The Mafia's History of Barrel Murders

**Local press immediately commenced coverage of the discovery of skeletal remains inside of a barrel at Lake Mead over the weekend of April 29, 2022. (Shawna Hollister/KLAS/@VegasIssues)**

Mob Methods

The recent discovery of a body in a barrel at Lake Mead resurfaced in the public consciousness the long-standing link between Las Vegas and organized crime. While no firm links have been made between this gruesome discovery and the Mafia, the disposal of the victim’s body in a barrel left at the bottom of a lake bears the hallmarks of a Mob-related murder.

We explore over a century of the Mafia’s recurring use of barrels to dispose of their victims.

The murder of Benedetto Madonia and his disposal in a barrel in New York City garnered some of the first national attention to the emerging Mafia in the United States. The Morello Crime Family was believed responsible for the murder of Madonia. The Mafia and Black Hand groups were responsible for other “barrel murders” in the early years of the 20th century, including of Bertha Garlow after she stumbled across organized crime activities. (UCR Digital Newspaper Archive)

Barrel Murders of the Early 20th Century

In April of 1903, a barrel was left on East Eleventh Street in New York City. Police made a grisly discovery inside of the barrel – the lifeless body of a middle-aged man. Within a few weeks famed NYPD detective Joe Petrosino identified the victim as 40-year-old Benedetto Madonia of Buffalo, New York.

Madonia’s brother-in-law, Joseph De Primo, was serving time for his part in a Mafia-run counterfeiting ring and sought Madonia’s assistance in collecting De Primo’s share of the profits from his co-conspirators that had managed to evade arrest. Madonia traveled down to New York City and made contact with the members of the counterfeiting ring. The counterfeiters held Madonia off for two or three days before he made threats to go to the police or Secret Service with information about the illicit operation. Not long after making these threats, Madonia was lured to a confectionary shop at 156 Elizabeth Street by the counterfeiters where he was stabbed to death and stuffed into the barrel that would serve as his interim resting place.

Several members of the Morello Crime Family, including head of the organization Giuseppe Morello and ruthless enforcer “Petto the Ox”, were arrested in connection with Madonia’s brutal slaying. Morello was quickly released after the District Attorney elected not to pursue charges against the notorious mafioso that originally haled from Corleone, Sicily. As a newspaper account a few years after the barrel murder noted, the other eleven Morello Family members arrested in connection with the crime were later released “through the workings of the omerta.”

The Mafia’s method of publicly disposing of their victims in barrels continued in the New York area for decades after Benedetto Madonia’s corpse was found on a Manhattan street. In 1911, the dismembered body of Black Hand extortion ring member Francesco Manzello was found in a barrel along a road in Rochester. Then in 1918 the body of Gaspar Candella was found in a barrel left in a vacant Brooklyn lot. Candella had suffered more than twenty wounds before being placed in the steel drum.

The detective that helped identify the body in the barrel, Joe Petrosino, was later assassinated by the Mafia while on a trip to Palermo, Sicily. Petrosino was investigating the criminal records in Sicily of suspected Mafia members in the United States as a new law allowed for the deportation of recent immigrants with a prior criminal record. Nobody was arrested in connection with Petrosino’s murder, but among those rumored to have been the gunman was Joseph De Primo, brother-in-law of the murdered Madonia.

Giuseppe Morello would also go on to meet a violent end. Morello was murdered in his East Harlem office in 1930 by a rival gang faction during the Castellammarese War. Morello’s gang would ultimately go on to become the Genovese Crime Family, which is still in operation today.

Johnny Roselli

John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli was a long-time member of the Chicago Outfit. During the 1950’s, Roselli was sent to Las Vegas by the Outfit to oversee the mob’s casino operations. Roselli’s time in Las Vegas was cut short in part due to the mobster not showing the proper respect to Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb.

Roselli and Chicago Outfit head Sam “Momo” Giancana were clandestinely recruited by the CIA in the early 1960’s to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The plot was obviously unsuccessful, but the CIA’s links with the Mafia would eventually be exposed and fueled concerns about the Mafia’s potential ties to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As part of Congressional investigations into these ties, Roselli testified in April of 1976 in a closed hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee exploring whether there was a conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination.

Only a few months after offering testimony on organized crime activities, Roselli went missing after leaving his sister’s Broward County home to play a round of golf.

The mystery of Roselli’s disappearance was solved when a barrel wrapped in chains was found floating in Biscayne Bay on August 7, 1976. Inside was Roselli’s legless body. His cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation, but he had been tortured prior to his murder. Writer Selwyn Raab noted in his expansive book detailing the history of the American Mafia, “Mutilation and torture before [Roselli] was strangled meant that [Roselli] had already violated the oath of omerta or that he was about to.”

Local Miami police noted Roselli’s killers endeavored to keep his murder a secret. Medical examiner Dr. Ronald Wright told reporters, “The lengths [the killers] went to insure that the body would not be found clearly earmarks this as a true gangland-style killing.”

Cesare Bonventre

Bonanno Crime Family acting boss Carmine “Lilo” Galante had a reputation for using “Zips” – recent immigrants from Italy as opposed to Italian-Americans – as enforcers for his organization. According to crime writer Selwyn Raab “Zips” were prized for their perceived loyalty and commitment to the tradition of omerta, with the term “Zip” apparently a contraction of Sicilian slang words for “hicks” and “primitives.” One such “Zip” that proved an essential asset to the Bonnano Family was Cesare Bonventre, a native of Castellammare del Golfo.

On July 12, 1979, Galante attended a going-away party for his cousin and Bonanno soldier Giuseppe Turano at the Brooklyn establishment Joe and Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant. Bonventre attended as Galante’s bodyguard – but when three masked men stormed into the restaurant with guns drawn, Bonventre joined in opening fire at his boss. Bonventre fled the restaurant on the heels of the gunmen and was promoted to capo after the murder.

Bonventre later found himself caught up in the fight over leadership of the Bonanno Family. The feared mobster was murdered in a chop shop in New Jersey, and his dismembered body was disposed of in three barrels. Some transfer of his remains evidently occurred as Bonventre’s corpse was later discovered in a New Jersey warehouse in two barrels.

the Lake Mead Barrel

Visitors to Lake Mead discovered skeletal remains inside of a rusted barrel near Hemenway Harbor at Lake Mead on May 1, 2022. Police have so far determined that the male victim died from a gunshot wound and was likely murdered in the late-70’s or early-80’s based on his clothing.

The identity of the unfortunate occupant of the barrel has not yet been determined. But the timing of the murder and disposal method certainly bear strong indications of the Mafia’s handiwork. It was the era of ruthless Mafia enforcer Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, car bombs, and bribes in Las Vegas at the time the barrel was deposited in Lake Mead.

Whoever was responsible for the Lake Mead Barrel were at the time placing evidence of their mayhem under dozens of feet of water at the bottom of the nation’s largest reservoir. Like Johnny Roselli, those responsible for the barrel at Lake Mead likely never intended for evidence of their crime to be discovered.

And now Lake Mead is giving up more grisly secrets that killers from decades ago thought would remain long-hidden. Exactly one week after the gruesome discovery of the body in the barrel, additional skeletal remains were found at Lake Mead.