Legend of Lucchino, Part III: A Marked Man
In booming Pennsylvania coal country, immigrant Italians were exploited by corporations and terrorized by mafiosi. One brave insider turned against them, risking everything to stand up for workers.
This is Part III of our four-part series, “The Legend of Lucchino: The Man Who Took on the Mob.” If you haven’t read Parts I and II yet, click here to start at the beginning . (If you prefer to read the whole story on one page, click here.)
Two months after the loss of their child, Sam Lucchino was walking along Railroad Street, talking to a wealthy local Italian named Charles Consagra.
A light snow fell, and moonlight shone brightly down on Pittston. Lucchino and Consagra were deep in conversation when two gunshots suddenly rang out, fired at close range into the side of Lucchino’s neck. He collapsed to the ground, his blood staining the snow. He later claimed that in his semiconscious state, he saw Charles Consagra frantically running around, trying to find help.
Neighbors rushed over and carried Lucchino up the road to the house where he and Nellie lived on Railroad Street, “where his bride of three months was horrified at the murderous attempt upon her husband’s life.”
Blood was pouring from his neck. A doctor was summoned and later declared that if either bullet had sunk in slightly farther — a “small fraction of an inch, a sixteenth would have been enough” — Lucchino would have bled out and died on the spot.
But miraculously, he survived. The next day, he was convalescing in bed, and already receiving visitors — including none other than Charles Consagra.
According to The Informer, Charles Consagra was a foot soldier in the Pittston Crime Family. A nervy, impulsive man with striking sociopathic tendencies, even by Mafia standards, Consagra had been born in Montedoro 15 years before Lucchino, in 1870. His last name, spelled “Consagra,” first appeared in local papers in 1911. But given the tendency toward butchering Italian surnames at the time, it is likely that he was one and the same as “Charles Gonzaga,” who had worked with Lucchino to set off the bomb outside of the Rizzos’ house in 1907.
“‘Mano Nero,’ the notorious Black Hand, again struck with reprehensible force against this community last night,” read a front-page story in the Pittston Gazette.
A connection to Lupo and Morello was immediately suspected. But as the investigation unfolded, a tangled web of local interests took shape. Consagra initially told the police that two men jumped out of an alley on the right side of the street, armed with “short rifles, commonly termed carbines.” He tried to play himself off as an innocent bystander. But the close-range nature of the attack, on such a quiet, moonlit night, quickly drew suspicion, and on February 13, he was arrested along with seven other men.
Sensing an opportunity, the Pittston Police reopened two cold case murders from years past. One case involved the unsolved murder of Giuseppe Castellina, who had been blown away on Railroad Street six years prior. Consagra was now the lone suspect.
When this news reached him in his cell, he immediately fingered another suspect in Lucchino’s shooting — Peter Lacatta, his very best friend and in-law. Consagra started spinning a desperate narrative, claiming that Lacatta had committed the murder, apparently not caring that he was in earshot in a nearby cell. But Consagra’s story fell apart under light questioning, and he erupted in fury after realizing his error.
“You have my life in your hands,” he screamed out at Lacatta. “If I get you in the same cell with me, I will cut your head off with a plate.”
Later, when Consagra was “marched to the warden’s office” and “taken into the presence of his accuser,” the two men reportedly “stared at each other for an instant,” when, to the surprise of everyone present, Consagra fainted and had to be given medical attention.
Meanwhile, Sam Lucchino was developing an even more high-profile reputation, with one local paper hailing him as the “deadliest foe of organized crime in this community.”
A preliminary hearing was held in Pittston to address Lucchino’s shooting, alongside the reopened murder cases. As reported by the Pittston Gazette, “crowds of the swarthy sons of Italy, and some of their wives, were crowded up against the bar in the rear of the room.”
Tensions were running high. Word had just spread that another attempt was made on Lucchino’s life. The night before the hearing, two gunmen, one disguised as a woman, were spotted outside his house, leading to a shootout with Lucchino’s cousins, though no one was hurt.
