William Oldfield is an archivist and historical lecturer. He lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Victoria Bruce is the author of No Apparent Danger, Hostage Nation and Sellout. She is the recipient of the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism for her film, The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt.

On the night of April 18, 1908, in the railroad town of Bellefontaine, Ohio, about 50 miles northwest of Columbus, 18-year-old Charles Demar walked into the fruit shop he owned with his uncle, Salvatore Cira, and put a bullet into his uncle’s head. Salvatore’s body was discovered later that night by his wife among crates of bananas and apples spattered with his blood. When the police arrived, Mrs. Cira appeared not to understand them, or at least she pretended she didn’t speak English. This wasn’t unusual; the police commonly ran into this problem with Italian immigrants who wanted nothing to do with law enforcement on any level. The most preyed-upon victims were often unwilling to give police any leads, even if they’d personally seen a suspect commit a crime against a loved one.

It’s not that Bellefontaine police lacked investigative skills. No law enforcement institution in the nation had been able to penetrate the criminal organizations that had begun quietly terrorizing cities across America, particularly those with large populations of immigrants from Italy. Nearly 6 million Italian immigrants entered the country in the last two decades of the 1800s and organized crime, common in their native country, often found its way across the Atlantic, too. Increasingly in the papers, the gruesome crimes were credited to “Black Hand” criminals because of several recovered threat letters penned by “La Mano Nero” that demanded exorbitant payments, or death.


The Bellefontaine cops searched the premises of Demar’s Fruit Importers and collected as much evidence as they could. What they found tipped them off to the idea that the murder was more sinister than a random killing. In the dead man’s pants pocket, there were two letters written in Italian. Knowing they had no chance of getting anywhere by interviewing friends or relatives of Cira, the cops were hopeful that the letters would lead to a break in the case. They also knew that their work was done, because the letters put the murder squarely under the jurisdiction of the United States Post Office Department and its inspectors.

In the year of the murder, before the FBI, the U.S. Post Office Inspection Service was the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, and the only agency equipped to solve such a large-scale crime. At a time when the United States Post Office has found itself in the cross hairs of Republican cost-cutting—“on an unsustainable fiscal path,” in the words of one Donald Trump executive order—the story of Inspector Frank Oldfield recalls a time when the nation’s mail delivery service was not just in the black, but the last line of defense against sophisticated, cross-country crimes.

The police brought the letter to the attention of Oldfield at the Columbus Post Office. Since arriving in Columbus in 1901, 41-year-old Oldfield had become one of the most successful Post Office inspectors in the service. And he seemed to be the only one up to the task of solving the Black Hand riddle—infiltrating and taking down the first mafia ring in the United States.

While the “Black Hand” was a term used broadly in sensational news articles about Italian immigrant crimes in the media at the time, an organized crime ring was something that almost no one in law enforcement believed existed on American soil. “Experienced policemen say there is no Black Hand: that it is simply a convenient name adopted by any group of Italian criminals who wish to strike terror into their prospective victims,” the New York Times reported in 1910.

Meanwhile, loosely organized coalitions of extortionists, typically from Sicily where such networks were common, took root in American neighborhoods and thrived. One of them was the organization that Oldfield was about to bust open. Salvatore Arrigo, a fruit seller in Columbus, had connected with fruit sellers from Buffalo, New York, Pennsylvania and throughout Ohio, to form his own deceptively silly-sounding criminal ring: the Society of the Banana. By 1909, Arrigo had passed the leadership seat on to Sam Lima, another member of the group, who had much larger financial goals for the group’s criminal activities.

Little did Sebastian Lima know, the Post Office had started watching him.

In late February 1909, Lima, Sam’s brother-in-law, left the Society of the Banana headquarters in the back of Sam’s fruit shop in Marion, Ohio, an industrial suburb of Cleveland at the time. Sebastian walked three blocks south and arrived at the town’s post office, a corner storefront in the Masonic Temple building at 173 South Main Street, with a stack of letters addressed to cities in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York—invitations to a meeting of top bosses at the Society of the Banana. He asked the clerk for stamps and received tiny two-cent rectangles with perforated edges. The image on the stamp was a portrait in profile of George Washington, his face created from a series of minute strokes and dots. What Sebastian did not notice about the stamps the clerk gave him that day was that each one had a tiny red dot inside the letter o in the word “two.”

Inspector Frank Oldfield in 1909, during the Black Hand investigation. | Courtesy of William Oldfield

After the letters were ready to mail, Sebastian, dressed like a laborer in baggy pants and suspenders, handed the clerk $900 in neatly stacked bills.

