receivers moved in, and the inven­tory for his store only reached $1,500. Lupo was miss­ing, and his debts were up to $100,000. The attor­neys for the receivers dis­cov­ered that Lupo had made around $50,000 worth of pur­chases in the week lead­ing up to his dis­ap­pear­ance . Most of the goods had been deliv­ered to ware­houses, and paid for with loans that Lupo had taken out. The pro­duce he pur­chased included meat ($5,000), oil ($5,000) and canned goods($6,000). On Fri­day 4^th Decem­ber, $50,000 of goods were found on a transat­lantic pier in New York, sent there by Lupo they were bound for Italy. The receivers also dis­cov­ered Lupo was the owner of real estate in Harlem worth $110,000 and that he had just taken out new mort­gages on his prop­er­ties before dis­ap­pear­ing. On Decem­ber 16^th, Sal­va­tore Manzella, an importer of wine and Ital­ian pro­duce at 196 Eliz­a­beth St, filed for bank­ruptcy. William Blau, the receiver, pre­sented Manzella to Judge Holt when he refused to show his accounts. Manzella tes­ti­fied that for over three years he had been a vic­tim of extor­tion from Lupo the Wolf, and as a result he had lost his busi­ness. He also claimed that Lupo, one week before he dis­ap­peared, had vis­ited his store and taken over $1000 in cash. In the search for Lupo, the police dis­cov­ered he had a brother, John, liv­ing in Newark NJ, who ran a gro­cery store in Hoboken.

On Feb­ru­ary 11^th, 1909, Giuseppe Morello relo­cated to 207 E 107^th street. His cur­rent home/office at 630 138^th Street was built by his failed real estate com­pany, the Ignazio Flo­rio Cor­po­ra­tion, and the build­ing had to be handed over to the com­pany receivers. After Morello moved from his home a meet­ing of the share­hold­ers was held and the 630 E 138^th house was sold. E 107^th street would be a wel­come area to Morello, num­ber 231 was one par­tic­u­lar address that con­tained many impor­tant names — Gio­vanni Rao who ran the feather shop on the ground floor and was father to Joey Rao, Steve LaSalle lived there and also Angelo Gagliano who ran a saloon at 277 E 107^th with Ippolito Greco. Fur­ther along on E 107^th was Sal­va­tore Romano the Morello fam­ily doc­tor, Romano’s mother had been the mid­wife for Morello’s mother in Corleone.

On Novem­ber 12, 1909, Ignazio Lupo walked into the office of his receivers with his coun­sel, Charles Bar­bier. He had been miss­ing for a year after his store was served with bank­ruptcy. He made a claim that he had been black­mailed for $10,000 which left him broke and caused him to flee to Bal­ti­more and Buf­falo. Lupo was arrested on Novem­ber 17^th in con­nec­tion with the extor­tion of Sal­va­tore Manzella. He was arraigned on Novem­ber 22^nd, how­ever Manzella failed to appear and Lupo was dis­charged. He was imme­di­ately rear­rested by a Deputy Mar­shall in rela­tion to a coun­ter­feit­ing charge from Sep­tem­ber 1902, he was later released on $5,000 bail.

In 1910, Giuseppe Morello and Lupo were sent to Atlanta Pen­i­ten­tiary under the charge of coun­ter­feit­ing.

In Jan­u­ary 1911, almost one year after his impris­on­ment for coun­ter­feit­ing, Giuseppe Morello was reported to have spo­ken to the Attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the US author­i­ties. In the hope of short­en­ing his sen­tence he sup­plied infor­ma­tion about the mur­der of Lieu­tenant Pet­rosino. Morello later with drew his state­ments and refused to sign them. The con­tents of the talks were never offi­cially released, but it was claimed that he had pointed to Carlo Costan­tino for the mur­der of Lt. Pet­rosino.

Giuseppe Morello was 40 at the time of his arrest in 1910, his brother, Nicholas Ter­ra­nova, was the next most impor­tant fig­ure within the family.

