Giacinto Arcuri (GTA) has died

[antimafia]

Appreciate your research, Antimafia.

Do you have any idea how/if Rosario Arcuri fits into the family tree? He lived in NYC and was the suspect in the 1933 murder of the elder Vito Rizzuto.

I've worked on a family tree for the Arcuris who lived in Quebec and New York but I'm unable to see where the Toronto area–based Giacinto Arcuri, the subject of this thread, fits.

Giacinto Arcuri is likely not a first cousin to Bonanno member Domenico Arcuri of the Montreal area who died under bizarre circumstances in 2012 in Broward County, in Florida -- I'll refer to Domenico as Domenico Arcuri Sr. in this post. I haven't found a common ancestor yet. I've been able to rule out they had the same paternal grandfather. I don't have enough information to know whether they had the same maternal grandmother.

Giacinto's father's name was very likely Emanuele, and Domenico Arcuri Sr.'s father was definitely the Domenico Arcuri who was born 1900 and died 1933. The older Domenico Arcuri (1900-1933) was born to Giuseppe Arcuri and Giovanna Alfano -- Bronx-based Bonanno member Giuseppe Arcuri (September 30, 1921-June 11, 2001) was named after this paternal grandfather, Giuseppe. (Recall that there has been speculation that Domenico Arcuri Sr.'s wife, Carmela/Carmelina Alfano, is believed to be related to longtime Bonanno member and one-time consigliere Nicolino/Nicholas/Nick Alfano. I've wondered whether Arcuri Sr.'s wife might be a relative instead. There may also be other Alfanos in the family tree via Arcuri Sr.'s mother's ancestors.)

Arcuri Sr. of the Montreal area had a brother named Giacinto who died in 2003. This Giacinto in the Montreal area was born in 1923 and was married to Rosa Zambito, who was born around 1931 and died June 30, 2011. The mother of Arcuri Sr., the Giacinto in the Montreal area, and Giuseppe in the Bronx was Filippa Arcuri (1904-1990) -- it was from Filippa's parents (Giacinto Arcuri and Giovanna Guaragna) that B. and I were able to figure out that her brother was the Rosario Arcuri (born around 1896; died August 20, 1934) who was involved in the murder of Vito Rizzuto Sr. (father of Nick Rizzuto Sr., killed November 2010).

I'm going to share in my very next post in this thread, via Evernote, an image of a record I found through Ancestry. I originally had planned to create a new thread about the record -- I still can -- but I see no reason not to post in this thread imminently. Stay tuned.

[antimafia]

^^^^
As promised toward the end of my post just above:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s229/sh/ ... e59ebb7f29

I strongly suspect that the Rosario Arcuri whose name appears at the top of the record is the Rosario Arcuri who was killed in 1934 -- recall that Vito Rizzuto Sr. and Calogero Renda were also found to have been using fraudulent visas while living and working in the US.

I suspect, but am not sure, that the John Guaragna whose name appears in the entry for Rosario Arcuri's INS case is the father of Bonanno member Manny Guaragna "Manny from the Bronx" (November 2, 1932-July 29, 2008). John Guaragna (December 8, 1895-April 1, 1964) was, like Arcuri, born in Cattolica Eraclea, in Agrigento; I'm trying to determine whether the two of them might have even been related.

[antimafia]

Giacinto's father's name was very likely Emanuele, and Domenico Arcuri Sr.'s father was definitely the Domenico Arcuri who was born 1900 and died 1933. The older Domenico Arcuri (1900-1933)

Drawing attention to a typo I made twice in my second-to-last post: the Domenico Arcuri who was born 1900 died 1993, not 1933.

[B.]

Excellent -- thank you so much for the thorough reply. It slipped my mind that we had already discussed / found Rosario's apparent relation to the others.

Yep, Manny Guaragna's father Giovanni was from Cattolica Eraclea and born December 1895, like you said, while Manny Guaragna's mother was from the neighboring village Montallegro, where the Todaros of Buffalo were from. The Cattolicensi are so tight knit even today, it would be shocking if Giovanni Guaragna did not know his mafiosi paesani in the Bronx. If he was involved with Rosario Arcuri, that along with his son's future membership raises some questions about the elder Guaragna.

As I'm sure you remember, JD uncovered info that Vito Rizzuto and Calogero Renda were associated with Nick Alfano during their time in NYC. This isn't surprising given that their contemporary from Cattolica was Nick Buttafuoco who was later identified as an Alfano crew member. Buttafuoco was photographed warmly greeting Calogero Renda along with Nick Alfano decades later (the photos were posted here).

