Giuseppe Morello

Giuseppe "the Clutch Hand" Morello (May 2, 1867 – August 15, 1930), also known as "the Old Fox", was the first boss of the Morello crime family and later top adviser to Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria. He was known as Piddu and his rivals the Castellammarese knew him as Peter Morello. He had a deformed right hand with only one finger, resembling a claw. Born in Corleone, Sicily, Morello lost his father in childhood; his mother remarried into the Terranova Mafia clan, and his stepfather likely facilitated his early entry into the local Mafia.

An uncle, Giuseppe Battaglia, was a Corleonesi leader who may have also assisted him. Morello married in 1889 and had two children, though one died in infancy. He fled Sicily around 1892 after becoming a suspect in a murder and after his counterfeiting operation was exposed.

The Italian government convicted him in absentia for counterfeiting, sentencing him to over six years in prison. He eventually reunited with his extended family in New York, but moved to Louisiana and then Texas to farm cotton before returning to New York around 1897 after contracting malaria. In the 1890s, he founded the 107th Street Mob, which evolved into the Morello crime family, later known as the Genovese family, the oldest of New York’s Five Families.

Morello crime family

His empire was built on ruthless violence; his main enforcer, Ignazio Lupo, was responsible for over sixty murders in a decade. The family pioneered regular extortion payments from businesses, adopted from Black Hand methods, and used barrel murders to dispose of bodies. By 1905, Morello was recognized as the boss of bosses by Mafia leaders across the U.S. He was imprisoned again for counterfeiting in 1910, receiving a 25-year sentence, but was paroled and later freed from parole restrictions by President Harding in 1922. Upon his release in 1920, he found his former captain Salvatore D’Aquila viewed him as a threat.