Zangara, being a man with a large family, feared to tell what he knew because he felt sure that Morello would murder him just as he had slain the Di Puma woman. However, when the accused man, Francesco Ortonello, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, Zangara came to the front, declaring that his conscience troubled him to see an innocent man sent away for the murder of Vella. He went to the authorities and told them that he was willing to risk his life and tell the truth for Ortonello. The authorities told Zangara that it would have been better had he told it during the trial. Now it was too late.
A few days after this the murder of Zangara took place.
Morello was on his way to America at this time, but the "Black-Hander" had many powerful friends still watchful for his interests, and some of these attended to Zangara.
Pietro Milone, a police officer who tried hard to clear Ortonello, was murdered one night on his way home. The one who slew the officer was never punished.
Biaggia Milone lived across the way from the spot where Morello and his companion were seen hiding, and this woman subsequently admitted she saw the shooting and that Morello did it.
This woman is now in New York, and is the cousin of Domenico Milone, who conducted the grocery store at No. 235 East Ninety-seventh Street, which was the headquarters and distributing plant for the Lupo-Morello counterfeit money. The Milone woman has even stated publicly that she would not testify to what she knows in behalf of Ortonello in an effort to get the old man out of prison where, she says, she knows he is unjustly kept!
Ortonello's father, who tried to have his son freed, was threatened with death several times, and several shots were actually fired at him while the old man sat in his own doorway. The marksmanship was not good and the old man escaped the bullets.
While Morello was in prison charged with murdering the Di Puma woman he met Ortonello in the prison. Morello admitted to Ortonello that he had murdered Vella, the chief of the Sylvan Guards, for which crime Ortonello was there in the prison awaiting trial. Morello also informed Ortonello that if he and all his family did not care to join Vella in the world to come that the whole family had better be careful of what they said and what charges they made, and that any evidence tending to show his (Morello's) complicity in the crime must be suppressed.
In order that the reader may view the foregoing facts in proper perspective it will be necessary for me to relate a little of the politics and the relation of the so-called Mafia to the murders.
Vella, the murdered chief, was a very active and knowing man. He had dug up a great amount of evidence against the criminal band of which Morello was a member, and which was under the leadership of a very wealthy and powerful young man named Paolino Streva.