This is from that often-discussed January 1965 transcript between Magaddino and the two Bonanno representatives:



- First, I still suspect "Bill Loffa" (ph) is Nick Alfano. There is no smoking gun, but Paul Sciacca and Nick Alfano were part of a leadership committee who helped DiGregorio transition into power and this meeting between Magaddino, Sciacca, and "Loffa" (ph) was arranged so that the Bonanno representatives could receive counsel / advice on this process. Other FBI reports refer to Sciacca and Alfano being involved in that process. His age, scope of knowledge (NYC and Canada), and other circumstantial info also points me to Alfano. I know others disagree, but I've carefully analyzed this transcript many times over the years and keep coming back to this interpretation.

- While some names are horribly disfigured through phonetic interpretation, the name "Razzuto" seems fairly straightforward -- it is likely Rizzuto. But which Rizzuto?

^ There was Bonanno member Nino Rizzuto of Camporeale heritage and a relative of former boss Nicolo Schiro, but he doesn't appear to have been caught up in mafia politics at this time. Rizzuto's Camporealese paesano Frank LoBruzzo is brought up in the next sentence, but that is Magaddino's doing and doesn't come from "Loffa," and I don't know if there was a close relationship between LoBruzzo and Nino Rizzuto.

^ While "Loffa" refers to "Razzuto" alongside some of the main pro-Bonanno figures, this segment comes after a discussion about Montreal's role in Bonanno family politics. If nothing else it refers to members who haven't come on board with the new leadership. We know the Bill Bonanno group attended Vito Rizzuto's wedding in Canada the following year, so it seems the Rizzutos were friendly with the pro-Bonanno faction (as was most if not all of the Montreal decina) and the Bonanno faction made it a point to attend the Rizzuto wedding, so there could be more to this relationship.

^ The reference isn't to "Razzuto" himself, though. "Loffa" first says the "brother-in-law of Razzuto's brother", but is cut off, and finishes by again saying "Razzuto's brother." Given the stop-and-go nature of the conversation and Magaddino butting in, it's possible whatever "Loffa" was trying to say didn't come out correctly or was transcribed incorrectly. He could have been referring to Calogero Renda, but in this context it seems strange to reference Renda -- or Rizzuto for that matter -- alongside the top pro-Bonanno faction members, unless Renda was somehow important to the Canadian side of the Bonanno war.

^ If "Loffa" is Nick Alfano as I suspect, we at least know he was familiar with Rizzuto and Renda, which could lend itself to him bringing them up.The question would still be why he thought they were relevant in his answer to Magaddino's question. Even if Rizzuto and Renda were Bonanno sympathizers, they would seem to be odd company in this context -- unless we consider there was more to Bill Bonanno and company's attendance at the 1966 Rizzuto wedding, perhaps something of a political nature.

[antimafia]

Enio Mora had ‘his hand into so many things.’ So what was it that got him killed?

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2022/0 ... illed.html

Peter Edwards wrote earlier on Saturday about the cold case of Buffalo Family soldier Enio Mora, but I’m posting here a link to the article because I’ve never been able to reconcile two events: 1. Arcuri testifying in 2002 at his trial for Mora’s September 1996 murder that he’d been living in Canada since the early 1940s, and 2. Arcuri being outed as one of three killers involved in a shocking murder in his and his parents’ Sicilian hometown in 1955.

Arcuri needing an interpreter during the trial in Ontario also doesn’t make sense if he truly did arrive in Canada at age 12, which works out to 60 years of living in this country. When Edwards wrote about the trial contemporaneously, he wrote that Arcuri had lived in Canada for four decades.

From the article:

Arcuri, a retired fish salesman and paver, was a frail-looking five-foot-five man, who limped to the witness stand. He testified through a Sicilian-language interpreter, even though he has lived in Canada since 1942.

[Antiliar]

Excellent -- thank you so much for the thorough reply. It slipped my mind that we had already discussed / found Rosario's apparent relation to the others.

Yep, Manny Guaragna's father Giovanni was from Cattolica Eraclea and born December 1895, like you said, while Manny Guaragna's mother was from the neighboring village Montallegro, where the Todaros of Buffalo were from. The Cattolicensi are so tight knit even today, it would be shocking if Giovanni Guaragna did not know his mafiosi paesani in the Bronx. If he was involved with Rosario Arcuri, that along with his son's future membership raises some questions about the elder Guaragna.

As I'm sure you remember, JD uncovered info that Vito Rizzuto and Calogero Renda were associated with Nick Alfano during their time in NYC. This isn't surprising given that their contemporary from Cattolica was Nick Buttafuoco who was later identified as an Alfano crew member. Buttafuoco was photographed warmly greeting Calogero Renda along with Nick Alfano decades later (the photos were posted here).

