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to dealers around the country. However, he had been suspected of double-dealing after some of the money had gone missing, so he had been put to death.
    The gang was led by Giuseppe Morello – aka ‘Clutch Hand’, ‘Little Finger’ or ‘One Finger Jack’, because his deformed right hand resembled a claw – and his underboss and brother-in-law Ignazio Saietta – aka ‘Lupo the Wolf’. Both men were from Corleone, Sicily. Giuseppe’s two brothers, Nicolo and Ciro were also gang members, along with their two half-brothers Ciro and Vincenzo Terranova. Tomasso Petto was the gang’s strong-arm man. Physically powerful but not very bright, Petto could not resist stealing the only valuable – and traceable – item in Madonia’s possession. He went on trial for murder, but the case against him collapsed after Madonia’s wife, son and brother-in-law refused to testify against him. In August 1904 he was implicated in the kidnapping of Morello gang member Vito Laduca, though no charges were ever filed. The following year, he was found dead outside his home. There were 62 stab wounds in his body. Giuseppe De Priemo – then out of jail – was suspected, but no arrests were made and Petto’s murderer was never found.
    Another man who was involved with the Lupo–Morello gang was the Sicilian Don Vito Cascio Ferro. When he first travelled to New York in 1901 he was already a seasoned criminal. It was said that he was the first mafioso ‘of respect’ to set foot in America, so he was feted in Sicilian–American criminal circles. He brought with him the u pizzu , or ‘protection money’, concept – no one who could afford it was to escape paying u pizzu to the Onorata Società . Ferro was a known counterfeiter, who was suspected of being involved in the murder of Madonia. He fled to New Orleans in order to escape arrest and then went back to Sicily, leaving Lupo and the others to continue the collection of the pizzu . Ferro took with him a photograph of Joe Petrosino, which he carried in his wallet.
    Despite the formation of the NYPD Italian Squad, extortion remained rife in New York.
    When two plain-clothed policemen were killed by a young man freshly arrived from Palermo, the police combed the city for Italians carrying concealed weapons.
    The county coroner received a letter of protest signed by 200 Italian women, who complained that Italians were being picked on. It was the Sicilians who were to blame, they said in the letter:
‘The Sicilian is a blood-thirsty man. He belongs to the Black Hand. He exercises blackmail, is a dynamiter and, by blood, a coward… We must suppress the immigration from Sicily. Then you will see if the Italians in America will not be mentioned any more criminally.’
    But most New York policemen, being Irish, could not tell the difference between a Sicilian and an Italian.
    Petrosino’s Italian Squad enjoyed some successes. During the round-up, it arrested Enrico ‘Erricone’ Alfano, ‘Generalissimo of the Camorra’, who was deported back to Italy to stand trial. As a result, Petrosino was hailed by the newspapers as the ‘Italian Sherlock Holmes’. The arrest caused ‘an enormous sensation among the members of the Neapolitan Camorra’ and it was reported that ‘the Black Hand condemned Petrosino to death’.
    At 6.30 pm on 23 January 1908, a bomb went off outside the bank of Pasquale Pati & Sons at 240 Elizabeth Street in the heart of Manhattan’s Little Italy. The bank had an unusual gimmick – it displayed $40,000 in gold and bills behind its windows in order to prove its solvency. Although the bomb blew out the windows, their valuable contents were recovered. Pati’s neighbour Paolo Bononolo, who owned the building adjoining the bank, 242 Elizabeth Street, thought the bomb was directed at him because he had received several Black Hand letters. He also owned a tenement at 512 East 13th Street, which adjoined a house in which a bomb had gone off two days earlier. Then Pati