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Watertown New York and The Black Hand #760754
01/28/14 02:01 PM
01/28/14 02:01 PM
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NNY78 Offline OP
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Does anyone on here have any info on the Mafia in this area going back to the time before during and shortly after prohibition. They were reported to be involved with Alcohol running,untaxed cigarettes via the Indian Reservation, gambling and prostitution and they worked in conjuction with others in Southern Ontario. Any insight would be helpful.

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #760784
01/28/14 04:50 PM
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Prior to prohibition,this was Angelo Palmeri's personal turf, as much Massina and Ogdensberg as Watertown. He would help Italian and Sicilin, especially Castellammarase,cross the river into NY and either recrit them or more often shake them down for what little they had. This was the origin of the Italains replacing the Dutch, Germans and English in the Mohawk Valley.
A lot of the bootlegging, sugar and molassis rackets were executed by the Irish and Jews and as well as Italians from Buffalo and others from the Castellammarese clans in NY, especially the Maranzano faction.


Been there and done it
I am very much for real, so if you ask, make sure you really want to know.
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: TheArm] #760788
01/28/14 05:11 PM
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Arm,

Thank you for the infomation, I'm new on here and grew up in that area and heard stories but no confirmation until now. If you know did any guys involved have the last name Coppola or Scordo?

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #760907
01/29/14 01:30 PM
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Those names don't ring a bell but a lot of the old timers names have been lost to history. One name that has been mentioned is someone named Spano who apperently whcked someone around 1910 and was hung. Other names I have heard associated with the period and the area are Colisanti,Malarzo,and Muscerella


Been there and done it
I am very much for real, so if you ask, make sure you really want to know.
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: TheArm] #760909
01/29/14 01:34 PM
01/29/14 01:34 PM
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Arm

whats the story on niagara falls ny these days ? any players ?

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: TheArm] #760918
01/29/14 02:21 PM
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Arm,

Thank you for the insights. I have heard stories from others over the years that believed a Joe Spano who owned a bakery and Nicholas Colesanti who owned a restaurant and were prominent members of the community were involved with the Black Hand. Spano with Alcohol and Colesanti with bookmaking I think not sure? Do you happen to know why they called it the Black Hand instead of LCN or mafia?

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #760920
01/29/14 02:54 PM
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I don't know about today but when I lived in the falls between 93 and 99 (Went to NU) there were players that hung around Pine Ave. The Cuomo was always a hot spot and Lefty's at the corner of Hyde and Pine. There was a guy at the dart shop that made book and was into girls / porn. There was a candy store on main street that took heavy action and old timers that were heavily involved with the democratic party. As a student I worked for a monument company and they would clean Maggadino's headstone for free out of respect.

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: faffy444] #760928
01/29/14 03:37 PM
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Originally Posted By: faffy444
Arm

whats the story on niagara falls ny these days ? any players ?


The Casinos have brought both sides of the falls back big time, mostly throgh legit business like trash,linnens,cartage,livery, and vending, but there is also plenty of money on the street.
Since Sonny Nicoletti passed the falls has been run directly from the top.


Been there and done it
I am very much for real, so if you ask, make sure you really want to know.
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #760934
01/29/14 03:47 PM
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sonny was around for a very long time, both with his father and then on his own.

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: faffy444] #760951
01/29/14 05:28 PM
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Originally Posted By: faffy444
sonny was around for a very long time, both with his father and then on his own.


Sonny was a giant, and a hell of a nice guy


Been there and done it
I am very much for real, so if you ask, make sure you really want to know.
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: TheArm] #773223
04/16/14 03:58 AM
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Found this New York Times Article from 1906.

So desperate have the members of the Black Hand become in robbing, assaulting, and even killing foreigners who refuse to contribute to their treasury that Sheriff Merritt of Westchester County has decided to send two posses of deputies throughout the northern part of the county in search of them, and also to protect the hundreds of Italians employed on the New York City watershed, the State roads, and other
improvements.

Full article


http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10710FA345A12738DDDA00994D0405B868CF1D3

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: Toodoped] #773227
04/16/14 05:02 AM
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Originally Posted By: Toodoped
Benjamin Pazzo

lol lol lol
Good for him he lived in America where not everyone understands Italian. In Italy he would have probably changed the surname.

