Giuseppe Boscarino

Giuseppe Boscarino
Giuseppe Boscarino

Alias: Giuseppe Monte

Born: 1850

Nation­al­i­ty: Italian

Died: 28th August 1919

Where: Atlanta Penitentiary

Cause: Her­nia

Giuseppe Boscari­no was born in Cor­leone around 1850, he arrived in Amer­i­ca in 1890. Secret Ser­vice records from 1903 describe him as a pool room owner and a ‘good friend’ of Vito Cas­cio­fer­ro. Both Cas­cio­fer­ro and Giuseppe Morel­lo were noted to be guests at his house on East 11th Street, and a nephew to Cas­cio­fer­ro helped to run Boscari­no’s pool room.

Dur­ing early 1903 Boscari­no was help­ing the Morel­lo gang to dis­trib­ute coun­ter­feit money under the alias of Giuseppe Monte. The New York Times claimed that he

gained con­trol of a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars of spu­ri­ous notes, known as Mor­ris­town Fives, and began to super­in­tend their distribution.

After the famous Bar­rel Mur­der in 1903, Boscari­no was arrest­ed along with the rest of the gang but was never brought to trial, although in 1910 the NYT claimed:

Boscari­no is as close­ly con­nect­ed with the famous Bar­rel Mur­der of sev­er­al years ago as any mem­ber of the gang now alive or at lib­er­ty since Lupo the Wolf went away.

He was later given the max­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years at Atlanta Pen­i­ten­tiary after a con­vic­tion for dis­trib­ut­ing money for Morel­lo and Lupo. His prison record shows a long list of vio­la­tions for fight­ing and theft and gen­er­al dis­obe­di­ence, with two denials of parole. His mail records show cor­re­spon­dence with Pietro Inz­er­il­lo’s wife and Giuseppe Paler­mo’s nephew, Frank Minore.

He died in prison on 28th August, 1919, from a stran­gu­lat­ed her­nia, he had refused treat­ment for the con­di­tion for some­time even after being warned it may kill him. His wife, Maria Boscari­no, instruct­ed the prison to bury him there as she could not afford the ser­vice. Her cable to the prison reads : ‘No funds to pay bur­ial here. give chris­t­ian bur­ial there’.

His pall bear­ers at his funer­al includ­ed Giuseppe Morel­lo, Anto­nio Cecala, and sev­er­al other well known Ital­ian counterfeiters.