DREADED CAMORRA

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume L, Issue 7958, 10 April 1922, Page 3

DREADED CAMORRA

BRANCH OF GANG IN AM ERICA.

_ The arrest of eight^Sicilians is believed to have put the New York police on the track of a Carnorra gang, which has committed fiftyone murders in New York, I lie arrests were made on information supplied by Bartolomeo Fontano, a member of the Sicilian Carnorra. He took part in five murders carried out in .New York by the notorious Bonaventre gang, and, fearing (hat the. Carnorra was about to silence him by death, he asked for police protection. According to information received by the police, the Bonaventre gang is an' American branch of the Carnorra - the notorious Italian secret society— and is ordered by the Palermo headquarters-some-times by cable—to kill marked men in America. Immigrants recently from Sicily are usually chosen to commit the murders. If they refuse they are eventually murdered, and, knowing the consequences of refusal, they generally accept, hoping that one crime will release them from the grip of the gang. Often, however, they are used again and again until (he Carnorra decides that they know too much. Then they arc themselves ‘'removed,” the bodies being usually disposed of in brick ovens.

Liquor smuggling and drug organisations are implicated in the crime ring, whose murders have recently terrorised the Italian section of New York. Eighteen murders ■have taken place in a few weeks.