Last edited by Dwalin2011; 04/16/14 05:02 AM.

Willie Marfeo to Henry Tameleo:

1) "You people want a loaf of bread and you throw the crumbs back. Well, fuck you. I ain't closing down."

2) "Get out of here, old man. Go tell Raymond to go shit in his hat. We're not giving you anything."
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: Toodoped] #773248
04/16/14 08:05 AM
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Toodoped,

Great read thank you!!

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #773257
04/16/14 08:26 AM
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Originally Posted By: NNY78
Toodoped,

Great read thank you!!


I gotta say im sorry....i miss read the name of this thread and i posted about the wrong stuff blush i had a few beers few hours ago smile so...im goin to delete it

@Dwallin2011 lol your r right,i just remembered(translated it) what "pazzo" means.....


He who can never endure the bad will never see the good
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: Toodoped] #773264
04/16/14 09:24 AM
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Toodoped,

Put the bottle of Hennessy down and step away from the keyboard lol

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: padrone] #773365
04/17/14 07:20 AM
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Originally Posted By: padrone
I don't know about today but when I lived in the falls between 93 and 99 (Went to NU) there were players that hung around Pine Ave. The Cuomo was always a hot spot and Lefty's at the corner of Hyde and Pine. There was a guy at the dart shop that made book and was into girls / porn. There was a candy store on main street that took heavy action and old timers that were heavily involved with the democratic party. As a student I worked for a monument company and they would clean Maggadino's headstone for free out of respect.


Padrone,While visiting NY a couple years ago, we ate at the COMO just for the nostalgia. It used to be a super good place but this time the food was mediocre. There were a few guys in there that looked as though they might be "The boys".
There are a number of good places on Pine Ave.

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: Toodoped] #773380
04/17/14 09:36 AM
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NY Black Hand

At the opening of the twentieth century, the influx of Italians in to America began to grow. From 1890 to 1900, 655,888 immigrants arrived in the United States, of whom two-thirds were men. Many Italians arrived in the United States hoping to earn enough money to return home and buy land. Coming especially from the poorer rural villages in Southern Italy, including Sicily and Campania, most arrived with little cash or education; since most had been peasant farmers in Italy, they lacked craft skills and, therefore, generally performed manual labor.

The immigrants populated various US cities, forming ‘Little Italies’, where they could easily establish a familiar cultural presence. Chain and return migration helped subdivide these new Italian communities into regional groupings. Italian neighborhoods typically grew in the older areas of the cities, suffering from overcrowded tenements and poor sanitation.

Living together in such closed communities created little more than a microcosm of the society they had left in Europe. Some criminals exploited this fact, and began to extort the more prosperous Italian’s in their neighbourhood. A crime that would eventually snow-ball into an epidemic known as ‘The Black Hand’.

The extortions were done anonymously by delivering threatening letters demanding money, signed with a crudely drawn symbols, such as a knife or a skull. The following is an excerpt from one such letter:


If you have not sufficient courage you may go to people who enjoy an honorable reputation and be careful as to whom you go. Thus you may stop us from persecuting you as you have been adjudged to give money or life. Woe upon you if you do not resolve to buy your future happiness, you can do from us by giving the money demanded. …
Blackhanders
People paid the Black Hand extortionists in the fear that American law had no understanding, or power, to help them. This an excerpt of a letter that appeared in The New York Times around this period:


My name is Salvatore Spinelli. My parents in Italy came from a decent family. I came here eighteen years ago and went to work as a house painter, like my father. I started a family and I have been an American citizen for thirteen years. I had a house at 314 East Eleventh Street and another one at 316, which I rented out. At this point the ‘Black Hand’ came into my life and asked me for seven thousand dollars. I told them to go to hell and the bandits tried to blow up my house. Then I asked the police for help and refused more demands, but the “Black Hand’ set off one, two, three, four, five bombs in my houses. Things went to pieces. From thirty two tenants I am down to six. I owe a thousand dollars interest that is due next month and I cannot pay. I am a ruined man. My family lives in fear. There is a policeman on guard in front of my house, but what can he do? My brother Francesco and I do guard duty at the windows with guns night and day. My wife and children have not left the house for weeks. How long can this go on?
Bombed store
The Cosmopolitan spoke of the ease, in which the threats were sent:


