Infamous America - NEW ORLEANS Ep. 2 | “The Sicilian Lynchings, Part 1”

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

On a hot October night in 1890, the New Orleans chief of police gunned down a few blocks from his home. The police quickly round up the usual suspects. The detainees are almost exclusively Italian. Anti-Italian sentiment engulfed much of the city, but the ensuing courtroom trial cast serious doubt about the guilt of the 19 men who were charged with the crime. The verdict set the stage for one of the darkest chapters in New Orleans’ history. Check out the Jordan Harbinger show today! jordanharbinger.com/start Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like The Explorers, History of the Great War, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 Italian men awoke inside the parish prison in New Orleans on March 14, 1891. They'd all been there for five months. They'd all been charged in the murder of David Hennessy, the famed chief of the New Orleans Police Department who had been gunned down on Giraud Street. The men were going to trial in groups. Yesterday, four men were acquitted of the crime. Three men were granted mistrials, and two had their cases thrown out by the judge.

but they all remained in custody. The authorities were ordered to keep them in jail for a lesser charge, not the murder. Or, depending on which newspaper you read, they were being held for their own safety. But the men were anything but safe. This left the exonerated men suspicious as to why they remained behind bars. But overall, the mood in the cells was jovial. The acquittals gave hope to those who still had to stay in trial. Maybe the jurors and the public were seeing the trial and the investigation for what it was,

a desperate attempt by the New Orleans political machine to blame the murder of one of their own, one of the elite, on the Italian immigrant population. The optimism of the men in jail ended at sunrise. In the night following the acquittals, the anti-immigrant groups went to work. A call for justice, a call to action, appeared in the morning papers. And as the Italian prisoners rose from their sleep, they could hear the crowd massing outside the prison. They could sense the tension amongst the prison guards. They watched the officers arm themselves and prepare for an insurrection.

Outside, there was a crowd of thousands that grew by the minute. Their vigilance was turning to rage. They were there for the street version of justice that had not been delivered in the courtroom. When the mob finally decided to act, the prison guards did. nothing to stop them. Neither did the police chief or the mayor. By the time the sun set on March 14th, 11 of the 19 men who had been rounded up and charged for Chief Hennessy's death would be dead themselves. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling four infamous stories from New Orleans over the next

six episodes. This is the first of two episodes about one of the darkest chapters in New Orleans history for its police, its politicians, and its people. This is episode two, The Sicilian Lynchings, Part 1. Police Chief David Hennessey walked down Rampart Street in Central New Orleans with his old friend Bill O'Connor. Hennessy was incredibly young for a police chief. He was just 32 years old. O'Connor had been a city police officer, but now worked for a private security company. He met Hennessy after a long day. on the job. They'd enjoyed some oysters, and now they headed home, chatting about the recent death of Charles Stuart Parnell, the once great crusader for Irish independence. Parnell had very

nearly gotten the Emerald Isle out from under the thumb of Queen Victoria, but he had been undone by scandal. In New Orleans, Hennessy and O'Connor could certainly relate. Like most big cities, New Orleans was rife with scandal. But Hennessy appeared untouched by those sordid dealings. He was respected by his detectives and officers. He had friends in the political machine of the city, and he won national acclaim from the New York Times after the police force maintained law and order during the World's Fair in New Orleans in 1884. But that didn't mean he was free from enemies. Because of death threats, it had become routine for either uniformed beat cops or plain-closed detectives to escort the chief of police home to his small house he shared

with his mother on Giraud Street. But on that night, October 15, 1890, Hennessy assured Bill O'Connor that he was fine to cover the last few blocks alone. The night was thick with fog, and Hennessy didn't want his friend to walk any further than needed. The two friends said their goodbyes. Hennessy made his way down Girard Street. It was October and almost midnight, but the heat in the city was still thick and heavy. Although he was affluent and influential, his neighborhood was full of people who were just scraping by. African Americans and some northern Europeans and Italian immigrants lived in the dilapidated cottages on the street. They were poor, but they were hardworking and respectful of authority. No doubt one of the most powerful men in the city felt he had

