At daybreak on May 22, 1893, a man was shot to death in the backyard of a boarding house on Spencer's Hill in Dunmore. I set out to preserve his memory. Instead, I found the story of the woman at the center of it, an Italian immigrant whose life was harder than anything the newspapers ever printed about her.
The deeper I dug into the 1872 murder of John Garrity, the clearer it became: this was not just a story about a killing. It was a story about an entire community. Irish immigrants bound together by family, friendship, hardship, and secrets buried in the records of Scranton’s Notch.
The 1872 murder of John Garrity was an open-and-shut case. Part I follows the crime, investigation, and sentencing. But there was more. Part II uncovers the family story the newspapers never reported.
In 1928, Italian immigrants in Scranton were particularly violent. Dynamite was the weapon of choice used to intimidate and exact revenge of their targets and ideological enemies. The Black Hand, present for decades, was now joined by fascists and anti-fascists during Mussolini's reign in Italy. Read about how the city was rocked by attacks leading up to the Great Depression.
A dispute over just fifteen cents leads to murder and then Lackawanna County's first execution by hanging.
