{"id":6523,"date":"2014-04-07T00:01:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T04:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=6523"},"modified":"2014-04-30T16:20:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T20:20:00","slug":"zanghis-revenge-a-pivotal-mobster-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2014\/04\/zanghis-revenge-a-pivotal-mobster-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Zanghi\u2019s Revenge: A Pivotal Mobster Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Police Lineup at City Hall (left to right): Joseph Ida, John Avena and Luigi Quaranta, Memorial Day, 1927. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The third attempt on John Avena\u2019s life took place on March 11, 1927 as the 32-year old gangster stepped out of a restaurant at 822 South 8th<\/sup> Street.<\/p>\n

Avena knew exactly<\/em> who was behind the failed hit. And, as we learned last time<\/a>, he had no intention of turning anyone in. \u201cI like to settle these things myself,\u201d Avena liked to say.<\/p>\n

Avena worked for Salvatore Sabella, who also liked to settle things for himself<\/em>. Growing up in Sicily as a butcher\u2019s apprentice, Sabella killed his abusive boss. Now in Philadelphia, this seasoned head of the Philadelphia mob joined Avena and a handful of others to send a \u00a0message, loud and clear: the streets of South Philadelphia were theirs\u2014and would remain theirs.<\/p>\n

This message would be delivered on Memorial Day. Anthony \u201cMusky\u201d Zanghi, 27, a bootlegger, bank robber, bigamist, hold up man, counterfeiter, and alleged cop killer had been making his way into the Philadelphia crime scene. He was standing on the very same stretch of sidewalk on 8th<\/sup> Street where Avena had been shot two months before, talking with his 19-year old brother, Joseph, and Vincent Cocozza, 30, whose own arrest record included burglaries, robberies and the sales of narcotics.<\/p>\n

As \u201cMusky\u201d Zanghi later told it, Avena walked by and \u201cgave me a Judas greeting<\/a>.” Moments later, a car pulled up and as many as 20 shots rang out from pistols and sawed-off shotguns. \u201cI saw two men lift shot guns and fire,\u201d Zanghi stated. \u201cAfter the shooting, I saw Cocozza on the ground in a pool of blood. Then I saw my brother had been shot. At the hospital I had found out that they had blown his brains out and he was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zanghi had been warned that Sabella and his men were after him. \u201cI was sent for by Sabella,\u201d he told police. \u201cThe plan was when they fired at me to take my kid brother, too, he choked,\u201d talking to the authorities. \u00a0According to The<\/em> Public Ledger<\/i>, Zanghi \u201cwas hysterical over the death of his brother.\u201d And, for the first time \u201cin the history of the police department\u201d a gangster had broken the code of silence. From the newspaper clippings at Temple University\u2019s Urban Archives<\/a> we learn of \u00a0Zanghi ‘s willingness “to break all traditions of gangland and \u2018squeal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Police rounded up Sabella\u2019s men, and Zanghi placed each one at the crime scene, except for Joseph Ida (at the left in the photograph). Zanghi \u201cwas positive in his identification of Avena as the man who fired the fatal shot as Joseph.\u201d<\/p>\n

As “he was taken past the \u2018lineup\u2019 at City Hall, Zanghi paused before Avena, his face turning purple with rage: ‘Oh, you rat,’ he shouted. ‘Why did you fire when my back was turned?'”According to reports, Zanghi \u201cattempted to assault Avena, but was restrained\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Zanghi also fingered Luigi Quaranta (at the right in the photograph) as the one who shot Cocozza with a shotgun; he identified Sabella as another shooter and John Scopoletti as the driver. In all, Zanghi identified six men involved in the incident.<\/p>\n

On June 3, the day after the victims\u2019 funerals, all six were led to their arraignments through cleared corridors of City Hall. \u201cThe faces of the prisoners were covered with heavy growth of beard” as they listened to the charges of murder and manslaughter. Each one responded to the charges through an interpreter. \u201cTwenty four detectives sat on the two benches behind the defendants. The prisoners did not even glance at them. Their eyes were fixed on Judge McDevitt throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA tough, hard-looking lot of thugs,\u201d observed Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick, who inspected his Police Department\u2019s unprecedented catch.<\/p>\n

But star witness \u201cMusky\u201d Zanghi would drop from the scene before the trials started. Word on the street was he had been offered as much as $50,000 to disappear. The authorities would hold off on their original plan to try Avena first. On June 13, the District Attorney announced, and the newspapers reported that Quaranta, described as “a swarthy and rather dapper little man” was “unexpectedly chosen as the first to stand trial.”<\/p>\n

Two days later, Quaranta \u201cnervously twisted his gray-banded straw hat in his hand” and “transferred his gaze to the foreman of the jury\u201d before they read the verdict: \u201cWe find the prisoner guilty of murder in the first degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Quaranta understood, he showed no emotion. He turned away from the jury and stared at the floor. \u201cAfter a few moments elapsed, he looked questioning at his attorney, but finding the latter\u2019s attention engaged elsewhere shrugged his shoulders.\u201d Then Quaranta, who would be sentenced to life in prison, \u201cwas led from the courtroom and down winding stairs to the waiting patrol wagon” and taken to Moyamensing Prison<\/a>, in what now seemed, to some, a safer South Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

(The story continues…\u00a0Piero Francisco: Singing, Dancing Mob Murder Witness.<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third attempt on John Avena\u2019s life took place on March 11, 1927 as the 32-year old gangster stepped out of a restaurant at 822 South 8th Street. Avena knew exactly who was behind the failed hit. And, as we learned last time, he had no intention of turning anyone in. \u201cI like to settle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events-and-people","category-neighborhoods","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}