Three of a Kind

July 28, 1932 saw the Pittsburgh underworld up-ended when three members of the ruling Volpe clan were eliminated at the same time. The patriarch of the Volpe crime family was brother John. He had been picked up numerous times for numerous crimes, including murder, but never convicted. Through the 1920s, the Volpe clan ran the underworld in the town of Wilmerding outside Pittsburgh. By the early 1930s they were making inroads into Pittsburgh.

John Bazzano, the local Mafia chieftain, who took the reigns of leadership the prior fall after the murder of Joe Siragusa, considered the Volpes allies, but with their moving into Pittsburgh he decided that they needed to go.

For a headquarters in Pittsburgh, the Volpe brothers used Bazzano's Rome coffee shop and it was there that Bazzano made his move. John was the first to go, simply because he stepped outside moments before the gunmen arrived. As he loitered out front, a car bearing New York license plates pulled up and three men got out. John seemed to know what was coming because he turned to run back to the shop but, the gunmen were faster and shot him five times. John crumpled to the ground and the gunmen passed him and entered the shop. They knew their targets. Brother Arthur, who was lunching on a bowel of corn flakes, took a bullet or two to the back of the head while his brother James made a dash for a counter but, fell with a bullet through the brain.

While the town of Wilmerding mourned the three Volpe brothers, the surviving siblings plead their case to the National Mafia Commission, who came to the conclusion that Pittsburgh mob boss John Bazzano had no authority to bump of the brothers. Sentence was passed and Bazzano ended up in sack.

John Volpe                James Volpe               Arthur Volpe