jimmyb wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 4:05 pm
Here are a few more details about Stefano Leale. I mentioned him in my first post for this thread. He was significant Mafioso from Alcamo. He was gunned down in 1959, Palermo. I have in my notes that Nino Buccellato was one of the suspected shooters.
There's some good info on the murder in Panteleone's book: "He was killed right in the center of town, in the Via Torino, one of the beautiful, wide running streets running between Via Maqueda and Via Roma. His killers traveled to the spot on three old bicycles, one of which was provided with a baker's pannier in which firearms were hidden."
Two saw-offed shotguns and numerous shells were discarded at the scene. Apparently he survived some prior assassination attempts. Leale was protected by Rimi and on good terms with the Grecos, but apparently that came to end. I'll keep digging to figure out what happened.
Jimmy,
Have you ever come across the name Tony Leale in your research?
His aliases when he was based in Toronto, Canada — and presumably when he travelled throughout Ontario (maybe in Western New York too if he travelled there?) — were Leala, Cici, Frank Cici, and Antonio Barboni. This Leale was murdered June 4, 1922 on a road near what was then known as the Oakville Golf Course in Oakville, Ontario (25 mi. from Toronto).
Writing about Leale, James Dubro and Robin Rowland indicate in their book about the Calabrian-Canadian independent bootlegger Rocco Perri that Leale was “originally from Alcamo, Sicily, near Castellamare [sic].” Next sentence of the same paragraph: “Leale was later reported to be a ‘blood relative’ of the Scaroni family and it was known that he had worked for the Scaronis under the name of ‘Cici.’ ” (
King of the Mob, pp. 95, 98n)
I would say that “Sciarrone” is likely the correct spelling of the surname of a number of Calabrians, related by blood, who were involved in a not-so-cut-and-dried Calabrian–Sicilian crime war in Ontario at the time. Canadian mob researcher Jerry Prager traces the ancestry of the Sciarrones (he also writes “Sciarronis” occasionally) as being from San Giorgio Morgeto, a Calabrian mafia stronghold in Reggio from where many of the inhabitants of Guelph, Ontario descend. As an aside, Guelph was considered the territory of the Zerilli Family of Detroit — at least per deceased poster †Pierre de Champlain in one of his books covering the 1970s.
I haven’t checked for myself the ancestry of this Leale and the Sciarrones yet. I’m almost certain Dubro and Rowland write what the newspapers reported — Prager likely did too, but he would have dug into the Sciarrones’ ancestry, as he’s an expert about the San Giorgio Morgeto townspeople who immigrated to Guelph.
