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'The Black Hand' and the Death of ‘Italian Sherlock Holmes’
January 20, 2024
Italian immigrants arriving in New York City in the early 1900s were terrorized with kidnappings, murder and extortion by a secret society known as "the Black Hand." And then Joe Petrosino took action. He led a special NYPD task force, the Italian Squad, which worked to take down the Black Hand as well as the Mafia. But in March 1909 while on a secret mission in Palermo, Sicily, Petrosino was murdered. Over 100 years later, his death remains unsolved.