Carey, Arthur (1866-1952) - New York PD

Born New York City, July 1866.
Died New York City, Dec. 13, 1952.

Arthur A. Carey was a second-generation police officer who served for almost forty years on the New York Police Department and led the department's Homicide Bureau for eighteen years.

He reportedly was born on Staten Island in July 1866 (a birth year of 1865 is sometimes seen) into the already large family of Henry and Elizabeth Carey. Henry, born about 1824, was an immigrant from Ireland; Elizabeth, born about 1830, was a native New Yorker. Arthur was raised in an Irish neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan.

Henry had died by the time of the 1880 federal census. With several children already off on their own, Elizabeth then was raising Arthur and three other siblings in an apartment on Christopher Street in Manhattan.

Arthur joined the police force on March 1, 1889. He learned his craft under Chief Inspector Thomas Byrnes and Captain George W. McClusky. He was made a detective in 1892.

He took a bride, Lucy, in 1895. They eventually had seven children together. The family lived at first at 124 West 115th Street in Manhattan, but subsequently moved north to the Bronx. They lived in a number of locations in that borough, including an apartment on Nelson Avenue near Boscobel, within the Highbridge neighborhood, and a private home at 2792 Bainbridge Avenue, just northwest of Fordham University and the New York Botanical Garden.

Around the turn-of-the-century, Arthur's police work focused almost exclusively on homicide cases. He participated in the investigation of the 1903 barrel murder case and in the related arrest of the dangerous Tomasso "the Ox" Petto.

Carey was promoted to lieutenant in 1906 and captain the following year. He assumed temporary leadership of homicide detectives in 1908. Carey was moved out to command a Brooklyn precinct between 1910 and 1914 but then returned to the Homicide Bureau.

As a "murder man," Carey was regularly called upon to investigate the most horrific of crimes. He was a leader in the investigation of the 1920 Wall Street terrorist bombing that claimed dozens of lives. In 1921, he worked on a case in which the upper half of a woman, who had been beaten and strangled to death, turned up in a sewer excavation at Long Island City. He also worked on a number of gangland murders, including the Barrel Murder, the 1921 killing of Joseph "Joe Pep" Viserti and the 1928 killing of Arnold Rothstein.

He reached the rank of deputy inspector in 1926. Late in 1928, Police Commissioner Grover A. Whalen forced him into retirement, as the centralized detective system was dismantled.

He briefly continued his work as a sleuth for the Westchester County district attorney. In this period, Arthur, his wife and three of their children, lived on Seminary Avenue in Yonkers.

Carey's autobiographical Memoirs of a Murder Man was released in 1930. The book focuses on Carey's detective work in homicide cases and features a chapter on the Morello Mafia's infamous 1903 Barrel Murder. (Read this chapter on our website.)

By 1935, Arthur and Lucy were in retirement, living a 321 Bedford Park Boulevard in the Bronx, quite close to their former Bainbridge Avenue home.

Carey died Dec. 13, 1952, at his Bronx residence. He was 86 years old. His two oldest sons, Donald and Arthur Jr., had followed him into the New York Police Department. They were serving as detectives at the time of his death.

Sources:

•  New York State Census of 1915.
•  New York State Census of 1925.
•  United States Census of 1870.
•  United States Census of 1880.
•  United States Census of 1900. 
•  United States Census of 1930.
•  United States Census of 1940.
•  Anderson, Isaac, "A murder man blows the gaff on crime," New York Times, July 6, 1930, p. Book Review 13.
•  Carey, Arthur A., with Howard McLellan, Memoirs of a Murder Man, Garden City NY: Doubelday, Doran and Company, 1930.
•  "Arthur Carey, 87, ex-inspector, dies," New York Times, Dec. 14, 1952, p. 90.
•  "Detectives say they hope to find driver of horse," New York Evening World, Sept. 27, 1920, p. 8.
•  "Half of slain woman's body found in pool," New York Tribune, Oct. 23, 1921, p. 8.
•  "'Joe Pep,' ruler of Little Italy in Harlem, slain," New York Tribune, Oct. 14, 1921, p. 1.

Petrosino, Joseph (1860-1909) - New York PD

Born Padula, Italy, Aug. 30, 1860.

