Philadelphia poison ring

Last updated

The Philadelphia poison ring was a murder for hire gang led by Italian immigrant cousins, Herman and Paul Petrillo, in 1930s Philadelphia, where the Italian community had more than doubled in 20 years from 76,734 in 1910 (the year the Petrillos arrived in the country) to over 155,000 by 1930 - just before the murder ring began operations. The activities of the ring came to light in 1938 and the cousins were ultimately convicted of first degree murder and executed by electric chair in 1941.

Contents

A Russian-Jewish immigrant gang member, Morris Bolber, known as 'Louie, the Rabbi', turned state's evidence. Gang members, associates and 'dupes' (many of them Italian-born, superstitious women, dubbed 'poison widows' by an excited press) were brought to trial and mostly convicted to death sentences (later commuted) or varying prison sentences. One or two were found not guilty, notably the widow Stella Alfonsi, whose husband's 1938 death by poison brought the case to light, and who was successfully defended by the lawyer Raymond Pace Alexander.

History

Herman and Paul Petrillo were cousins. Herman was an expert counterfeiter and arsonist, with contacts in the criminal world, while Paul ran an insurance scam business from the back of his tailor's shop and aspired to a paid consultancy in 'la fattura', a magic believed in and resorted to by many in South Philadelphia's Italian community. The murders began in 1931, with Herman enlisting associate thugs to kill men he had arranged to insure, to collect on the double indemnity accident insurance.

Herman ruthlessly and euphemistically described this as "sending [them] to California". Two victims, Ralph Caruso and Joseph Arena were both drowned and bludgeoned on separate fishing trips. While a third victim, John Woloshyn, was first bludgeoned and then repeatedly run over by a car. Meanwhile, Herman tried to steer clear of repeated attempts by the authorities to bring him to justice for insurance fraud, arson and currency counterfeiting.

As the Depression deepened, the Petrillos headed an informal gang, now including Morris Bolber and other self-styled 'fattuchierie' (wise women, witches) such as Maria Carina Favato, Josephine Sedita and Rose Carina, who offered superstitious, unhappily married, murderous or merely gullible women incantations, powders and potions to adjust their lives. These 'love potions' usually contained arsenic, or antimony, and they were invariably accompanied by excessive insurance policies on the victims, often made out in favour of gang members rather than the supposed 'poison widow' beneficiaries.

The gang embraced insurance agents and made highly successful use of the period's widespread cheap insurance policies, often taken out without medical examination (not required for policies under $500) or the knowledge of the principal concerned, who would subsequently meet an agonising death by arsenic, engineered by the spouse; possibly with intent, possibly in superstitious ignorance of their actions. This went on from 1932 until 1938, when the death of Ferdinando Alfonsi in a hospital brought matters into the open.

Vincent P. McDevitt was an Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia. In early 1939, the District Attorney, Charles F. Kelley, assigned him to the homicide case of Ferdinando Alfonsi, who had died on 27 October 1938. McDevitt immediately had information from two undercover detectives, agents Landvoight and Phillips. From them, McDevitt had an informant, one George Meyer, who ran a local upholstery cleaning business. [1]

Meyer encountered Herman Petrillo when he was trying to obtain money for his business. Petrillo had offered to provide him with a large sum of money in both legal tender and counterfeit, if Meyer would perform the hit on Alfonsi. Landvoight and Meyer had played along with the murder plot, with Meyer hoping for an advance pay-out and Landvoight hoping to finally bust Petrillo's counterfeiting crimes. [2] Working undercover, Landvoight helped Meyer "play along," as the Petrillos plotted the murder that they wanted Meyer to carry out.

