Italian authorities believe they have solved the Mafia murder of a New York police officer who was shot and killed on the island of Sicily over 100 years ago, the BBC reported.
The murder might have gone unsolved for another century if it wasn't for the recent arrest of a man in the island's capital of Palermo, who claims his great-uncle murdered Joe Petrosino in 1909.
Lieutenant Petrosino, an Italian immigrant, was said to be one of the first New York detectives to help bring down organized crime in the early 20th century. He targeted extortion rackets, called Black Hand, that were run by Italian gangsters.
Petrosino was also a mastermind at going undercover, carrying out covert operations as a sanitation worker, a blind beggar and a health inspector, according to the BBC.
At the time of his death, Petrosino was on a classified mission to Sicily to collect evidence. He was waiting for an informant when he was shot four times in the street on March 12, 1909, according to witnesses who were waiting for a tram.
The murder went unsolved for decades until Monday, when a man claiming to be the murderer's great-nephew was arrested along with 95 others suspected of running Mafia extortion rackets in Palermo.
"The uncle of my father was called Paolo Palazzotto," the nephew, Domenico Palazzotto, told a colleague, according to the Ansa news agency. "He killed the top policeman killed in Palermo."
Paolo Palazzotto apparently murdered the lieutenant on the orders of Cascio Ferro, the crime boss of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia. Their operations were known to have extended to the U.S., Ansa reported.
Ferro and Paolo Palazzotto were both arrested after Petrosino's murder. But police could not charge them due a lack of evidence and they were later released, the BBC reported.
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