Killed Palermo, Sicily, March 12, 1909.

Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino achieved great success in the fight against Italian and Sicilian organized criminal groups in the United States. When he attempted to take the fight to the Mafia's home island, he was assassinated.

On a visit to Palermo in western Sicily, officially to gather information on the identities of Mafiosi who might have fled to the U.S., Petrosino was shot through the body, in the throat and in the head while he stood beside a garden in the Piazza Marina on March 12, 1909. He was 48.

His visit to Sicily was supposed to have been a secret. But many sources agree that Police Commissioner Bingham released fairly specific information about the trip through the New York Herald and other newspapers before Petrosino landed in Europe. Mafiosi in the U.S. were able to mobilize their Old World fellows to act against the lieutenant.

Many believe Vito Cascio Ferro, a Mafia leader on both sides of the Atlantic, organized and/or participated in the assassination. (An often retold and probably untrue story has Cascio Ferro excusing himself from a dinner party thrown by a local government official to do the deed. Cascio Ferro promptly returned to dinner afterward.) It is also known that several mafiosi traveled to Sicily just before the attack on Petrosino.

Petrosino joined the New York City police department in 1883, despite failing to meet the department's height requirement. Capt. "Clubber" Williams was his mentor. He rose through the ranks, reaching the detective sergeant level in 1895 under then-police commissioner (and later U.S. President) Theodore Roosevelt.

Petrosino would be considered brutal by today's standards. He did not hesitate to use threats and force to extract information from street thugs. While his tactics would be frowned upon by many today, they were accepted at the time (forensic science was in its infancy) and highly effective. Petrosino was placed in charge of the Italian Squad, a group of Italian and Sicilian officers whose job was to check organized criminal activity in ethnic neighborhoods.
Petrosino's greatest successes came against transplanted Neapolitan criminals - those belonging to the Camorra. He was less fortunate in dealing with the Sicilian Mafiosi, but may have been on the verge of acquiring some very effective tools in the form of documentary evidence from Italian police agencies.

Among Petrosino's more noteworthy adventures were: saving Angelo Carbone from execution by extracting a murder confession from another man; deporting Camorra leaders Tony Strolle and Enrico Alfano; and identifying both the victim and the perpetrators of the infamous barrel murder in 1903 (though the ring leaders, including Ignazio Lupo, Vito Cascio Ferro and Giuseppe Morello, managed to escape prosecution).

Many of Petrosino's cases were chronicled in a 1914 series of newspaper articles by A.R. Parkhurst under the title, "Perils of Petrosino." His career was also the subject of a number of pulp fiction volumes in the U.S. and Italy.

Related links:

•  Informer (Jan. 2009): Martyr - Joseph Petrosino.
•  Article - Badges in Little Italy - Mafiahistory.us
•  Old 'Black Hand' lie finds a new teller (Writers of Wrongs - 25 Apr 2017)
•  108 years ago: Petrosino is slain (Writers of Wrongs - 12 Mar 2017)

Oldfield, Frank (1867-1916) - Postal Inspection

Born Ellicott City, Maryland, Jan. 1867.

Died Athens, Ohio, May 25, 1916.

John Frank Oldfield, who went by the name of "Frank," and his younger brother Clarence for a time held local government jobs in their native Howard County, Maryland. They were key men in the Republican Party of Ellicott City (at a time when political rallies often were indistinguishable from street gang clashes). Into the late-1890s, Frank Oldfield served as the sheriff of Howard County.

During the Administration of President William McKinley, Frank Oldfield joined the United States Postal Inspection Service, while Clarence Oldfield became an inspector for the Customs Service. Continued political activity momentarily cost Frank Oldfield his job in the fall of 1899. After his return to the Postal Inspection Service, Frank Oldfield became the most renowned member of what was at the time the highest ranking federal law enforcement agency.

Oldfield worked primarily in the Midwest, but he also had occasion to travel. His authority as a postal inspector gave him law enforcement powers throughout the U.S.

In the early 1900s, he assisted in the conviction of a former congressman for taking bribes related to the purchase of postage stamp dispensing machines. Oldfield also cracked down on several Ohio postmasters he found were taking money from the till and some postal patrons who were using the mails for gambling and pornography.

