Rooming house blues

Former members of the “Forty Thieves” gang, that operated in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn, Vincent Pisano, twenty, and Oresta DeRobertis, twenty-one, had lived in various places in that area and ended up a short time before August 7, 1934 at small rooming house. They each had a room on the top floor flanking the room of Mrs. Kathleen Wagermann and her children. At 4:00 a.m. two killers, each armed with a revolver, managed to gain entrance to the house. Then, climbing up the stairs they split up. One entered Pisano’s room and the other DeRobertis’s. All the inhabitants of the boarding house were suddenly woken up when the gunmen simultaneously emptied their guns into their targets. Five of the six bullets fired at Pisano lodged in his abdomen while three out of the six fired at DeRobertis pierced his head