Thursday, November 18, 2010

For PK--Anthony DeCaprio????

PK, this quote at the end of this story caught my eye, "Of Anthony DeCaprio, however, there is no further news," and got me thinking. If you took of the ball cap, removed the sunglasses, and added a Paladin mustache to the Curator, is it possible he might be Anthony Decaprio from New Castle, Penn?


The Harvard sandwich bar in Cleveland was easy pickings. Workers from the nearby Fisher Body plant could cash their payroll cheques there, so it had thousands of dollars on the premises every Friday, but the only security measure that had been taken was the hiring of a special policeman to watch over the cash. It was nothing that a few young men with a couple of guns between them couldn’t handle.

On April 16, 1937, Anthony DeCaprio drove Joseph Taylor and Theodore Slapik to the sandwich bar and sat outside with the engine running while they went in. Minutes later, he heard shots -- the sound of what witnesses would later describe as a gun battle between the stick-up men and Special Policeman Lawrence Krull -- and then the sandwich bar’s doors opened and Taylor and Slapik came out, their bags bulging.

They got away without a hitch, richer by $1,700 -- a steelworker’s yearly wage, at that time.

Behind them, they left Krull lying on the floor of the sandwich bar with three bullets in him. When they checked the papers the next day, they’d have seen that the 27-year-old was in a critical condition in hospital. The Sunday papers would have told them that he had died.

The boys agreed to split up and leave the state. Joseph Taylor went west to Illinois, where he got a job as a layout man with Ringling Brothers circus; Theodore Slapik went north to Michigan; and Anthony DeCaprio went east to Pennsylvania, ending up in a rooming house on South Walnut street in New Castle.

In October, six months after the shooting, two Cleveland detectives travelled to New Castle, having “received information” that DeCaprio was in the town. The information probably came either from Taylor, who had been arrested in August in Chicago and connected to the murder of Krull by his fingerprints, or from Slapik, who had been picked up later that same month in Detroit.

Anthony had just walked into a saloon on Neshannock avenue when Ray Showalter, New Castle’s chief of detectives, who had been waiting there with one of the Cleveland cops, shoved a revolver into his side and took him into custody. At city hall, Anthony admitted driving the car in the robbery and waived extradition papers. He was taken back to Ohio the next morning to stand trial for murder.

Three of the robbers’ accomplices were also arrested that year, and all six young men were found guilty of murder, receiving life sentences in Ohio penitentiary.

Theodore Slapik was released in 1955, when the governor of Ohio decided he was eligible for parole (after he’d been working as the governor’s driver for some years) and, in 1957, Joseph Taylor escaped from his job in the prison’s sewage disposal plant but was caught two hours later. Of Anthony DeCaprio, however, there is no further news.

4 comments:

PK said...

It all seemingly fits.
Except, hardened criminal types never quit smoking.

Wade G. Burck said...

PK,
A few do quit, no matter how hardened, if they get pu**y whipped and turn soft.

Wade

Anonymous said...

why is Jim Ziychek's picture with this article?

Wade G. Burck said...

Anonymous,
Because there has been a question raised, about whether Zych is actually Zych, or if he is in fact, Anthony DeCaprio gone underground at the Big Circus Sideshow.
Wade