Criminal. Giuseppe Morello received notoriety for being a criminal element in the American-Italian Mafia during the early 20th century. His gang became the first Mafia gang in New York City. When Morello was about five years old, his father died. His mother married a member of the Corleone Mafia. He was born with symbrachydactyly, a congenital abnormally of his right hand. The only right hand digit he had was his fourth finger, the rest curled together into a small knob-like feature. In his Sicilian culture, the birth defect was considered evil as he had to primarily use his left hand. He became known as "the Clutch Hand." Later, he was called the "Old Fox" or "Piddu," a Sicilian diminutive form of Giuseppe, which was anglicized to "Peter." As a young man, he became a member of the Corleone Mafia in 1889, which was headed by Paolina Streva. When a local chief of police was gunned down, he was seen by a lady in the vicinity of the murder. Within a short time, the lady, who witnessed the policeman's murder, was found murdered. Fearing for his life, Morello left Italy for the United States. Although he was not accused of murder, the Italian courts did bring charges in absentia of fraud and counterfeiting. After being found guilty, he was sentenced on September 14, 1894 to six years in prison with 45 days of solitary confinement, a heavy fine, and his right to hold an Italian public office was terminated, but this was no problem for him since he had migrated to the United States. Along with his wife, his infant son, three half-brothers, a half-sister, his mother, and step-father, Morello reached New York City around late 1892. After a few months, he and his family traveled to Louisiana to join members of the Corleone family, and then went to Bryan, Texas in hope of employment on a cotton plantation. After members of the group became ill and dying with malaria, the Morello family returned to New York City within five years. At some point, his wife returned to Italy, where she died on June 30, 1898. On December 7, 1903 he remarried a distant cousin and had two daughters and a son. He resumed as head of a small gang of criminals, the 107 th Street Mob in Italian Harlem, which dealt in racketeering, loansharking and after his return from Texas, counterfeiting thousands of $5 bills, and for this crime, he was arrested. It was alleged that he had ordered several torturing murders on various rivals, but no solid evidence could be found. In 1910 he was found guilty of counterfeiting again and sentenced to 25 years in the federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia. He was paroled in 1920 and United States President Warren Harding freed him from parole in 1922. During this time his oldest son, Charles, was killed on April 12, 1912 in a family-business-related gunfight. A half-brother, Nicholas, had managed the gang while he was in prison, but was murdered in the Mafia-Camorra war on September 7, 1916. At this point, his other half-brothers stepped-up to manage the family's organization until Morello's release. In 1920 he became the second in command, or consigliere, next to Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria , This was the position he held during the Castellammarese War, which was the bloody power struggle within the Italian-American Mafia from February of 1930 to April 15, 1931. On August 15, 1930, "Peter," as his rivals called him, and one of his colleagues were shot to death near his business office in Harlem's Little Italy by a gunmen, who was following the orders of rival Salvatore Maranzano . With the murder of "Joe the Boss" in a Brooklyn restaurant on April 15, 1931 the Castellammarese War ended with Marzanzano becoming the head of the American Mafia for a short five months. He was ordered to be murder by yet another seeking to be the position of the Mafia boss, namely Lucky Luciano . The Morello crime family merged into the Luciano Family and then that family into the the Genovese Crime Family about 1957, thus making it the oldest of the "Five Families" of the Mafia in New York City.