For­tu­nato Lomonte, a cousin of the Morello fam­ily, ran a hay and grain office with his brother Tomasso at 2103 1^st Avenue, on the junc­tion of E 108^th Street. Just a few doors away was the “Mur­der Sta­ble”. The police were sur­prised to learn of his mur­der on May 23^rd 1914. For­tu­nato, who had just left his busi­ness premises on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing, was walk­ing along E 108^th Street when he was shot in the back with three bul­lets. The killer had appeared from the hall­way of a ten­e­ment, then escaped by return­ing to the hall­way and vault­ing a fence at the rear of the build­ing. Josephine Con­stanzo a passer by was also shot. Lomonte’s friends drove him to Harlem Hos­pi­tal where he was revived. Detec­tive John Cas­setti pushed Lomonte for the killers name, but Lomonte refused to name his killer before he fell uncon­scious and died.

The mur­der is thought to be from the D’Aquila fam­ily look­ing to move into the Harlem power vac­uum after the incar­cer­a­tion of the Morello lead­er­ship in 1910, but may have been for the recent killing of D’Aquila friend Giuseppe Fontana.

Tomasso Lomonte, was shot and killed on Octo­ber 13^th 1915. After the death of his brother, For­tu­nato, in May 1914. It was men­tioned in sev­eral news­pa­pers that Tomasso had begun to speak with police.

Tomasso, 29, had been at the home of his cousin, Rose Lomonte, at 312 E 116^th Street. He left the house dur­ing the evening with his cousin, they were both shot from behind after only walk­ing a short dis­tance, Tomasso died quickly and Rose was taken to Harlem Hos­pi­tal where she later died. After fol­low­ing the com­mo­tion of a crowd out­side a build­ing on E 116^th Street, the police arrested a nine­teen year old boy called Anto­nio Impoluzzo, he was found in bed with his clothes on, hid­ing a pis­tol. He was even­tu­ally elec­tro­cuted for the killing at Sing Sing in May 1917.

On June 24^th 1916 a meet­ing took place at Coney Island between the Sicil­ian Morello gang, the Neapoli­tan Navy Street gang and the Neapoli­tan Coney Island gang. The idea of the meet­ing was to dis­cuss the expan­sion of gam­bling dens in lower Man­hat­tan. Pel­li­grino Morano, from Coney Island, began talk­ing about the lucra­tive Ital­ian Zaconette card games. Nick Ter­ra­nova and Steve LaSalle explained that Joe DeMarco would have to be killed before they could expand in the area. The Brook­lyn gang also had an inter­est in killing DeMarco as he had recently taken over one their games on Mull­berry Street.

After the removal of DeMarco, the Camorra devised a plan to kill the Morel­los. Even though the two gangs had worked along­side each other for some­time, includ­ing jointly remov­ing Gio­sue Gal­lucci from Harlem, Morano wanted them dead. Morano had been run­ning a pol­icy game in Harlem, the realm of the Morello fam­ily, but could not make it pay enough to cover the rake that the Morel­los demanded from him, another fac­tor was the killing of Nicolo Del Gau­dio had angered Alle­san­dro Vollero and he now wanted the Morel­los dead. The Neopoli­tans believed they could taken over the Harlem rack­ets if they could elim­i­nate the Morello lead­er­ship. They hatched a plan where they would try and lure the entire Morello lead­er­ship down to Brook­lyn and ambush them.

On Sep­tem­ber 7^th 1916, Nicholas Ter­ra­nova and Charles Ubri­aco trav­elled down­town to meet with the Navy Street gang. Ralph Daniello served the men drinks before Pagano arrived to take them to a cof­fee house where Lau­ri­tano and Morano were wait­ing. The men walked together towards Myr­tle Avenue when they were ambushed at the junc­tion of John­son Street and Hud­son Avenue. Nicholas Ter­ra­nova was shot dead by Tom Pagano, and Ubri­aco was slain by Thomas Car­illo and Lefty Espos­ito. Later that evening Ciro Ter­ra­nova was called to iden­tify his broth­ers body.

The Morello gang and the Brook­lyn Camorra were at all out war. The Camorra hatched var­i­ous plans to wipe out the rest of the Morello lead­er­ship, but they were either foiled or were never com­pleted, how­ever four asso­ciates of the Morello gang were mur­dered by the Camorra in Philadelphia.

Ciro Ter­ra­nova was tried for com­plic­ity in June 1918, in con­nec­tion with the DeMarco/Lombardi killing. Johnny Espos­ito, the killer of Lom­bardi, had turned state evi­dence the same Daniello, and tes­ti­fied against Ter­ra­nova. Ciro was acquit­ted due to lack of cor­rob­o­ra­tion when it was ten­u­ously proved that Espos­ito and Ter­ra­nova were part of the same gang.