MURDER AT No. 248 PRESIDENT ST (1916)
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The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
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Joseph Russo had a good reputation.
He was a 26-year-old longshoreman with a strong work ethic.
But when his wife was discovered with a bullet between her eyes, Detective Coughlin figured he would search the place.
And when the dust had settled, the police were in possession of nine weapons and Russo was in lock-up.
INVESTIGATING THE CRIME
Carroll Gardens by this time had changed from the lower middle class Irish neighborhood that it had once been, into a working-class Italian community with numerous Italian criminal gangs. Violence was a common daily occurrence and reports of abductions, shoot-outs, and kidnappings for ransom were often in the papers.
Still, the police had, during the investigation, come to believe that “the bullet that killed his wife was fired accidentally.”
Russo told the police that he had been “cleaning an automatic pistol about 10 P.M. with his wife seated across the table from him with the baby, Anthony, in her lap.”
After Russo had removed the magazine, he had forgotten that “a cartridge had been left in the chamber.”
Then, apparently, continuing to clean and oil the weapon, Russo pulled the trigger and the cartridge “exploded.” First, gracing the face of the baby, whom Rose had seated on the table, the bullet then “entered his wife’s forehead between her eyes.”
WHY SO MANY GUNS?
Although the police suspected this an accidental shooting, they were not taking any chances. Russo was being held in the Butler street court without bail on a charge of homicide until they could get to the bottom of the situation.
Searching his rooms, detectives found “five automatic pistols, three revolvers, and a double-barreled shotgun” on the first floor of the house.
Russo had said that his weapons cache was the result of a money-making speculation. He had told police that he “bought the guns and ammunition because they were offered so cheaply he could make money on them.”
“ACCIDENTAL”
Finally, after the four detectives had completed their investigation, they seemed to be satisfied with the accidental nature of the shooting, “for the pair were very fond of each other, and the husband seemed to be prostrated.”
The tenement where Russo lived with his extended family, No. 248 President Street, was an “old two-family house” in the Italian quarters of Carroll Gardens. Living with Russo on the lower part of the house was his wife, Rose, 24, her brother Louis Agnati, 12, and their two babies, Rose, 19 months, and Anthony, 6 months old. (Census records seem to be at odds with the family’s make-up, showing two infant sons, Vincent and Frank, living at 248 President.)
POSTSCRIPT
Tragedy comes in many forms and, it was later learned, Russo would have to deal with a second catastrophe. For he realized that his shooting accident had killed not just his wife that day.
For Rose was “soon to have become a mother again.”
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