Barrel murder

A barrel murder was a method of execution used by early American mafiosi since the 1870s ^[1], although the earlier recorded barrel murders in New York were reported in 1895 ^[2] and 1900 ^[3].

The victims, usually Italian immigrants, would be found stuffed inside a barrel after being shot, stabbed, or strangled to death, and left on a random street corner, back alley, or shipped to a nonexistent address in another city. First used by the Sicilian Provenzano crime family in New Orleans and the Morello crime family in New York, the Barrel Murders eventually alerted authorities of the existence of the Mafia leading to the later investigation by New Orleans police chief David C. Hennessy whose eventual assassination by Sicilian mafiosi in 1890 would expose organized crime in the United States. New York detective Joseph Petrosino's early investigations into the New York barrel murders would also lead to crackdown against the Black Hand and the Morellos until his assassination in 1909. The Morellos, suspected of over 100 murders, continued to use the barrel murder for over thirty years until eventually ceasing after the (now well-publicized) murders, which obtained unwanted attention from local authorities, as did the practice of other non-Italian criminals drawing police suspicion away from themselves onto the Morellos and other Italian mafiosi.

The method was later used in Johnny Roselli's death when he was found in a 55 gallon oil drum off the coast of Florida in 1976 although it is argued, given Roselli's involvement with the CIA, whether this was made to look like Mafia or CIA related assassination.