The still unsolved murder of Carlo Tresca

 

On January 11, 1943 the anarchist Carlo Tresca was shot to death on the northwest corner of 15th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. There was no doubt that the shooter was 33 year old Carmine Galante, known associate of Mafia boss Frank Garofalo. He was held in prison for nearly a year but never charged by the Manhattan D.A. Frank Hogan, nor was the case pursued by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

On July 12, 1979 Carmine Galante, who had risen over the next 36 years to head the Bonanno crime family, was shot to death by four masked gunmen in the garden of Joe & Mary's Restaurant in Brooklyn. His cigar was still in his mouth when this picture was taken.

You could say it was karma or quote Jesus, "Those who live by the sword die by the sword." Or you could point to the many killings Galante had himself ordered that same year in his takeover of the growing narcotics trade from the Gambino family. Or you could say it was the long delayed justice for his murder of one of the most courageous independent American radicals of the early 20th century. As Dorothy Gallagher titled her definitive 1983 biography of Tresca, he had "all the right enemies." In the pages of his Italian language weekly, il Martello, he had attacked Stalin, Mussolini, homegrown fascists and Kremlin stooges, the Mafia, the Catholic Church and an unending stream of capitalists and corrupt politicians. Although evidence and witnesses clearly pointed to Galante as the shooter, who had given the order to silence the 63 year old editor? And why now, when Tresca had been carrying on his unrelenting attacks for decades?

Years of controversy followed Tresca's death as one side and then another accused the communists or the fascists of ordering the murder. Both Ms. Gallagher and a second biographer, Nunzio Pernicone (Carlo Tresca; Portrait of a Rebel, 2010) agree that the most likely instigator of the murder was Frank Garofalo, a Mafia boss and frequent associate of Generoso Pope, publisher of the Italian language daily, il Progresso, whom Tresca had insulted a few months earlier. Pope's influence over the Italian vote had led FDR and Mayor LaGuardia to overlook his pro-fascist stance prior to Pearl Harbor, but that was not something Tresca would allow anyone to forget. However, the old radical had never attacked Garofalo in the pages of il Martello. 

Others pointed to the reported sighting in New York of the infamous Stalinist hit man Vittorio Vidali just before the murder. Tresca had reserved special scorn for Vidali, who was guilty of personally executing hundreds of anarchists and Trotskyists in Spain at the behest of Stalin. Tresca had an intense hatred for all Stalinists, especially since their abduction and murder of his friend Julia Poyntz in 1938. Her crime: after visiting the Soviet Union, she came away completely disillusioned. Could his continued focus on her disappearance have alarmed Stalin that winter of 1942-43 when continued US aid against the Nazis was so vital?

I returned to the neighborhood surrounding Union Square where Carlos Tresca spent most of his life, living in various apartments and moving the offices of his newspaper frequently, always low on funds, declaring the paper bankrupt more than once. I started where he was shot down, a few feet from the final location of il Martello. The building at 97 Fifth Ave has been renovated since his time and appears to be converted entirely to apartments. The 15th Street doorway through which he exited on January 11, 1943, according to Nunzio Perricone, has long since disappeared. and there is nothing to indicate the enormity of the crime once committed at this crosswalk.

Turning west, I looked down 15th Street where the getaway car carrying Carmine Galante and perhaps Frank Garofalo or the mysterious Vittorio Vidali sped away into the darkness of a city whose streetlights had been dimmed by wartime restrictions.

Retracing what I know of Carlo Tresca's life on these blocks, I came to 112 East 19th Street, an earlier home both to il Martello and to the Rand School, a longtime institution for workers run by American Socialists. No plaque identifies the history of the present building although it was here where a rightwing mob once stormed the school, only to be beaten back by workers and students.

il Martello, in the course of six moves from 1917 to 1943 occupied the same address as the Rand School once again at 7 East 15th Street. Today a Buddhist Center occupies the building, which might have pleased the old radical. Or might not, since he adhered to a very strict atheism.

Tresca moved his own quarters as frequently as he moved his office, but still never straying too far from Union Square, then and now a hub for demonstrations and activism. And a great place to meet the most interesting New Yorkers. Here is the square today:

The last stop of today's walking tour of Carlo Tresca's New York is at John's restaurant on 12th Street and Second Avenue, established in 1908. John's was a favorite gathering place for the radicals and writers of New York in the 1930s and it was here that Tresca enjoyed lunch with his old friend, the novelist John Dos Passos, only hours before he was killed. Perhaps they talked of Dos Passos' journey to Spain with Ernest Hemingway and his deep disillusion with the Stalinist destruction of the anarchist and socialist opposition to Franco's fascism. Dos Passos might perhaps have remembered how Carlo had warned him to beware the murderous NKVD agents sent by Stalin to wipe out any leftists who would not bow to Moscow. Or perhaps they discussed a rumor that one of those same homicidal agents, Vittorio Vidali, had left Mexico after arranging the murder of Leon Trotsky? And was possibly sighted in New York?

This coming January will mark the 80th anniversary of the still unsolved murder of Carlo Tresca. He has already appeared twice in my own works. He first appeared in The Red Nurse (2012, Amazon) as a brilliant organizer and onetime lover of Helen Schloss during the 1912 Little Falls Textile Strike. His second appearance was as mentor to the young radical Tom Ryan in The Witch Girl & The Wobbly, a novella published last year. ( Running Wild Novella Anthology, Volume 4 Book 1: Wright, Peter: 9781947041820: Amazon.com: Books) 

The next appearance of Carlo Tresca is a work in progress.