little to fear by walking a couple hundred yards down the street to his home. But David Hennessy badly misjudged how untouchable he was. He didn't see the attack coming, but he heard it. In rapid succession, as many as two dozen shots exploded out of the windows of the clabbard homes on Girard Street. Some were from pistols, others were from shotguns. They were at close range, and they tore through the police chief. One blast broke his leg, another shattered his elbow. A shot to the chest nicked his heart, but somehow didn't kill him. But the three rounds that entered his stomach did the most damage. Reports said later that there were five shooters and they fled immediately. Hennessy cried out in pain and called for his friend Bill O'Connor. The chief drew his sidearm

and tried to get to his feet to pursue his attackers, but his strength was gone. on. Bill O'Connor rushed to his friend. O'Connor clutched his friend until more help arrived and Hennessy could be transported to Charity Hospital, barely a mile away. At the hospital, doctors furiously worked on the young police chief. The outlook was bleak. His mother was called to his bedside, and so was a Catholic priest. Hennessy turned them both away, claiming he'd be fine in the morning as wounds bled beyond what emergency medicine of the day could handle. He fell asleep in the morning about nine hours after he'd been shot and never woke up. City officials, including Mayor Joseph Shakespeare, wanted answers.

Bill O'Connor stepped forward. He told me who did it, O'Connor said. When pressed, O'Connor said he had asked Tennessee who shot him. As the chief bled in the mud of Girard Street, he whispered one word to O'Connor. O'Connor repeated it now, and pardon the slur. Daegos, O'Connor said. And that one word incited a storm in New Orleans that lasted for months. Historian Richard Gambino notes that Bill O'Connor was the only one who could testify

to Hennessy's supposed accusation, but at the time, it was enough to start the ball rolling. By the morning of October 17th, less than 24 hours after Hennessy died, the Times-Picayune newspaper ran an advertisement calling for city politicians to allow vigilante groups to assist in finding the assassins. The police investigation was only one day old. Lawmen had barely begun to canvas Henness Hennessy's neighborhood to ask for possible witnesses. There were no solid suspects or viable leads, but O'Connor's statement drove ever. everything. The advertisement in the newspaper, which was most likely the work of a group called

the Crescent City White League, urged citizens to assist the officers of the law in driving the murderous mafia from our midst. Within a few days of Hennessy's death, Mayor Shakespeare stood before city officials and passionately appealed to them to form a special committee to investigate the murder. He claimed he would be the next to be assassinated by the Italians. He called them the most idle, vicious, and worthless people among us. The mayor got what he asked for, and the committee of 50 was born. Like most new groups who immigrated to America, Italians face pushback from the groups who came before them. After the Civil War, they were willing to do jobs, mostly in agriculture, that were vacated when freed slaves left the South to look for

opportunity in the north. Outdated books and articles say the Italians were treated as badly as African Americans in the South. Obviously, that wasn't the case. Italians were never slaves, but the dangerous prejudices were very real. Mayor Shakespeare's comments were not unusual for the time. Many people believe that all Italians were connected to a mysterious and secret underworld of crime that lurked in every shadow and dark alley. There was no evidence to prove a Italian immigrants were more likely to be involved in crime, organized or otherwise, but the stereotype followed them from the old country. Immigration offices of the time differentiated between Northern Italians and Southern Italians. Southern Italians faced harsher prejudice, and Sicilians

the worst. So when Mayor Shakespeare looked at his acting chief of police and said, scour the entire neighborhood and arrest every Italian you come across, the chief and the New Orleans Police Department were happy to comply. And they were supported by the newly formed Committee of 50. The committee was actually a group of 83 men, none of whom were Italian. They were civic leaders, labor leaders, and generally affluent men who saw their interests threatened by crime, and also the rise of the hardworking Italian immigrants.

