Crime Incorporated. William Balsamo
jugular was severed completely. But his killer or killers went on to insure his death by inflicting deep stab wounds on the face, neck, and upper torso.
The case went unsolved and without any visible progress toward solution for twenty days—until it was placed in the hands of NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, the department’s specialist in organized crime matters. He knew immediately that there was only one way to solve the crime: get the victim identified, then hope that a motive for the killing might surface, from which may come a focus on the probable killer.
Petrosino wasn’t aware of the one factor that had handicapped the other detectives in those long and unrewarding days of their probe. The body had lain on a mortuary slab on ice with the face still muddied with blood and grit. No one had cleaned it off to enable the sleuths to get an accurate view of the victim’s features.
Petrosino’s first order of business was in going to the morgue and viewing the corpse. When he saw the condition of the face, he asked the medical examiner to clean it. Once this was done, the lieutenant called a police photographer to take a picture of it.
As soon as the negative was developed. Petrosino hurried to Police Headquarters at 240 Centre Street in Manhattan and directed the photo lab to make thirty prints. He had them distributed to every detective under his command, which covered seven precinct homicide squads in Manhattan. The admonition to each of his sleuths was:
“Hit the pavement and show this picture around. We’ve got to get an I.D. on this man who was found murdered in a barrel. Send all your findings to my office after you’ve cleared it with your sergeants. This is imperative. Act on this at once.”
Another investigation relating to this murder was underway at the same time—unbeknown to the NYPD and Lieutenant Petrosino. Treasury Department Agent William Flynn and a team of his investigators had been on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters who were pushing their phony money in various sections of New York City.
Flynn had one leg up on Petrosino in his search for the killer of the murdered man in the barrel only because the federal officer had a bead on the known operator of the counterfeiting ring. He also knew where the suspect met with the pushers of his funny money.
So Flynn and his men made it a part of their routine to eat lunch and dinner in The Star Of Italy Cafe on Elizabeth Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They became fairly regular customers in the hope that they’d pick up bits and pieces of information about the counterfeiters.
After a while Flynn and his Treasury Department agents just about gave up hope that the man they suspected of being the counterfeit ring’s leader would ever show up at The Star of Italy. Twenty days had passed during the stakeout and the federal sleuths still hadn’t seen the suspect they were out to collar.
But on the twenty-second day they had a picture of the man they’d been hunting. It was brought to them by Lieutenant Petrosino and a team of his sleuths who had come with the photo of the murdered man in the barrel. Once the blood and grime had been washed from his face and its photo taken, police went to their files, matched the features with their rogue’s gallery of prisoners and wanted men, and established that no one could fit the portrait of the wanted counterfeiting boss more than one particular picture from the rogue’s gallery.
How did Petrosino make contact with Flynn, the Treasury agent?
Through some simple reasoning. When the lieutenant read the victim’s rap sheet and saw his involvement in counterfeiting, he knew that Treasury must have had some awareness about the dead man, now positivly identified as Benedetto Madonia.
At this gathering of city and federal investigators came a meeting of minds and a decision of how to proceed in solving the murder. Flynn told Petrosino that the slain counterfeiter had a brother-in-law in Sing Sing doing a three-year stretch.
“Go and see Giuseppe DiPrimo,” Flynn advised. “I’ll bet he can give you a lead. “We also know him as ‘Benny the Convict.’”
Petrosino, who could never be mistaken in a crowd for anyone else because he always wore a black derby, even when behind his desk, journeyed to Ossining, some sixty miles up the Hudson, and had a chat with DiPrimo.
Early in the conversation Petrosini showed DiPrimo the full-faced photo of Madonia taken on the mortuary slab and asked, “Do you know this man?”
DiPrimo’s eyes opened wide in recognition.
“Yeah…yeah…” he replied hesitantly, “that…that’s my brother-in-law…that’s Benedetto Madonia…”
Benny the Convict looked up bewildered.
“What did he do…and why does he look so sick in this picture?” the Mafia hood rasped. “You know…he’s married to my sister who lives in Buffalo…”
“No kidding? I didn’t know that,” Petrosino said. Then in the next breath: “And why was he in New York City last April 14th? What business did he have there?”
DiPrimo froze for a second or two. The question seemed to stun him. Then he seemed to pull himself together:
“I sent him to New York to see Giuseppe Morello to get something that belongs to me…”
From all that Petrosino knew about Morello’s East Harlem operations, coupled with what he had learned from Flynn about Madonia’s workings as a high-flying counterfeiter, the response from Benny the Convict made no sense at all.
Madonia was trying to muscle in on Morello’s territory by recruiting storekeepers to make their shops clearing houses for his bogus greenery. What dealings could the brother-in-law of the murdered counterfeiter from another part of town have with the leader of the turf Madonia was trying to muscle in on?
“Hey, you make no sense,” Petrosino barked. “Your brother-in-law was looking to boot Madonia the hell out of Harlem. So I can’t believe there was anything that Morello could have which belonged to you…”
Don Guiseppe – “Battista” – Balsamo, the first godfather
The clock on Columbia Street
Frankie Yale in 1918
William “Wild Bill” Lovett, leader of the White Hand gang
The Adonis Club, meeting place of the Black Hand gang. Inserts: Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan (L); “Needles” Ferry (R)
John Scalise (L) and Albert Anselmi (R), triggermen of the ambush of Sagaman’s Hall
Frankie Yale’s death, July 1, 1928
Vincenzo Gibaldi, who became “Machine Gun McGurn,” and his wife, Louise Rolfe
Al Capone
UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos
The St. Valentine’s Day massacre, 1929
DiPrimo was nonplussed. He shook his head and