Petrillo's Job

When George Meyers of Lakewood, N. J. one day last year asked a Philadelphia friend for $25 to use in his upholstery-cleaning business, the friend introduced him to Herman Petrillo. Mr. Petrillo had a better idea. He would give George Meyers some big money "--$500 real or $2.500 counterfeit"--if only he would see that one Ferdinand Alfonsi met an accidental death. Cleaner Meyers told his story to the Secret Service, was hired as an informer. Last week he told his findings in a Philadelphia court, where Mr. Petrillo and two women were on trial for running a racket, the blood temperature of which was record low.

Ferdinand Alfonsi did die, of arsenic poisoning. So did one Philip Ingrao, 18. So, the Government contended, did at least ten other Philadelphians, whose grasping relatives had insured them for a total of nearly $100,000, and given Herman Petrillo the job of making the policies pay out. Thoroughly professional, Mr. Petrillo, said witnesses, shopped around for cheap killers, worked not only with arsenic but with sandbags, faked hit-&-run accidents, a lead pipe so ingeniously designed that it could bash in a skull to look as if the victim had fallen downstairs.

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