Murder

The plan was to steal or buy a car, take Alfonsi out to a dark country road and hit him with the car, thus making the murder look accidental. [3] Herman Petrillo preferred the idea to steal the car rather than buy one, but Landvoight and Phillips were hoping to convince Petrillo to give them money to buy a car for the murder, as it would give them the opportunity that Phillips had so long prayed for, to arrest him on counterfeit charges. In the end, Petrillo sold them some fake tender, ostensibly for buying a means of transportation to the planned crime scene. [4]

The "play along" plan continued until Meyer, on a whim of curiosity and concern, decided to visit the intended murder victim. At the front door of the house where Alfonsi lived, Meyer learned from an old woman who had opened the door that Alfonsi was gravely ill. After notifying Phillips, he returned with Phillips and Landvoight to the Alfonsi house. They found Alfonsi to be bizarrely ill, suffering symptoms of bulging eyes, immobility, and being unable to speak. At their next meeting with Herman Petrillo, after Petrillo handed Phillips an envelope full of counterfeit bills, Phillips asked about the plan to murder Alfonsi. Petrillo replied that there was no reason to worry about it anymore; it was being handled, apparently. [5]

Investigation

Ferdinando Alfonsi died after being admitted to the National Stomach Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The cause of death was heavy metal poisoning. The autopsy revealed tremendous arsenic levels. The detectives assigned to the case were Michael Schwartz, Anthony Franchetti, and Samuel Riccardi. They instantly thought of the rumors, already well-developed, about a highly organized arsenic killing spree surging through the city. Indeed, there were distinct patterns. The victims tended to be Italian immigrants, as Alfonsi was, and to have high levels of arsenic in their bloodstreams.

Herman Petrillo and Mrs. Stella Alfonsi were both arrested. Mrs. Alfonsi had purchased a sizable life insurance policy for her husband, an immigrant who could not read English. He had been unaware of the policy, signing some documents with a cross while others bearing Alfonsi's signature were ineptly forged by Herman Petrillo. The Alfonsi case fitted a rapidly emerging common modus operandi in a lot of other homicide investigations. Most importantly, each case involved a fresh life insurance policy with a double indemnity clause and a nearly direct lead to one of the Petrillo cousins, and each cause of death was listed as some sort of violent accident. [6]

In media

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Double Indemnity</i> 1944 American film by Billy Wilder

Double Indemnity is a 1944 American crime thriller film noir directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain's 1943 novel of the same title, which appeared as an eight-part serial for Liberty magazine in February 1936.

<i>Strong Poison</i> 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers

Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Swanenburg</span> Dutch serial killer

Maria Catherina van der Linden-Swanenburg was a Dutch serial killer who murdered at least 27 people and was suspected of killing more than 90 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morello crime family</span> Now-defunct Mafia syndicate

The Morello crime family was one of the earliest crime families to be established in the United States and New York City. The Morellos were based in Manhattan's Italian Harlem and eventually gained dominance in the Italian underworld by defeating the rival Neapolitan Camorra of Brooklyn. They were the predecessors of what eventually became known as the Genovese crime family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tillie Klimek</span> Polish-American serial killer

Ottilie "Tillie" Klimek was a Polish American serial killer, active in Chicago. According to accounts, she pretended to have precognitive dreams, accurately predicting the dates of death of her victims, when in reality she was merely scheduling their deaths.

Marie Besnard, also known as 'The Good Lady of Loudun', was an accused serial poisoner in the mid-20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judy Buenoano</span> American serial killer (1943–1998)

Judias V. "Judy" Buenoano was an American serial killer who was executed for the 1971 murder of her husband James Goodyear. She was also convicted for the 1980 murder of her son, Michael Buenoano, and of the 1983 attempted murder of her boyfriend, John Gentry. Buenoano is also acknowledged to have been responsible for the 1978 death of another boyfriend, Bobby Joe Morris, in Colorado; however, by the time authorities tied Buenoano to Morris, she had already been sentenced to death in the state of Florida.

Audrey Marie Hilley, also known by the aliases Robbi Hannon and Teri Martin, was an American murderer and suspected serial killer. She was suspected in the death by poisoning of her husband and the attempted murder of her daughter, and spent three years as a fugitive from justice. Her life and crime spree are the subjects of the 1991 telefilm Wife, Mother, Murderer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish-American organized crime</span> Jewish Mob or the Jewish Mafia

Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mob, Kosher Mafia, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik. The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian cosa nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase 'cosa nostra' into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.

Polish-American organized crime has existed in the United States throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Although not as well known as Italian, Irish, Russian mafias, the Polish Mob has a presence in many urban Polish American communities.

