The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia

Paul Moses

Jul 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Adam Barr

About this audiobook

In Sicily, on March 12, 1909, four gunshots thundered in the night. Two men fled, and investigators soon discovered who they had killed: Giuseppe Petrosino, the legendary American detective whose exploits in New York were celebrated even in Italy. Veteran New York City journalist and historian Paul Moses explores the lives of the nationally celebrated detectives who followed in the slain Petrosino's footsteps as leaders of the New York City investigative squad: Anthony Vachris, Charles Corrao, and Michael Fiaschetti. Drawing on new primary sources such as private diaries, and city, state, and federal documents, this narrative history follows the Italian Squad across the first two decades of the twentieth century as its detectives battled increasingly powerful gangsters, political obstacles, and deeply ingrained prejudice against their own beloved Italian immigrant community. Vachris, Corrao, and Fiaschetti became, like Petrosino, famous for meting out tough justice to criminals who comprised the "Black Hand." Beyond trying to prevent horrific crimes-nighttime bombings, kidnappings that targeted children at play, shootings that killed innocent bystanders-the Italian Squad commanders hoped to persuade society of what they knew for themselves: that their fellow immigrant Italians, so often maligned, would make good American citizens.

About the author

Paul Moses is professor emeritus of journalism at CUNY-Brooklyn College and a former reporter and editor at Newsday. He is the author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York's Irish and Italians and The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace.

Adam Barr, a recovering lawyer, former golf industry executive, former singing telegram messenger, and former print and television reporter, now bends the energy of all those "formers" toward his passion for acting and singing. He lives near New York City with his family.