When the committee held a public forum in Lafayette Square that denounced the reputed mafia and promised to root out, quote, the existence of secret societies or bands of oath-bound assassins, the men were cheered by the public and celebrated by the newspapers. A few days after Hennessy's murder, a newspaper story strengthened the narrative of the mayor and the committee of 50. Hennessy had been scheduled to provide new evidence in an appeals case that was related to an ongoing feud between two prominent Italian families, the Provenzano's and the Montrangas. There had been a confrontation that turned bloody between the two families, and the hard-nosed Hennessy arrested several members of the Provenzano family and helped send them to prison. But allegedly, the new evidence would reverse their conviction and exonerate the Provenzano. That could have been a motivation for the Montranga family or its supporters to commit the murder,

but the all-consuming dragnet was already in motion. Possibly as many as 250 Italians were dragged from their homes and businesses and hauled to the New Orleans parish prison. Some were charged. Many were just held under suspicion. Only a few received lawyers and none were allowed to speak to their families or the press. An angry mob gathered outside the jail every day as new suspects were brought in. The mob mocked and taunted each detainee with the chant,

Who Kill it a Chief? Squads of officers from around the city were brought in and armed with rifles and shotguns to keep the mob back. But the scene foreshadowed the horrific events to come. Pietro Montestario was 42 years old. He was a cobbler. He had a small shoe shop near the corner where David Hennessy was gunned, down. He repaired shoes for the chief's mother. Antonio Marquesi was 44 years old. He was a neighborhood fruit vendor. His son Gaspari was

14. Emmanuel Polizzi was a middle-aged man who survived by selling small wares outside a market near the shooting. He was known by his neighbors to suffer emotional breakdowns. They were four of the hundreds of Italians who were rounded up. Montesterio's arrest was based on his proximity to the killing, and the fact that a weapon, which was never proved to be used in the shooting, was found near his home. Antonio Marquesi and his son were arrested because they were known associates of Montestero, in that Montestero had repaired their shoes. The police were additionally suspicious of Gaspari because they found $100 in his room when they searched the Marquesi home. and Emmanuel Polizzi was arrested because a police officer, not a doctor,

determined that a cut on his hand might have been from a gunshot. Later, a boy who was no older than 12 identified Polizzi as a man who ran away from the scene of the shooting. They were among the 19 men who were indicted by a grand jury at the end of November 1890 for the murder of police chief David Hennessey. 17 of the 19 were Sicilians, and the indictment came after they were detained for six weeks. Few spoke English, and few were provided translators when they were first questioned. A couple were wanted for crimes in Italy, but only one, Emmanuel Polizzi had any kind of a police record. He'd been in a fight in Austin, Texas, and had slashed a man with a knife.

Most of the men were tradesmen like Pietro Montestero, or merchants. or longshoremen. One was a labor organizer, and one worked as a low-level operator for the Democratic Party. But one of the men was definitely not low-level in New Orleans. Joseph McCaca was a boss in the city's democratic political machine. He was arguably the most influential Italian-American in all of New Orleans at the time. And he had an alibi. Hundreds of people saw him at a theater on the night of the murder.

but it didn't matter. Authorities quickly regarded him as the probable mastermind who organized the murder. As a political boss and a wealthy importer of fruit, Makaka was embroiled in the vendetta between the Provenzano's and the Montrongas. He was also known to have a relationship with Chief Hennessy,

and some said the relationship had soured. Maybe that was enough to motivate Makaka to orchestrate the murder of the police chief. but Hennessy was rich and he had political clout, as well as being a high-profile lawman. Killing him would lead to a world of trouble. It was risky and reckless, and that argued against Makaka as the mastermind. But for some of the elite in New Orleans, the elimination of Joseph Makaka was advantageous. They saw his power as a threat, and Makaka saw it too.

He thought he was being framed, and he hired the best attest at least. attorneys in the city. And he also believed the investigation and trial were an attack on his countrymen based solely on where they were from. Most were poor, working-class men who couldn't speak the language and would be hanged if they were convicted. Macaca refused to stand for it. He told his attorneys he would pay for them to represent every fruit vendor, cobbler, and dockworker. The 19 accused killers of David Hennessey would spend the Lenton season, Christmas, and New Year's Eve in New Orleans Parish Prison. The trials would begin February 16, 1891. By late March, around the Feast of St. Joseph, the patron saint of workers, one way or another, the men would know their fate.

