Terrified Torpedo

The fat man was scared stiff. It was night and the police were after him. So was his gang. For almost seven months he had been on the lam, sleeping in flophouses, always moving. He had no tie. His hat & coat were gone. When he came to a church he went inside. It was dark there, too. He was still scared, too scared. In the empty, still church he began to scream.

There the startled receptionist of Manhattan's Roman Catholic Church of the Guardian Angel found this abject fatness slobbering, went to fetch Father Rinschler. The shuddering fat man looked up and shrieked: "Three men are waiting out there to kill me." Father Rinschler called the police, who dragged the sanctuary-seeker away, still gobbling like a terrified turkey.

At the station house the fat man yammered and foamed: "I was never a rat. I was never a rat in my life. I was never a rat. If they leave me alone, I'll go away--I'll never squeal. But if they don't leave me alone I'll squeal. They'll kill me! They'll kill my wife and children!"

Police shut him up. They didn't have to ask who he was. They knew: Vito Gurino, 33, ex-baker, top trigger man of the Brooklyn syndicate of small-time gunmen who, at bargain-basement prices (TIME, April 1), murdered underworld characters for rival gangs. They had been looking for him. Two of his bosses were in the death house at Sing Sing, two more were on trial, others awaiting trial for their part in the 83 murders chalked up against the syndicate by Irish William O'Dwyer, Brooklyn District Attorney.

Six policemen had to carry the terrified torpedo to the squad car that whisked him to District Attorney O'Dwyer. Once his 250-lb. bulk was larded into a chair before the District Attorney, Vito Gurino, slavering, quaking, poured out his confessional. For almost seven months he had had no one to confide in.

Mr. O'Dwyer got an earful. At the close of a 15-hour session the squat gunman had confessed to three murders, implicated himself in four more. On one shooting expedition he had been with Harry ("Happy") Maione and Frank ("The Dasher") Abbandando, now awaiting the electric chair at Sing Sing. They had polished off two members of a plasterers' union asleep in their apartment. They also shot the plasterers' bulldog. Once, for diversion, Gurino and four other gorillas abducted a nightclub singer, took her to a vacant lot and raped her. They didn't kill her. They gave her frightened mother about $500, told her to keep her mouth shut. The others were just run-of-the-mill jobs. One of them was so much so that the greasy killer couldn't for the life of him recall the victim's name--some gentleman from Connecticut.

To bolster Vito Gurino's memory, District Attorney O'Dwyer brought in one of his old pals, Angelo ("Julie") Catalano, State's witness. The two had not met since Gurino tried and failed to take his fellow mobster for a ride last spring because he feared that Catalano would talk. When Catalano saw his would-be assassin, he went white with terror, hid behind detectives. But as he listened to the whining confession, Catalano took heart, came out from behind his protectors, stared unbelievingly at the cringing fat man in the chair. At the end his smile was tipped with scorn. As for Vito Gurino, it looked as if he would end his story in another chair.

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