What was the Combaneesh?

[Angelo Santino]

There was also a Dominick Musolino killed in Buffalo in 1912 and Francesco Rangatore from Trabia was a witness, a likely relative of future Buffalo member Sam Rangatore who was originally from the Trabia colony in Johnstown. So these Trabia / Calabria circles keep overlapping.

Yes. Given these intersections between Calabresi and Trabbiesi in PA and Western NY, we should reconsider also the “Society of the Banana and Faithful Friends” in OH. This group would seem to be opaque and confusing — what looks like a Camorra/“Black Hand” Society led by and composed of Sicilians, mainly from the mafia hotbed area around Trabìa and Tèrmini Imerese (as you’ve discussed before, the Limas themselves had a mafia lineage going back to Trabìa). As a reminder, an LE raid executed in 1909, investigating a ring of “black hand” extortionists, on the Limas’ home in Marion, OH, in 1909, found a book of rules, like a constitution, similar or identical to those recovered from Camorristi in both Italy and the US, secreted in a safe and including pages denoting the membership and ranks of the “Society of the Banana”. This book specified punishments for infractions including death and wounding by knife, again like the Camorra, and established protocol for meetings and interactions with other branches of the Society. Interestingly, one of these rules specified that a member who travelled to an area under the jurisdiction of another branch must inform the heads of the “local” of that area of his trip and how long he would be staying (on pain of a knife attack if he failed to do so, naturally). This of course immediately brings to mind the “locali” of the ‘Ndrangheta.

Investigation by LE and the USPS reported that the Limas and their fellow Banana Buddies, while based in Central OH and Cincinnati, had confederates or counterparts in Western PA, Western NY, Chicago, and Chicago Heights, some of which were used to mail their “Black Hand” letters (the message to the extortion target by having multiple letters mailed from different cities being, essentially, “we are legion, we are everywhere all at once, you have no choice but to pay as you cannot fight or escape us”).

Now that we’ve seen that Sicilians were documented as being inducted into the Camorra in 19th century Italy, that Camorristi seem to have been operating perhaps even in Palermo as late as 1915 (we at least have an attestation from an American LE investigation claiming that they indeed were), and that they operated in Eastern Sicilian cities such as Messina and Catania into the 20th century, the Banana Boys can be evaluated in a new light (rather than being some weird aberration that seemed to make no sense). While none of the men arrested and put on trial as members of the Banana Society in 1909-1910 were mainlanders, we don’t know who their contacts in these other areas outside of OH were. We know that they had ties to PA and Western NY, where we have seen Trabbiesi connected to Calabresi. Further, among their number in OH were several Messinesi, hailing from a province of Sicily with a documented Camorra presence.

This stands out because the Trabbiesi, unlike the Messinese, have a long documentation, as do the Limas, with Mafia. We have ample evidence of cammoristi becoming mafiosi but this, mafiosi going camorristi is the first and relatively few examples we have. Eric found an example from 1970 but these are the only two I can think of. Also the documents the Bananas were found with are exactly the same, verbatim, as those found in Sewickley on people from Gizzeria.

This made no sense to me and I was scratching my head, but the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We know there was Camorra in Messina and we have a source stating it was in Palermo. Who is the say it wasn't in other Sicilian cities? And then there's the other aspect- the Calabrians dominated PA, WV and large portions of OH and the Sicilians were not dominant in numbers so maybe that factored in. But again, if these were mafiosi that went camorra, it's one of the few examples in history.

[motorfab]

Speaking of the Pennsylvania/Ontario/Buffalo area, in 1918 an individual named Giuseppe Mammona (sometime spelled Mammone) was involved in an attempted murder in Lackawanna, a town located south of Buffalo not far from Pennsylvania and the Canadian border (see here details here viewtopic.php?t=7900&start=135)

The reason I mention this is that Mammona would eventually move to Australia in 1926 after his prison sentence and would be involved in the murder of Domenico Belle in Sydney in 1930.

While searching Belle's home, the police will find a manuscript written in the Calabrian dialect which will turn out to be a manual for the initiation rite into the Onorata Società/Camorra. The document is available in the book Evil Life and there is a clear mention of the Camorra in it.

