At the turn of the 20th century, there was a proliferation of street gang, in New York, there were the black hand gangs. The Morello Mafia family of East Harlem, led by Giuseppe “the Clutch Hand” Morello, along with his half-brothers Nick, Vincenzo, and Ciro Terranova, was a Mafia family that occasionally crossed over to Blackhand activities
Opposing them were two Camorra gangs, one led by Pellegrino Marano in Coney Island and the other led by Alessandro Vollero. The Camorra may have shared a common origin, but they were much less tight-knit than the Mafia
For nearly a decade, these rival factions had left each other alone to their respective trades.
Gambling, prostitution, and drugs were the Camorra gangs rackets, the black handers generally ran gambling.
Pelligrino Morano, was an early leader of the Brooklyn (Coney Island) Camorra which met at his restaurant, the Santa Lucia.
Morano started to expand his operations into territory long held by Blackhanders
The Blackhand responded to the onslaughts of the Camorra in October of 1914, by murdering Morano’s top man, Nicolo (Nick) Del Gau-dio of the Del Gau-dio brothers who controlled gambling in East Harlem.
DelGaudio and his brother Gaetano had once worked closely with Gio-sue Gallucci, the politically connected East Harlem crime boss, and with the remnants of the Morello-Lupo Mafia (Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo were locked up in Atlanta Federal Prison during the decade).
Del Gaudio lived at 2029 First Avenue in East Harlem. (The building still stands) He owned a restaurant nearby at 2023 First Avenue although the police believed his restaurant was merely a front for illegal activities.
In February 1913, he was suspected in an unsuccessful attempt on Gallucci’s life that resulted in the death of Gallucci bodyguard Tony Capilongo.
That spring, Del Gaudio fled the US for Italy. And returned a year later in 1914.
On October 14, 1914, DelGaudio and his friend Tancredi Dellabado met at First Avenue and walked toward a garage where DelGaudio kept his automobile. As they passed a stable at 421 East 104th Street, (long gone and replaced with apartment buildings) a gunshot rang out. DelGaudio fell mortally wounded, and Dellabado ran off. Police later found a shotgun inside an upstairs front window over the stable. Along with it was a hat they traced to Francisco Ruggiero of 403 East 106th Street. Ruggiero was arrested.
His brother Gaetano DelGaudio managed to remain alive for another two years. In the early morning hours of November 30, 1916, he was shot while working in his restaurant, 2031 First Avenue. He died a short time later in a hospital, after refusing to name his murderer.
In retaliation for (Nick) Del Gaudio’s murder, Morano probably planned and engineered the murders of Nicholas Morello and Charles Un-bri-aco by luring them to a peace conference in Brooklyn in 1916.
The murders sparked the Camorra-Blackhand war that lasted from about 1914 through 1917.
Marano invited the Terranova brothers and three other Mafia captains to Navy Street, under the false pretense of discussing an amicable way to divide their rackets.
In preparation for the meeting, Marano’s men prepared bullets smeared with garlic and pepper, believing that this would infect their rivals’ wounds and ensure their deaths long after the shootout.
On September 7, 1916 only Nick Terranova and Eugene Ubriaco showed up for the meeting but Marano went ahead with the plan anyway, murdering both of them. Blindsided, the Mafia was still in a state of disarray and confusion when Marano followed up this ambush by quickly killing six more Morello soldiers.
During that outbreak, in 1917, a Black Hander named Giuseppe Favarro was killed by “Torpedo” Tony Notaro and Ralph Daniello, two members of the Camorra who worked for Pelligrino Morano. Notaro and Daniello were arrested for the Favarro murder.
But before his arrest Daniello, a small-time member of the Navy Street gang, fled to Reno Nevada with his 16-year-old girlfriend after being acquitted of robbery and abduction charges.
When Vollero refused to pay him after his money had run out, he penned an angry letter to the NYPD’s Italian Squad offering to sell information.
Over the span of nearly two months, Daniello told the police everything he knew, solving almost two dozen murders and providing leads for hundreds of open cases. At the time, it was the biggest mob confession in history, and the effect was immediate. Within weeks, dozens of Camorra members were arrested.
Tony Notaro also turned states evidence. Both gunmen testified that Morano had ordered the murder of Morello and Unbriaco. Morano was arrested and convicted in the murders and sent to prison for over a decade.
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Pelligrino Morano, New York’s Camorra
