Ignazio Lupo

Ignazio Lupo (Italian: [iɲˈɲattsjo ˈluːpo]; March 21, 1877 – January 13, 1947), also known as Ignazio Saietta and Lupo the Wolf, was a Sicilian American Black Hand leader in New York City during the early 1900s. His business was centered in Little Italy, Manhattan, where he ran extensive extortion operations and committed other crimes, including robbery, loan-sharking, and murder. By the start of the 20th century, Lupo merged his crew with others in the South Bronx and East Harlem to form the Morello crime family, which became the leading Mafia family in New York City.

Suspected of at least 60 murders, he was not caught by authorities until 1910, when the Secret Service arrested him for running a large scale counterfeiting ring in the Catskills. He was paroled after serving 10 years of a 30-year sentence. A few years later, he was forced into retirement by the emerging National Crime Syndicate led by Lucky Luciano.

Ignazio Lupo was born in Palermo, Sicily, to parents Rocco Lupo and Onofria Saietta. He has sometimes been referred to as Ignazio Saietta, using his mother's maiden name, but his actual surname was Lupo.

From age 10, he worked in a dry goods store in Palermo. In October 1898, he shot and killed a business rival named Salvatore Morello, by Lupo's account in self-defense after Morello attacked him with a dagger during an argument in Lupo's store. Lupo went into hiding after the killing and, on the advice of his parents, eventually fled Sicily to escape prosecution.

After stops in Liverpool, Montreal, and Buffalo, he arrived in New York in 1898. On March 14, 1899, Lupo was convicted in absentia of 'willful and deliberate murder', reportedly due to the testimony of the clerks who worked in his store. Lupo would never serve out the Sicilian sentence, though he would one day return to Sicily.

Upon settling in New York City, Lupo opened a store at East 72nd Street in Manhattan with his cousin Saitta, but moved his business to Brooklyn after a disagreement. In 1901, he moved his business back to Manhattan and opened a small import store at 9 Prince Street, while also running a saloon across the street at 8 Prince Street. Lupo's father, Rocco, joined him in New York City in 1902 and together they opened a retail grocery store on 39th Street between 9th and 10th avenues. Around this time, Lupo began preying on his fellow Italian immigrants, using the extortion tactics of the Black Hand.

In 1902, Giuseppe Morello acquired a saloon at 8 Prince Street, at the rear of the premises where Lupo was running his saloon. Morello had immigrated to the United States from Sicily in the 1890s and had been joined by his three half brothers Vincenzo Terranova, Ciro Terranova and Nicholas Morello. Lupo became closely associated with the Morello-Terranova faction and eventually married into their immediate family when he wed Salvatrice Terranova on December 23, 1903.

He maintained his leadership over his Little Italy-based interests, but in the early 1900s Lupo 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. Lupo kept his base of operations in Little Italy, but shared the overall leadership of the crime family with Giuseppe Morello, who operated from his base in East Harlem, while various members of their group, including Morello's half brothers, led the affiliated groups and ran the rackets with soldiers such as Giuseppe Fanaro, Giuseppe "Joe" Catania Sr., Charles Ubriaco and Tommaso "The Ox" Petto, a top enforcer and killer within the crime family.