up the steps into the house to his wife. She greeted him and asked
immediately:
“Where’s Joe?”
Varotta had not seen his little son. No doubt he was playing in the
street and would be in soon.
The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joe did not appear, and
twenty minutes had passed, his mother went out to the stoop to call
him. She could not find him in the street, and he did not respond to
her voice. There was another wait for half an hour and another looking
up and down the street. Then Salvatore Varotta was forced to yield to
his wife’s anxious entreaties and set out after the lad.
He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friends and neighbors,
questioned the children, circled the blocks, looked into cellars
and areaways, visited the kindergarten where the child was a pupil,
implored the aid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late at
night, went to the East Fifth Street police station and told his story
to the captain, who was sympathetic but busy and inclined to take the
matter lightly. The child would turn up. Lots of children strayed away
in New York every day. They were almost always found again. It was very
seldom that anything happened.
So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wife and told her what
the “big chief policeman” had said. No doubt, the officer spoke from
experience. They had better try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn
up in the morning.
On the afternoon of the following day the postman brought a letter to
Salvatore Varotta. The truck driver read it and trembled with fear
and apprehension. His wife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a
candle before the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and began endless
prayers and protestations.
The letter was written in Italian, evidently by one habited to the
Sicilian dialect. It said that the writer was a member of a powerful
society, too secret and too strong to be afraid of the police. The
society had taken little Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price
of his life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars. Varotta
was to get the money at once in cash and have it ready in his home, so
that he could hand it over to a messenger who would call for it. If the
money were promptly and quietly paid the boy would be restored safe and
sound, but if the police were notified and any attempt were made to
catch the kidnappers, the powerful society would destroy the child and
take further vengeance upon the family.
There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of this forbidding missive
with a dripping dagger at its side.
Varotta and his wife conferred all day in despair. They did not know
whom they might trust, or whether they dared speak of the matter at
all. But necessity finally decided their course for them. Varotta did
not have twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not have it ready when
the fateful footfall of the messenger would sound on the stairs. In his
extremity he had to seek aid. He went to the police again and showed
the letter to Captain Archibald McNeill.
The same evening the case was placed in the hands of the veteran head
of the New York Italian Squad, Sergeant Michael Fiaschetti, successor
of the murdered Petrosino and the agent who has sent more Latin
killers to the chair and the prison house than any other officer in
the country. Fiaschetti saw with immediate and clear vision that this
job was probably not the work of any organized or powerful society.
He knew that professional criminals act with more caution and better
information. They would never have made the blunder of assuming that
Varotta had money when he had none. The detective also saw that the
plan of sending a messenger to the house for the ransom was the plan
of resourceless amateurs. He reasoned that the work had been done by
relatives or neighbors, who knew something but not enough of Varotta’s
affairs, and he also concluded that the child was not far from its home.
Fiaschetti quickly elaborated a plan of action in accordance with
these conclusions. His first work was to get a detective into the
Varotta house unobserved or unsuspected. For this work he chose a woman
officer, Mrs. Rae Nicoletti, who was of Italian parentage and could
speak the Sicilian dialect.
The next day, Mrs. Varotta, between weeping and inquiring after her
child, let it be known that she had telegraphed to her cousin in
Detroit, who had a little money. The cousin was coming to aid her in
her difficulties.
That night the cousin came. She drove up to the house in a station
taxicab with two heavy suit cases for baggage. After inquiring the
correct address from a bystander, the visiting cousin made her way into
the Varotta home. So the detective, Mrs. Nicoletti, introduced herself
to her assignment.
The young woman was not long in the house before things began to
happen. First of all, she observed that the Varotta tenement was being
constantly watched from the windows across the street. Next she noted
that she was followed when she went out, ostensibly to do a little
shopping for the house, but really to telephone to Fiaschetti. Finally
came visitors.
The first of these was Santo Cusamano, a baker’s assistant, who dwelt
across the street from the Varottas and knew Salvatore and the whole
family well.
