A Sicilian "Blood Vendetta" Amongst Mafiosi

The Good Killers

Bart Fontana nervously explained to Fiachetti that over the course of the last decade or so, dozens upon dozens of victims had been murdered at the behest of the gang’s leadership.

These killings were not only confined to New York City . The gang was responsible for gangland murders all across America.

Police later confirmed Fontana’s statements by documenting numerous victims in such cities as Detroit, Buffalo , New Jersey, New York City, and even back in Sicily to name but a few.

Fontana explained that many of these killings had their original genesis in old vendettas and blood feuds that traced back to the Trapani Province in Sicily .

At first, it was almost too fantastic a tale for American law enforcement to even believe. But every single one of “The Good Killers” so-called victims first named by Fontana later checked out.

He named the names, and with the help of police departments in Detroit and New Jersey, Fiachetti and his New York City squad of detectives were able to confirm the events.

Within days of his revelations, the New York Police Department led by Fiachetti arrested all those named in the Caiozzo murder plot.

Good Killers exposed!

Those picked up for murder included such iconic future mafiosi as Vito Bonventre, Stefano Magaddino , Giuseppe (Joe) Lombardi, Mariano Galante, Bartolomeo (Bart) Di Gregorio, Salvatore (Sal Rose) Ciaravino, and Felice (The Wolf) Puma.

All were put behind bars and held without bail because of Fontana’s confessions.

Also questioned by police about various homicides was mafioso Gaspare Milazzo, who was another important clan member.

Note: As more and more details of the investigation unraveled, Detective Fiachetti later stated, “It is the most important arrest that I ever made.”

Collectively, authorities said the gang was responsible for an estimated 125 killings in New York and Detroit between the years 1916 and 1923.

That may or may not have been an exaggerated guess, but no doubt “The Good Killers” were responsible for dozens and dozens of gangland murders nonetheless.

Caiozzo's ghost haunts Fontana.

As the months passed, other hoodlums suspected of taking part in various gangland homicides were brought in and questioned including mafiosi Mariano (Mimi) Crociata, Andrea Licata, Giuseppe (Joe Napoli) Ales, Gaspare Galante, Giuseppe Bonventre, Mariano Melita, Antonio Alescio, Vito Adamo, Vincenzo Ilado, Giuseppe Barbara, Carlo Barbara, and Sebastiano (Buster) Domingo.

These men were all suspected killers and known allies of the “Good Killers” faction.

Here is a partial list of “Good Killers” murder victims that Fontana had named for Fiaschetti and his men.

At the time, Fontana referred to the overall group as “The Bonventre Gang” and said their headquarters was based both in Brooklyn and in upstate Buffalo, NY.

The following twenty homicides committed in Detroit, Michigan were considered attributable either directly or indirectly to “The Good Killers.”

Old blood vendettas from Sicily and gangland struggles for power between the Bonventre Gang and their enemies for Detroit’s underworld was generally given as the main catalysts.

• Salvatore Adamo • Vito Adamo • Pietro Bosco • Giuseppe (Joe) Bosco • Rosario Briganti • Joseph Brucia • Felice (Phil) Buccellato • Giuseppe (Joe) Buccellato • Pietro (Pete) Buccellato • Salvatore LNU, said to be a Buccellato cousin • Carlo Callego • Salvatore Cipriano • Vittorio (Vito) Cusumano • Antonio (Tony) Giannola • Salvatore (Sam) Giannola • Michele Maltisi • Gaspare Milazzo • Rosario (Sasa) Parrino • Luigi (Luca) Sarcona • Giovanni Vitale

Among the twenty-two other known homicides traced to the gang that were committed in New York and New Jersey involved alleged feuds and vendettas of allies and enemies alike.

Those killed included:

• Vincenzo Alfano • Vito Bonventre • Pietro Bonventre • Vito Buccellato • Camillo Caiozzo • Pietrino Caiozzo • Giovanni Carollo • Antonio Casileo • Antonio Curatolo • Antonio Di Benedetto • Francesco Finazzo • Giuseppe Grautelli • Angelo Lattuca • Antonio La Tucco • Giuseppe Longo • Antonio Mauro • Antonio Mazzara • Filippo Mazzara • Giuseppe Messina • Joseph Ponzo • Felice Puma • Giovanni (Angel Face) Torres

Fontana confesses

But in a strange twist of events after going to trial, all the Caiozzo homicide suspects would eventually beat the case except for Fontana himself, who was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder.

The one ground shift that did occur from all the tremendous police pressure and unwanted publicity of the case was to later force both Magaddino and Milazzo to flee the New York area and relocate to the cities of Buffalo and Detroit, respectively, in an attempt to escape future law enforcement scrutiny.

