An NYPD detective dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes” will finally be getting a gravesite marker nearly a century after his death, the Daily News has learned.
Members of the Detectives Endowment Association will unveil the headstone for Det. Joseph Pucciano at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery on Tuesday.
Pucciano, a heralded gang-buster and member of the NYPD’s famed Italian Squad in the 1920s, died on July 13, 1928, of pulmonary tuberculosis, members said. He repeatedly graced the pages of the Daily News with reports of his headline-grabbing arrests.
“Joe solved a dozen or more seemingly unsolvable murders,” the News wrote a month after the detective’s death. “His memory was deep. His luck was good. He was called in to succeed where the ferreting of others had failed. The greatest of his long list of victories was the imprisonment or execution of almost fifty members of one of New York’s most ruthless predatory gangs.”
The steely-eyed detective was born in Calabria, Italy in 1879. He grew up on the Lower East Side and taught himself to speak four languages: English, Italian, Chinese, and Albanian.
He joined the NYPD in 1905 and spent the next 20 years busting gangsters in Brooklyn as part of the Italian Squad and the Brooklyn homicide squad. The Italian Squad was made up of Italian-born cops focused on mob-related murders and mayhem.
“Pucciano was a hard-hitting, smart, innovative, and savvy investigator who earned his detective shield within five years,” the DEA noted. “(He) worked on a wide array of cases that ranged from huge, organized crime takedowns of shakedown artists like the notorious Navy Street Gang, to abduction and kidnapping for ransom, as well as Prohibition-era poisoning cases, and narcotics.”
He handled more than 40 murder investigations and was nicknamed both “The Italian Sherlock Holmes” and “The Master Detective” in the press, the union said.
One of his biggest cases was the apprehension of Tony Perreti, “nicknamed for no rhyme or reason ‘Tony the Shoemaker,’” The News noted at the time.
Perreti, the head of the Navy Street Gang who plotted 23 murders and was known to have lavish dinners where he outlined his plans to rub out rival gang leaders, had organized the execution of two rival gangsters from Harlem and had already fled to the west coast when Pucciano was put on the case.
Pucciano was able solve the double killing and locate one of the conspirators, Ralph “The Barber” Doniello by visiting Perreti’s coffee house, where the detective “accidentally — or on purpose — knocked down a picture from the wall,” The News said.
Several addresses were written on the wall behind the picture, including Doniellos.
“How Pucciano knew it was there will never be known,” the News noted.
The detective grabbed Doniello in Reno, Nevada. He immediately turned state witness and helped Pucciano round up the rest of his gang.
Nearly a decade later, just a year before the detective’s death, Perreti was sent to the electric chair.
Pucciano was survived by two sons and a daughter. His son, George, became an NYPD cop. Yet his grave never had a marker.
The DEA learned about the oversight last year as they unveiled a headstone for Det. Bernardino Grottano, who was shot and killed as he chased a robbery suspect while off duty on May 19, 1924.
Grottano’s widow couldn’t afford a headstone at the time of her husband’s death. Grottano was another NYPD detective lost to time until the DEA stepped in to pay for a dignified marker for the hero cop.
As they were preparing the unveiling of Grottano’s headstone, DEA members learned that he was a partner of Pucciano, who was buried a few plots over and also didn’t have a headstone.
The union couldn’t locate any of Pucciano’s descendants, but felt it was important to honor the detective with the same tribute.
“The job hasn’t changed and none did it better,” DEA President Scott Munro said about Pucciano. “(He) served the citizens of the city with bravery and distinction.”
