NEW YORK MURDERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18651, 21 August 1930, Page 7

NEW YORK MURDERS

FIVE IN A DAY. WORK OF GANGSTERS. Underworld gansters in New York created a record of murders for any American city, except Chicago, on. May 18, by killing five men, alleged to be “squealers,” and seriously wounding another. - There have been a number or “squealings” to the police lately about New York's gangster plots, and racketeer leaders are believed to have grown uneasy, and to have ordered their henchmen to enforce the law ot silence by imposing death penalties on persons suspected of giving away information. , New secret methods of keeping racketeers and gunmen under surveillance have been recently adopted by New York police, against which tne underworld is now trying to protect itself by terrorising “stool pigeons,” or decoys, and by strict observance of uhicagos underworld “code of honour,” under which there has been only one Chicago “squealer” in recent years. The first man murdered on May 18 was Paul Gallo, a real estate dealer and plumber, of Mulberry Street, in New York’s underworld Bowery district. He was shot while entering his West Street house early in the morning, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Albert Peppi. A small sedan motor car swung alongside the pavement while Gallo was putting his key in the door, and a man fired four shots. Gallo fell, mortally wounded. Some hours afterwards Anthony Elterone and Salvatore Sazalino, two notorious managers of the underworld, were found dead together at Brooklyn, with bullets in their bodies. A sedan motor car answering to the description of the one used in the murder ox Gallo was seen at tne spot a short time before the bodies were found, and the police believed that Elterone and Sazalino were “taken for a ride.” or killed in the motor car. The bodies were thrown out, and all identification marks were removed, but the police identified them through finger prints, both having police records. The fourth victim. Jack Vaienti, was also “taken for a ride,” but the police have only a vague description of the motor car. Valenti’s body was found dumped at the foot of a wall in the Unionville section of Brooklyn, with four bullets in the head. Christo de Oro, an underworld dealer in lottery tickets, was the fifth victim, being shot dead shortly after arriving in New York from Norfolk, Virginia. Benjamin Schnite, with no address, whose affairs are not known, was hovering between life and death in Gouverneur Hospital after nearly becoming the sixth victim of the “murder racket.” Schnite was visiting his wife at her father’s apartment, in the underworld section, and while whistling from the street to attract her attention in an upper window he was mysteriously shot in the neck with three bullets and fell unconscious.