Oldfield mobilized local government agencies against a growing ring of Mafia black handers in Ohio known as the Society of the Banana. While many of the underworld group's illegal activities were not mail-related, the Society's practice of extorting money through mailed threats brought the case to Oldfield's desk. He succeeded in breaking up the ring, led by Salvatore Arrigo, Francesco Spadera and Salvatore Lima, by 1909.

During his investigation of the Society, Oldfield tracked down branches in Indiana, Illinois, New York, California and Oregon, and established links between the Arrigo-Spadera mob and the alleged assassins of both New Orleans' Police Chief David C. Hennessy and New York Detective Joseph Petrosino. In the summer of 1909, Oldfield arrested Charles Vicario at Bellefountaine, Ohio, charging him with being a fugitive and with having knowledge of the Petrosino assassin.

Oldfield and his family settled in the community of Athens, Ohio, about 75 miles southeast of Columbus. Oldfield spent his final years battling cancer. He died in Athens on May 25, 1916. A small news item in the newspaper of nearby Lancaster, Ohio, stated, "J.F. Oldfield, former postal inspector and famous as one of the shrewdest detectives in the federal service, died at his home here following a long illness from cancer. Oldfield gained national fame in the Black Hand cases in northern Ohio."

Ness, Eliott (1903-1957) - U.S. Treasury Dept.

Born Chicago, IL, April 19, 1903.

Died Coudersport, PA, May 16, 1957.

While Eliot Ness was not quite the one-man show depicted on television and radio and in the movies, he was a key player in the government's assault on Al Capone's Chicago crime empire.
Ness led a band of eight young men, titled the "Special Prohibition Unit" but remembered as "The Untouchables" for their refusal of enormous bribe offers. The group conducted a frontal assault against Capone's bootleg brewery operations while other government agencies picked away the crime lord's underbosses and allies and assembled the tax evasion case that would jail Capone in 1931.

Ness later led a municipal police force as Cleveland's Director of Public Safety in the late 1930s. In the job, he thoroughly modernized the city's police department while cracking down on corruption, violent labor activity, gambling and contraband alcohol. News headlines largely ignored his successes, however, and focused on the decapitation murder cases in the Kingsbury Run area that stymied Ness and on his anti-labor image. Ness saw additional bad press as the result of a drunk driving accident in 1942 and was forced to resign his post.

In 1947, former safety director Ness ran as a Republican for mayor of Cleveland. He lost the Nov. 4 election in a landslide to Democrat Thomas A. Burke, having sacrificed much of his personal wealth in the campaign.

Ness eventually left public service and became president of the Guaranty Paper Company and the North Bridge Industrial Corp. in Pennsylvania. He died at his home in Coudersport, PA, on May 16, 1957 (his remains reportedly were cremated), just before his autobiographical "The Untouchables" was published. The book, which exaggerated Ness's importance in the Capone fight and glossed over his failings, became enormously popular and spawned the myth of Eliot Ness.

Read:
The Untouchables by Eliot Ness with Oscar Fraley.

Hennessy, David (1857-1890) - New Orleans PD

Born New Orleans, LA, 1857.

Killed New Orleans, LA, Oct. 16, 1890.

Police Chief David C. Hennessy of New Orleans was ambushed by Mafia assassins on his way home from work late on the night of Oct. 15, 1890. Hennessy was less than a block from the house he shared with his widowed mother when shotgun blasts from across Girod Street knocked him to the ground. Two of his assailants then approached and fired into his midsection with high-caliber rifles. The chief was still able to stand and return fire with his revolver. The assassins fled. Hennessy stumbled around the next corner and collapsed. When fellow police officers reached him, Hennessy reportedly said he had been shot by "the dagoes."

The location where Chief Hennessy was gunned down by Mafia assassins.
The chief was returning home in the glow of electric streetlights on the
raised sidewalk to the right. Mafia gunmen hid in the shadow
of the long, sloping roof to the left.

While the Sicilian criminal society bore the whole blame for Hennessy's death the following morning, many others in the New Orleans community had motive for acting against Hennessy. Among these were the Provenzano clan, who, despite their friendly stance toward the chief, might never have forgiven him for his role in the capture and deportation of their infamous leader, Giuseppe Esposito, in 1881.

