Up on the roof

Salvatore Natoli was a twenty-four year old drug dealer who had served a term in the Elmira Reformatory for a robbery and, at the time of his death, had a Federal narcotics charge pending against him. The impending drug trial may have been the reason Natoli was bumped off. Perhaps the men he worked for were afraid of what he might say when in custody. Whatever the reason, at about 8:30pm on this date in 1935 Natoli was lured to the roof of a Harlem tenement and shot in the head. He was found about eight hours later by one of the building's tenants.