People v. Nitti

• Decision Date: 14 April 1924
• Docket Number: No. 15740.,15740.
• Parties: PEOPLE v. NITTI et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

312 Ill. 73

143 N.E. 448

PEOPLE

v.NITTI et al.

No. 15740.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April 14, 1924.

Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; Joseph B. David, Judge.

Isabella Nitti and Peter Crudelle were convicted of murder, and they bring error.

Reversed and remanded.De Stefano & Mirabella, Nuncio Bonelli, Alberto N. Gualano, Francis B. Allegretti and Helen M. Cirese, all of Chicago (Rocco De Stefano and Thomas E. Swanson, both of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.

Edward J. Brundage, Atty. Gen., Robert E. Crowe, State's Atty., of Chicago, and Edward C. Fitch, of Springfield (Edward E. Wilson and Clyde C. Fisher, both of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

THOMPSON, J.

At the May term, 1923, of the criminal court of Cook county, Isabella Nitti, Peter Crudelle, and Charles Nitti were charged by indictment with the murder of Frank Nitti. The three defendants were placed on trial under their several pleas of not guilty. At the close of all the evidence the state's attorney, at the request of the court, nolle prossed the case against Charles. Isabella and Peter were found guilty, and their punishment fixed at death. Motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment were made and overruled. Attorneys appearing in this court for plaintiffs in error were substituted for the attorney who had appeared for the defendants in the trial court. The attorneys substituted filed a motion to vacate the judgments and the orders overruling the motions for new trial and in arrest of judgment, and supported this motion by affidavits. This motion was overruled, and judgments were entered on the verdicts. This writ of error is prosecuted to review those judgments.

Frank Nitti, an Italian truck farmer, leased and operated a small tract of land near Stickney, in Cook county. July 29, 1922, he disappeared from his home. May 9, 1923, a body, identified as his, was found in a catch-basin in Stickney. When the body was found it was badly decayed. There was no flesh on the face and front of the body from the waist up. There was very little flesh on the back of the neck and body above the waist. The lower half of the body was in a better state of preservation, and the trousers and shoes were still intact. The bones of the left hand had fallen apart and were found at the bottom of the catch-basin. On one of these bones was a ring, which was identified by three persons as a ring which Frank Nitti had worn for some time before he disappeared. There was a shoe on the left foot of the body and another shoe was found in the catch-basin, and these were identified by one witness as the shoes worn by Frank on the day he disappeared. The skull of the body was fractured, the shape of the fracture indicating that it had been caused by a blunt, octagonal instrument about 1 1/4 inches in diameter.

Isabella Nitti was the wife of Frank, Charles was his son, and Crudelle was a farm hand who was employed by Frank, and who boarded and roomed with the Nitti family. The three were arrested for the murder of Frank about six weeks after his disappearance, were kept in custody for several weeks, and were finally discharged because the state was unable to prove the corpus delicti.

Mike Travaglio testified that he saw Frank selling vegetables at the Randolph street market, in Chicago, about 7 o'clock Saturday norning, July 29, 1922; that he had not seen him alive since that time; that he saw his body at an undertaking establishment in Berwyn on May 10, 1923; that he identified the body by the two shoes and the ring found with it; that in April, 1922, he was employed by Frank; that he requested Frank to buy a pair of shoes for him; that Frank bought a pair of tan shoes and gave them to him; that he wore them two or three days, but as they were too large for him he gave them to Frank; that Frank wore them from that time until he disappeared, three months later; that he had the shoes on when he saw him at the market the morning of the day he disappeared; that the shoes were ordinary tan lace shoes and had no mark to distinguish them from other tan lace shoes; that the morning he saw Frank at the market he saw on his finger the ring which was found with the dead body; that the ring was one formerly owned by James Nitti, one of Frank's sons; that when James wore the ring it was set with a red stone; that James wore it until the set was broken; that thereafter the prongs were pounded down with a hammer and Frank wore it; that he had seen many rings like this one was when it was new.