I think the geographic connection between these places where the Camorra/Picciotteria was established is well known is interesting.

[Angelo Santino]

Speaking of the Pennsylvania/Ontario/Buffalo area, in 1918 an individual named Giuseppe Mammona (sometime spelled Mammone) was involved in an attempted murder in Lackawanna, a town located south of Buffalo not far from Pennsylvania and the Canadian border (see here details here viewtopic.php?t=7900&start=135)

The reason I mention this is that Mammona would eventually move to Australia in 1926 after his prison sentence and would be involved in the murder of Domenico Belle in Sydney in 1930.

While searching Belle's home, the police will find a manuscript written in the Calabrian dialect which will turn out to be a manual for the initiation rite into the Onorata Società/Camorra. The document is available in the book Evil Life and there is a clear mention of the Camorra in it.

I think the geographic connection between these places where the Camorra/Picciotteria was established is well known is interesting.

Australia is another place where the camorra was active but sadly I just don't have the resources to look up the early stuff. Most people place its formation in 1930 but that seems rather late to me. It was in the US and Canada by the 1890s and Buenos Aires it was documented in 1910s but likely goes back as well.

Canada is also interesting. I lack the resources and time to look into our northern neighbor and their laws don't help matters because they'll only identify people after they're convicted. But there was camorra and mafia in Canada in the 1890's that was connected to camorra and mafia in America. We jump to the 1970s, the ndrangheta rank/dote/grade of santista was formed with the leader of Toronto and about 3 dozen bosses in Reggio. So whatever existed in 1890s Toronto on York Street remained linked, as did Australia, to Reggio and they maintained this international link for more than a century.

Sidenote: I dated the sister of the sister who dated an Anastasio (won't give his first name, an Albert Anastasia descendant who lives in FL) and he would take her on trips to Australia where he had relatives and his family in America remained in contact with relatives in Australia three generations after migration. I'm not implying there was a camorra connection (there wasn't) but the camorra spreads like the mafia through chain migration. These Calabrian families (lower case f) stay in contact even after 3 generations. Just ask JCB. You throw the society (capital S) into that and that may explain why Canada and Australia got with the system after Catanzaro and north up didn't. They all evolved into 'ndrangheta while camorra groups north of cosenza did not.

[PolackTony]

Australia is another place where the camorra was active but sadly I just don't have the resources to look up the early stuff. Most people place its formation in 1930 but that seems rather late to me. It was in the US and Canada by the 1890s and Buenos Aires it was documented in 1910s but likely goes back as well.

From what I understand, Calabrians (as well as Sicilians) didn’t begin to arrive in significant numbers to Australia until the 1920s, following increasing immigration restrictions in the US in that period. Prior to this, Australia’s Italian population was, by all accounts that I’ve seen, very strongly Northern in origin. So it would make sense that around 1930, a few years after Calabrian immigration to Australia began in earnest, that we would see evidence that the Onorata Società was active there.

Speaking of the Pennsylvania/Ontario/Buffalo area, in 1918 an individual named Giuseppe Mammona (sometime spelled Mammone) was involved in an attempted murder in Lackawanna, a town located south of Buffalo not far from Pennsylvania and the Canadian border (see here details here viewtopic.php?t=7900&start=135)

The reason I mention this is that Mammona would eventually move to Australia in 1926 after his prison sentence and would be involved in the murder of Domenico Belle in Sydney in 1930.

While searching Belle's home, the police will find a manuscript written in the Calabrian dialect which will turn out to be a manual for the initiation rite into the Onorata Società/Camorra. The document is available in the book Evil Life and there is a clear mention of the Camorra in it.

I think the geographic connection between these places where the Camorra/Picciotteria was established is well known is interesting.

Thanks for the reminder on Mammona. An interesting story in its own right, given the connection between Buffalo and Australia, but also because of the document that you mention here. I’m posting the English translation of it as published in an appendix of the book “Evil Life: The True Story of the Calabrian Mafia in Australia” (per the authors, the document was seized from the home of an associate of Mammona and Belle outside of Sydney in 1930). It is clear that it is a text describing the initiation to the dote of Camorrista.

