As explained in several recently published Button Guys articles, during their heyday, the Neapolitan Camorra operating in New York City was a very formidable bunch.
And despite their criminal brethren in the Sicilian Mafia garnering most of the media attention in later decades, back around the turn of the 20th century — from 1900 to about 1930 — most newspapers headlined their stories about Italy’s secret societies with such titles as “Camorra” this or that.
The fact is back then, New York City boasted several large Camorra Clans that had strategically situated themselves within the city’s various Italian colonies. It’s been well documented that separate but interwoven and allied clans operated from Lower Manhattan’s Little Italy section and in Upper Manhattan’s Little Italy of East Harlem.
There were two additional clans based in Kings County which could easily be considered the New York Camorra’s primary stronghold and headquarters. A fifth offshoot was located in the Ozone Park section of Queens County.
Over the last few weeks, Button Guys has reported extensively about the legendary Camorra boss Francesco (Frankie Yale) Ioele and the clan he headed that was headquartered in the Coney Island section of South Brooklyn.
But there was a second notorious band of camorrista also headquartered in Kings County, this one in the borough’s Downtown Brooklyn section centered around Myrtle Avenue and the Brooklyn Navy Yards. In fact, this particular Camorra faction eventually become infamous as “The Navy Street Gang.”
Vollero and Lauritano
Headquartered out of a little cafe located at 113 Navy Street and led by the notorious camorrista Alessandro Vollero, the Navy Street Gang boasted a large membership which was largely composed of Black Hand extortionists, blackmailers, strong-arms enforcers, cutthroats, and murderers.
The cafe was owned and operated by Vollero’s longtime second-in-command and confidante, the equally notorious Leopoldo (Leo the Lion) Lauritano, a man considered to be a very dangerous camorrista in his own right.
The local police precinct considered the cafe to be a known hoodlum hangout, and on more than one occasion, police officers conducted surprise raids and effected arrests of Camorra suspects for a variety of criminal offenses ranging from extortion, robbery, and weapons possession to gangland murder.
Over the years, police raided the cafe on so many occasions that they eventually became so familiar with the inside layout of the place that detectives were able to describe a hidden gun “trap” secreted into a wall of the cafe.
As the police approached the cafe, one of the gang’s lookouts would alert the members, giving them time to quickly discard their guns, stilettos, and other weapons into a chute built into a supporting pillar. The weapons would then safely drop into a box in the basement below, where they could be retrieved later.
Vollero and his clan also hung out at a nearby pool hall located just a few doors down from the cafe. Another favored watering hole and hangout was inside the Santa Lucia Hotel, located along the Coney Island boardwalk, which was owned by another underboss of their clan by the name of Pellegrino Morano.
There was a restaurant inside the lobby of the hotel that served fine southern Italian fare and a cocktail lounge with live nightly entertainment that attracted many local racketeers and Camorra members alike.
Members of the Navy Street gang were known to frequent the Santa Lucia to mingle with fellow camorrista and other local hoodlums. The Coney Island location was also an ideal spot to meet with Frankie Yale and his faction, who were the resident powers in Coney Island at the time.