Many in the Democratic establishment also had reason to fear and despise the chief. In 1881, Hennessy killed Chief of Detectives Thomas Devereaux in a gunfight. Devereaux was well connected in the local Democratic party and was close friends with private investigator Dominick O'Malley (who was later known to be working for the Matranga Mafia organization). The corrupt old-line Democrats also might have feared the charismatic Hennessy because he was committed to the anti-immigrant, anti-political-machine reform platform of Mayor Shakespeare.

The Matranga organization was likely infuriated when Hennessy backed the rival Provenzanos in a court battle resulting from a Provenzano attack against Matranga men in the summer of 1890.

Finally, the chief apparently threatened to reveal some damaging information about affluent and influential Sicilian merchant Joseph Macheca (affiliated with the Matrangas) and his friends at the retrial of the Provenzanos late in 1890. Hennessy appears to have gained the information from Italian government sources.

Hennessy is credited with being the first law enforcement professional to identify the Mafia in America and attack it with some degree of success. He must also be viewed as law enforcement's first martyr in the fight against organized crime.

Related Links:

•  Book: Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia
•  Informer (Sept 2008): 1891 Lyncher Admits His Role
•  "Disturbance at trial of Hennessy assassins" (Writers of Wrongs - 02 Mar 2017)
•  "$5000 awarded to family of lynch victim" (Writers of Wrongs - 13 Jan 2017)

Fiaschetti, Michael (1881-1960) - New York PD

Born Morolo, Italy, Feb. 8, 1882.

Died Brooklyn, NY, July 29, 1960.

Detective Michael Fiaschetti might be forgotten but for a boastful 1928 autobiography entitled, "The Man They Couldn't Escape." (After a printing in England, it was published in the U.S. with the title "You Gotta Be Rough.") In the book, Fiaschetti describes his adventures as a member of and a commander of New York's Italian Squad.

A native of central Italy (about 50 miles east of Rome), Fiaschetti arrived in the U.S. about 1895. He and his family spent some time in the Boston area before moving to New York. Fiaschetti was naturalized an American citizen. He joined the New York Police Department in 1908 and was initially assigned to a beat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Fiaschetti quickly won appointment to serve under Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino on the NYPD Italian Squad. He worked with Petrosino for just half a year. The young detective clearly idolized the tough Petrosino, who was known for somewhat brutal tactics. In his autobiography, he noted that he acquired a preference for physical force and a collection of knowledgeable stool pigeons over the subtler deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes. He also scoffed at the code of omerta. Criminals on their deathbeds may not inform on the guy who shot them, Fiaschetti argued, but that's only because there's no way that could benefit them (and it could be dangerous for the loved ones they leave behind). But, if given a choice between being sent up the river and ratting on a criminal confederate, Fiaschetti said nearly every underworld character would sing.

Fiaschetti battled kidnappers, black handers and lottery racketeers during his career. While he was not directly involved, the death of the powerful Giosue Gallucci, racket king of Italian East Harlem, occurred during Fiaschetti's tenure.

The Italian Squad was gradually dismantled after Petrosino's 1909 assassination in Sicily. The squad was briefly resurrected under Fiaschetti's leadership years later. In 1920, the new squad chief traveled to Italy in disguise, duplicating the assignment that cost Petrosino his life. Fiaschetti's "old school" methods and tactlessness with political leaders resulted in the end of the Italian Squad in 1922.

Fiaschetti ran a private detective agency for some time and toured the country giving lectures on law enforcement. He returned briefly to public service when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York appointed him third deputy police commissioner in charge of city markets. That position was eliminated in 1938.

He died in the summer of 1960 at the Veterans' Administration Hospital in Brooklyn.

Related Links:

•  Article: The Good Killers by Thomas Hunt and Michael A. Tona - Mafiahistory.us
•  Informer (Jan 2009): Martyr - Joseph Petrosino and the NYPD Italian Squad.

Dimaio, Francis (1864-1954) - Pinkertons

Born Philadelphia, PA, March 4, 1864.

Died Delaware, 1954.