In the time between the late November indictment and the mid-February trial, the press aggressively put, two narratives. The first was, these 19 men, from the probably corrupt political boss down to the 14-year-old son of a fruit peddler, were not just vile participants in a conspiracy to kill the police chief. They were, as a rule, part of the mafia. The second narrative was, police chief David Hennessy was a noble and righteous man who was just short of deserving sainthood. Reporters lauded the bravery he displayed when he tried to stand and fight back against his assassins, even though he was severely wounded. They celebrated the bravery on his deathbed. He swore until his dying breath that the killers hadn't finished him off.

Mostly, the newspapers recounted the story that thrust Hennessy into the national spotlight. A decade before his murder, David Hennessy, who was then a detective, had orchestrated the capture of Giuseppe Esposito, a man wanted in Italy for murder and kidnapping. Esposito was hiding in New Orleans under a false name. Hennessy coordinated with Italian officials and law enforcement in New York to bring Esposito in. The case made Hennessy a celebrity and also made Mayor Joseph Shakespeare, who was one year into his first term, look very good. But there was more to Hennessy's story. In the run-up to the trial of the 19 Italian men, the newspapers ignored the other chapter in the story of David Hennessy,

the chapter where he himself was tried for murder. A few months after the Esposito arrest, Hennessy was up for chief of police, but he wasn't likely to win the battle against the chief of detectives, Thomas Devereaux. Devereaux was well-connected, and the back and forth between the two men was public and volatile and hit its peak on October 13, 1881. That morning, Hennessy and his cousin Michael were passing by the office of a newspaper editor who was meeting with Devereaux. The editor claimed that Michael walked in the front door and immediately began firing a gun.

Devereaux drew a pistol and shot back. But Devereaux didn't see the side door of the office burst open and he didn't see David Hennessy fire a single bullet into his head. Hennessey stepped over the dead body of his rival and gathered up his cousin who had been struck in the cheek but would survive. Hennessy was charged with murder, but at trial, Hennessy's version of the gunfight had him acting purely in self-defense. The newspaper editor's testimony was weakened by the fact that as soon as the shooting started, he ducked under his desk, so he didn't actually see the key moments. Finally, several people swore under oath that they had heard Devereaux claim that he would one day kill David Hennessey. Hennessy was found not guilty.

The publicity around the trial was bad for the police department, bad for the local government, and bad for the city. In an effort to distance themselves from the scandal, the New Orleans PD took Hennessy's badge. But he was quickly back on the streets working for a private security company. Mayor Joseph Shakespeare lost a bid for re-election a year after the Esposito case, but he returned to office with a narrow win in 1888. With the Devereaux-Hennessee scandal far enough in the past, Shakespeare knew exactly who he wanted as chief of police, David Hennessy. In Hennessy's short time as chief, he grew to be respected by all.

He used fear and intimidation when he had to, but relative to the overall corruption of the city, his reputation was good. It was easy for the press to make him out to be the patron saint of law and order. It was even easier for the press to paint the alleged murderers the way Mayor Joseph Shakespeare described them, without courage, honor, truth, pride, or any quality that goes to make a good citizen. The mayor's vitriol drove one New Orlean to take matters into his own hands. hands before the trial. Thomas Duffy went to parish prison and asked to visit his cousin, whom he said

was one of the accused. When Duffy was granted access to a fruit vendor named Antonio Scafidi, Scafidi had no idea who Duffy was. Duffy drew a pistol from his coat pocket and fired through the bars. Scafidi was hit, but he survived, though it was pretty clear that in the court of public opinion, the 19 men were guilty. However, as the trial grew closer, it was also clear that a conviction in a court of law might prove much more difficult. Nearly 800 New Orleans passed through the courtroom