James Nitti testified that he lived in Wisconsin, and that he had not seen his father for about a year before he disappeared; that he saw the body which was found in the catch-basin and identified it as that of his father by the ring which was found on the bone of one of the fingers; that the ring formerly belonged to him, and that at the time he wore it it was set with a red stone; that he broke the stone and threw the ring in the front yard; that his father got the ring, flattened the prongs, and thereafter wore it; that he was at his mother's house, in Cicero when the deputy sheriff came to arrest her and Crudelle; that when the deputy came into the house she said, ‘James, we got your father; now it is sure I won't come out no more;’ that she clasped her little girl in her arms, kissed her, and said, ‘My dear daughter, now I won't see you any more forever; the last time I see you is today;’ that then she fainted; that Crudelle was present, and said nothing; that witness was present at the state's attorney's office about the middle of September, 1922, when his mother, his brother Charles, and Crudelle, were there under arrest for the murder; that two assistant state's attorneys, a private attorney hired by him to assist the state's attorney, his brother Mike, Deputy Sheriff Dasso, who made the arrest, and other persons, were there; that the interview was conducted in both the English and the Italian languages; that Assistant State's Attorney Romano, who spoke Italian, asked Charles in Italian, ‘Who killed your father?‘ and that Charles replied, ‘My mother and Peter Crudelle;’ that Romano then asked Mrs. Nitti, ‘Did you kill your husband?‘ and that she replied, ‘Whatever Charlie said, that is true;’ that Charles was directed by Romano to tell the whole story; that Charles said his father was asleep under a wagon, and that Pete got a hammer and walked toward his father; that he pushed Pete to prevent him from hitting his father, and that Pete dropped the hammer; that his mother handed the hammer to Pete, and that Pete struck his father on the head; that Pete and his mother pulled his father from under the wagon and dumped him into it; that they hitched a horse to the wagon and hauled the body to the drainage canal and dumped it in. On cross-examination James testified that he had employed private counsel to assist in the prosecution, and had paid him $700; that the $700 had been collected by James Volpe; that his mother was in jail about three months the first time she was under arrest; that while she was in jail he applied for letters of administration in his father's estate; that his brother Mike was with him; that he knew nothing of any trouble between Mike and his father; that he had heard nothing about it, and had made no inquiry about it; that on the morning of May 5, four days before the body was found in the catch-basin, his mother in a private conversation with him said, ‘If you want to see your father go in the cornfield;’ that there had been no talk about his father before she made this remark, and that he did not know why she made the statement to him; that he told her not to talk like that; that when the interview was held in the state's attorney's office 10 or 12 people were present; that Charles spoke in English and Italian; that his mother does not speak or understand any English, and Crudelle speaks and understands little English; that Romano talked with Charles in English; that after he had talked to him, Romano said to witness' mother, in Italian, what is equivalent to, ‘Did you kill your husband?‘ and that she replied, ‘Come parle.’

Edward H. Hatton, coroner's physician, testified that he examined the body which was found in the catch-basin; that the body was clothed from the waist down with trousers and underclothes, and that there were a shoe and a sock on the left foot; that the upper part of the body was badly decomposed and was clothed only in fragments of underclothes; that the flesh had entirely disappeared from the skull, face, neck, and chest; that the heavy muscles of the back and shoulders were still attached to the bones; that there was some hair between the shoulders, which was nearly black; that the trousers were in good condition; that there was a depression in the skull in the region of the temple; that there was a hugh fracture of the skull, extending back from this depression nearly to the mid-line at the back of the head; that the fracture was 3 or 4 inches in length; that there was anotherfracture running from the depression toward the mid-line at the front of the head; that the bone of the nose was broken, and the front teeth were missing; that the bones of the skull were blood-stained, and there was an accumulation of clotted blood in the cavity of the skull; that the skeleton appeared to be that of a white man between 25 and 50 years of age, 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighing about 145 pounds; that in his opinion the injuries were produced by the forcible contact of some hard substance with the skull, the substance having a comparatively flat surface about 1 1/4 inches in diameter, either round or octagonal.

David Abram, an undertaker of Berwyn, testified that he, with the assistance of other men, took the body from the catch-basin; that the body was sitting in 2 1/2 feet of water; that in the catch-basin they found a bone with a ring on it; that the ring produced in court was the one found; that the shoes and the...