Showing The Crescent City Lynchings: The Murder of Chief Hennessy, the New Orleans "Mafia" Trials, and the Parish Prison Mob by Tom Smith

The Crescent City Lynchings recounts one of the bloodiest and most misreported episodes in U.S. history. An hour before midnight on October 15, 1890, Chief David Hennessy was fatally wounded as he walked home from New Orleans police headquarters. As Hennessy lay dying, he murmured that "dagos" had shot him. Because the popular young police chief had intended to testify in a trial involving two rival families of Italian fruit stevedoers later that week, he was taken at his word, and mass arrests shook the Italian immigrant community in New Orleans. After four months of police and municipal bungling, nineteen Italians and Italian-Americans were indicted for the murder.