A DANGEROUS CONSPIRACY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 9 July 1907, Page 4

A DANGEROUS CONSPIRACY.

BLACKMAIL, MURDER AND • OUTRAGE. The New York police seem to lie in a fair way towards breaking lip one of the most dangerous conspiracies tliat ever threatened civilised society. It is only | witlun the last eight years that the doings of the Black Hand gang have come into prominence, although it is possible that its history goes further back, and that a number of mysterious murders committed before its name began to be widespread about are attributed to its emissaries. The Black Hand exists ( to levy blackmail by spreading terror. ' At first its attempts met with comparatively little success, for people who received theatening letters, disregarded them. Experience began to show, how- j ever, that the writers were in earnest, i ''Send us money or we will kill you"; "■Send us money or we will blow up your house"; "Send us money or we will kidnap your child"—such were (he missives, signed with a rude drawing of a black hand. And the writers were as good as their word. Elaborate piecautions were taken so that the money should be paid in such a way that it could not be traced to the recipient. c Some of the threatened men, like An- ' gelo Pecoraro, a well-to-do New York ■ merchant, and Nicolo Parella, a "jeweller, of the same city, mysteriously disappeared; others, like two men named . Farro and Creseino, were found stabbed to death or shot through the head. The murders of those named took place four years ago. and since then the outrages known to have been committed by the gang in New York, Brooklyn. Philadelphia and other places in the Cnite:l States exceed sixty in number. Early this year they blew up the house of an Italian grocer at Oyster Bay, close to the residence of President Roosevelt. The number of children kidnapped amounts to some scores, although it is impossible to get figures, as in many cases they have been secretly ransomed by their distracted parents. For a time the victims of the blackmailing were selected from the Ttalian - population—a fact which led to the police to suspect that the gang had some connection with the notorious Mafiia. For this reason a well-known Ttalian detective sergeant, Giuseppe Petrosini. was deputed to endeavor to find out the secret of the mysterious organisation, but hitherto all his efforts and those of his colleagues have been baffled. By degrees the blackmailers extended the'r operations. Threatening letters began to reach men of other nationalities whose names appear in the newspapers as owners of vast fotunes. Mr David Wesson, the millionaire revolver maker, had received communications with the dreaded sign of the black hand shortly before his death, and that event is attributed to the worry and anxiety from which he suffered in consequence. The New York police allege that quite a score of persons have become insane because of the threats of which they have been the recipients. Some have committed suicide, while in one casff the victim slew an innocent person in the belief that he was being dogged by a member of the band. A judge of Italian extraction, Robert Cortese, of Paterson, New Jersey, received a parcel bv post last February. He had previously received threatening letters. His son opened the parcel, and an explosion occurred. The judge was killed on the spot, and his > son seriously injured. Only about a month ago a bomb was placed in the entrance of a tenement house in the Eist ' Sixty-first street. New York. The hall was wrecked, but fortunately no one was injured, although there were 125 persons in the building at the time. It appears that a rich banker named Coffazzi is half-owner of the house. Ifis son had been kidnapped shortly before by the Black' Hand, and as the father refused to pay the ransom the bnv ImiT been returned to him. The bomb outrage was the blackmailers' revenge. From time to time men, sometimes a dozen in a batch, have been brought before the Police Courts as suspects, but the secret .of the conspiracy has been . kept with masterly cunning, and the proceedings have invariably ended in the acquittal of the prisoners for want of evidence. That the members of the gang ■ are very numerous, amounting to some hundreds, is freely asserted. The police estimate that during the past five years they have netted more than a quarter of a million dollars, while within the sam? period they have wrecked or burned property to the value of a hundred thousand dollars.