Cusamano was very sympathetic. It was too bad. Undoubtedly the best
thing to do was to pay the money. The Black Handers were terrible
people, not to be trifled with. What? Varotta had no money? He could
raise only five hundred dollars? Sergeant Fiaschetti had instructed
Varotta to mention this sum. The Black Handers would laugh at such
an amount. Varotta must get more. He must meet the terms of the
kidnappers. As for the safety of the boy, the Varottas could rest easy
on that point, but they must get the money quickly.
The following day there were other callers from across the street.
Antonio Marino came with his wife and his stepdaughter, Mrs. Mary
Pogano, née Ruggieri. The Marinos, too, were full of tender human
kindness and advice. When Antonio found out that Varotta had reported
the kidnapping to the police he shook his head in alarm. That was bad;
very bad. The police could do nothing against a powerful society of
Black Handers. It was folly. If the police were really to interfere,
the Black Handers would surely kill the boy. Antonio had known of other
cases. There was but one thing to do--pay the money. Another man he had
known had done so promptly and without making any fuss. He had got his
son back safely. Yes, the money must be raised.
Then Cusamano came again. He inquired for news and said that perhaps
the Black Handers would take five hundred dollars if that was really
all Varotta could raise. He did not know, but Varotta had better have
that sum ready for the messenger when he came. As he left the house,
Cusamano accidentally made what seemed a suggestive statement.
“You will hear from me soon,” he remarked to Varotta.
While these conversations were being held, Mrs. Nicoletti, the
detective, was bustling about the house, listening to every word she
could catch. She had taken up the rôle of visiting cousin, was busy
preparing meals, working about the house, and generally assisting the
sorrowing mother. Whatever suspicion of her might have existed was
soon allayed. She even sat in on the council with Cusamano and told him
she had saved about six hundred dollars and would advance Varotta five
hundred of it if that would save the child.
Mrs. Nicoletti and her chief were by this time almost certain that
their original theory of the crime was correct. The neighbors were
certainly a party to the matter, and it seemed that a capture of the
whole band and the quick recovery of the child were to be expected.
Plans were accordingly laid to trap the messenger coming for the money
and any one who might be with him or near the place when he came.
On June first, a man whom Varotta had never seen before came to the
house late at night and asked in hushed accents for the father of the
missing boy. The caller was, of course, admitted by Mrs. Nicoletti, who
thus had every opportunity to look at him and hear his voice. He was
led upstairs to a room where Varotta was waiting.
When the dark and midnight emissary of the terrible Black Hand strode
across the threshold, the tortured father could hold back his emotion
no longer. He threw himself on his knees before the visitor, lifted his
clenched hands to him, and kissed his dusty boots, begging that his
child be sent safely home and pleading that he had only five hundred
dollars to pay. It was not true that he had received any money. It was
impossible for him to ask his rich patroness who had befriended Adolfo
for anything. All he had was the little money his wife’s good cousin
was willing to lend him for the sake of little Joe’s safety. Would
the Black Hand not take the five hundred dollars and send back the
child, who was so innocent and so pretty that his teacher had taken his
picture in the kindergarten?
The grim caller had very little to say. He would report to the society
what Varotta had told him and he would return later with the answer.
Meantime, Varotta had better get ready all the money he could raise.
The messenger might come again the next night.
The detectives were ready when the time came. In the course of the next
day Varotta went to the bank as if to get the money. While there he was
handed five hundred dollars in bills which had previously been marked
by Sergeant Fiaschetti. Later on it was decided that Mrs. Nicoletti
would need help in dealing with the kidnappers’ messenger, who might
not come alone. Varotta himself was shaken and helpless. Accordingly,
Detective John Pellegrino was dressed as a plumber, supplied with kit
and tools, and sent to the Varotta house to mend a leaking faucet and
repair some broken pipes. He came and went several times, bringing
with him some new tools or part when he returned. In this way he hoped
to confuse the watchers as to his final position. The trick was again
successful. Pellegrino remained in the house at last, and the lookouts
for the kidnappers evidently thought him gone.
