Sharing a forgotten source
Arthur Train wrote about the 1905 Torsiello murder solved by Petrosino
A crime historian recently wrote to ask me about a 1905 Bronx murder case. The body of a murdered Italian immigrant was found in Van Cortlandt Park. Detective Joseph Petrosino was assigned to investigate. In characteristic fashion, Petrosino aggressively followed his few bits of evidence until he confronted Antonio Strollo in New Jersey. Strollo portrayed himself as a close friend of the victim. But it seems Petrosino was almost immediately certain of Strollo's guilt. He questioned and prodded until Strollo's alibis collapsed.
When the case against Strollo went to trial, the defendant introduced as evidence what he insisted was a letter from a “Black Hand” gang, threatening him and the murder victim Antonio Torsiello. Strollo insisted that the writer of the letter was the murderer. The state did not resist that suggestion, and proved that Strollo had written the letter himself. He was convicted of murder and executed in the electric chair in 1908.
While Mafia seems not to have played a role in it, the case has been interesting to me for a number of reasons. These include its location in the Bronx (my earliest home), the mention of “Black Hand,” the familiarity of the surname “Strollo,” the work of Petrosino and other aspects.
A forgotten source of information on the case is an authoritative account by prosecutor Arthur Train, published in his 1922 book True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney's Office. Train devoted an entire chapter of the book to the case. The chapter is quite informative, though Train annoying refers to Petrosino as "Petrosini." It includes an image of the "Black Hand" letter Strollo introduced as evidence.
(Train may have written the material at the time that Strollo was executed. The book, released in 1922, specifies a copyright date of 1908. Train had written articles for magazines as a sideline, while working as an assistant district attorney, before giving up the law to become an author. The book appears to have been a collection of earlier articles.)
In order to enable broader access to Train's account (now in public domain due to copyright expiration), I have reprinted the chapter on my mafiahistory.us website. I included some background on Arthur Train and his work. If I can find the time, I hope to post my own account of the Torsiello-Strollo matter.
The chapter can be found here: 'A Case of Circumstantial Evidence,' by Arthur Train.
Interestingly, the Antonio Strollo executed for the murder of Torsiello appears to be a relative of Anthony "Tony Bender" Strollo, later a leading figure in the Genovese Crime Family in New York City. When this connection was mentioned to the crime historian who asked about the case, he expressed his belief that both of those men were also related to the Lenine "Lenny" Strollo who became a famous Mafia leader in the Youngstown, Ohio, area. Like the other Strollos, Lenny's family roots extend back to the community of Colliano in the Salerno province of Italy.
For more on Lenny Strollo and the Youngstown underworld, see our November 2022 issue of Informer: The Mob in Youngstown.
