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Barrel murders
Barrel Murder: Early mafioso execution method Barrel murder—where a corpse was deposited in a barrel and abandoned—came into vogue in this country in the 1870s, especially in New Orleans and New York where the first waves of Italian emigration washed ashore. It was the outbreak of such crimes, in which the victim invariably was an Italian, that first led American authorities to announce the presence of the Mafia in this country.
The barrel was deposited in the ocean if the corpse was not meant to be found or else, rather perversely, shipped off by rail to some distant city—and a nonexistent address. In other cases the barrel was simply left in a vacant lot or even on a street corner. This was often done if the purpose of the killing was to carry out a Black Hand murder threat and thus advertise the slaughtering abilities of such extortionists.
The leading exponents of barrel murder were Lupo the Wolf (Ignazio Saietta) and the Morello family, a homicidal pack of cutthroats, brothers, half-brothers and brothers-in-law, from Corleone, Sicily. Together they were believed to have slaughtered and barreled at least 100 victims over three decades.
Eventually the power of the Morellos and of Lupo, who went to prison, was broken and the mobs stopped utilizing the barrel technique, mainly because it so clearly established the crime as a mob job.
Possibly almost as troubling was the fact that many freelance killers started using the technique in an effort to shift the blame for their acts on the Mafia. Oddly, the technique was revived in 1976 when 71-year-old Johnny Roselli, involved along with Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana in the CIA-underworld plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, was murdered and his body stuffed into a 55-gallon oil drum and dumped into waters off Florida. The drum eventually floated to shore despite the holes punched in its sides and heavy chains weighing it down. Of course, any near-competent hit man should have predicted that gases produced by the body's decomposition would lift the grisly drum to the surface.
Sources in the underworld also pointed out that the barrel technique had long been abandoned, but whoever had disposed of Roselli's body in this fashion either did not know that or perhaps was simply using it as an expedient to label it a mob job. Since the Roselli murder remains unsolved, the possibility cannot be excluded that this method of victim disposal might well have been used to make a mob job look like a CIA job.
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Contributor's Note
This intel reflects only one of my activities. I also write about and/or have websites on Vespa Scooters, Lambretta Scooters, Hardy Banana plants, Medical memorabilia, reborn baby dolls and much more. Hope you enjoyed the read, Philip Davey
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This intel was contributed by Phildave
Phildave
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May, 2012
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