Pietro Inzerillo

Pietro Inz­er­il­lo, mar­ried with five chil­dren, com­ing from Mari­neo in Paler­mo, Sici­ly, arrived in New York in 1890. He was a mem­ber of the Morel­lo gang and the owner of a pas­try shop on 226 Eliz­a­beth Street — ‘Dol­ceria Pas­tic­ce­ria’. The café was a known hang­out for the gang.

In Jan­u­ary, 1903, Giuseppe Guil­am­bar­do was arrest­ed there dur­ing the coun­ter­feit­ing inves­ti­ga­tion known as the ‘Mor­ris­town Fives’. Four months later the Secret Ser­vice searched Inz­er­il­lo’s café when Benedet­to Mado­nia, the Bar­rel Mur­der vic­tim was found.

On Fri­day 1^st May, 1903, Inz­er­il­lo gave his tes­ti­mo­ny to the coro­ner’s court inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bar­rel Mur­der, he was then excused then rear­rest­ed on a bench war­rant from the US Dis­trict Court. He was indict­ed along with Ignazio Lupo on a 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 coun­ter­fet­ing charge on June 25^th, 1903. They would later for­feit this bail, but the charges were even­tu­al­ly dropped.

Some­time after the bar­rel trial Inz­er­il­lo trav­elled back to Italy. Unsuc­cess­ful efforts were made to bar him from re-entering the coun­try when he returned.

Inz­er­il­lo was attacked and hos­pi­talised on Decem­ber 27^th, 1908. He was shot, along with employ­ee Tony Kelly, whilst stand­ing out­side his café. Camil­lo Conigharo, a for­mer employ­ee of the café was arrest­ed. The papers claimed Conigharo had been sacked from the store after the Christ­mas trade slacked off. Inz­er­il­lo was shot in face and abdomen, he was rushed to hos­pi­tal where he claimed to know noth­ing about his attacker.

After the mur­der of Pet­rosi­no, Inz­er­il­lo was arrest­ed along with fif­teen other sus­pects across New York, he was held on $5000 bail.

Inz­er­il­lo was seen with Morel­lo and Lupo in 1910, when the Secret Ser­vice were track­ing the Morel­lo gang in con­nec­tion with coun­ter­feit­ing.