August 15, 1930
Giuseppe Morello, or “The Old Fox” as he was known, was an early mafioso operating in New York. Heading a gang originally referred to as the 107th Street Mob, he was one of the most powerful crime bosses of his day—the legendary capo di tutti capi, “Boss of all Bosses”, in fact.
Morello had entered the Mafia while still in Sicily. Upon arriving in the United States, and eventually settling in New York, he brought the family business with him. Morello’s gang liked to use the old Black Hand extortion racket—threatening violence on fellow Italians until a pay-off was made. But Morello also had a hand in smuggling and counterfeiting. He was arrested in 1900 for passing phony five-dollar bills which at the time were described as roughly executed and of poor quality. He later improved his counterfeiting process, however, and was able to pass near-perfect replicas. Morello would launder these phony bills through his restaurants, saloons and other establishments—one of the first crime bosses to launder money in this way.
Morello and his lieutenant, the deeply sinister Ignazio Lupo “The Wolf”, were extremely dangerous individuals and were responsible for countless murders. Their specialty was the “barrel murder”, so called because the victims would be stuffed into a barrel after death. None other than Joseph Petrosino had a run-in with the gang in 1903 while investigating the barrel murder of Benedetto Madonia.
In 1909 Morello and Lupo were sent to prison. Morello’s original sentence was twenty-five years, but he only served about ten. Still it was a long stretch, and while in prison, of course, Morello had no way of exercising control of his gang.
During his incarceration, the Morello mob, now overseen by Morello’s half-brothers, the Terranovas, began to lose territory to rival gangs. In 1916 Nicolo Terranova was gunned down and when Morello was released from prison in 1920 he found himself also a marked man. Salvatore D’Aquila, at one time a subordinate Morello, currently owned much of the rackets in New York City. Now with his old boss released, he found that he was reluctant to relinquish the power that he had connived so long to amass.
D’Aquila ordered his gunman Umberto Valenti to eliminate Morello and his associates, including rising boss Joe Masseria. Valenti was only partially successful but was able to eliminate another of Morello’s half-brothers, Vincent Terranova, and a few intermediate hoods before he himself was killed by Masseria.
Masseria now assumed control of the Morello gang, with Morello taking a subordinate position to his former underling. Now over sixty-three years old, Morello was a wily strategist, one who had seen his fair share of gang struggles, and his opinions were greatly respected. He assisted Masseria as he moved to consolidate his powerbase and to eliminate rivals, including Salvatore Maranzano of the Castellammarese, a faction that was backed by the Sicilian Mafia.
On August 15, 1930, Morello was killed as he worked in his East Harlem office. He was one of the first victims of what was to become the infamous and bloody Castellammarese War, a conflict which directly ushered in a new era of organized crime and the creation of the Commission (a ruling body for the Italian Mafia) and the National Crime Syndicate (the ruling body for all mobs).