Gaetano Costa

Gaetano Costa, a male Italian butcher and merchant, was working out of his shop at Thirty-second Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn when an extortion demand—framed in the familiar menace of the Black Hand—came his way. The note insisted he hand over $1,000, hidden inside a loaf of bread, to a man who would step up like any ordinary customer and signal himself by pulling out a red handkerchief. Costa refused to be shepherded into that ritual. He ignored the handkerchief, and in the small, e ...

Gaetano Costa - National Gun Violence Memorial

Tooele Transcript Bulletin | 1905-10-20 | A Black Hand Murder