BLACK HAND MURDERS

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 860, 5 July 1910, Page 5

BLACK HAND MURDERS

BROOKLYN MERCHANT KILLEDHIS WIFE STABBED AND STRANGLED. NO ARRESTS MADE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. New York, July Members of the notorious "Black Hand" Society waylaid and shot Mr. Piccolo, an Italian merchant of Brooklyn, New York. While tho unfortunato man was dying ill the hospital the miscreants visited his homo and strangled and stabbed with knives Mrs. Piccolo. Both Mr. and Mrs. Piccolo succumbed to their injuries. So far the police hare m;ido no arrests. ITALIAN BRIGANDS TRANSPLANTED. LONG LIST OV MIHIDKR MYSTERIES. Yesterday it was cabled that members of the "Black Hand'' had to Dr. Cimera, an Italian physician of New York, that thoy had murdered his kidnapped son twcausc a ransom of sixteen hundred pounds sterling that they had demanded had not been paid. They threatened to capture anil murder his other child. Tile police would not allow the doctor to pay the ransom. The members of the "Black Hand" gangs- arc simply tho brigand? of Italy's lonely mountain roads transplanted to America. Their methods and rules of procedure are identical with those of tho outlaws whom people at a sale distance fiild picturesque. J,ike them, the "Black Hand" levy blackmail, kidnap men or their children and hold them to ransom, murder their victims in cold blood if the ransom be not forthcoming, and terroriso the surrounding population into tacit complicity. The only difference is that they carry on their operations in populous cities, and find in crowded slums the impunity otherwise sought in inaccessible dens hidden among desolate hills. Last year much was heard of tho "Black "Hand" in connection with the murder of Lieut. Petrosino, of the United States police. The gang's murders and outrages are numerous, but being chiefly among the foreign population of America do not attract great attention. From practically tho whole Italian community of America these modern brigands levy plunder and blackmail, and it is only exceptional cases of refusal (hat get into the papers. In July last the "New York World" published details of 112 unsolved murder mysteries in NewYork which had occurred in New York since January 1, 1 HUH, the victims in the majority of cases being Italians. In justice to the police it should he remembered that they have to deal with an extraordinary conglomeration of the worst elements of Europe, and that the immigration laws probably constitute the greatest obstacle to the reduction of crime.