The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 23, 1905, Page 8

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. TORTURICI Wa with her her and % yken and re she is there is . about the s e with E even now e feeling onlv into dis pity i with ave o, . character of the mind whether nvoluntarily. »nstructs the swift. heavy fury asing when the ) draw- blood hurry- k of each other, oning hate “What kind of these who can do Preconce ns of little Prison with m in my 1ber there are com res many who are “but e the quadruped.” i sits by the grated prisor eyed baby girl on her le hands to- such a fragile, shabby little ng there, slight as a fifteen- year-old girl's, with the cheap white shirt-waist untidily flaring bose from =kirt rent It is such a pretty, young, the skirt belt, and the the knee blac at appealing brown hair. face framed in the mass of The skin is of the creamy tint and texture of a chlla. The brown large prominent and us. The long nervous strain, perhaps the awful things they may have looked upon, jake them appear to be starting from the head. In profile they are so prominent that you can see a golden light through the Be- the brows the same nervous strain has knotted a frown into two deep wrinkles. The chin is round and small, and the mouth a soft little bud that quivers with the overtension of the nerves and relaxes now and then into & wan little smile. These signs—the starting. brilliant the troubled, knotted brows. the quivering of tise lips—are the only evi- dences of emotion she has given ex- cept on that day when she was taken to the Morgue to look on the mangled body of her husband’s victim and she tore her way out screaming: “I have never looked upon one who has died by the hand of God! Por Dio! How can I look upon him who has died —iike that!” The wide-eyed baby girl slips to the flioor and with a confiding smile tacks her course to me on chubby bow legs to make overtures of friendship, and Rosa Torturici tells me, by way of Judge Spinetti, her attorney, who in- terprets for us, her little life story. She tells it with vivid Italian gestures and wolubility—but the volubility is of nar- rative, not of self-analysis. and eyes are iris. tween eyes, Sici » comes from ves: from He vineyardist there, which is larger now than it was when father, Domenico was a and lived at Cefalu, 2rTaco, she was a little girl. They lived al- ways in the village except for two sntlss in the summer, when the whole ily, father, mother, two s and daughters, went out with the f2 donkey and cart to bring in the 1 the grapes. nt to the Church of San Gio- 1 made her and mfirmation in ( confession got her alu. Can sh Oh redd and write? y she says with animated pride is quite educated. She went to the hool of « a Government th 1s—you must k e wer - »w how zreat a d an. for able to read not only tic tinct poor , tc be appreciate Siciliar 10 se aspirations: the yeasar the diz: ther re 1 the family for her to be- L ra wished Her mother. it ious.” he and not only e Gov but she ernment home with a private teacher studied to help he with edu- she on her ly, Il her family Zoes testified Crispino Vilarde, ther of the murdered man. at He said that her family in all “fine people. shé smiles that is true: m to t a letter written, uest were not one of th ever had g0 to some one read. Every one of them can read and write— or ey are quite educated. little Rosa, after she had made confession and got confirmed by padre and had educated so that she success- the examination of the ntary school, came to this coun- of San Giovanni, »ecome passed fully Her father had here before. and after making money enough in the orange groves of Louisiana had sent for his family And Rosa’s thirteenth birthday rassed on shipboard on the Atlantic. And then when she was fifteen vears old another great event happened. All the family, the father, the mother, and sisters and brothers, weresout for a Sunday jaunt in their in the orange grove country north of New Orleans, all in their very best Sunday, clotheg, and as gay as only those sunny southern people can be—and she saw for the first time Pietro Torturici. He was on a Sunday outing, too, and— whether it was the Sunday clothes, or the Sunday gayet: just fate, he made up his mind as 3oon as he set eyes on her that he would have her for his wife. + Before the week was well begun he came to her father’'s house and asked to marry her. Her father and her mother thought come was wagon. or well of it, for he was a Siecilian. too. ng and strong and earning the ent sum of $47 a month in a stable. demurred; she was too vounsg, she could wait; she would know him better before deciding, while her mother, Eleonora, urged her not to let the chance slip by. *A girl must marry while she is young; when she’s old—" her mother shook her head discouraz- ingly. Pietro Torturici came for his an- swer himself, She remembered the day well. was standing by the window combing her younger sister’s hair, .and he came to the outside of the window and asked her to speak for herself. He wanted no go-betweens. She hung her head, and logked away, and would not say yes—nor yet no. But it must be and straight to him. He didn’t want her father and mother to make up her mind for her: So—she looked at him again—and.looked away and said yes