No Italian is too lonely or too poor to embark as a Black-Hander. A sheet of paper, pen and ink, and enough knowledge of Italian to scrawl a few lines of demand and the accompanying threat are all that is necessary

The myth of the Black Hand spread through the Little Italies of America. A strong fear was instilled in the communities, and even the mention of ‘La Mano Nera’ would cause people to cross themselves with the hope of protection. Italian folklore spoke of gangsters being able to ‘cast the evil eye’ and to possess other ‘magical powers’, such fables, mixed with the reality of bombings and murders in the press, only helped to compound the effectiveness of the Black Hand legend.

Extortion letters were written in a mixture of dialects, certainly by people originating from different regions of Italy, and the Black Hand symbols varied greatly in design. Some designs were an open hand, others a closed fist, while others showed a hand holding a knife. The extortionists’ targets also varied widely, of course the unifying factor was their wealth.


The Ruin of Pasquale Pati

In January 1908, a bomb blew open the front of an Italian Bank “Pasquale Pati & Son” at 238 – 240 Elizabeth Street. Pati was the most successful Italian banker in New York, with his business capitalised at $500,000. The bank had the unusual trick of displaying piles of money behind their secured windows as proof of their ability to pay depositors. The son, Salvatore Pati, who was in the bank at the time of the bombing, managed to secure the money whilst the bomb throwers escaped into the crowds on Elizabeth Street. The bomb was not an attempt at robbery, but a warning from the Black Hand after Pati had publicly announced he would not fall for their attempts at extortion. After the explosion, nervous depositors began to withdraw their money, and in the next four weeks over $400,000 in deposits were removed.

On 6th March, 1908, three armed men entered the bank, but escaped empty handed when Pati shot one the men who later died in hospital. Pati began to receive more death threats, including one note that said he would be cut-up like the victim of the ‘Barrel Murder‘ several years ago.

Pati was forced to close the bank, just two weeks later, after he learned a group of men had attempted to set fire to his family home in Brooklyn. He pinned a note to the front of the bank reading:


The clientele of the this bank be calm and trustworthy, as the banker, Pasquale Pati, has long been obliged to absent himself to protect his existence and family. He has been molested and threatened and will be back soon. He possesses 45 houses and $100,000 life insurance and has bonds of $15,000 with the State of New York

A crowd ‘that packed Elizabeth Street from Houston to Prince Street” began to rush towards the next largest Italian bank, F. Acritelli & Son, 239 Elizabeth Street, which was then also forced to close. A police guard was provided for both banks.

Three days later, after Pati had not reappeared, the director of the Italian Chamber of Commerce was appointed receiver of the bank by the United States Circuit Court. Pati, who had built his business over seventeen years, starting as a cobbler before moving into grocery and real estate was a ruined man.



The Italian Vigiliance Protective Association

In February 1908, 500 Italians held a mass meeting at the office of Bollettino della Sera, an Italian newspaper edited by Frank L. Frugone. The speakers ridiculed the Black Hand, saying it only existed in Sicily and was a mild form of the Mafia. Frank Frugone was elected president of a new organisation called The Italian Vigiliance Protective Association. A memorial was prepared by the group to petition the Italian Government, stating that all prefects and priests in Italy, and Royal Commissioners on the emigrant boats, be instructed to request the people not to carry arms when coming to America.

The ‘Bollettino della Sera’ was very critical of the American press and its willingness to publicise Black Hand crimes, which seemed merely to augment the epidemic.
Black Hand headlines
Robert Park, wrote the following in his 1921 publication, ‘Old World Traits Transplanted’:


The Italian press got as much news value as possible out of the situation, and threw the blame on the Americans, claiming that they admitted too many Italian criminals, and that the American police and court systems were defective in comparison with the Italian … The Italian papers protested violently against the blackening of the Italian name. The Bollettino claimed that “the fear of the Mafia is in great part a product of the reporter’s fancy.“. The Bollettino resented the fact that “that odious word ‘mafia’ is continually thrown in our faces“

Park also talked of the positive efforts by the paper to end the crime wave:


