THREE MEN SHOT

Hokitika Guardian, 28 October 1931, Page 6

THREE MEN SHOT

fcROOKLYN CANCSTERS. “TAXI DANCE HALL RACKET” NEW YORK, Sept. 12. Five gangsters invaded a dance hall in Brooklyn, New York. They kidnapped three men from the arms of girl partners, ‘‘took them for a ride” in a sedan to a lonely suburb, stood them against a wall, and shot them down. One is dead and two are reported to he mortally wounded.

Anthony Ferrara, a twenty-five-year-old convict, who is on parole, or tick-ct-of-leave, as it is called in England, is the dead rnan. He was shot through the nose eye and head. Murray Leonardi aged twenty-one, another ex-con-vict, has a bullet through his shoulder and another near the heart. Angelo Ouranni, aged twenty, has a bullet in the jaw another in the hack and a third in the chest.

This outrage in Brooklyn, popularly is known as the “City of Homes and Churches,” took place while the Federal authorities, acting on orders from President Hoover were preparing to operate with the New York officials .in the greatest drive ever attempted against the cities criminal element, and also, at a time when scores of mass meetings were being held jn the metropolis to protest against the terrible conditions created by gangsters and racketeers.

All the men concerned—victims and assailents—were connected with the “taxi dance hall racket.” They pooled money to rent rooms for low dances, and provided girls for hire as partners on the taxi system' either by the hour or so much per dance. The scene of the triple shooting was badlv-lighted district, lined with slaughter-houses , and there in the street the men were butchered as cattle are killed in the adjoining pens. The police version of the story," as told to-day, favours the theory that the shooting was the aftermath of a prison quarrel, and they have arrested Murray Leonardi. Leonardi, they sav was the ringleader in the shooting, and was accidentally brought down by one of bis own gang. Mis presence in the dance-hall and bis abduction'with the two other men, according to the police, was simply part of a plan to allay suspicions. Leonardi and Curauni. true to gangster tradition, refuse information to the police. But Curauni told the detectives at his bedside that the girls they took to the dance had nothing to do with it.