Based on the notes at the end, it would seem that investigators translated “sgarro” as “loot”, which appears several time in the text (I’d like to see the original in Calabrisi, but it makes sense for example that the phrase “loot and blood Camorrista” was originally “Camorrista di Sgarro e Sangue”). Note in general the similarity to Masonic rituals. Note also the reference to “Three Knights”, though the names given here are different than the typical names of Osso, Mastrosso, and Carcagnosso. In relation to the latter, note the invocation of Saint Michael the Archangel, a patron of the ‘Ndrangheta (the mythic founder of the Calabrian branch of the Onorata Società being the Spanish knight Carcagnosso, stated in ‘Ndrangheta legend to have been a devotee of San Michele Arcangelo). Lastly, note the response to the question “Where does one take the Camorra?” (presumably, “take” here meant “receive”). The initiate responds that the Camorra is taken on Favignana (an island off the coast of Trapani that housed a notorious prison in yesteryear), where the Camorra is “covered in irons and chains”. I read this as a reference to the Camorra’s origin in the prison system. We can compare this to an oath attested by affiliates of the “Società di Malavita” in Bari in 1891, stating that Camorrista is one who has “one foot in the grave and the other wrapped in chains” (ie, the Camorrista is a Bad Guy who walks between death and prison).

[JoelTurner]

This is something you could help with, but since there was at least one Camorra group active in Newark it opens the possibility that the Newark Family brought some in. Luigi Russo who was murdered with Monaco may have been from Maddaloni di Caserta. Not aware of other possible mainlanders with them but most of the research on Newark members has come through relation and shared Sicilian hometowns and it's hard to find leads on members outside of that.

The first name that comes to mind is Aniello "O'Maddalonese" Santagata. As his nickname indicates, he was also from Maddaloni, Caserta, Campania

He lived in the Newark area from ~1921-28, living in the First Ward at 25 Stone St, Newark, NJ. He then lived in NYC till ~1952 when he married Grace Carbone and moved to her family home in Kearny (1 Kearny Ave, Kearny, NJ).

Her father, Jerry Carbone, was a barber and criminal both "professions" also shared by Santagata. Though he passed away at some point in the 1920s, he was a noted bootlegger with arrests for liquor in Springfield, MA and Stroudsberg, PA. His barbershop was at 23 4th St, Harrison, NJ which was roughly a 25-minute walk from Santagata's house. They could have credibly worked together.

Her sister, Marian Carbone, was married to Albert Barrasso. He's another confusing figure, it later came out that he was a Colombo member who was transferred/loaned out to the DeCavalcantes. He told the authorities that he was not a Sicilian, his family's exact hometown is unclear but was likely Casola, Caserta, Campania. This would make him pretty unique among the NJ Colombo crew as they were largely Sicilian. The well known figures from that group like Misuraca (Giardinello), Lombardino (Gibellina) or Cammarata (Villabate) and even the more obscure ones like Angelo Speciale (Montelepre) or Salvatore Cammarata (Alimena) all fit this.

----------------------

Other than Barrasso, neither Santagata nor Carbone were ever confirmed as members. The latter was totally unknown while the former's only brush with fame was getting pinched for narcotics with Big Sam Accardi and the Campisi bros.

I'm not going to jump and say that any of these people were members of the Camorra but it's a possibility. They didn't really fit the old Newark Family's paradigm either in hometown or in their geography.

[PolackTony]

This is something you could help with, but since there was at least one Camorra group active in Newark it opens the possibility that the Newark Family brought some in. Luigi Russo who was murdered with Monaco may have been from Maddaloni di Caserta. Not aware of other possible mainlanders with them but most of the research on Newark members has come through relation and shared Sicilian hometowns and it's hard to find leads on members outside of that.

I'm not going to jump and say that any of these people were members of the Camorra but it's a possibility. They didn't really fit the old Newark Family's paradigm either in hometown or in their geography.

