Antonio Morello was born in Corleone, Sicily, in 1864. He had two younger brothers, Nick Morello, born in 1866, and Joe “The Clutch Hand” Morello, born in 1867. They were immediately drawn to a life of crime and began working hard for the sicilian Mafia. The Morellos were an especially vicious clan, with Antonio Morello alone suspected of having committed between 30 and 40 murders in the 1890s.
In 1892, Antonio, Nick, and Joe were listed as men-turned-men in the Corleonesse mob. In 1893, Joe Morello, under contract to the mob, allegedly killed Corleone police officer Giovanni Vella. Two women were witnesses. One was killed, the other threatened, and Joe Morello escaped arrest. He was not so lucky a year later, when he was arrested for forgery and sentenced to six years in a Sicilian prison. But he never lived a day, because he escaped to America, along with his two brothers and his two half brothers Ciro Terranova and Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Saietta.
In the United States, the Morello clan organized the infamous Black Hand, through which they wrote sinister letters to Italian immigrants, threatening to kill them if they did not pay their protection money. The note was always punctuated at the bottom by a creepy drawing of a “black hand.” Their first headquarters was in East Harlem, where they operated a “Murder Stable”, where dozens of men were tortured and killed, their cries for mercy echoing through the streets of East Harlem in the middle of the night.
Things began to turn sour for the Morello clan, when in 1898, Antonio Morello was gunned down by a rival mobster, allegedly for the affections of a woman. Things took a turn for the worse in 1909, when Joe Morello and Ignazio Saietta were arrested, tried, and convicted of Joe Morello’s old con: forgery. They were sentenced to a staggering 30 years in prison, but released after 10 years, after allegedly oiling the palms of the correct politician, which was not an uncommon practice in those days.
With his brother Joe incarcerated, Nick Morello took over the family business. He was immediately confronted with the problem of the Neapolitan Camorra, which was the Neapolitan version of the Sicilian Mafia. The Camorra, led by Don Pellegrino Morano, was establishing itself in Nick Morello’s territories in East Harlem and also in Greenwich Village. In 1914, after bodies had piled up on both sides, Morello asked Morano for a truce, whereby the territories could be divided up peacefully, so that both could continue to earn money, without fear of being killed. Morano initially refused, but in 1916 he changed his mind and said a truce was the right thing to do. He lured Nick Morello to Navy Street in Brooklyn for a meeting, guaranteed his safety. Morello agreed, and as he and his bodyguard were getting out of his car, five of Morano’s men opened fire, killing them both.
When Joe Morello was released from prison in 1920, he tried to regain control of his mob remnants. But he was thwarted by Joe “The Boss” Masseria, who was now considered the boss of the New York City mob. But Masseria, recognizing Morello’s skills with both a gun and a knife, made him his bodyguard and then his top lieutenant.
In 1930, Masseria became involved in the Castellammarese War against Salvatore Maranzano. Dozens of men were killed on both sides, including the last surviving Morello brother. On August 15, 1930, Joe Morello was counting cash in his East Harlem business office, when someone known as “Buster from Chicago” broke in and filled Morello’s body with lead.
All three Morello brothers lived by the sword and died by the sword, which didn’t deter many other men from fighting to take their place in American infamy.