detained under $25,000 bail. Then, in November, despite strenuous protest by Assistant District Attorney Jacob Grumet, the bail was reduced to $5,000 and Nuccio was set free by General Sessions Judge George L. Donnellan. Twice since then Nuccio has been arrested on bootlegging charges, and gave new bonds.

Among the clues in the hands of the police is "information" connecting Vito Genovese, alleged former New York City gang chief, with the Tresca case. He disappeared in 1937 when Thomas E. Dewey, as special prosecutor here, was crusading against organized crime. Ernest Rupolo, convicted gunman, is reported to have told the Kings County (Brooklyn) authorities that Genovese arranged the Tresca killing at the bidding of Mussolini and his son-in-law, Count Ciano. Rupolo's story was told in the hope of getting leniency when he was facing a possible 40-80 years sentence as a second offender. Sentence was deferred by Judge Samuel Leibowitz when an assistant prosecutor said Rupolo had made "valuable disclosures." Following these disclosures Genovese, then serving as an interpreter for the Allied Military Government in Rome, was extradited to New York on a 1934 murder charge. Brought back in June, 1945, he is yet to be tried.

What did District Attorney Hogan's office find out about Genovese's alleged connection with the Tresca slaying?*

Why Has the Investigation Moved So Slowly?

The Tresca case remains a mystery, a double mystery, involving two questions: Who killed Carlo Tresca? And: Why have the District Attorney's office and the police failed to make any headway toward a solution? "Motive" and "opportunity" are the two prime factors to be established in tracking down any murderer. Here is a case in which powerful motives appear to have been established. Two political groups which in the past have shown no scruples about using assassination as a political weapon obviously had an interest in eliminating Carlo Tresca. Prominent individuals long associated with those groups had often been bitterly attacked by Tresca. As for "opportunity," we have the police finding the murder car a few hours after the crime, and two parole officers declaring that they saw a parolee with a bad record enter that car an hour and a half before the murder took place.

* R. Harris Smith, in his OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) p. 86, states that in 1943, "... OSS responsibilities for Italian espionage were preempted by the Office of Naval Intelligence through a mysterious arrangement with the American Mafia. The criminal syndicate agreed to direct clandestine operations on the island of Sicily in return for the parole of Mafia chief 'Lucky' Luciano. (The 'deal' was arranged by Assistant New York District Attorney Murray Gurfein, who became an OXX colonel in Europe later in the war.)" On p. 103, Smith writes: "A very few OSS men had indeed been recruited directly from the ranks of Murder, Inc. and the Philadelphia 'Purple Gang.'"