When Crocervera and DePriema were brought to my office I knew in advance that neither of them would talk, having had the characteristics of the men recorded long before they were arrested. However, in order to give Crocervera the impression that DePriema had told me a lot of the workings of the gang, I hit upon the idea of keeping DePriema in my inner office for several hours while Crocervera remained in an outer office. I was timing my effort for a purpose. As DePriema was leaving, I stepped to the door with him and shook his hand warmly and patted him on the back in order that Crocervera, seeing the performance, might gain the impression that DePriema had confessed all he knew about the gang. Naturally, the object of this move was to tempt Crocervera to talk and give information important to the government. But Crocervera did not talk. The subsequent arrest of Giallambardo served to strengthen the impression already planted in the mind of Crocervera that DePriema had betrayed him, and we overheard Crocervera telling this to the members of the gang while they were in our office.
The gang was not in position to take revenge on DePriema, as he was in Sing Sing prison, where the three men had been sent upon conviction on the charge of passing counterfeit money. Following the hereditary Sicilian custom, the gang then proceeded to select a blood relative of DePriema and mark him for murder. There being no male blood relative of DePriema on this side of the Atlantic, the Black-Hand Society decided that the nearest male relative must pay the penalty for DePriema's treason. Benedetto, the brother-in-law, was chosen as the sacrifice.
These details of the motive of the murder, and the society's choosing Petto, the Ox, to do the killing were confessed to me several years later by members of the gang after I succeeded in convicting them for counterfeiting and had them sentenced to long terms in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia.
As to the identity of Benedetto's kinsman, who made certain of his aim at Petto, the Ox, near the Italian rendezvous where "Il Bove" held sway in the little Pennsylvania city, I can only answer at the present writing that the kinsman was not DePriema, because the latter was still in Sing Sing Prison when the murder of the man in the barrel was avenged.
CHAPTER III
ORGANIZED TERRORISM
From what has been related so far, I presume the reader may gain some idea of the dangerous type of men whom I refer to as members of the Black-Hand Society.
You are now familiar with the kind of punishment meted out to one whom the gang suspects of having betrayed a member. You have also been acquainted with the Sicilian custom of revenge by way of an actual example showing how the slayer of the man in the barrel came to his end in a manner that is as certain as daylight follows darkness. It is the racial idea of the antique Hebrew law, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." The Sicilian "vendetta" demands a life for a life. You may have noted further that the police of New York and the machinery of the law failed to track down the slayer of the man in the barrel. A circumstance that makes it singularly difficult for the authorities to cope with this type of criminals is that the Sicilian does not ask the police for help when a member of his family is murdered. He keeps it quiet. And as quietly a blood relative of the slain person assumes the responsibility which we Americans place on the police and the courts. The end of Petto, the Ox, shows exactly what happens when individual vengeance succeeds in place of justice meted out by a court of law.
The reader will remember that when the criminal band, which the police rounded up in connection with the barrel murder, were turned out by the police magistrate, because there was insufficient evidence to hold them for the murder of Benedetto, the suspects dropped out of sight as far as the police of New York were concerned.