While we don’t know for a fact that Santagata, Carbone, or Barasso were affiliated with the Camorra, there is good reason to be open to the possibility that they very well may have been. It’s similar to the Sicilians, where even if we don’t know that a given guy had a mafia lineage in his background, we think it’s significant to analyze him with respect to hometown/provincial dynamics, given the ways that many Sicilians came from towns that were mafia hotbeds and that mafia dynamics were interlaced with broader paesani dynamics in the process of immigration and settlement/community-building in the US.

When making sense of Campanian paesani networks, it’s important to underscore that Campania’s provincial borders have changed since most of the people we’re discussing here arrived in the US. Modern Caserta is much smaller than the historical Caserta province, which was called Terra di Lavoro and was an absolute hotbed of Camorra activity in the late 19th and early 20th century (the districts that formerly composed Terra di Lavoro have also remained hotbeds of the modern Camorra, providing critical bases of activity and recruitment for both of the Camorra “revivalist” projects of the 1970s-80s, Raffaele Cutolo’s Nuova Camorra Organizata and the rival Cosa Nostra-allied Nuova Fratellanza Napolitana [“Nuova Famiglia”]). Like how the Fascist regime split Enna province from Caltanissetta in the late 1920s, the Fascists broke up Terra di Lavoro in the same period. While it’s well-known that the Fascists launched a “war” against the Sicilian mafia in the 1920s, they also launched a comparable “war” in that decade against the Camorra in Terra di Lavoro, as the province was reportedly overrun with Camorra Societies operating rackets such as loansharking, extortion, hijacking, and fencing of stolen livestock and goods with networks running across Campania and Puglia. Most concerning for the Fascist regime was that the Camorra in Terra di Lavoro was alleged to have been heavily involved in local party politics in the province, which was seen as a serious obstacle to Fascist control and administration of Campania, leading to a major offensive on the criminal associations and the splintering of the province.

I’ve written about this before in one of the Chicago threads, jokingly referring to Terra di Lavoro as akin to the lost Atlantis of the Camorra. But many LCN affiliates, particularly with the Chicago and Genovese Families, had origins in Terra di Lavoro, which wouldn’t be obvious given that today these towns are in separate provinces (or even regions, as part of Terra di Lavoro was reassigned to Lazio and Molise) But until the late 1920s, towns like Maddaloni, Aversa/Casal di Principe, Casola, Nola, Acerra, Scisciano, Roccarainola, Palma Campania, Ottaviano, among others, were all in the same province.

Now, while the men you mention here don’t fit the strongly Sicilian Newark Family networks or even the heavily Avellinese 1st Ward mainlander networks, it’s worth noting that Boiardo was from Marigliano, which, like Maddaloni and Casola, was Terra di Lavoro, and both sections (the area around the city of Caserta for the latter two and the old Nola district for the former) were in the middle of areas of heavy Camorra activity. Hence, there is a strong possibility that people from these areas could have a Camorra background, or at the least would be ensconced within Camorra-linked community/paesani networks in the US.

[B.]

Ah yes, Santagata. He is one I looked into some years back for some of the same reasons you mentioned. Since he was likely a paesan of Luigi Russo they probably knew one another and it opens the possibility of more Castertani involved with these circles.

I wasn't aware of his father-in-law Carbone. Even though he was dead, that two of his daughters married mainland mafiosi (or suspected in Santagata's case) isn't nothing. Neither are his ties to Springfield MA and PA, both areas relevant to this thread. Where was Carbone from?

Barrasso joining the Colombos may have been a byproduct of the Newark Family if he was a member given the Colombos look to have inherited one of the largest groups of ex-Newark members. Maybe he went with the tide.

[B.]

Posted this years ago and I haven't seen the original transcript but it's a summary of Stefano Magaddino and Domenico Romeo (obscure but highly-respected Buffalo member from Siderno) discussing interactions with the Calabrian Camorra / 'ndrangheta:





- We don't have the original dialogue to see how it was phrased, but when Magaddino says Sam Rangatore was contacted by "Tony Christi" from "Garmottisi" he is likely saying this man contacted him on behalf of the Camorristi.