Even though this was about twice the clerk’s annual salary, it did not surprise him. In fact, the clerk was already taking out a money order form for Sebastian to fill out. Transferring enormous amounts of money from the Marion post office to Sicily was a nearly everyday occurrence for Sam and Sebastian Lima, who the clerk, and everyone else, believed were brothers. It was assumed by many in the Italian community as well as throughout the city that the two had some kind of criminal business on the side, but the hefty influx of the Lima money into the economy and the Marion County Bank Company kept the gossipers at bay. The two Limas were careful to never make victims out of anyone in Marion, so no one could be sure where the incredible amounts of money came from. Sebastian filled out the money order. The recipient was his mother, Signora Carmella Barbara Lima, in Palermo, Sicily. He paid for the transfer and left.

When Lima was out of sight the clerk took the copy of Lima’s money order and put it aside to give to the Post Office inspector, Frank Oldfield from Columbus, who’d come to work in the back office. Then he got out a sheet of stamps, put tiny dots in the o as he had been instructed, and put the sheets away so he wouldn’t accidentally use them on the next customer.

Now, all Oldfield had to do was wait for the invitations to reach the Society members and wait for the meeting at the fruit shop headquarters in Marion, scheduled for March 9, 1909.

Late in the afternoon of March 9, George Pate, Frank Oldfield’s fellow inspector, wearing a slouchy suit with his jacket unbuttoned, loitered in the arched entryway of the Marion train station and waited.

The Sicilians came on different trains from all different directions. On the Cincinnati inbound, an old man walked especially slowly: Salvatore Arrigo, the first Society of the Banana godfather. With him came another, younger man, who Pate knew must be Vincenzo Arrigo, the old man’s son. From Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Dennison, Ohio, came a long line of Sicilians who Pate checked off his list one by one—all Society of the Banana members, including Antonio Lima, Sam Lima’s father, who was one of the highest up in the gang and had a long criminal history back in Palermo.

Bartillon card photo and data about Salvatore Arrigo, the first "boss" of the Society of the Banana. | Oldfield Collection

When it was completely dark, all four inspectors on duty, including Oldfield, took to the streets to monitor the store from four different vantage points. It was a cold March evening and all of the windows were closed in the store. Oldfield wished he could hear what was going on, but even if he could have, there was no way to understand what was being said without a translator.

The lights at Lima’s burned on and flickered. The men had a lot of current business to cover. There was new ground to break as well. This was not an ad hoc gang of criminals haphazardly going after one victim, then the next. This was an interstate and intercontinental coalition. This was a covert and tight-knit confederation. And best of all to Sam Lima, the new and improved Society of the Banana was just like a corporation.

Sam Lima no longer saw himself as a criminal. He saw himself as a CEO, and he was about to be elected along those lines by the men at the meeting. He saw these regional leaders as his board of directors. He fancied himself like the shipping magnates in the Great Lakes or the oil and steel barons who built skyscrapers and put their names on top. The Society’s well-tuned extortion business was bringing in thousands of dollars every week. Once victims had succumbed to the threatening letters, with some having to be coerced under threat of death, they were described as “friends” of the Society and continued to make regular “tribute” payment to Sam Lima and his gang.

Fourteen Mafiosi sat cramped in Lima’s back room on chairs and fruit crates amid the cigar smoke. Commanding his audience, Sam Lima called the meeting to order. First order of business: a vote to elect a new “boss” of the Society of the Banana. While the title was mostly a token, Arrigo, everyone knew, was too decrepit and unmotivated to remain in the position. A unanimous vote made Cincinnati saloon owner Francesco Spadaro the successor. Spadaro agreed to the title, happy to collect checks and use his saloon as cover for the group’s illegal activities. The real control was to go to the Society’s new director. All in favor of Sam Lima to be the new director of the Society of the Banana?

Thirteen hands rose.

Lima’s first order of business was to hammer out the Society’s new bylaws, which Oldfield found later in a raid of the building along with minutes of the meeting that night and the lists and ledgers with victims’ names. Over the evening, a brutal and sinister list of articles was proposed and agreed upon.

Bylaws and Regulations of the Society of the Banana

Art. 1. The person who tries to reveal the secrets of this society will be punished with death;

Art. 2. A member who offends one of his companions, staining his honor, will be punished according to article 1;

Art. 3. The member who tries to do harm to another branch of the society, or to the family of other companions, if this harm shall have been grave, will be undressed and marked on his body with the mark of infamy and called with word of contempt, “Swindler,” and if the offense is more grave, he will be stabbed;

Art. 4. The person who is a coward and does not sustain the punishment assigned to him by the Society, he will be punished in accordance with Art. 3;

There were 16 articles in all.

