"Although the Sicilians had been acquitted of Hennessey’s murder, police had returned them to the parish prison on Marais Street (the site is now part of Armstrong Park) because they all had other outstanding charges against them. The mob encountered little resistance from the police guarding the prison and stormed inside to hunt down the inmates. Gun-wielding vigilantes shot down nine of the Sicilians inside the jail, including the shipping magnate J. P. Macheca. The pack dragged two more men outside, where the crowd hanged them from lampposts. Despite all of this violence, two of the more conspicuous men among the prisoners, Charles Matranga and Bastiano Incardona, went unharmed. Widely regarded as ringleaders of the French Quarter Mafia alongside Macheca, their survival left open-ended questions as to the true motivations behind the lynching. While Mayor Shakspeare did not take responsibility for the day’s events, neither did he regret them.

The lynching of Sicilians in the wake of the Hennessey murder was not an isolated incident, as Italians across the Gulf South fell victim to mob violence throughout the 1890s."

- according to Justin A. Nystrom