A little after ten o’clock on the night of June second there was a
knocking at the Varotta door. Two men were there, one of them the
emissary of the Black Hand who had called the night before. This man
curtly announced the purpose of his visit and sent his companion up to
get the money from Varotta, remaining downstairs himself.
Varotta received the stranger in the same room where he had kissed the
boots of the first messenger the night before, talked over the details
with him, inquired anxiously as to the safety of Joe, and was told that
he need not worry. Joe had been playing happily with other children and
would be home about midnight if the money were paid. This time Varotta
managed to retain some composure. He counted out the five hundred
dollars to the messenger, asked this man to count the money again, saw
that the bills were stuffed into the blackmailer’s pocket and then gave
the agreed signal.
Pellegrino, who had lain concealed behind the drapery, sprang into the
room with drawn revolver, covered the intruder, handcuffed him and
immediately communicated with the street by signal from a window. Other
detectives broke into the hallway, seized the first emissary who was
waiting there. On the near-by corner, Sergeant Fiaschetti and others of
his staff clapped the wristlets on the arm of Antonio Marino and James
Ruggieri, his stepson. A few moments later Santo Cusamano was dragged
from the bakeshop where he worked. Five of the gang were in the toils
and five more were seized before the night was over.
Cusamano and the first messenger, who turned out to be Roberto
Raffaelo, made admissions which were later shown in court as
confessions. All the prisoners were locked into separate and distant
cells in the Tombs, and the search for Joe Varotta was begun. Sergeant
Fiaschetti, amply fortified by the correctness of his surmises, took
the position that the child was not far away and would be released
within a few hours now that the members of the gang were in custody.
Here, however, the shrewd detective counted without a full
consideration of the desperateness and deadliness of the amateur
criminal, characteristics that have repeatedly upset and baffled those
who know crime professionally and are conversant with the habits
and conduct of experienced offenders. There can be no doubt that
professionals would, in this situation, have released the boy and sent
him home, though the Ross case furnishes a fearful exception. The whole
logic of the situation was on this side of the scale. Once the boy
was safely at home, his parents would probably have lost interest in
the prosecution, and the police, busy with many graver matters, would
probably have been content with convicting the actual messengers, the
only ones against whom there was direct evidence. These men might have
expected moderate terms of imprisonment and the whole affair would have
been soon forgotten.
But Little Joe was not released. The days dragged by, while the men in
the Tombs were questioned, threatened, cajoled and besought. One and
all they pretended to know nothing of the whereabouts of Joe Varotta.
More than a week went by while the parents of the child grew more and
more hysterical and finally gave up all but their prayers, convinced
that only divine intervention could avail them. Was little Joe alive or
dead? They did not know. They had asked the good St. Anthony’s aid and
probably he would give them his answer soon.
At seven o’clock on the morning of July eleventh, John Derahica, a
Polish laborer, went down to the beach near Piermont, a settlement just
below Nyack, in quest of driftwood. The tide was low in the Hudson,
and Derahica had no trouble reaching the end of a small pier which
extended out into the stream at this point. Just beyond, in about three
feet of water, he found the body of a little boy, caught hold of the
loose clothing with a stick, and brought it out.
Derahica made haste to Piermont and summoned the local police chief,
E. H. Stebbins. The body was carried to a local undertaker’s and was
at once suspected of being that of the missing Italian child. The next
night Sergeant Fiaschetti and Salvatore Varotta arrived at Piermont and
went to see the body, which had meantime been buried and then exhumed
when the coming of the New York officer was announced.
The remains were already sorely decomposed and the face past
recognition, but Salvatore Varotta looked at the swollen little hands
and feet and the blue sailor suit. He knelt by the slab where this
childish wreck lay prone and sobbed his recognition and his grief.