With that squared away, Lima got down to the main business at hand. Each man came to the meeting with a list of “friends” for the Society to persecute. Having done their background research on the marks, they estimated net worth and monthly income and put a price on the victim’s “friendship.” Most of the proposed victims were fruit dealers or other merchants whom the Blackhanders did business with. Some were doctors or other professionals. All were Italian or Sicilian. In a leather-bound ledger, Sam Lima listed all the names. In the next column, he wrote the person’s address. In the third column was the amount of money the Society would require in order to let the victim and his family live.

A translation of a fourth threatening letter to John Amicon in spring 1909. Inspector Oldfield hired several Sicilian translators to interpret correspondence during the Black Hand investigation. | Oldfield Collection

The fourth column he left blank to fill in once payment or partial payment was made. If no payment was made, there would eventually be an x in that spot. They then set about creating an intricate plan to deliver their demands, not directly, but in a convoluted scheme of “under cover” letters sent to victims by other victims so that there would be no trail back to the Society of the Banana. There were 43 human targets on the list. The sums they would owe ranged from $200 to $20,000, for an initial payment.

If all went as planned, in the next month, the Society of the Banana would rake in $118,000.

The last thing on the agenda to discuss was something eating at Sam Lima: the defiant, dismissive John Amicon. How dare he disrespect the Society and publicly belittle Lima’s operation. John Amicon was one half of Amicon Brothers, the multimillion-dollar fruit distributor with a Columbus operation spanning a city block employing hundreds. Amicon was one of Lima’s biggest targets. After several death threats, not only would Amicon not pay, he publicly disrespected the criminals around the Italian neighborhood in Columbus. “I’m not afraid of any man in the United States,” Amicon later told reporters. “I wouldn’t give them a cent if it cost me my life.” Oldfield learned later that Sam Lima had asked baby-faced Charlie Vicario from Bellefontaine, a city halfway between Marion and Columbus, his favorite go-to hit man, to be on standby for an Amicon hit should it be needed. When Lima said the word, Vicario was to take a stiletto and put it into Amicon’s heart.

Lima would give Amicon one more chance to pay.

Outside Lima’s store at daybreak, the inspectors waited.

The Sicilians emerged from the shop one or two at a time. Over the next few days, without any clue they were being watched at every turn, the Society of the Banana began its new reign of terror: an all-out assault on 43 victims all at once.



***

Within a week of the meeting, the post office clerks and postmasters in Marion, Cincinnati, Columbus and a half-dozen other cities were tracking letters sent to a half-dozen states. Every post office where the letters left the hands of Society members was watched. Oldfield engaged local policemen, federal marshals, Secret Service and detectives from the largest private detective firm in the world to help investigate the letters’ final recipients. Frank and his fellow inspectors were completely overwhelmed. It was a tornado of activity on the part of the Society of the Banana that Oldfield didn’t have the manpower to match.

Still, they tried. Oldfield, Pate and Inspectors Edward Hutches, Raleigh Hosford and A.P. Owen went city to city, knocking on doors. Terrified Italians and Sicilians answered, wide-eyed and stuttering. “We know you just got a letter. What did it say?” the detectives asked. The inspectors were in plain clothes but had the unmistakable look of lawmen. Time and again, the immigrants denied that they had received a letter. Many said they didn’t speak English and gestured that they had no idea what was being asked of them.

In one case, Hosford got information that a certain victim paid off The Black Hand with a check. “Can we have the endorsed check?” Oldfield asked him after tracking him down at home. The canceled check bearing the endorsement of one of the blackmailers would be critical evidence. The victim shook as though breaking a fever, and flatly refused to give it up.

Original stamp marked by Post Office inspectors during the Black Hand investigation. The letter “O” in “two cents” was filled in with red ink to mark stamps on letters sent by members of the Society of the Banana. | Oldfield Collection

Two weeks went by, and the Black Hand case wasn’t getting anywhere even though Oldfield was blowing through an enormous amount of resources. With his army engaged all across Ohio and into Pennsylvania, travel expenses piled up.

Frank was so sure that he’d have dozens of victims stepping up and willing to testify in court that all of the expense would be worth it. In reality, he had zero.

Oldfield’s entire career was on the line. John Amicon was the only victim who had agreed to testify in court against The Black Hand. How could Frank prove there was a highly organized band of criminals with only one single victim coming forward?

Lima, like a mouse catching the scent of a cat, sent off a frenzy of letters to his board of directors warning members to lie low and watch their backs.

It was a warning that went out a little too late. There were 43 “cover letters” containing 43 extortion letters traveling on mail cars and mail pouches in every direction across the Great Lakes, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Chicago. Letters even went as far as Oregon, where Lima had a brother, Michelangelo, with a Portland operation identifying victims on the West Coast.

