Mafia Cop Killers in Akron by Mark J. Price

Author:Mark J. Price [Price, Mark J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

As quietly as he arrived, Mazzano returned to jail in handcuffs. The judge and prosecutor had little time to relax because Borgia’s trial was scheduled the following week.

The case took an astonishing turn, though, before the reputed kingpin could set foot in court. The next day, authorities arrested two more Furnace Street gang members for the deadly ambush of Patrolmen Edward Costigan and Joseph Hunt. One week later, they nabbed another.

THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW

Akron gangsters Lorenzo Biondo and Anthony Manfriedo made an odd couple as they hid from police at a Brooklyn rooming house in New York. Biondo was gruff and grim, a brooding thug who rarely spoke. Manfriedo was pleasant and personable, a naïve lackey who loved to gab. After a few weeks of keeping a low profile, they felt cooped up in the low-rent hideout and needed a break. What would it hurt if they left their claustrophobic confines for a few hours and found a good place to drink?

Biondo and Manfriedo walked to a nearby pool hall—the natural habitat of the Furnace Street gang—and blended in with the crowd in early May 1918. They smoked cigarettes, swigged booze and loosened up. See? Nothing to worry about. They were just two guys enjoying a night out in a city of millions.

A sharp-eyed bartender happened to see a red, puckered wound on Manfriedo’s hand when he ordered a drink. Manfriedo was too busy socializing to notice that the Italian bartender was suddenly watching him suspiciously and listening carefully.

The next day, the telephone rang at the office of Detective Michael Fiaschetti, commander of the acclaimed Italian Squad at the New York Police Department. “He was in my place last night,” the bartender said. “Says he is coming again tonight. Looks like he’d been shot through the hand.”

Fiaschetti had waited weeks for that call. After casting hundreds of lines into the water, the squad finally got a nibble. As the detective recalled years later in a 1929 article in Liberty magazine:

It was the biggest stool pigeon operation I ever had anything to do with. As I’ve explained, it takes all kinds of birds of both sexes to make a stool pigeon system. The Italian Squad had an extensive one, and we pressed the whole of it into service. I got my staff of informers busy, and the detectives under me got theirs. Telephone calls, meetings in obscure places, cajoleries, threats—“You’ll be doing me a big favor, boy,” and “I’ll do something for you,” or “You know I’ve got you right where I want you, and you’d better treat me right.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.