- Rangatore was asked to vouch for Charlie Longo who wanted to become a "compare". It's likely the true phrase was "Camorrista" or some variation and this becomes more evident as the file continues. Longo is said to be from "San Giovanni Annato", which is actually San Giorgio Morgeto in Reggio Calabria where the Longos of Ontario were from.

- Magaddino explains that this request is a breach of protocol as Buffalo cannot vouch for someone becoming a "compare" (Camorrista), the approval instead having to come from San Giorgio Morgeto. Magaddino states it is not Buffalo who is responsible but rather the "local people" who must approve the induction of a "compare".

- The Longos discussed here had a long history in the Ontario underworld and older generations were no doubt Camorristi. Given Magaddino is very familiar with them they obviously interacted with Buffalo and for all we know some of them could have held dual membership with Buffalo given later Camorristi / 'ndranghetisti like Giacomo Luppino did.

- Reference to the Longos in California would include LA Family member Dominick Longo who originally started out around the Buffalo Family and was related to these ones. Romeo says Charlie Longo is likely not one of the Longos in California as "that is where their papers are fixed up", a possible reference to them being "with" a California Family and therefore not soliciting Buffalo to approve the induction of a Camorrista in Canada.

- Magaddino says they checked "all societies" to locate Longo, a likely reference to the Camorra societies in the region. Though Magaddino makes it clear Buffalo has no business approving the induction of a Camorrista, he still obviously made effort to assist with the matter and the fact that Camorristi consulted Buffalo before inducting someone speaks volumes.

- I had forgotten it was Sam Rangatore who the Camorra contacted about this matter. As I mentioned earlier, a likely relative named Francesco Rangatore witnessed the murder of a Calabrian with the noteworthy surname Musolino in 1912 and there is a long history of Trabia surfacing in connection with Camorristi, Sam Rangatore being born in Johnstown, PA, where the Calabrian Camorra and Cosa Nostra once closely overlapped.

--

Note that on other tapes Magaddino refers to the Calabrians in Canada as "Camorristi". Romeo, who no doubt has his own history with the Camorra / 'ndrangheta, seems to agree with the language. I'd be curious what the Canadians were actually calling their organization at this stage though either way the rank of Camorrista would have been in formal use.

As antimafia found, San Giorgo Morgeto was involved with the Ontario Camorra going back to at least the early 1910s and terms like Piccioteria, Camorra, Mafia, and Black Hand were in use as well as the rank of Camorrista.

[B.]

I'm curious about the 116th Street crew's connections.

Mike Coppola was Salernitan but I haven't had seen anything linking him to Camorristi. That crew's deeper history is obviously Sicilian with Ciro Terranova but even some of the later leaders like Benny Lombardo and Tony Salerno were Sicilian (Salerno was Messinese though) and the crew seems to have been a mix of backgrounds.

The Morello-Terranovas were linked to mainlanders though. An interesting one was Diamond Joe Viserti, a Neapolitan who was likely a Camorrista. He was killed by Annibale Stilo from the Gambino-linked Brooklyn Calabrian faction and Stilo was in turn believed to have been killed by Johnny Roselli when he fled to Boston.

[antimafia]

Good stuff Antimafia.

The Joe Musolino of Canada was a cousin of the infamous one back in Santo Stefano di Aspromonte, is that right?

I suspect Stefano Zoccoli of Pittsburgh (and later head of the
San Jose consiglio) was a relative of the infamous one in Calabria as he was from Santo Stefano, his mother was a Musolino, and Giuseppe Musolino was involved with an older man also named Stefano Zoccoli.

Zoccoli's daughter married Pete Milano and an informant linked Zoccoli, his compare Tripodi in Steubenville, and the Milanos to Rocco Pellegrino in Westchester.

Good stuff Antimafia.

The Joe Musolino of Canada was a cousin of the infamous one back in Santo Stefano di Aspromonte, is that right?

