Trading Blows
On August 15, 1930, Castellammerese loyalists executed a key Masseria enforcer, Giuseppe Morello, at Morello's East Harlem office (a visitor, Giuseppe Pariano, was also killed). Two weeks later, Masseria suffered another blow. After Reina's murder, Masseria had appointed Joseph Pinzolo to take over the ice-distribution racket. However, on September 9, the Reina family shot and killed Pinzolo at a Times Square office rented by Lucchese. After these two murders, the Reina crew formally joined forces with the Castellammarese.
Masseria soon struck back. On October 23, 1930, Castellammarese ally Joe Aiello, president of the Chicago Unione Siciliane, was murdered in Chicago. At the time, it was widely assumed that Capone, another Castellammarese ally, had killed Aiello as part of a bitter power struggle in Chicago. However, Luciano later admitted that Masseria ordered the Aiello hit, which was performed by Masseria ally Alfred Mineo.
Read more about this topic: Castellammarese War
Famous quotes containing the words trading and/or blows:
“His farm was “grounds,” and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor’s at a trading station.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
““Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven’s last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us: we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colors, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.””
—John Milton (1608–1674)