Lucchino was still recovering from the gunshot wounds when he took the stand. According to William Gillespie, the former mayor, Lucchino showed “no sign of fear,” and needed little coaching as he “stolidly, almost indifferently, told his tragic story.” It was reported that he tried to speak in English at the trial.
Lucchino claimed that no one else was around when he was shot. He said that Consagra moved “from the left to the right side” and added that Consagra was left-handed. A judge ruled that Consagra and seven other men be held for conspiracy to kill a government witness.
Hearings for all three cases were held in unison. The waterworks flowed when the first cold case was called, and the widow of a murdered Italian immigrant named Peter Salvagi took the stand. Salvagi had been found butchered the previous year, shoved down a “cave hole” by a burbling creek, with his head nearly severed. On the stand, his widow screamed in Italian and ripped at her dress. She pulled out a “portrait of the late husband surrounded by several of his children,” and shoved it at the suspects, who were “unmoved.” Salvagi had been harassed for years, she claimed, adding that on one occasion Lucchino had saved his life.
When the second cold case brought Consagra’s ex-best-friend Peter Lacatta to the stand, Consagra — the lone suspect — asked the courtroom interpreter to step aside so that he could look the witness “in the face.” He then lifted up one of his children and plopped her on the floor, directly in front of Lacatta. The infant was removed by a detective who dryly noted that Consagra “would [later] have an opportunity to play his sympathy act in court.”
Following the hearing, Railroad Street went into lockdown. Lucchino’s friends posted themselves up and down the road, “armed with shotguns and rifles,” prompting one paper to describe the scene as “feudal.”
But Lucchino remained undeterred. He reportedly continued to walk around town late at night, alone and unafraid.
The first of the three cases to be tried was the Castellina shooting, with Charles Consagra as the only defendant. Lucchino appeared as a star witness and “made an impressive appearance.”
Consagra’s lawyer, Miner B. Schnerr, a well-known socialite and rising local legal star, tried to shake Lucchino by dredging up his Black Hand past. He called on Joseph Rizzo to testify against him as a character witness. But Lucchino was backed up by a powerful lineup of city officials, including the current mayor, who testified to his “good reputation.”
However, Schnerr did manage to wrestle out one revealing detail.
“How much did you get from the county last year?” he asked Lucchino.
“About seven hundred dollars,” Lucchino responded. And so it became known that Lucchino had worked as a “special” detective on this case and many others.
As the trial continued and Peter Lacatta took the stand again, he testified that Consagra had borrowed a gun from him shortly before the shooting — and later returned it with the cartridges missing.
“Has Consagra told you anything about the case since?” he was asked.
He replied: “Last Christmas night … he called me to one side and said: ‘What you think of that Sam Lucchino making that arrest in New York?’”
“I said, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’”
“He said, ‘I will have to kill that Lucchino, or he may make big arrest around here.’”
“I said, ‘You ought not kill Sam Lucchino, he is Godfather to your child.’”
“He said, ‘I don’t care.’”
In a shock verdict, Charles Consagra was acquitted, despite his testimony having gone to “pieces.”
He began “sobbing” with his wife when the decision was read and translated into Italian. But he wasn’t off the hook, as his trial for Lucchino’s attempted murder still loomed.
Following his acquittal, Consagra’s demeanor changed dramatically. The next week, he appeared at the courthouse as an observer and seemed “an altogether different man from the [gloomy] individual who was fighting for his life a few days ago.” At one point, he kissed the hand of one of his attorneys in a conspicuous display of gratitude. What followed next reeked of corruption and quickly turned into a roller coaster.
In mid-May, charges were dropped against all the remaining men being held for Lucchino’s shooting — except for Charles Consagra. Then, in a sensational twist, warrants were issued for Peter Lacatta, Stefano La Torre and Sam Lucchino himself — along with Lucchino’s brother, Peter.
The inclusion of Stefano La Torre — Lucchino’s old friend and brother-in-law, a reputed Pittston Crime Family leader — in this legal stunt suggested some level of internecine Mafia warfare. Lucchino and La Torre were still allies, indicating just how mixed up and murky Lucchino’s life had become, living side by side with friends and enemies alike on a roughly one-mile stretch of road.