I suspect Stefano Zoccoli of Pittsburgh (and later head of the
San Jose consiglio) was a relative of the infamous one in Calabria as he was from Santo Stefano, his mother was a Musolino, and Giuseppe Musolino was involved with an older man also named Stefano Zoccoli.

Yes, and there was another Joe Musolino in Cleveland who was connected to the Milanos and Frank Turone. He served time in Leavensworth with Sam Lima (Banana Society). Lima got out out first and moved to SF. Musolino remained in contact with him and upon getting out moved to SF to the same address.

Screenshot 2024-02-16 162200.png

The Camorra was in Toronto on York St by the 1890s. When the santista grade was formed, Toronto was a part of it. Indicating that Canada Calabrians have a 100+ year relationship with Reggio. But it's confusing given their relations with the American LCN, but again, given how many societies upon societies the honored society had joining the mafia would be just another ring on the ladder to climb.

Nicaso and Edwards date the Toronto inhabitant Joe Musolino fleeing to New York State and then York Street in Toronto after May 13, 1901, when there were massive raids and arrests of his cousin Giuseppe's group in Santo Stefano d'Aspromonte that day and the previous day. (Deadly silence, p. 200)

The book's authors have an interesting footnote in ch. 1, which deals with the murder of Francesco Sciarrone by Frank Griro, the trial, and the aftermath. At the bottom of p. 25:

[*]Where Joe Musolino of Toronto went after the case is a mystery, but there's a curious note in a wiretapped conversation by old 'Ndrangheta wise man Giacomo Luppino of Hamilton, Ontario, that was picked up by police when they bugged Luppino's home on October 25, 1967. Luppino talks of an incident in Vibò Valentia in Catanzaro province [ed.: This locating of VV in Catanzaro was true at the time of the book's publication, as VV didn't become its own provincia till January 1, 1966.], saying "This is what happened in 1933. Peppi Musolino's brother Tony Musolino, they shot at him and he started to sing that there were forming an 'association' so they arrested him, so as soon as he was out, his uncle was then a priest at Vibo. So he got him out of Santo Stefano and brought him over to Vibo, where he really saved him." Someone named Scarfo adds, "Now he is well off and has a good name."

[PolackTony]

I'm curious about the 116th Street crew's connections.

Mike Coppola was Salernitan but I haven't had seen anything linking him to Camorristi. That crew's deeper history is obviously Sicilian with Ciro Terranova but even some of the later leaders like Benny Lombardo and Tony Salerno were Sicilian (Salerno was Messinese though) and the crew seems to have been a mix of backgrounds.

The Morello-Terranovas were linked to mainlanders though. An interesting one was Diamond Joe Viserti, a Neapolitan who was likely a Camorrista. He was killed by Annibale Stilo from the Gambino-linked Brooklyn Calabrian faction and Stilo was in turn believed to have been killed by Johnny Roselli when he fled to Boston.

We don't know of any specific claims of ties between the Coppola crew and the Camorra in Harlem, so we are left with what we often do, trace out paesani networks with the assumption that these likely intersected to at least some degree with Camorra and Mafia dynamics.

Most sources will say that Giuseppe Viserti was from "Naples", but he was actually from the Camorra hotbed of Sarno, Salerno. Coppola's family was from the nearby town of Fisciano, at the edge of the Nocerino Sarnese area of Salerno province denoted by Italian authorities in the 1920s as one of the prime centers of Camorra activity in provincial Campania (many of the Campanian Camorristi or likely affiliates in the US were Provincials rather than Napolitani, and we know that this was a distinction in the Camorra as the Provincial Camorra in Campania was organized under its own jurisdiction separate from that of Napoli City). One can go through prior posts in other threads to see how important the Nocerina Sarnese was as a source area for Campanian recruits in NYC to the Genovese and Gambino Families, as immigrants from these towns clustered together in both Manhattan and Brooklyn (e.g., the area around 116th and First Ave had a very notable concentration of Salernitani, with almost entire blocks composed of relatives and paesani from these towns).

[PolackTony]

Good stuff Antimafia.

The Joe Musolino of Canada was a cousin of the infamous one back in Santo Stefano di Aspromonte, is that right?