she wobuld marry. him. en,” after a little while~her father and mother were as much opposed to her marrying him as they had been in favor of it. Wt Because Torturici was so boyish, o full of fun, so light-headed and light- hearted. - Why, he skipped rope and played ball and made jokes and Whit- tled and sang like one of the little boys. But she liked that in him as much as the father and' mother disliked it; and now that they had put him in her way and urged her.to marry him she had learned to love him, and, say what they pleased, she would marry bim. S0 they were married at the Church of St. Bernardo in New Orleans just three months after the day they met on the Sunday jaunt. She was just a few months over 15, and he was 18. That was a little more than five years ago. He had been a good husband to heg, Joyous, improvident, generous; good— in his way. ‘When he had money nothing was too good for her. Why, he didn't even want her to cook when they lived in New Orleans. He would take her to restaurants to eat, and so, too, here in BSan Francisco when he had the money to do it. There were grand feasts and merry- makings in those queer Latin quarter restaurants, where the dubfous two-bit table d’hote flourishes. He took her to the theater, too, every time he had the money; sometimes, in times of affluence, every night to the yes or no, . teatro Amcricano, and to those cheap glittering upper Kearny street and Market. > Once he had all of a thousand dollars —in bills—saved up, she believes, out of his wages as a section foreman. And like a thrifty little wife she went through his pockets and took it away from him and hid it—the whole fat wad of bills—in her bosom and tried to 1 uade him to buy some land near her father’s home with it. And he would have done it—how the lightest wind changes ouf course—only' that there was a différence of opinion about who should have the crop on the land in question. He wanted to bécome own- er of it with the croy; the owner want- the ». But for this difference peor Rosa might be her own house- holder now and neighbor to her father, Vilardo alive and Toriurici not a fugi- tive from justice. The all but three ithe' t Califor places on ed cr thousand dollars melted away. hundfed of it, and with € to 2 {wo years ago to try his for- He left Rosa in New Orleans d, heedless, improvident, pleasure- hundred Torturici came tune. loving, he spent the entire three hun- dred coming out here. Instead of mak- ing a through trip he stopped off wherever fancy moved him to, because, says Rosa, he liked the good time. He sent for her, and when she joined him here there was nothing in the mis- erable basement rooms he had for her S except a bed. and went to t ill, they were happy theaters and the 2 cent table d’hote dinners when he had work. And the baby came, And the rent of those two dingy basement at 710 Montgomery street could not be paid.. The butcher, the baker and the grocer were not too cordial about charging things—some- times they wouldn't charge them. * They moved to 736% Green street. They took Vilardo as a lodger, and then— The awful thing that sent a shudder through the whole cit- happened. 4 No, no; not in all the time she had knewn him and been wife to him had she thought he could do such a ter- rible deed. Nothing had ever suggest- ed the possibility of it. He would get angry with her, oh, ter- ribly*angry; fly up with a flash like a can of powder wher a match s dropped in. He was ifapulgive—yes; so quick—and like mad. ut in & moment it. was over—he would' cry, yes, cry, and say he was sorry for being unkind to her. And now, after hfl\‘];‘lg done this thing, if he was any sort of a man, if he had ever loved her and the baby, he would come back and present himself, so that she might go free. She spread the morning paper out on her knee, smoothing it where her pic- ture and the baby’s were displayed upon the page, and pointing to it said with feverish earnestness to Judge Spinettl and to me. rooms “Yes, if he is any sort of a man and’ he sees this—that I who am innocent and the baby to which he is father are here, in prison, he will come back; no matter where he is, he will come back and present himself, so that we shall not suffer the punishment.” 1t is perhaps a childish conception of chivalry and duty, but Rosa Torturici's is not a complex mind. ‘Whether she knows much or little of that shocking crime, whether or no she had an awful share in it, volun- tarily or involuntarily, who shall say? Not I, for one; for it is not given to a mere newspaper woman to read the naked human heart. Only three could unravel the mys- tery of it all—Vilardo, Pietro Torturici and his wife, Rosa, and Vilardo is dead. : ‘Was it because of the sin of Rosa Torturici? Did she fall through her soft affection? She is such a pretty little creature, and beauty allled with weakness makes its appeal to man. Was it in a transport of jealousy that death was dealt in such fearful form to Vilardo? » - ? Was it because the rent could mno . be paid for the two mean little rooms, at 710 Montgomery street?, Because there . was.no -longer- credit with -the butcher, the baker and the grocer? Because there was not even the mac- aroni ard tomato paste 'and pepper paste to set upon the bare table—and Vilardo's savings offered the one