This is from that often-discussed January 1965 transcript between Magaddino and the two Bonanno representatives:



- First, I still suspect "Bill Loffa" (ph) is Nick Alfano. There is no smoking gun, but Paul Sciacca and Nick Alfano were part of a leadership committee who helped DiGregorio transition into power and this meeting between Magaddino, Sciacca, and "Loffa" (ph) was arranged so that the Bonanno representatives could receive counsel / advice on this process. Other FBI reports refer to Sciacca and Alfano being involved in that process. His age, scope of knowledge (NYC and Canada), and other circumstantial info also points me to Alfano. I know others disagree, but I've carefully analyzed this transcript many times over the years and keep coming back to this interpretation.

- While some names are horribly disfigured through phonetic interpretation, the name "Razzuto" seems fairly straightforward -- it is likely Rizzuto. But which Rizzuto?

^ There was Bonanno member Nino Rizzuto of Camporeale heritage and a relative of former boss Nicolo Schiro, but he doesn't appear to have been caught up in mafia politics at this time. Rizzuto's Camporealese paesano Frank LoBruzzo is brought up in the next sentence, but that is Magaddino's doing and doesn't come from "Loffa," and I don't know if there was a close relationship between LoBruzzo and Nino Rizzuto.

^ While "Loffa" refers to "Razzuto" alongside some of the main pro-Bonanno figures, this segment comes after a discussion about Montreal's role in Bonanno family politics. If nothing else it refers to members who haven't come on board with the new leadership. We know the Bill Bonanno group attended Vito Rizzuto's wedding in Canada the following year, so it seems the Rizzutos were friendly with the pro-Bonanno faction (as was most if not all of the Montreal decina) and the Bonanno faction made it a point to attend the Rizzuto wedding, so there could be more to this relationship.

^ The reference isn't to "Razzuto" himself, though. "Loffa" first says the "brother-in-law of Razzuto's brother", but is cut off, and finishes by again saying "Razzuto's brother." Given the stop-and-go nature of the conversation and Magaddino butting in, it's possible whatever "Loffa" was trying to say didn't come out correctly or was transcribed incorrectly. He could have been referring to Calogero Renda, but in this context it seems strange to reference Renda -- or Rizzuto for that matter -- alongside the top pro-Bonanno faction members, unless Renda was somehow important to the Canadian side of the Bonanno war.

^ If "Loffa" is Nick Alfano as I suspect, we at least know he was familiar with Rizzuto and Renda, which could lend itself to him bringing them up.The question would still be why he thought they were relevant in his answer to Magaddino's question. Even if Rizzuto and Renda were Bonanno sympathizers, they would seem to be odd company in this context -- unless we consider there was more to Bill Bonanno and company's attendance at the 1966 Rizzuto wedding, perhaps something of a political nature.

Might be worth getting Nick Alfano's FBI file to see what aliases he used.

[antimafia]

Thanks for the additional info. I was reading this story recently in Mafia Inc (better late than never ...) and I was wondering if it was the same Giacinto Arcuri, following the conversation we had a few weeks ago on the different Arcuris from Cattolica Eraclea.

The suspect in the murder of Giuseppe Spagnolo is therefore an Arcuri who is not in Canada?

[snip]

From reading Mafia inc., you know there were people who were convinced that Cattolica Eraclea capomafia Nino Manno was behind Spagnolo's murder and that the three shooters -- Arcuri, Salvo, and Cammalleri -- were merely acting on Manno's orders. (2010, French edition, p. 31) The three shooters named on that Evernote item to which I linked have at least one thing in common: Cammalleris in their family tree.

Manno's wife, Giuseppa, was a Cammalleri; shooter Leonardo was her brother. But suspect Rosario Gurreri, who had been asked by the other three to participate in the murder but ended up only loaning a mule to Arcuri, didn't have any Cammalleris in his family tree. (You gotta love how a mule was considered a mafioso's getaway vehicle in Sicily in 1955.)

[snip]

It took me more than seven years to make the discovery I made today, as I didn't realize that Calogero Renda (father of Paolo Renda, who was kidnapped in May 2010) had another sister besides Maria Renda. Maria's first husband was Francesco Milioto, and her second husband was Vito Rizzuto Sr. (i.e., father of Nick Rizzuto Sr., who was murdered in Nov. 2010; also the grandfather of Vito, who died in Dec. 2013).

See the four screenshots below. Turns out that Rosario Gurreri's mother, Anna Renda, is Calogero's sister. For ratting out the three individuals who had greater involvement in the murder of Giuseppe Spagnolo in Cattolica Eraclea in 1955, Gurreri was hacked to death in Montreal in 1972 by, presumably, Vito Rizzuto's father-in-law, i.e., Leonardo Cammalleri, and Leonardo Salvo.

I encourage posters to save items and tidbits found online, even if what you save, for the moment, doesn't produce any leads. Today, I wouldn't be able to capture again two of the screenshots I captured years ago.

[B.]

Great work.

[motorfab]

So Gurreri was Calogero Renda's nephew. Great reasearch here, thanks !

[antimafia]

^^^^
Correct. Also a first cousin to Paolo Renda, who might have also met a grisly death.