These events would greatly alter the course of mafia history in this country.

Magaddino would rise to become boss over all of Upstate New York , as well as parts of Pennsylvania, and certain cities in Canada.

Gaspare Milazzo would rise to become the consigliere of the Detroit family until his own murder nearly a decade later during intra-gang warfare.

Enter Pietrino Caiozzo

Not much was known about Pietrino’s early life back in Sicily. What we do know is that he was born in 1885 and raised in the town of Castellammare del Golfo.

By the time he reached his early twenties, it is believed that he had already sailed to America to start a new life.

He came from a large blood family of interlocking relatives of the same surname, some of whom are suspected to have been members of the town’s mafia.

His father, also named Camillo Caiozzo, was known to be a stone mason and bricklayer by trade.

Camillo and his wife Anna raised a large family of at least seven children they named Vincenzo, Guiseppe, Vita, Joanna, Luigi, Camillo Jr., and Pietrino himself.

The extended Caiozzo clan also had many relatives and cousins who all had similar first names. The Camillo Caiozzo killed in Avon, New Jersey back in 1921 is believed to have been a direct cousin.

It is believed that Pietrino’s father Camillo had also met a violent death between the years 1900 and 1903 back in Castellammare.

He was allegedly intentionally thrown off a work scaffold in an incident that was first thought to have been a workplace accident.

But the local Carabiniere and Camillo’s own family later suspected foul play. His killing was later thought to have been the handiwork of competing mafiosi who were enemies of his.

Sailing to New York City

Shortly after his father's death, Pietrino was thought to have immigrated to America. Within a short time after his arrival, he helped bring his older brother Luigi and younger brother Camillo over to the United States as well.

Ellis Island documents show that he would travel back and forth between the United States and Sicily over the next few years. One particular voyage took place with Pietrino Caiozzo arriving at the Port of New York on December 18, 1905.

The three brothers eventually settled in New York City permanently.

920 along Little Italy’s Elizabeth Street

The Caiozzo brothers initially lived on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood, a street known to be largely occupied by Sicilian immigrant families.

Over time, the brothers each moved within blocks of one another a few streets north around East 12th Street, off First Avenue which, in those days, was also considered part of Little Italy.

It was an area also densely populated with Sicilian immigrants, many of whom had also hailed from Castellammare del Golfo.

Two Legitimate Brothers

There is no evidence that either Luigi or Camillo Jr. were ever involved in crime. It seems that both brothers ended up gravitating to the construction field the same as their father had done before his untimely death.

As young men, both Luigi and Camillo Jr. became bricklayers like their father before them.

Camillo Jr. later became a very successful businessman as the owner of a Queens-based construction company, a restaurant and a catering hall, cigar, and confectionery business.

He was also a property owner and landlord of multiple apartment houses and storefronts that he rented out in the Corona section of Queens, which was also an area heavily populated with fellow Italians.

Luigi joined his kid brother Camillo in opening up a construction company.

Together, they built several apartment houses they later sold for a substantial profit. But he eventually decided to relocate down to Tampa, Florida with his wife and children.

The City of Tampa also had a large Sicilian colony that would give birth to its own mafia clan. The Santo Trafficante Family became the resident borgata for that city.

Luigi and his wife and children would live in Tampa for the remainder of their lives.

But Pietro (Pietrino) Caiozzo seems to have taken a much different turn in life than his kid brothers. He became a racketeer.

Il Malandrino

New York Police records show that Pietrino had been arrested at least once for an assault and robbery relating to an incident that took place in the heavily populated Italian colony of Downtown Brooklyn back in 1908.

It seems that he rented a room in a home belonging to a French woman. Within a day of leasing the place, he and a friend had reportedly spent the entire evening in the upstairs room of the house engaged in hushed conversation and activity.

A subsequent police report made by the French women documented what happened next.

By her account, the then 23-year-old Caiozzo and his friend returned the following day. They quickly walked up to their room and then almost immediately, within a few minutes, later came down the stairs and started to curse and assault her.

They allegedly tied her up to a bedpost and gagged her and then robbed her of $8 dollars. But the woman’s story sounds fishy at best.

I do not have any hard proof, but why would Caiozzo pay her good money to rent a room in his own name just one day before, only to then assault her and take back the money the very next day?

I suspect there is more to the story than that.

Pietrino was known to be currently living in an apartment at East 12th Street in Manhattan at the same time he rented this room in Brooklyn.

It is possible that Caiozzo rented the room for the illicit purposes of stashing some contraband or for some other illegal purpose.