But gradually as the practice became epidemic, affecting all classes of Italians, and involving Americans also, the Italian community and the American police were forced by public opinion into an alliance which succeeded in abating the evil … Two columns in the Bollettino (Jan 1908) call on Italians to rise up and put a stop to the crimes which are besmirching the Italian name … An editorial headed “The Cry of Alarm” warned that the doors of this country would be closed to Italians … The Bollettino printed a notice, “Against the Black Hand” advising all honest Italians to aid Commissioner Bingham by sending him all threatening letters, and information about Black Handers and idle Italians, with a description of individuals

After the formation of the ‘The Italian Vigiliance Protective Association’, Police Commissioner Bingham was asked of his plans to eradicate the Black Hand. He claimed his request for $25,000 to establish a secret detective service had been turned down by the city’s aldermen. He also stated that Lt. Petrosino and his squad were too well known in the Italian quarter to be of any assistance.

1908 showed the highest number of Black Hand cases recorded. Commissioner Bingham’s report listed the following:

Black Hand cases reported: 424
Arrests: 215 / Convictions: 36 / Discharges: 156 / Pending: 23

Bomb outrages reported: 44
Arrests: 70 / Convictions: 9 / Discharges: 58 / Pending: 3

Lt Petrosino gave the following statement to the Bollettino della Sera in 1908:


The United States has become the refuge of all the delinquents and the bandits of Italy, of Sicily, Sardinia, and Calabria. About a year ago the authorities of Tunis decided to cleanse the Italian quarter of that city where there were a great number of crimes. The French government proceeded to make a rigorous inquest which resulted in the expulsion of 10,000 Italians from that country. Where did that flower of manhood go? They were welcomed with open arms by Uncle Sam… Our Penal Code should be made more severe. The worst with immigrants who come here from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Calabria is that they do not know how to use the liberty which is enjoyed in this country…”

Petrosino’s Secret Police Squad

The NYPD was incapable of dealing with the explosion in crime. It had no intelligence network inside the Italian community, and little understanding of the culture and language. Even when the police made arrests the American criminal procedure, and the ‘Presumption of Innocence’ provision, was simply not able to deal with the criminals when people would not dare testify against them.

A report issued by the Italian White Hand Society, Chicago, 1908, hinted at the problem:


To a certain type of Italian criminal, who in his native land lives in continual dread of the carabineers, the guards of public safety, the civic guards, and even the rural and forest guards, any one of whom may appear at his very bedside any hour of the night to make sure that he is at home from sunset until dawn, this country where such an abundance of guardians of the peace is replaced only by the policeman, often nothing but a creature of politics, cannot fail to appear as the promised land … To a certain type of Italian criminal, who, when mysterious crimes are committed, is liable to be locked up in jail as a suspect, sometimes even for months, simply because he is recognised as being capable of committing crime, this country, where hold-ups, thugs plying their trade in the most prominent streets, or in the elevated railroad stations and street cars, night riders and lynchers, so often escape justice, cannot fail to appear as a most fertile vineyard, easy of cultivation for one willing to take chances.

The Black Hand fear became such a problem that a special Italian branch of the police had to be formed. The New York Times ran this story about the new force :


NEW SECRET SERVICE TO BATTLE ‘BLACK HAND’
Police Commissioner Theodore A. Bingham, finally has his Secret Service. It is a secret in every sense of the word, since no one at 300 Mulberry Street except Lieutenant Petrosino and Bingham himself knows its membership. Substantial funds for the maintenance of the Secret Squad have been made available to the Commissioner, but this is all he will say. He refuses to discuss their source, confining himself to the assurance that it is not public money. It is generally believed that the money was contributed by a number of prosperous Italian merchants and bankers across the city, aroused by the wave of extorsions in recent years.

Joseph Petrosino, the tough Italian policeman who headed the squad, gave his views on the Black Hand criminals:


There is only one thing that can wipe out the Black Hand, and that is the elimination of ignorance. The gangsters who are holding Little Italy in the grip of terror come chiefly from Sicily and Southern Italy, and they are primitive country robbers transplanted into cities. This is proved by their brutal methods. No American hold-up man would ever think of stopping somebody and slashing his face with a knife just to take his wallet. Probably he would threaten him with a pistol. No American criminal would blow up a man’s house or kill his children because he refused to pay fifty or a hundred dollars. The crimes that occur among the Italians here, are the same as those committed at one time by rural outlaws in Italy; and the victims, like the killers, come from the same ignorant class of people. In short we are dealing with banditry transplanted to the most modern city in the world.

