In 1901, the Mafia presence in New York was considered by many citizens to be less than certain. But the disclosure of the infamous Murder Stable site convinced even the most skeptical that there was a “Mafia” or a “Black Hand” or some organized concern of Italian criminals. Oddly, the discovery came while the New York police and the U.S. Secret Service were more concerned about the presence of foreign anarchists.
Early in 1901, the Secret Service got wind of rumors that there was an anarchist plot to assassinate President William McKinley. The service enlisted the aid of New York police detective Joseph Petrosino, who would later become the first genuine police menace to the American Mafia and various groups of Black Handers.
Petrosino infiltrated anarchist circles in New Jersey and found there to be no organized plan to kill the president. His investigations, however, revealed that a number of individuals were all capable of trying the assassination.
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More important, within the context of discovering the Mafia in action, Petrosino and the Secret Service stumbled across the “Murder Stable,” a property located at 323 East 107th Street in the heart of Italian Harlem. A gang of Italian criminals, headed by some brothers named Morello and a particularly fearful individual named Lupo the Wolf, were the terrors of the area; screams through the night struck dread in neighbors living in the stable area.
The authorities dug up the premises, unearthing the remains of about 60 murder victims. The property belonged to one Ignazio Saietta, a.k.a. Lupo the Wolf. It was determined that Lupo the Wolf and the Morellos used the place to torture their enemies into compliance or to death.
Among the murder victims was a teenage Morello whom Lupo the Wolf decreed had too loose a lip about gang affairs. He executed him slowly and savagely, striking fear in other gang members and discouraging them from straying in any fashion.
Remarkably, nobody was convicted for the wholesale killings in the Murder Stable. Lupo insisted he was no more than the landlord of the place and could hardly be held responsible for what his tenants did. The “tenants” turned out to be no more than Italian names that could not be traced.
Even more remarkably, the Murder Stable apparently continued to be used as a murder site until about 1917 by Lupo the Wolf (until he was imprisoned on unrelated charges), the Morellos and another relative through marriage, gangster Ciro Terranova.
