VICIOUS VENDETTA

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 3, 5 January 1937, Page 4

VICIOUS VENDETTA

QUEENSLAND ITALIANS

A SERIES OF MURDERS

(From "The Post's" Representative.] SYDNEY, December 24.

A blood feud, more vicious and protracted than was waged among the hill-billy families of the Kentucky hills, has claimed three lives in a little more than two years among the numerous Italians of the sugar cane fields of Northern Queensland.

Mrs. Guissepnia Bacchilla was blown to pieces with a bomb in October, 1934. Dementia Scarcella was riddled with bullets in June, 1935. Recently Francesco Femio was slam as he lay helpless in his bunk in a canerieM barracks. Femio was a cousin of Scarcella.

Sicilians not engaged in the vendetta, but with some knowledge of the inevitable moves in such campaigns, know that the death of Femio will be avenged at the first opportunity, but the victim may' not be the slayer of Femio. The Sicilian vendetta does not centre on the actual principals in a series of killings. It strikes at their nearest relatives to inflict greater hurt.

Investigations showed that Mrs. Bacchilla was slain in reprisal for something which might possibly have occurred between two factions back in Italy a year or so previously. Scarcella was slain for the activities of two relatives who have since returned to their native land, and Femio, a man who. had no known enemies on the canefields, was killed in the same way as Scarcella, with bullets bearing the same peculiar markings.

Inquiries show that the vendetta started in Italy fully ten years ago. ! Now three murders have occurred within a radius of a mile near Ingham and five other killings elsewhere in the north are attributed to the same feud. The influence of the Black Hand Society has done more than anything else to confuse inquiries into the latest unsolved murder. Fear of the Black Hand has silenced other Italians in the district and the police have made little headway in their search for the killer of Femio.