so- lution to the grinding problem how to ifve? Or was it the Mafia? The upper-class Italians laugh at any mention of the Mafia? There is no Mafia, they tell you. “There is no such thing as Mafia in San Francisco,” says C. F. Gron- dona of the Columbla Banking &om- pany, which holds the savings of the Italian colony, Sicilians and all. “Why should there be Mafia here? That is a thing®of the past in Italy.” “Mafla!” savs Carlo del Pino of L'Italia, “What does any one mean by Mafia? Why, if two or three or four or five agreé together to do a thing, bind themselves together for the pur- pcsé of vengeance, that is a Mafia. But big secret organization—here; oh, no."” vengeance of the f there is Mafia here I .should know it,” sdys Judge Spinetti, “for my practice is. in criminal cases, There is no Mafia here. Once only do I remember any one connected with the Mafia—that was Vincenzo Trops oni, who threw cayenne pepper into an officer’s face to let his prisoner escape, He was sentenced and served his time—and néver had anything to do with Mafla after that.” On the other hand there was affair with Italy over the Killing that of Chief of Police Hennessey in New Or- leans ~in’ 1891. Eleven men were lynched ‘in the Sicilian quarter in New Orleans as the result of that, hanged . to telegraph poles, while women waved approval from their balconies to those who took the’law into their own hands. It cost the -United States a pretty penny in indemnity, which is some proof of a Mafia. < There was the murder mystery of Jackson- Park, in Chicago, not so very long ago, where an Italian was found dead from a'poignard thrust with an “M” cut in the snow by his side. What did that'mean? * ’ From the time of the middle ages there has been that seéret power in Italy that has driven terror and the stilétto to the hearts of - authorities unapproved. | It has been driven south in Italy by an Jncreasing liberality and free- dom - and . enlightenment . until its remaining ‘stronghold is conceded to be Sicily, where the people, with their admixture of the Oriental and ,the African, offer’a temperament peculi- arly’ susceptible to its teachings. . My vegetdble’ dealer ‘tells me; “They stick you quick in Sichy, comes from Palermo. More learned authority says that ‘“people of every rank, profession and occupation, who have no other ties, unite for their common interest, with- out regard to law, justice or public order. They believe that they can best provide for the safety of their own persons and of their prop- erty by their own strength and per- sonal influence, independent of all authority and of all law.” That is a nice, scholarly way\ of putting it, but the Mafia maxims that are the common conversational ex- change of Sicily are more character- istic. “The poor,” they say, force, fools resort to law.” “Take the life of whoever youllose the ‘means of living.” “Be }upec,ttul to officers of the law, but stand afar off. “An influential friend is worth more than 1000 lire in your pocket.” “Imprisonment, sickness and .mis- “resort to makes fortune: prove-the hearts of friends.” . “The truth is only told in the con- tive is true. Ttaly says she doesn’t want the Ma- fia. Al Sicily is the home of the Ma- fia. The conStant pressure has squeezed over 30,000 Sicilians out of Sicily into this country. They are still Sicilians, still Mafiosi. The leopard, it is said, does net change his spots—even by emigration. It may be that it was the arm of the Mafia that struck down Vilardo. It may be that it was need or jeal- ousy. The awful thing was done and Rosa Torturici, wnose mmd is not complex nor refined to splitting hairs in the problems of life, what did she do? It is known at least that she labor- -ed -at removing the traces of -the crime—the blood-soaked apron, the little - handprint on the floor, - the washing of clothes all tell that. It ig known that when the detec- tives went from house to house seek- ing an gwner for .he shawl she kept her own counsel. That she confessed to knowing of no missing lodger. That she did not go to the police and denounce her husband as a murderer is also true. " That she ‘has been sullen and secre- But she is not a very advanced woman, not educated to very high standards of public duty, I fear. She only acted uvon her instincts of wifely duty, perhaps. If 4t bad been your husband, the father of vour baby—of course. that's quite an impossible suppesition—but if it had been, what would you have dote in her place? I put a rather cruel question to Rosa Torturici* as I said good-by. I asked her, and Judge Spinetti inter- preted it with great care, what she would do if Torturici eame back. That it seems to me—for life is so complex—a harder question to decide than what to do when he went away. Quick upon the heels of the ques- tion came her answer. She has ne two minds about the matter. She knows what she wants to do. “If he comes back—and he should come back and release me from this place”—in her ignorance she believed that she would be kept in prison until Torturici was found—"“I never want to see him again. Never! Never! I ‘want to get out of here. [ want to go away from San Francisco, where this thing happened. I want to get away from all that will make me remem- ber it. “I just want to take my baby and go home to my mother.”