Pinkerton Detective Francis P. Dimaio performed critical roles in the resolution of a number of high-profile cases from 1890 through 1920. (The photo at right was taken during his retirement, when Wild West historian James D. Horan documented Dimaio's contributions to law enforcement in several books.)

Dimaio's most recognized role was as a member of the "Who are those guys?" band that pursued Wild Bunch leaders Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Dimaio's pursuit occurred in South America, and it appears unlikely that he was ever within practical reach of Butch and Sundance. The detective was in Argentina on another matter when word came that the two outlaws had also arrived in that country.

Dimaio mobilized local law enforcement and plastered Wanted posters everywhere. Butch and Sundance fled into the jungles as the rainy season arrived to prevent any pursuit. As conditions improved, word came out of Bolivia that the two outlaws had been shot to death.

But Dimaio's more significant efforts were against the Mafia in the United States. He went under cover, posing as an apprehended Sicilian counterfeiter, into the Orleans Parish Prison to learn the story behind the 1890 assassination of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy. Demaio succeeded in extracting useful information from one of the gunman. Terribly under weight and very ill from the conditions in the prison, Dimaio was removed from the prison as the case against the Hennessy assassins began. He needed more than a year by the ocean in Atlantic City, NJ, before he was again fit for assignment.

Later on, Dimaio contributed to the break up of a Mafia blackmailing operation in the western Pennsylvania and Ohio region (see Oldfield). He made it a point to learn Mafia methods and customs from Sicilian sources and used that information to infiltrate Mafia units in the U.S. As a regional supervisor of the Pinkertons, Dimaio supervised a group that aggressively targeted Mafia kidnapping in the Midwest.

Dimaio eventually retired from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to start his own private detective firm in Philadelphia. He lived to a ripe old age, retiring to a hotel in Delaware. History lost track of him there, but evidence suggests he died in 1958 at the age of 94.

Read more about Dimaio in:
Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia.

Cavolo, Charles (1891-1958) - Cleveland PD

Born Vietri di Potenza, Italy, March 6, 1891.

Died Cleveland Heights, OH, April 23, 1958.

Detective Charles S. Cavolo was born in southern mainland Italy in 1891 and came to the United States as a teenager in 1907. His family settled on Cleveland's infamous Mayfield Road.Cavolo grew up alongside many who would become Cleveland mobsters. But he decided to take another path, and joined local law enforcement.

Cavolo's familiarity with Italians and Sicilians and his background on Mayfield Road equipped him to challenge the local Mafia on its home turf. During the Prohibition Era, he was highly successful in organized crime cases.

In 1926, he nabbed a Cleveland gangster for importing a Chicago gunman for a hit against a local man. The following year, he worked on two well-publicized murder investigations, those of Samuel Volpe (a sewer contractor found frozen and riddled with bullets in early March) and Louis Nobile.

As a key member of the Cleveland Police Black Hand Squad, Cavolo helped local newspapers to decipher an underworld feud in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Gang leader Frank Lonardo was murdered in fall of 1929. His own bodyguard Frank Alessi was suspected. Bootlegger and convicted cop-killer Carmello Licarti was found dead in a Cleveland gutter in early April 1930, a bullet wound in his head and mud stuffed in his mouth. By the end of the month, Alessi - the suspect in the Lonardo murder - was dead. Cavolo immediately arrested Frank Brancato for that killing.

Cavolo was momentarily discredited in February 1931, when it was reported that he helped murderer and thief Ross Valore win parole. Cavolo was able to prove that he had no part in the parole. He underscored his position on Valore by securing a statement from the convict's wife that implicated Valore in six murders.

The detective tracked the Hymie Martin-Solly Hart gang to Buffalo, NY, in summer of 1931. The gang was wanted for stealing $45,000 worth of jewelry. Cavolo's bloodhound sense also led to the arrest of Carmine Pigano (alias Benny Nacci) on Cleveland streets in 1938. Pigano was wanted in Dearborn, Mich., in connection with the 1930 kidnapping of a nine-year-old boy.

In 1940, as head of the police automobile bureau, Cavolo unearthed a tire theft ring with headquarters in Cleveland and Buffalo. Stolen tires were transported to a Buffalo clearinghouse. Police estimated that the thieves had earned a million dollars through the racket.