After few weeks with no sign of the lawman, Sam Lima, with renewed confidence, continued his operation. On March 29, postal clerks at Marion reported that Lima dropped off a stack of letters. As he was instructed, the mail clerk gave the unknowing Lima marked stamps and called Oldfield, who inspected the addressees on all the envelopes. Oldfield’s biggest hope was that the final recipient of the extortion letter inside one of those letters was John Amicon. Because without seeing a letter through its journey from Lima’s hands all the way to the sole victim who would testify, Oldfield had nothing on which to base an arrest warrant.

One was addressed to the teenage member of the gang, Tony Vicario, so Hutches went to Dennison to trail the young mafioso. While Hutches was following Vicario, the same scenario was unfolding all across the region, with other inspectors, postmasters, mailmen and lawmen watching the extortionists as they sent and received letters.

On March 30, Vicario arrived at the Dennison post office and checked his post office box. There were two letters. From behind two-way glass, D.C. Mann, the Dennison postmaster, and Hutches watched the young Sicilian open the envelopes and read the letters.

Trial exhibit of weapons seized from Black Hand members, including rifles, revolvers, knives, bullets and brass knuckles. | Oldfield Collection

Then Mann came out from behind the counter. “Wait, Vicario, there is some more mail for you.” Mann handed Vicario the Lima letter. Vicario opened it, took out another sealed letter and a slip of paper. From the angle where he was behind the glass, Hutches saw “Columbus, Ohio” on the address of the second letter but could not make out the name of the addressee. Still, he was hopeful—Columbus was where John Amicon lived.

The Post Office inspectors were interfering with Sam Lima’s bottom line, and he was determined to put a stop to the investigation. In the first week of April, Sebastian and Sam loitered around the Amicon Brothers warehouse and watched John Amicon and his brother Charles come and go from the saloon across the street. Amicon’s air was nonchalant. Rather than snarl at the Limas as he had before, John Amicon pretended not to notice them at all. That made Sam Lima all the more furious. There was still no money coming from either Amicon brother, so Lima made a decision. The time was right for a little reminder. The next day, a dynamite explosion blew the back porch off Charles Amicon’s home.

One day after the explosion, Columbus members of the Society of the Banana, the white-haired Severio Ventola and the young Salvatore Demma, went to the Amicon Brothers’ giant warehouse on Naghten Street to further intimidate the brothers.

“If you boys will let those fellows alone now and not bother with this investigation, you won’t receive any more letters or have any more trouble,” Ventola told Charles Amicon, who later related the conversation to Oldfield in a deposition.

Charles knew that proposing that his brother back off was fruitless. But he was so rattled by the explosion at his house that he made a futile attempt to get his brother to let it all go. John refused to even discuss it.

A week went by with John and Charles Amicon at odds on how to handle their predicament. It had been a month since the Society of the Banana meeting. Money was rolling in. Sam Lima, once again, felt unstoppable.

Then, on April 8, a letter from Dennison, Ohio, came by mail carrier to Columbus, addressed to Signore Giovanni Amicone, John Amicon’s Italian name. Amicon immediately called Oldfield. When the inspector came, Amicon handed him the letter. Oldfield took out his magnifying glass and looked closely at the stamp. Inside the letter o in “two” was a tiny red dot.

Mug shots commissioned by Frank Oldfield after the Black Hand captures. From left-right, from top: Sam Lima, Guiseppe Ignoffo, Severio Ventola, Sebastian Lima, Salvatore Arrigo, Vincenzo Arrigo, Francesco Spadaro and Augustino Marfisi. | Oldfield collection.

Amicon opened the letter. Inside was a threat to his life written in Italian and a demand for payment of $10,000. He translated the message to Oldfield. It was in the same handwriting as the letter that had left Sam Lima’s shop for Dennison 10 days before. After nearly three grueling months, Oldfield now had enough evidence to report to U.S. Attorney William Day and have a federal judge sign a warrant to arrest Sam Lima.

Or so he believed. Oldfield’s hopes were dashed when Day told him there wasn’t enough evidence to get a conviction.

Oldfield refused to give up. Over the next six months, he gathered an army. He enlisted lawman across government agencies. He hired private detectives. He called up postal clerks and mail carriers. He collected intelligence in the Italian communities. And most importantly, with patience and finesse, he was able to convince dozens more victims to testify against the Society of the Banana. On a cold winter day in January 1910, Oldfield carried seven steamer trucks of evidence into a Toledo courtroom and took the seat as the star witness in the first federal trial of a Sicilian organized crime ring in America.

From INSPECTOR OLDFIELD AND THE BLACK HAND SOCIETY: America’s Original Gangsters and the U.S. Postal Detective who Brought Them to Justice by William Oldfield and Victoria Bruce. Copyright © 2018 by William Oldfield and Victoria Bruce. Reprinted by permission of Touchstone, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.