Lucchino was stunned to learn that he’d been accused of killing Peter Salvagi. Meanwhile, Consagra went to the press, claiming to have received a Black Hand letter. He stated: “While these men are in jail there will be no crime in Pittston. They doin’ all the killing.”
Whether Consagra’s sudden leverage within the local justice system stemmed from ties to law enforcement or mutual blackmail remains unclear. Regardless, five days later, the charges were summarily dropped, and Lacatta, La Torre and both Sam and Peter Lucchino were released. As one paper noted, the “general impression” was that the charges were “trumped up against Lucchino by his enemies, who are opposed to him because of his police work.”
Interestingly, it bears mentioning that in the lead-up to Lucchino’s legal trouble, Charles Consagra’s lawyer, Miner Schnerr, became embroiled in a shocking scandal of his own. Facing a charge of sodomy — which was classified as a crime in early 20th century America — his predicament cast an unusual shadow over the events surrounding Lucchino’s case.
One month earlier, in April, a married, immigrant Italian father of five from Pittston came forward to accuse him of the act, incriminating himself in the process. In the ensuing trial, Schnerr claimed that he was being viciously blackmailed. Complicating matters further, Schnerr’s legal defense presented a letter that was signed by the plaintiff, which read, “I undersigned, do declare that all I have done I did because Sam Lucchino made me do, because I did not know how to talk.” Yet in court, the man reverted to his original accusation, stating that he signed the letter after Italians paid him a visit in prison, insinuating coercion.
In early May, Schnerr was acquitted, but not without receiving a court censure for bringing “odium upon his profession.” His reputation had been ruined. Disbarment proceedings soon followed, charging him with 18 counts of professional misconduct, one of which particularly infuriated a judge: Schnerr had received a retainer to defend Charles Consagra, despite being appointed his public defender. After being disbarred, Schnerr closed up his offices in Pittston and Wilkes-Barre and split town for good. Months later, he was picked up in southern Italy and arrested for passing counterfeit money, along with an Italian-born companion, “a young married man who formerly lived in Pittston.”
In the midst of all this chaos, Charles Consagra’s charges for shooting Lucchino were mysteriously dropped. No mention or explanation of why could be found in the press, despite numerous articles noting that a “strong case” remained to be tried against him.
At the same time, Lucchino’s family began to unravel. The first blow came in late May when his mother, Pasqualina, was arrested for larceny, accused of stealing several hundred dollars worth of clothes from a Pittston department store on the very same day that her son was “vindicated” in the Salvagi cold case.
Then, in late August, as Sam and Nellie ate breakfast, they were startled by the sound of two gunshots coming from the second floor of their house, where both of Sam’s parents lived. Fearing another Black Hand attack, Sam grabbed his pistol and climbed up the stairs, where he was shocked to find his father, Tranquillo, lying in a pool of his own blood, with a gun.
The Pittston Gazette reported:
“Melancholy because his health was failing him, Tranquillo Lucchino, aged 70 … father of Samuel Lucchino, the young detective who has taken such a prominent part in the prosecution of the recent Black Hand cases, attempted to take his life this morning by firing two bullets into his head. … He has been suffering from miner’s asthma …”
Two days later, Tranquillo died. Sam was blindsided. He tried to hide what had happened from the press, claiming that his father had fallen down the stairs and accidentally discharged his pistol. But no one believed the story.
In September, Pasqualina Lucchino appeared in court to face her theft charges, “bent down with the weight of many years, and apparently friendless and alone.” Neither Sam nor Peter accompanied her or helped her find legal counsel. When she was convicted, the judge rebuked her sons for their “unfilial attitude” and commuted her sentence due to her age.
We will never know what went on behind the Lucchino family’s closed doors — how Sam Lucchino’s parents felt about their son’s shock decision to work with the law, or what it meant for their reputation in the intimate environs of Pittston’s Italian colony.
But through it all, Sam Lucchino remained unphased. He doubled down harder than ever in Pittston and refused to back away, even after receiving a fresh death threat — a letter that was signed simply, a “friend.”