{"id":7080,"date":"2014-04-30T00:10:17","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T04:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=7080"},"modified":"2014-04-30T15:31:56","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T19:31:56","slug":"piero-francisco-singing-dancing-mob-murder-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2014\/04\/piero-francisco-singing-dancing-mob-murder-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"Piero Francisco: Singing, Dancing Mob Murder Witness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"36443-0-cropped\"<\/a>
Curb Market – Southwest Corner 9th and Washington Avenue. May 23, 1937. Frank Siegner, photographer. Nearby was one of John Avena\u2019s two gambling houses. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Piero Francisco spent only three years in Philadelphia in the 1920s, and more than half of his time was behind bars. To earn this, Francisco had the misfortune to witness a pair of mob murders and the willingness to share what, and who, he saw.<\/p>\n

Francisco was only following the lead of his employer Anthony \u201cMusky\u201d Zanghi. Talk about making bad choices.<\/p>\n

Zanghi, owned La Tosca Caf\u00e9 at 9th<\/sup> and Fitzwater<\/a>, but Zanghi was no restaurateur. He was a gangster who hired Francisco, a down-on-his-luck dancer, to entertain caf\u00e9 clientele. In the Spring of 1927, Zanghi was target of a failed hit<\/a> that claimed the lives of his 19-year old brother Joseph, and Vincent Cocozza, an associate. After the shooting, Zanghi broke the code of silence and named names. He talked to the press, the police, the district attorney and the judges. But when it came time for the murder trial of Luigi Quaranta, the first of the assailants to face murder charges, Zanghi disappeared, leaving the State with Francisco as its one and only star witness.<\/p>\n

Piero Francisco\u2019s American tour wasn\u2019t supposed to go this way. In fact, Francisco hadn\u2019t even figured on visiting Philadelphia when he and his dance partner set sail from Italy for New York the year before. They planned to make their way to Hollywood and display their mastery of the edgy, new Apache dance style<\/a>. But Francisco\u2019s partner died while crossing the Atlantic. And having no luck finding a new one in New York, the \u201csmall, sleek-haired young \u2018Apache\u2019 dancer\u201d made his way to Philadelphia where he earned \u201ca comfortable salary\u201d giving \u201cdancing exhibitions\u201d in Zanghi\u2019s \u201ccabaret\u201d<\/p>\n

Until the day of the Zanghi-Cocozza murders.<\/p>\n

\"Iva,<\/a>
Joseph Ida, John Avena and Luigi Quaranta in a Police Lineup, May 1927. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDancer Replaces Zanghi as Witness, Names 3 in Slaying\u201d reads one headline, reporting on the first of what officials planned to be a dozen trials of the six men charged with murder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the court convened . . . Francisco, a pleasant faced, dark complexioned” man in his mid 20s took the witness stand. \u201cHis dashing brown suit, his patent leather shoes, and general dapper appearance contrasted strongly with his air of perturbation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throngs packed the Court in City Hall (Room 453), where Judge John Monaghan presided. And they would not be disappointed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you remember Decoration Day,\u201d Assistant District Attorney Charles F. Kelley asked his witness. \u201cI do, replied the dancer in a low voice\u201d beginning more than an hour of testimony. \u201cFrancisco\u2019s identification was positive,\u201d Philadelphians would learn. \u201cHis account of the double murder was clear cut and unshaken on cross examination.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was within three doors of this restaurant when I saw a blue sedan automobile going down 8th st. I saw John Scopoletti at the drivers wheel and saw Quaranta in back with another man I do not know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Francisco pointed to Quaranta, the stocky, immobile prisoner\u2019s face relaxed into a cynical smile. Then Mr. Kelley asked that the other defendants be brought into the court room. The atmosphere seemed to grow tense as the men came in, and many of the spectators rose and peered at the defendants as they entered in single file.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking over the prisoners with a hesitant yet deliberate air, Francisco pointed to Scopeletti, who was standing in the middle, and said, \u201cThat man was driving the car. Make him put on his hat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a half grin, not unlike the savage grimace of Quaranta when he was first identified, Scopoletti put on his hat and Francisco then said, emphatically, \u201cThat\u2019s him. He was driving the car.\u201d Francisco also identified Dominick Sesta as the other man with the shotgun sitting beside Quaranta.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went into a cigar store three doors from the restaurant and when I came out I saw Quaranta, Sesta and Scopoletti in the car. Then I heard shooting. The first shooting was very loud. The second shooting was like pistols. I could see smoke around the automobile.\u00a0 The shooting was coming from the blue sedan they were riding in. There were about eighteen or twenty shots in all, and some of them sounded like pistol shots.\u201d Francisco saw Joseph Zanghi fall to the pavement; he saw Cocozza being put into a car to be taken to Pennsylvania Hospital where he would be pronounced dead.<\/p>\n

There had never been such a trial in Philadelphia. According to the newspapers, \u201cThe word went out in gangland to get\u201d Francisco. The morning of his first appearance in City Hall, as the witness \u201cwalked along the street, downtown . . . a number of shots whizzed past him, missing him narrowly.\u201d A few days later, Francisco \u201cwas awakened . . . to find the house where he lived burning and shots riddling the walls in a further effort to bump him off.\u201d<\/p>\n

To protect his witness, Judge Monaghan sent Francisco to the House of Correction<\/a>. When Zanghi resurfaced, the Judge sent him there, as well.<\/p>\n

After Quaranta\u2019s conviction and sentence to life in prison, the other trials proved less successful. Some resulted in acquittals, others were postponed or never materialized. After twenty months of protective incarceration, Francisco and Zanghi were both released. Zanghi left Philadelphia for New York, where, in 1934, he would be killed in a fight over the spoils of an otherwise successful crime. (.PDF<\/a>). Francisco, who gained fluent English reading novels during his incarceration, had no intention of staying in America. \u201cFree Gang Witness to start a New Life,\u201d read the headline.<\/p>\n

Francisco had saved just enough from his daily witness fee to pay for a 2nd<\/sup> class ticket on a steamer to Italy. \u201cOfficials would not reveal the exact date of his sailing, nor the ship.\u201d And detectives accompanied him as he left the District Attorney\u2019s office, \u201ca free man at last.\u201d<\/p>\n

In newly acquired, perfect English, Francisco \u201cthanked all those who had helped protect him\u201d and set off, the newspaper reported, \u201cto live quietly under Italy\u2019s Fascist regime\u201d having had his fill of \u201cAmerica’s gangland entanglements.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Newspaper articles consulted at Temple University\u2019s Special Collections Research Center<\/span><\/a> include \u201cDancer Replaces Zanghi as Witness, Names 3 in Slaying,\u201d Philadelphia<\/i> Evening Bulletin<\/i>, June 16, 1927; \u201cFree Gang Witness to start a New Life,\u201d Evening Public Ledger<\/i>, March 9, 1929; and \u201cState Aids Zanghi Witness to Flee,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/i>, March 10, 1929.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Piero Francisco spent only three years in Philadelphia in the 1920s, and more than half of his time was behind bars. To earn this, Francisco had the misfortune to witness a pair of mob murders and the willingness to share what, and who, he saw. Francisco was only following the lead of his employer Anthony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080","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=7080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}