during jury selection. Judge by their last names, none were thought to be Italian. Almost immediately, prosecutors claimed that the defense was tampering with the jury. They gave reporters accusations of bribery and the press ran with it. Police interrogated the suspects repeatedly,

and the interrogations could get aggressive. It was an era when police could do and sometimes would do whatever it took to get a confession. But none of the men admitted to the crime, and they didn't implicate any of their countrymen. Emmanuel Polizzi's interrogations were especially brutal, and they drove a man who was already mentally ill to what would probably be classified as paranoid schizophrenopherson,

by today's doctors. But still, he professed his innocence. Twice police sent spies into the prison. They posed as criminals and tried to gain the confidence of some of the 19, but they didn't learn any valuable information for the prosecution. As the opening of the trial drew near, the prosecution's case against the first group of nine men was flimsy at best. The evidence was mostly the testimony of people who claimed they recognized some of the men on the night in question. Some character witnesses had nothing more to say than they had heard one of the defendants disparaged the police or had seen them lose their tempers. In all, the prosecution called 67 witnesses, but they only called two of the dozen or so police officers who had been

at the murder scene. Incredibly, they never called Hennessy's friend Bill O'Connor, whose account of Hennessy's accusation single-handedly set off the manhunt for Italian assassins. When the prosecution rested its case, it wouldn't have been hard for objective observers to cast serious doubt on the guilt of the nine men on trial. But defense attorneys worried that there were no objective people left in the Crescent City. They focused on disputing the foggy accounts of alleged eyewitnesses, many of whom changed their stories repeatedly. They emphasized that Joseph Makeka was seen by hundreds of people at the theater on the night of the murder.

They called 84 witnesses. Many of them attested to the hardworking, America-loving, pious nature of the defendants. But those sentiments were dealt a blow midway through the trial, when Emmanuel Polizzi suffered an episode during the proceedings. He jumped up and began screaming in Italian. He accused some of his co-defendants and confessed to the murder. reporter. Reporters said he tried to bite several people in the gallery before attempting to throw himself through a window. The tiny man who had become bone thin in prison fought off several guards before finally being subdued. Although the judge told the jury to disregard the outburst,

polisi was somehow deemed fit and sane to stand trial for his life. After nearly a month of the trial, The closing arguments came on March 12, 1891. The prosecution repeated its common refrain. The murder was a mafia conspiracy. The assassination was organized by mob boss Joseph McCaca and carried out by some of the men on trial, while others were guilty of serving as lookouts, providing safe haven for the killers,

or acquiring or hiding the murder weapons. The defense countered that the motive was suspect. If Makaka organized the murder to stop Hennessy from providing new evidence in the Provenzano appeal case, that was really hard to believe, and for a simple reason, virtually no one knew that Hennessy was going to testify. On top of that, nearly all of the 19 men in jail were arrested without any concrete evidence that linked them to the crime. With a paper-thin motive and no evidence, the defense said the investigation and trial were just a circus put on by the New Orleans Police Department

that played on the anti-Italian sentiment that had grown even more pervasive since Hennessy's murder. Before the jury retired, the judge ordered not guilty rulings for two of the nine men. There was so little evidence against them that they shouldn't have been on trial in the first place. Less than 24 hours later, the jury delivered its verdict on the remaining seven defendants.

In the cases of three men, including Emmanuel Polizzi and the shoemaker Pietro Montestero, mistrials were declared. The remaining four men, including the fruit vendor Antonio Marquesi and his 14-year-old son and the alleged mastermind Joseph Makeka were all acquitted. The first nine men accused of murdering police chief David Hennessy were innocent, but they would never step foot outside as free men again. Next time on Infamous America,

The city of New Orleans descends into madness. The racial hatred boils over, and the parish prison becomes the site of a terrible tragedy. That's next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin to just $5 per month. This episode was researched and written by Jamie Lyko, original music by Rob Valier.

Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. work. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin's World, History of the Great War, and many more. Thanks for listening.