Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre by Patricia A. Martinelli

Author:Patricia A. Martinelli [Martinelli, Patricia A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Life and Customs, Murderers - New Jersey, Murder, Social Science, True Crime, Fiction, Anthropology, Criminals & Outlaws, Cultural, Italian Americans, Murderers, Biography & Autobiography, New Jersey, General, Ingenito; Ernest, Italian Americans - New Jersey - Social Life and Customs, Biography, Customs & Traditions
ISBN: 9780811736305
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2010-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

Ernie took the stand for the first time on Tuesday, January 16, 1951. It was the ninth day of a trial that had been expected to last less than a week. He spoke so softly that his attorney had to repeatedly ask him to raise his voice to make sure the jury heard all of his testimony. After providing his name and age, the defendant answered a number of questions about his family and his early life in Wildwood. Ernie told the court that he had lived in Wildwood for about eight years before the family moved to Philadelphia. During that time, he attended St. Anne's Catholic School. He went to parochial school when the Ingenitos first settled in the city, but probably transferred to public school shortly afterward because the family could no longer afford the tuition.

Ernie testified that after his family moved to Philadelphia, he remembered climbing a tree with some friends. He recalled, "A few of us were playing in a tree, was swinging back and forth, and a branch broke, and I fell out. I was knocked out. When I woke up, I was in a hospital." Ernie remembered being hospitalized for several days before returning to school, but said that things seemed different afterward. Although he "made out pretty good" with arithmetic, "I couldn't read too well and I couldn't spell too well." When Sahl asked how the teacher responded, Ernie said: "Sometimes sit me in the corner on a stool. I didn't like it, and when it come time after lunch to go back to school I wouldn't go."

"Is that what they call the dunce's corner?" his attorney asked.

"Yes," Ernie answered.

The defendant said he would also "run out" when some of his schoolmates made fun of him because he couldn't read very well. When he was about fourteen, Ernie was eventually reassigned to the "OB Class," with other students who had similar learning disabilities. The change didn't sit well with him; too proud to tell his parents that he had been transferred, Ernie started playing hooky more and more from school.

"Now in the home, who took care of the children, or who tried to punish the children if they did anything wrong?" Sahl asked.

"My father," Ernie said.

His mother would intercede sometimes and tell his father not to hit the boy "so much," because he might hurt him, the defendant said. When Ernest Sr. failed to instill any respect for school in his son, Ernie's education was continued before long at the Shallcross School for delinquent boys in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His parents would visit occasionally, but by that time, their rocky marriage was on the point of disintegration. Ernie testified that he continued to go in and out of Shallcross and other institutions in the years that followed. During one of his last stays at Shallcross, the defendant noted he enjoyed the vocational part of the training offered there, but still had trouble in the classroom. He "made out all right" while helping on the school's farm and didn't mind cooking or building furniture in the carpenter's shop.

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