When he and his associate returned to the room the following day, they might have realized something was missing from the room and knew someone had stolen from them.

Of course, suspicion would have immediately fallen on their French landlord.

After a short-lived underworld career in the rackets, some fifteen years later Pietrino’s life would suddenly come to a very violent end.

What is it with New Jersey?

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, February 26th, 1923, in the City of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Pietrino Caiozzo was discovered lying face down on a sidewalk along Fourth Avenue.

The thirty-eight-year-old Caiozzo had been shot six times in the chest. He died in the ambulance en route to the General Hospital.

Pietrino dies from his wounds.

Pietro (Pietrino) Caiozzo, who resided at 248 Avenue A, Manhattan was identified by a card of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital Dispensary found in his breast pocket.

Besides the dispensary card which said that Pietrino had been receiving treatment for a stomach and intestinal ailment, police discovered $24.67 in cash, a set of rosary beads, a stack of mass cards, and other personal papers among the man’s clothes that had been bloodied from bullet wounds.

New Jersey Police Patrolmen Miller and Malone later reported that they found the victim after they heard a single gunshot, followed by a pause, and then six more gunshots.

The cops had been standing nearby at Elizabeth Avenue and Spring Street and ran in the direction of the sound of the shooting which led them to South Street and Fourth Avenue.

Pietrino’s gangland murder.

Within twenty minutes after the shooting, another Elizabeth patrolman named Officer Peter Buckley who was on duty about three blocks from the shooting saw two Italian-looking men hurriedly walking down the street toward him.

He immediately detained and interrogated them as to their names and why they were out on the street at such an early hour in the morning.

They gave their names as George Colletti and James Fortorella and said they both lived in New York City.

When asked what they were doing in New Jersey at such an ungodly hour, they claimed they were about to return to New York by train after having been at a house party on nearby Washington Street.

Murder suspects held.

The policeman inquired if they had heard any gunshots as he had and asked why they were taking such an indirect route to the train station as they claimed.

Once they couldn’t satisfactorily answer the patrolman’s questions, Officer Buckley immediately locked them up on “suspicion” pending a formal criminal investigation.

A Suspected Underworld Feud

Police labeled the murder an underworld “assassination.”

Colletti and Fortorella were both eventually charged in New Jersey State Supreme Court with Pietro Caiozzo’s murder.

But after a jury trial, both men were acquitted of first-degree murder and released from custody.

This seemed to be the end of the line as far as official theories for the Caiozzo killing went.

At the time nobody in law enforcement was able to connect the dots, so to speak, as to why he had been killed, what had been the possible motives, or who was actually behind his 1923 murder which had clearly been an underworld “assassination” as far as the police in New York and New Jersey were concerned.

Side Note: Back in the early 1900s through 1930s, the most common underworld rackets that mafiosi engaged in were liquor bootlegging, the Italian lottery, currency counterfeiting, prostitution rackets, burglaries, armed thefts, and the trafficking of opium and morphine.

Considering the fact that we know Pietrino’s cousin Camillo Caiozzo considered entering the prostitution rackets with his potential purchase of a “disorderly house” and the following criminal record listed below for hoodlum George Colletti, it is quite possible, even probable, that Pietrino Caiozzo was also involved in some type of bootlegging, prostitution, counterfeiting, theft, or narcotics rackets.

It is also possible and quite probable, as has been theorized, that the murder of Pietrino Caiozzo was actually a continuation of the old vendetta waged between members of the Buccellato and Magaddino clans started back in Castellammare del Golfo years earlier.

His killing in Elizabeth comes less than eighteen months after his cousin Camillo was killed at Shark River.

Both murders occur in New Jersey and are tied to men connected to the old Bonventre-Magaddino clan.

And both Caiozzo men are set up and executed gangland-style after being lured from Lower Manhattan to New Jersey on a ruse.

By checking into the background of Pietrino’s known killers, a pattern starts to emerge that provides us viable hints as to why, and by whom, he met his untimely death.

Nothing more ever emerged about James Fortorella.

In fact, this total lack of any type of past or future documentation makes me think that the identification papers Fortorella gave to police after his arrest might have been phony documents.

He seems to have simply evaporated into thin air after that single event.

Or, it’s quite possible that his name may have been misspelled by the police as Fortorella when, in reality, it may have been a more common Italian surname such as Tortorella or some such variation. (I have never come across a “Fortorella” in my life.)

Additionally, there is no such name as James in the Italian language. Its closest match is Vincenzo. Many Italian men who are named Vincenzo, or Vincent, later adopt the Anglicized name of James instead.

A Sicilian “Blood Vendetta” Amongst Mafiosi – Chapter 2

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