The Black Widow Murders were a colloquial name for a pair of murders committed by two pensioners in California: On April 18, 2008, Helen Golay, 78, formerly of Santa Monica, California, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, formerly of Hollywood, California, were convicted of the murders of two vagrants—Paul Vados in 1999 and Kenneth McDavid in 2005. According to reports, Golay and Rutterschmidt staged Vados and McDavid's deaths to appear as hit and run incidents in order to collect on multimillion-dollar life insurance policies they had taken out on the men.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Widows of Liverpool</span> Irish murderers

Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins were Irish sisters who were convicted of poisoning and murdering one person in Liverpool, England, and suspected of four more deaths. The women collected a burial society payout on each death, and were found to have been committing murders using arsenic to obtain the insurance money. Although Flannagan evaded police for a time, both sisters were caught and convicted of one of the murders; they were both hanged on the same day at Kirkdale Prison. Modern investigation of the crime has raised the possibility that the sisters were part of a larger conspiracy of murder-for-profit—a network of "black widows"—but no convictions were ever obtained for any of the alleged conspiracy members other than the two sisters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyda Southard</span> American serial murderer

Lyda Southard, also known as Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood, was an American female suspected serial killer. It was suspected that she had killed her four husbands, a brother-in-law, and her daughter by using arsenic poisoning derived from flypaper in order to obtain life insurance money.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Needle</span> Australian murderer

Martha Needle was an Australian serial killer known for poisoning her husband, three children, and prospective brother-in-law. She was hanged on 22 October 1894 when she was 31. She was convicted for the murder of Louis Juncken, brother of her fiancé Otto Juncken, on 15 May 1894. Although Needle collected substantial sums of insurance money, her exact motive for murdering her family has not been determined. Several times she stated her innocence, but she was eventually hanged.

Martha Wise was an American poisoner and serial killer. After her husband died and her family forced her to end a relationship with a new lover, Wise retaliated by poisoning seventeen family members, of whom three died, in 1924. She was convicted of one of the murders, despite defense claims that she was mentally ill and that her lover had ordered her to poison her family. The case is considered one of the most sensational of the era in Ohio, where it occurred.

Clara Green Carl was an American writer and murderer from New Straitsville, Ohio. In 1922, she was convicted of having poisoned her second husband, Frank Carl, and his father, Alonzo Carl. She was sentenced to life imprisonment but paroled after 15 years. During her time in prison she escaped once and evaded recapture for a week. It is suspected that she killed her first husband, Robert Gibson, as well. She was "considered one of the most daring woman criminals in the country," earning the nickname "feminine Bluebeard."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicolo Schiro</span> Italian-American mobster

Nicolo "Cola" Schiro was an early Sicilian-born New York City mobster who, in 1912, became the boss of what later become known as the Bonanno crime family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Vermilya</span> American serial killer (1868–1913)

Louise Vermilya was an American "black widow" whose activities spanned the turn of the 20th century. Light was shed on her murders only after she resorted to murdering outside of her immediate family, beginning with the death of policeman Arthur Bissonette. Authorities were alerted and suspicion arose over the peculiar and similar fates experienced by her two husbands, several immediate family members and two associates known to her.

Mária Gerzsány was a Hungarian serial killer responsible for poisoning at least three people with arsenic in Kistelek between 1905 and 1911. She was sentenced to life imprisonment for these murders, but it's presumed that she might've been responsible for more, selling her poisons to people who wished to get rid of unwanted relatives.

Lucretia Winslow Chapman also known as Lucretia Winslow Espos y Mina was an American school teacher tried and acquitted for the 1831 murder of her first husband, Dr. William Chapman. The crime was surrounded by scandal and speculation, which drew national attention to her trial.

References

  1. The Philadelphia poison ring
  2. The Philadelphia poison ring
  3. According to Robert James Young, says that an alternate method was proposed by Herman Petrillo: a lead pipe to the head, followed by a push down a flight of stairs. What is important, however, is that the Petrillo operation was plotting murders to appear as accidents in order to collect double indemnity premiums from the insurance policies. Also see:
  4. The Philadelphia poison ring
  5. The Philadelphia poison ring
  6. Arsenic and No Lace: The Bizarre Tale of a Philadelphia Murder Ring, by Robert James Young