I suspect Stefano Zoccoli of Pittsburgh (and later head of the
San Jose consiglio) was a relative of the infamous one in Calabria as he was from Santo Stefano, his mother was a Musolino, and Giuseppe Musolino was involved with an older man also named Stefano Zoccoli.

Zoccoli's daughter married Pete Milano and an informant linked Zoccoli, his compare Tripodi in Steubenville, and the Milanos to Rocco Pellegrino in Westchester.

Good stuff Antimafia.

The Joe Musolino of Canada was a cousin of the infamous one back in Santo Stefano di Aspromonte, is that right?

I suspect Stefano Zoccoli of Pittsburgh (and later head of the
San Jose consiglio) was a relative of the infamous one in Calabria as he was from Santo Stefano, his mother was a Musolino, and Giuseppe Musolino was involved with an older man also named Stefano Zoccoli.

Yes, and there was another Joe Musolino in Cleveland who was connected to the Milanos and Frank Turone. He served time in Leavensworth with Sam Lima (Banana Society). Lima got out out first and moved to SF. Musolino remained in contact with him and upon getting out moved to SF to the same address.

Screenshot 2024-02-16 162200.png

The Camorra was in Toronto on York St by the 1890s. When the santista grade was formed, Toronto was a part of it. Indicating that Canada Calabrians have a 100+ year relationship with Reggio. But it's confusing given their relations with the American LCN, but again, given how many societies upon societies the honored society had joining the mafia would be just another ring on the ladder to climb.

Nicaso and Edwards date the Toronto inhabitant Joe Musolino fleeing to New York State and then York Street in Toronto after May 13, 1901, when there were massive raids and arrests of his cousin Giuseppe's group in Santo Stefano d'Aspromonte that day and the previous day. (Deadly silence, p. 200)

The book's authors have an interesting footnote in ch. 1, which deals with the murder of Francesco Sciarrone by Frank Griro, the trial, and the aftermath. At the bottom of p. 25:

[*]Where Joe Musolino of Toronto went after the case is a mystery, but there's a curious note in a wiretapped conversation by old 'Ndrangheta wise man Giacomo Luppino of Hamilton, Ontario, that was picked up by police when they bugged Luppino's home on October 25, 1967. Luppino talks of an incident in Vibò Valentia in Catanzaro province [ed.: This locating of VV in Catanzaro was true at the time of the book's publication, as VV didn't become its own provincia till January 1, 1966.], saying "This is what happened in 1933. Peppi Musolino's brother Tony Musolino, they shot at him and he started to sing that there were forming an 'association' so they arrested him, so as soon as he was out, his uncle was then a priest at Vibo. So he got him out of Santo Stefano and brought him over to Vibo, where he really saved him." Someone named Scarfo adds, "Now he is well off and has a good name."

Great find, thanks for posting this.

[antimafia]

^^^^
You’re welcome, Tony.

[B.]

Didn't know that Vibo Valentina was in Catanzaro then. Thank you. Those changing boundaries are important with this as we've seen in other regions.

[PolackTony]

Didn't know that Vibo Valentina was in Catanzaro then. Thank you. Those changing boundaries are important with this as we've seen in other regions.

Yes, and important to be aware of this when doing genealogy or looking into historical case studies. Another thing to note is that the city of Vibo Valentia was called Monteleone di Calabria until 1928 (though as antimafia noted, it remained part of Catanzaro then and didn't become the capital of the new province of VV until 1966). Until the 1810s, there were historically only 2 provinces in Calabria: Calabria Ulteriore/Bassa (today's Reggio, Catanzaro, VV, and Crotone) and Calabria Citeriore/Alta (Cosenza province). This roughly corresponds to a cultural divide in Calabria, where the northern part of Cosenza traditionally speaks dialetti related to the Napolitano group (as in Basilicata), while from southern Cosenza down the dialetti are classed as related to the Sicilian group (on a continuum with the farther south being more similar to Sicilian, such that the dialetti of Messina and Reggio City being basically the same).

Also worth noting that the current province of Crotone was only split from Catanzaro in 1992.