Ignazio Saietta
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Ignazio Saietta aka Ignazio Lupo and Lupo The Wolf (March 19, 1877 - January 13, 1947) was a Black Hand leader, extortionist and murderer who was recognized as one of the leading New York mafia bosses in the early 1900s.
Ignazio Saietta was born in the Sicilian mafia stronghold of Corleone, Sicily. He fled to the United States in 1889 after killing a man, ironically named Salvatore Morello. Saietta was only 12 at the time, but he was already learning the centuries old mafia traditions of Sicily and once he reached America he continued his mafia career as an ambitious and eager New York mobster. Saietta became a feared Black Hand extortionist and gang leader by his late teens and by the age of 20 he had become a top Sicilian mafia boss within the Little Italy community of Manhattan where he and his mafia group based their operations which included extortion, theft, robberies, the Italian lottery, usury (loansharking) and murder. His mafia associates within the equally powerful and influential Morello family, which included Giuseppe Morello, Nicholas Morello and half brothers Vincent Terranova and Ciro Terranova were the leading mafia bosses in East Harlem and the South Bronx.
Saietta became closely associated with the Morello-Terranova faction and eventually married into their immediate family by taking a Morello sister as his bride before the turn of the century. He maintained his leadership over his Little Italy based interests, but by the start of the 20th century Lupo Saietta merged his mafia faction with the Morello-Terranova faction, which basically formed what became known as the Morello crime family, then the leading Mafia family in New York City. Saietta kept his base of operations in Little Italy, but shared the overall leadership of the crime family with Joe Morello from his base in East Harlem, while various members of their group such as lieutenants Nick Morello and the Terranova brothers led the affiliated groups and ran the rackets with soldiers like Giuseppe "Joe" Catania Sr., Charles Ubriaco and Tommaso "The Ox" Petto, a top enforcer and killer within the crime family. Saietta demanded absolute obedience from the members of his crew--for example, he killed one of his relatives just because he merely suspected he was a traitor. His reputation became so fearsome that it was common for Italian immigrants to cross themselves at the mention of his name.
Saietta was suspected of at least 60 murders, and may have killed many more. However, he was never caught until 1910, when the Secret Service arrested him for running a large scale counterfeiting ring in the Catskills. He was sentenced to 30 years, but was granted parole in 1920. Despite widespread police attention, it was his fellow gangsters who finally reined Saietta in. He relied almost entirely on terror and murder, and the emerging National Crime Syndicate felt he would generate too much heat. In the early 1930s, Saietta was told he was "out," but permitted to run a small Italian lottery in Brooklyn.
In 1936, Saietta was sent back to prison for running a protection racket among bakers. He was sent to Atlanta Prison to serve a few years on his original counterfeiting sentence. When he returned to Brooklyn, he had no remaining power and died in 1947.
[edit] In popular culture
- There is a character called "Ignaz the Wolf" in author Damon Runyon's short story Too Much Pep.
