During the Prohibition years and well into the 1950s, there were numerous gangland killings in the Utica area. Sal and Joe were known to rule their fiefdom with an iron hand and not men to be trifled with.
Joseph Falcone – aka Giuseppe Projetto (TN) – was born in 1902 in Sicily (Sciacca region). He originally settled in Brooklyn, NY, after emigrating to the U.S. By 1925, as a young 20-year-old man, he had relocated up to the “Utica-Rome” section of New York State. He was naturalized that same year.