140 years ago: End of Joseph Agnello

140 years ago today: New Orleans Mafia leader Joseph Agnello is shot to death during a gunfight at the Picayune Tier. Successor to the leadership of his brother Raffaele's underworld organization, Joseph Agnello was wounded in several attacks in 1870-72. He met his end after gunmen cornered him on the dock on April 20, 1872. Agnello tried to escape by jumping aboard the moored schooner Mischief but he was struck in the midsection by a large-caliber horse-pistol slug fired by Joseph Maressa (reportedly also known as Vincent Orsica). The slug passed through his body and ripped a gaping hole in his back.

122 years ago: Underworld feud flares up

122 years ago today (April 6), a New Orleans underworld feud between the Matranga and Provenzano factions flared up. A wagon carrying Matranga-aligned stevedores from work to their homes was ambushed at the intersection of Claiborne and the Esplanade. Two men - one was the older brother of local Mafia chieftain Charlie Matranga - were seriously injured in the nighttime attack. New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy, who had recently brokered a ceasefire agreement between the two groups, became personally involved in the investigation of the incident.

121 years ago: Eleven murdered

121 years ago today: The largest lynching in American history occurs at Orleans Parish Prison as eleven Italian-American men, suspected of Mafia membership and of involvement in the 1890 assassination of Police Chief David Hennessy, are murdered.

While the raid on Parish Prison is generally regarded as the work of a mob, in researching Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia, we found evidence that the mob was no more than a smokescreen. Political powers had determined in advance which of the prisoners would be slain and had handpicked teams of assassins to do the work. Thousands were present, but only those assassins actually gained access to the prison. Organizers claimed that the lynchings were intended to correct the jury verdict of the previous day. However, the list of those killed does not match the list of nine defendants in the Hennessy assassination trial. Most interesting, Charlie Matranga - regarded as the leader of the local Mafia - and his right-hand man, both unconvicted defendants in the trial, were spared.

121 years ago: None convicted

121 years ago today: The trial of nine men accused of the assassination of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy concludes March 13, 1891, without a conviction. Much of the city is enraged as the jury acquits six defendants - Joseph P. Macheca, Charlie Matranga, Bastiano Incardona, Antonio Bagnetto, Antonio Marchesi and Asperi Marchesi - and announces a deadlock on the remaining three - Manuel Polizzi, Antonio Scaffidi and Pietro Monastero.
The defendants, all widely suspected of membership in the Mafia criminal society, are held at Orleans Parish Prison overnight on a legal technicality. Their release is expected the following day.
City political leaders hastily arrange for a morning gathering of New Orleans residents on Canal Street.

Strange True Tours - New Orleans

Jeffery Holmes, who conducts Strange True Tours New Orleans, wrote to let us know that the Macheca family burial site in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 will be incorporated into his tours this summer.

121 years ago: Attack on Police Chief Hennessy

One hundred and twenty-one years ago on this date, New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy was shot and mortally wounded a short distance from his home. He succumbed to his wounds the following morning.

Chief Hennessy

Hennessy (left) attended a meeting of the Police Commission during the evening of October 15. The meeting broke up at about nine o'clock. Hennessy was driven back to police headquarters at the southwest corner of Common (Tulane Avenue) and Basin Streets. Captain William O'Connor of the private Boylan Protection Agency met him there and was to escort the police chief home. Hennessy had received a number of death threats from the local Mafia and the city fathers hired the Boylan agency to keep him safe.

Though Hennessy had a reputation for punctuality (he lived with his widowed mother and reportedly tried not to give her reason for worry), the chief did not immediately head home. Instead, he and O'Connor chatted at police headquarters for more than an hour. They left the building a few minutes after eleven.

While Basin Street was the most direct route between Hennessy's office and his home on Girod Street, heavy rains of earlier in the day had made the road unpassable. Hennessy and O'Connor took a significantly lengthier route, riverward on Common Street and then up Rampart Street to the intersection with Poydras Street. At that corner, the two men stopped into Dominick Virget's Oyster Saloon for a late snack. A teetotaller, Hennessy had a glass of milk with his plate of oysters.

At eleven-thirty, the men stepped out of Virget's and continued up Rampart Street. They paused in front of the McDonough schoolhouse at the corner of Rampart and Girod, about one and half city squares from Hennessy's home. O'Connor said goodbye to Hennessy at that point, though he had been charged with seeing the chief all the way home. O'Connor crossed the intersection diagonally to his left - his intended destination is unknown - while Hennessy turned right on Girod.

The chief took only a few strides and then halted as a young man darted out of a Girod Street doorway and ran toward Basin Street whistling loudly. The youth turned right onto Basin and disappeared around the side of Mrs. Ehrwald's second-hand store.

Girod Street shed roof.

Hennessy managed just a few steps more. As he reached the front of the residence at No. 269 Girod Street, shotgun pellets tore into him from his left. The initial blast, originating from the darkness under a shed roof on the opposite site of Girod (right), shredded his umbrella, disabled his left hand and knocked him backward. Hennessy instinctively drew his ivory-handled Colt 45 revolver. Another blast of shotgun pellets ripped through his slacks and shattered his right knee. On his way to the ground, the chief was struck by pellets in the chest and abdomen and then in the face and neck. Hennessy fired his revolver into the darkness across the street as he struggled to stand up.

Two shadowy figures stepped into Girod Street. Illuminated by a streetlamp, they advanced toward the fallen police chief. They fired large-caliber slugs into Hennessy's midsection and then ran off.

Hennessy miraculously managed to rise to his feet. He stumbled a few yards to the corner of Basin Street and dragged his disabled leg a few more paces down Basin. He collapsed onto the front steps of No. 189 Basin Street. Captain O'Connor, at most only a single square away when the gunfire erupted, reached the chief's side far too late to fulfill his function as bodyguard.

"They gave it to me," Hennessy mumbled, "and I gave it back the best I could." O'Connor asked if the chief could identify his attackers. Hennessy said, "Dagoes."

Read Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia, 2d edition.