A coroner’s autopsy showed that the child had been thrown alive into
the stream and drowned. Calculating the probable results of the
reaction of tides and currents, it was decided that Giuseppe had been
cast to his death somewhere above the point at which the recovery of
the corpse was made.
Long and tedious investigations followed. When had the child been
killed and by whom? Was the little boy still alive when the two
messengers arrived at the Varotta home for the ransom and the trap was
sprung which gathered in five chief conspirators and five supposed
accessories? If so, who was the confederate who had committed the final
deed of murderous desperation? Who had done the actual kidnapping?
Where had the child been concealed while the negotiations were
proceeding?
Some of these questions have never been answered, but it is now
possible, from the confession of one of the men, from the evidence
presented at four ensuing murder trials, and from the subsequent drift
of police information, to reconstruct the story of the crime in greater
part.
On the afternoon of May twenty-fourth, when little Joe Varotta went
into the candy store with his penny, he was engaged in talk by one
of the men from across the street, whom Joe knew well as a friend of
his father’s. The child was enticed into a back room, seized, gagged,
stuffed into a barrel and then loaded into a delivery wagon. Thus
effectively concealed, the little prisoner was driven through the
streets to another part of town and there held in a house by some
member of the conspiracy. The men engaged in the plot up to this point
were all either neighbors or their relatives and friends.
On the afternoon of May twenty-ninth, Roberto Raffaelo was sitting
despondently on a bench in Union Square when a stranger sat down
beside him and accosted him in his own Sicilian dialect. This chance
acquaintance, it developed later, was James Ruggieri. Raffaelo was
down on his luck and had found work hard to get. He was, as a matter
of fact, washing dishes in a Bowery lunch room for five dollars a week
and meals. Ruggieri asked how things were going, and being informed
that they might be better, he told Raffaelo of a chance to make some
real money, explaining the facts about the kidnapping, saying that a
powerful society was back of the thing, and representing that Varotta
was a craven and an easy mark. All that was required of Raffaelo was
that he go to the Varotta house and get the money. For his pains he was
to have five hundred dollars.
Raffaelo was subsequently introduced to Cusamano and Marino. The next
night he went to visit Varotta with the result already described.
After Raffaelo had made one visit it was held to be better tactics
to send some one else to do the actual taking of the money. This man
had to be a stranger, so Raffaelo looked up John Melchione, an old
acquaintance. Melchione, promised an equal reward and paid fifty
dollars in advance as earnest money, went with Raffaelo to the Varotta
home on the night of June second, to get the money. Melchione went
upstairs and took the marked bills while Raffaelo waited below in the
vestibule. It was the former whom Detective Pellegrino caught in the
act. Neither he nor Raffaelo had ever seen little Joe and both so
maintained to the end, nor is there much doubt on this point.
On June second, the night when Raffaelo, Melchione, Cusamano, Marino
and Ruggieri were caught and the others arrested a little later,
Raffaelo made some statements to Detective Fiaschetti which sent the
officers off the right track for the time being. This prevarication,
which was done to shield himself and his confederates, he came to
regret most bitterly later on.
On June third, as soon as the word got abroad that the five men and
their five friends had been arrested and lodged in jail, another
confederate, perhaps more than one, took Joe Varotta up the Hudson and
threw him in, having first strangled the little fellow so that he might
not scream. The boy was destroyed because the confederates who had him
in charge were frightened into panic by the sudden collapse of their
scheme and feared they would either be caught with the boy in their
possession or that the arrested men might “squeal” and be supported by
the identification from the little victim’s lips were he allowed to
live.
