Raffaele Daniello

Orig­i­nal­ly named Alphon­so Pepe, Ralph Daniel­lo fled from Italy in 1906. He had been arrest­ed for attack­ing a woman, and was sus­pect­ed of a recent murder.

In May 1917, Ralph ‘The Bar­ber’ Daniel­lo, of 1926 Pacif­ic St, Brook­lyn, a mem­ber of the Brook­lyn based Navy St gang, had been in court charged with rob­bery and abduc­tion. He was released before elop­ing to Reno with his new love, Ms Amelia Valve. Daniel­lo sent let­ters to his for­mer Navy St crew ask­ing for money, but his requests were ignored. The police tracked Daniel­lo down in Reno, and brought him back to Brook­lyn to face a new mur­der charge.

Indict­ments were brought against Daniel­lo on the charge of mur­der, grand lar­ce­ny and per­jury. He began to tell the police every­thing he knew about the Navy Street crew and a recent string of mur­ders in New York. When the police realised the extent of Daniello’s con­fes­sions he was sent to the office of DA Edward Swann.

On Novem­ber 27^th Daniel­lo was arraigned with John Espos­i­to, Alle­san­dro Vollero and Alphon­so Sgroia, and other mem­bers of the Navy St gang who had been arrest­ed on Daniel­lo’s confessions.

Accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny by Daniel­lo, Sicil­ians and Neapoli­tans were formed loose­ly in three main bands and con­trolled the rack­ets across New York. The bands were based in Harlem, down­town Mul­ber­ry bend with the last band cov­er­ing Brook­lyn and Coney Island. He went on to con­fess to his gangs involve­ment in the killings of both the DeMar­co broth­ers, Nicholas Ter­ra­no­va and Eugene Ubri­a­co, and the ‘Chuck’ Naz­zaro killing in Yonkers.

Ralph Daniel­lo was moved to a dif­fer­ent prison due the abuse he received after he tes­ti­fied at the trial of Vollero, he also received a sus­pend­ed sen­tence in view of his tes­ti­mo­ny. His free­dom was short lived when he was later arrest­ed for assault­ing a man in Coney Island, Daniel­lo claimed he had shot the vic­tim think­ing that he had been sent from the Navy Street gang on a vendet­ta. Daniel­lo was sen­tenced to five years in prison.

After his release in 1925 he was shot in his saloon, near Metuchen, New Jersey.