I came across these two articles while researching some things with ChrisChristie this morning.
Human trafficking in Tampa was big business for organized crime in the 1920s, so the racket itself doesn't surprise me. Italian and Cuban gangsters in Ybor City were engaged in smuggling. But here is a connection between the Genna Brothers in Chicago and Joe Mistretta, a made guy in Tampa. I need to do some more digging and also go through some Coast Guard files from the 1920s I have about immigrant smuggling in Tampa.
This is from the Chicago Tribune, June 16, 1924 on page 6. Notice that it says the Gennas were paying $500, not $100. Don't know which price is accurate. It also says they were importing aliens from Southern Italy and Sicily. So were they bringing Calabrians over too? I wonder if the immigration investigation documents still exist. Regarding Azzarello, despite one article saying he was 35 (born 1889/1890), he might be a match for one born in Caccamo in 1884.
CT 1925Jun16 p6 Gennas importing aliens from Italy - Azzarello.jpg
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Great info here. One wonders also if Merlo had any connections in Tampa, given that he was Agrigentino.
I’ve wondered if the letter from 1925 recovered from Genna affiliate Antonino “Il Cavaliero” Spano from a “DiStefano” in Havana (“Your unjust silence unable to know what to do in front of authority cause of debit hotel waiting and anxious remittance do nor quick be kindly though to reconnoiter telegraph over to resign bad result for destiny.") indicated a potential connection in Florida as well.
"Hey, hey, hey — this is America, baby! Survival of the fittest.”
Just spit balling a possibility, there was an Andrea DiStefano who was a bondsman who lived in Tampa. When I searched the Tampa papers he was the only one who stood out. He immigrated from Alessandria della Rocca to Ybor City in 1907.
