Alan Hynd - Authentic Cases From the Files of Alan Hynd

“Your cousin,” he said to Petrillo. “The one that was pinched a couple of years ago for counterfeiting.”

“Oh, you mean Little Herman. Herman Petrillo.”

“That’s the fellow. He used to be an amateur actor, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, before the Secret Service pinched him for that bum money. He used to act in church plays.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He’s a spaghetti salesman.”

“Get him here,” said the faith healer.

Herman Petrillo, the once-and-future counterfeiter, was a foxy-looking toy man given to loud checked suits and overcoats with belts in the back. Doctor Bolber decided that Little Herman would blend perfectly into his scheme. Bolber explained to Little Herman that he was to pose as Lorenzo, the roofer, in taking out an insurance policy. Then, after the policy was issued, Herman would shove the real Lorenzo off a roof. Little Herman, a real stinker, was simply mad about the plot.

Paul Petrillo, carefully coached by Bolber, assumed the role of a canvasser and called at Lorenzo’s home one day when Lorenzo was up on a roof in a distant part of the city. A few weeks after laying the groundwork, Paul asked Mrs. Lorenzo if she would marry him.

The lady said she would be glad to except that she was already married.

“But supposin’ something should happen to your husband,” said Petrillo.

“Like what?” asked the seduced wife.

“Like him fallin’ off a roof.” Mrs. Lorenzo, who caught on quickly, liked the idea. Now Doctor Bolber instructed Little Herman to telephone to the Philadelphia offices of the Prudential Insurance Com-pany, palm himself off as Lorenzo, and ask that a salesman come to the Lorenzo home the next day at noon, when the real Lorenzo would be up on a roof somewhere.

When the salesman called, there was Mrs. Lorenzo, the faithless wife, and Little Herman, the stand-in husband, look-ing for all the world like what they weren’t, applying for a $10,000 policy with double indemnity for accidental death. And they had cash in hand to pay for the first quarterly premium.

A Prudential doctor called the following day, found Her-man to be a sound actuarial risk, and in due time the policies arrived in the mail. Mrs. Lorenzo intercepted them. Doctor Bolber began to follow the real Lorenzo around, the better to spot some plausible way of striking up an acquaint-anceship with the man. He fell into conversation with the roofer in a bar one night. Thus he discovered that Lorenzo was mad for dirty French post cards. Doctor Bolber acquired a supply of the French art and gave the stuff to Little Herman. Late one afternoon Little Herman buttonholed Lorenzo when the marked man came down off a roof and sold him some cards.

“Get a hold of me any time you got more of this stuff,” Lorenzo told Herman. Doctor Bolber, too cagey to be hasty, allowed a few months to elapse before giving Little Herman the nod to take care of Lorenzo. But finally Little Herman appeared on a roof that Lorenzo was repairing solo. He had a new batch of French post cards for the roofer.

“Gee,” said Lorenzo, “these are pippins. How much?”

The question was to remain unanswered. Little Herman, looking around to make sure nobody was observing him, gave the ac-tuarial risk a shove and in a twinkling Lorenzo was plunging eight stories to the street.

Six months passed before Doctor Bolber summoned Little Herman again. “You ever go fishin’?” Bolber asked.

No, Little Herman didn’t know anything about fishing.

Bolber told him to bone up on the sport and to buy himself some tackle.

“We’ve found a man by the name of Fierenza who got $5,000 in double indemnity already,” the faith healer said. “He fishes every Saturday afternoon in the Schuylkill River. Your cousin is going to make love to his wife.”

One fine Saturday afternoon, when Fierenza was about to go out in a rented rowboat, who just happened along but Lit-tle Herman. Actor that he was, Little Herman, carrying bait and tackle and wearing hip boots and a battered hat bright with artificial flies, looked more like a fisherman than a real fisherman.

“You goin’ out in that there boat alone?” Little Herman asked Fierenza.

“Yeah,” said Fierenza. “How about me and you sharin’ the boat and we’ll split the expense,” suggested Little Herman. The diminutive fiend patted his hip pocket. “I got a bottle with me, too.”

Out on the water, in a sheltered cover where nobody could see them, Little Herman asked Fierenza if he could swim.

“No,” said Fierenza.

“Not a stroke?”

“Look,” said Fierenza, “if I went overboard I’d be drowned.”

“Hey,” said Little Herman a few sips of booze later, pointing to something behind Fierenza. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“There. Behind you!” Fierenza turned and there was a shove, a scream and a splash.

Little Herman, who could swim better than a lot of fish, dived off the other side of the boat. Then, good and wet, he climbed back in the boat again and rowed ashore. There he acted the role of a heart-broken friend.

“It’s all my fault,” he said. “I should have saved him.”

With three victims, Giacobbe, the dry-goods merchant, Lorenzo, the roofer, and Fierenza, the fisherman, disposed of within a year and a half, for an over-all take of $25,000, Doc-tor Bolber saw nothing ahead but a golden future. Many of the immigrant women who would be there clients had burdensome abusive husbands with whom they had been stuck with back in Italy. Since most were practicing Catholics, divorce was not an option. Thus Bolber and his two associates were selling a product that had a certain appeal. Similarly, most people in South Philadelphia knew better than to go to the police.

“There’s no telling,” Bolber said to the Petrillo cousins while the three sat around the faith healer’s office over a jug of Chianti one night in the summer of 1933, “where a thing like this could end. Why, we could establish branches all over the country — like Household Finance.”

Doctor Bolber, having his ear to the ground, had gotten a rumble about a most remarkable woman in North Philadelphia, a woman named Maria (or Carina) Favato who was known in her own bailiwick as the Witch. The Witch, who was a widow, was in the same profession as Doctor Bolber: faith healing, saltpeter and general mumbo jumbo.

The Witch, who was a widow, was in the business of getting rid of unwanted husbands for wives. Not for insurance money, but just to get rid of the men. This impressed Bolber as a wanton waste of golden opportunity and that was why, on one hot summer night, he journeyed across town to converse with Mrs. Favato.

One look at the Witch convinced Doctor Bolber why she had taken on that appellation. The woman, in her early forties, was strictly out of a bad dream: short, squat, with a hooked nose and a face that reminded Bolber of a batch of fresh dough with two currants for eyes. The Witch, it developed, had heard of Bolber and so, since the two immediately understood each other, they dispensed with the preliminaries and began to talk shop.

What, Bolber inquired, did the Witch use to poison errant husbands?

“Best stuff is arsenic,” said the Witch. “What you usin’?”

“Conium.”

“What that?”

“It’s from the carrot family. It’s also known as hemlock. It’s what they used to poison Socrates with,” Bolber said.

“Who?”

“Socrates.”

“Philadelphia man?” the Witch inquired.

“Not exactly,” said Bolber.

Doctor Bolber asked the Witch if she was married.

“Had five husbands,” said the Witch. “Poisoned three.”

“And did you collect insurance on the ones you poisoned?” Bolber inquired pleasantly.