Pellegrino Morano

Pellegrino Morano (born 1877) was the head of a group of Neapolitans criminals with roots in the Camorra based in Coney Island, where he owned the Santa Lucia restaurant, which was often used as the headquarters for their gang, known as the Coney Island gang. He is also known as Marano.

Morano was born in 1877 in Prata in the Italian region of Campania. According to immigration documents he entered the U.S. two times. Once in 1892 and permanently in 1912. He settled in Italian Harlem and started to sell stolen horses to make a living. In August 1904, he was arrested for the shooting of an Italian ‘well known to the police’ at Mulberry and Grand Streets. At the time he gave his address as 327 E 115th Street. The police believed his claim of innocence, but he was confined and charged for carrying a concealed weapon.

Years later, Morano moved to Coney Island where his associates Alessandro Vollero and Leopoldo Lauritano owned a coffee house at 133 Navy Street in Brooklyn. The coffee house was used as the headquarters for their gang, which mainly consisted of Neapolitans, and was often referred to as 'The Camorra'. Morano opened the Santa Lucia restaurant close to the Coney Island amusements parks including his right-hand men Tony Parretti, from where his gang made money in gambling and cocaine dealing. The gang was not a tightly led organization, but a rather loose association where everybody worked for himself, although Morano was one of the leaders that initiated recruits as camorristi.

Morano wanted to expand his business to the lucrative numbers rackets in Italian Harlem under control of Giosue Gallucci, the ‘King of Little Italy’. Gallucci was killed in May 1915. The money for the hit was provided by Morano. The lucrative numbers rackets left behind by Gallucci were now free for the taking, and they soon became the subject of a bloody fight, known as the Mafia-Camorra War, between Camorra gangs from Brooklyn and the Sicilian Morello gang.

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