Well this is how we found out. At my Grandfathers funeral my Dad was talking to some of his cousins about his Dad. Something reminded my dad about his grandfather and he asked his cousin if he knew anything about him. They said “Oh you don’t know? He was the leader of the Petrillo Mafia in Philadelphia in the early 1900s.” My dad didn’t believe them at first and they said no it’s true, google it. So he did and what he found out shocked him to his core. That’s kind of hard to do to my dad especially since he was a marine for 14 years!

Well as he was online and looking up the information he sure enough found his grandfathers name, Paul Petrillo. Paul Petrillo (My great-grandfather) and his cousin Herman Petrillo had come to America from Italy. When they got here they opened up a legit tailor shop and it was prospering. Well once the depression hit, they were in trouble and couldn’t find ways to make enough money to feed their families. So Herman came to Paul and told him that Crime could supply both of their families, and more. So Paul decided to try it out and see how it goes. This is what they would do to earn money.

They had a corrupt Life Insurance agent and they would go around house to house to old wives who were un-happy with their relationships. They would talk to the wives and tell them to take out Life Insurance on their spouses. The corrupt Life Insurance Agent would then change the beneficiary to Paul or Herman Petrillo. Then they would get arsenic poison and they would get the wives to poison their spouses to make it look like an accident. Why? Because accidents paid out double. This continued for years and years and they made over $750,000 from doing what is now known as the “Philadelphia Poison Ring”. Back then $750,000 was a lot of money. In the 1930’s Paul and Herman were on trial because an undercover agent had infiltrated the Petrillo Mafia and had taken an order to kill someone with a car to make it look like an accident. Paul had given the agent counterfeit money and the agent took it in as evidence and that’s when they busted everyone. Paul and Herman got the electric chair as a result of the trials.

We used to always as my grandfather about his dad, but the only thing he would ever say is “He was a horrible man and isn’t worth the time to talk about.” So we never knew anything about him. After his funeral we were looking through his stuff in the attic and we had found an old Pistol. We are not sure where it came from but we are almost positive it was a murder weapon that was used by my Great-Grandfather or one of his henchmen.