Shortly after Petrosino’s ascension to Bingham’s secret police squad, he was murdered in Palermo, Sicily. Becoming the first NYPD officer to be killed whilst on duty outside of the USA.

In a 1908, Lindsay Denison wrote about the workings, and origins, of the Black Hand. She claimed the gang name had arrived from a story printed in The Herald newspaper. The story declared that a recent murder of an Italian immigrant had been committed by the original “The Black Hand” – a secret Spanish society dating back from Inquisition days. The Herald speculated that the Black Hand was coming to life again amongst the Latin communities. According to Denison, other papers seized upon the idea and the story spread.

She went on to purport of organized sections of the Black Hand:


It is not possible to speak certainly of the way in which the spoils of their plots are divided. It seems most likely that the ‘divvy’ is governed by the generosity of the head ‘bad-man’ and the risks taken by the members accumulating the loot. The worst and greediest scoundrel in the plot takes all he dares. Most of the rest goes to the men who made the threats. Half of what the chief takes goes ” higher up”. There are at least two or three old graduates of South Italian crime, who never sully their hands with the commission of actual crimes nor trouble their minds to plan them …
Caropole
The Cosmopolitan wrote about the crime wave in 1909. They had a slightly different theory to Denison about the origins of the ‘Black Hand’ name:


Some years ago the story of an Italian murder was running in the New York newspapers, a space-writer on a certain morning paper needed more money than the story was bringing him. He could get more space only by giving a new twist to the crime, by working up an exclusive angle. The victim of this murder had received a letter warning him that death would follow his failure to contribute a specified sum by a certain date. At the top of the sheet was a crude drawing of a fist holding a long, wicked-looking dagger. It was drawn with black ink, a somber, sinister emblem. For the reporter it held an idea. The name “Black Hand” leaped from his imagination, and there you are.

With great circumstantial detail and flaring heads he introduced his find to the public this characterization was an instantaneous hit. The murder story was again good for columns of space. The inventive reporter’s rivals went him several better in succeeding editions. They found meeting places of the Black Hand. They traced other unsolved crimes of the Italian district to the same mythical source. The police said nothing. They had been unable to solve the crime, but if it was the work of a powerful secret organization there was some excuse for them.


Mafia and the Black Hand

In 1909, when Giuseppe Morello, the leader of the most powerful Mafia gang in New York, was arrested in connection with counterfeiting, a series of Black Hand letters were found at his home.

Agent Flynn of the Secret Service described the way in which the Mafia leader used the letters, adding a slight twist to the more simplistic methods of lesser criminals:


A threatening letter is sent to a proposed victim. Immediately after the letter is delivered by the postman Morello just “happens” to be in the vicinity of the victim to be, and “accidentally” meets the receiver of the letter. The receiver knows of Morello’s close connections with Italian malefactors, and, the thing being fresh in mind, calls Morello’s attention to the letter. Morello takes the letter and reads it. He informs the receiver that victims are not killed off without ceremony and just for the sake of murder. The “Black-Hand” chief himself declares he will locate the man who sent the letter, if such a thing is possible, the victim never suspecting that the letter is Morello’s own. Of course, the letter is never returned to the proposed victim. By this cunning procedure no evidence remains in the hand of the receiver of the letter should he wish to seek aid from the police.

Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #773385
04/17/14 09:54 AM
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Nice read.thanks


He who can never endure the bad will never see the good
Re: Watertown New York and The Black Hand [Re: NNY78] #792637
07/29/14 02:29 PM
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Originally Posted By: NNY78
Arm,

Thank you for the insights. I have heard stories from others over the years that believed a Joe Spano who owned a bakery and Nicholas Colesanti who owned a restaurant and were prominent members of the community were involved with the Black Hand. Spano with Alcohol and Colesanti with bookmaking I think not sure? Do you happen to know why they called it the Black Hand instead of LCN or mafia?


Were those people part of the Sicilian, Neapolitan, or Calabrian mafia? Or was it just like everyone involved in that stuff worked together and it didn't matter where they were from?


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