Raffaelo was brought to trial in August and quickly convicted of
murder in the first degree. He was committed to the death house at
Sing Sing and there waited to be joined by his fellows. When the hour
for his execution had almost come upon him, Raffaelo was seized with
remorse and declared that he was willing to tell all he knew. He was
reprieved and appeared at the trials of the others, where he told
his story substantially as recited above. Largely as a result of his
testimony, Cusamano, Marino and Ruggieri were convicted and sentenced
to electrocution while Melchione went mad in the Tombs and was sent to
Matteawan to end his life among the criminal insane. Governor Smith
finally granted commutations to life imprisonment in each of these
cases, because it was fairly well established that all the convicted
men had been in the Tombs at the time Joe Varotta was drowned and had
probably nothing to do with his actual murder. They are still in prison
and will very likely stay there a great many years before there can be
any question of pardon.
In spite of every effort on the part of the police and every inducement
held out to the convicted men, no information could ever be got as
to the identity of the man or men who threw the little boy into
the river. The arrested and convicted men, except for Raffaelo, who
evidently did not know any more than he told, absolutely refused to
talk, saying it would be certain death if they did so. They tried all
along to create the impression that they were only the minor tools of
some great and mysterious organization, but this claim may be dismissed
as fiction and romance.
XIV
THE LOST MILLIONAIRE
Some time before three o’clock on the afternoon of December 2, 1919,
Ambrose Joseph Small deposited in the Dominion Bank, of Toronto, a
check for one million dollars. At seven fifteen o’clock that evening
the lean, swart, saturnine master of Canadian playhouses bought his
habitual newspapers from the familiar boy under the lamps of Adelaide
Street, before his own Grand Theater, turned on his heel, and strode
off into the night, to return no more.
In the intervening years men have ferreted in all corners of the world
for the missing rich man; rewards up to fifty thousand dollars have
been offered for his return, or the discovery of his body; reports
of his presence have chased detectives into distant latitudes, and
the alarm for him has been spread to all the trails and tides without
result. By official action of the Canadian courts, Amby Small, as he
was known, is dead, and his fortune has been distributed to his heirs.
To the romantic speculation he must still exist, however. And whatever
the fact, his case presents one of the strangest stories of mysterious
absenteeism to be found upon the books.
Men disappear every day. The police records of any great city and of
many smaller places bear almost interminable lists of fellows who have
suddenly and curiously dropped out of their grooves and placements.
Some are washed up as dead bodies--the slain and self-slain. Some
return after long wanderings, to make needless excuses to their friends
and families. And others pass from their regular haunts into new
fields. These latter are usually poor and fameless gentry, weary of
life’s routine.
Ambrose Small, however, was a person of different kidney. He was rich,
for one thing. Thirty-five years earlier, Sir Henry Irving, on one of
his tours to Canada had found the youthful Small taking tickets in a
Toronto theater. Attracted by some unusual quality in the youngster,
Irving shrewdly advised him to quit the study of law and devote himself
to the theatrical business. Following this counsel, Small had risen
slowly and surely until he controlled theaters in all parts of the
Dominion and was rated at several millions. On the afternoon before his
disappearance he had consummated a deal with the Trans-Canada Theaters,
Limited, by which he was to receive nearly two millions in money and
a share of the profits, in return for his theatrical holdings. The
million-dollar check he deposited had been the first payment.
Again, Small was a familiar figure throughout Canada and almost as well
acquainted in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities of the
United States. Figuratively, at least, everybody knew him--thousands of
actors, traveling press agents, managers, real estate men, promoters,
newspaper folk, advance agents; indeed, all the Wandering Jews and
Gentiles of the profession of make-believe, with which he had been
connected so long and profitably. With such a list of acquaintances,
whose rovings took them to the ends of the earth, how almost
impossible it seemed for Small to drop completely out of sight.
Finally, Amby Small was a man with a wife and most deeply interested
relatives. Entirely aside from the questions of inheritance and the
division of his estate, which netted about two millions, as was
determined later on, Mrs. Small would certainly want to know whether
she was a wife or widow, and the magnate’s sisters would certainly
suspect everything and everybody, leaving nothing undone that would
bring the man back to his home, or punish those who might have been
responsible for any evil termination of his life.