October 2023 issue contents - Features
Italian gang chief with an Irish name
Vaccarelli graduated from street fighter to labor leader and businessman
By Thomas Hunt
Mistakes are frequently made about the Lower East Side underworld chief known as “Paul Kelly.” He has often been referred to as the Irish leader of an early twentieth-century street gang at New York’s Five Points, as the non-Irish founder of a predominantly Irish gang, as the first Mafia boss in New York City or as the one-time Mafia boss of both Salvatore “Charlie Luciano” Lucania and Al Capone. None of these things are true.
“Kelly” was originally Vaccarelli, a U.S. immigrant from southern mainland Italy. He was chief of a mostly Italian gang. While headquartered within the Lower East Side, that gang always remained a considerable distance from the Five Points neighborhood and distinct from the various organizations that bore the label “Five Points Gang.” Kelly was never part of the Mafia. Though he probably had contact with some existing and future Mafia leaders, he could not have commanded Lucania or Capone, as they were young children at the time Kelly stepped away from his underworld organization...
Magazine page count: twenty five.
Images: fourteen.
Sidebar articles: four.
Endnotes.
No comments:
Post a Comment