Following Friends

Attilio Pecora was an ally of Pittsburgh's Volpe crime family and best friends with John Volpe. With the deaths of three of the Volpes the previous July, Pecora, it was stated, was setting up to run the numbers and booze rackets in East Pittsburgh, Wilmerding and Turtle Creek.

On September 3, 1932 Pecora was standing outside his fruit store when a car pulled up to the curb down the street and somebody called to him. Pecora made his way to the car. In a flash, a shot gun appeared in the front passenger window and out the back window. Both went off and Pecora crumbled to the ground.

Attilio Pecora

Human pin cushion

Pittsburgh mobster John Aliberti was found on this date in 1933 on the outskirts of his home town with upwards of sixty ice pick wounds in his body. His pal, John Bazzano, was found in a similar condition the previous year in Brooklyn. Bazzano had orchestrated the murders of the Volpe Brothers, rival mafiosi in his coffee shop, a decision that the fellas in New York City didn't take kindly to. Aliberti, we're told, took a powder from the his old haunts after the Volpe murders for a number of months.

Known as a gunman, Aliberti was arrested in 1927 for having a pistol and shotgun in his car. He did time in prison for a shooting and was arrested and acquitted for murder in the spring of 1932.

Perhaps Aliberti was bumped off for being in the Bazzano camp or maybe it was because the previous summer he reportedly bombed a night club. The gunman was last seen at 2 a.m. the morning of his murder arguing with two men and two women, but when cops approached he got into a car with them, and two other men, and took off. His body was found six hours later.