Jul. 6—Pittston native Joseph Morreale was not nationally known as the likes of Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Baby Face Nelson and John Dillinger, but he did have a respectable gangster name.
Morreale was known as “Colorado Joe,” or by his alias, “Joe Guiseppe,” by state policemen in the late 1920s and early 1930s as he ran a racketeering ring that stretched from Pittston into Scranton.
Morreale, who lived on Fronthingham Street, operated a confectionery store at North Main and Mill streets in Pittston, which policemen knew was a front to launder money and store bootlegged liquor for distribution.
“Morreale’s occupation was listed as a bootlegger in the Wyoming barracks,” reported the Times Leader Evening News on July 6, 1934.
Morreale was found dead from multiple gunshot and stab wounds in a gulley along Union Highway near Endicott, N.Y., on July 5, 1934.
Several theories were investigated by state policemen in New York and Pennsylvania to find who killed Colorado Joe and why.
Newspapers in the area reported Morreale was given a “gangster ride,” meaning a death ride.
Morreale’s closest associates were “grilled” by policemen, the Evening News reported, beginning July 5, but by July 9, 1934, the investigation stalled with no arrests.
Theories reported by the Evening News and the Wilkes-Barre Record why Morreale was killed were:
—Morreale ratted out suspects who robbed the employee payroll at a furniture manufacturing business in Binghamton, N.Y.
—Morreale was killed for his role in the “bumping off” of three gangsters whose bodies were found in an abandoned coal mine in Old Forge.
—Or, Morreale was killed as he was expanding his racketeering and liquor bootlegging business into the Binghamton, N.Y., area to compete with gangsters in the southern New York region.
A clothing store owner from Endicott, N.Y., told policemen on July 6, 1934, that Morreale had proposed they enter business together, and Morreale inquired about an adjacent vacant storefront and if there was back alley, the Evening News reported.
Policemen were not able to gather enough evidence to arrest anyone for Morreale’s murder, but their strongest lead was the bodies found in the Old Forge mine.
“Police reported a similarity between Morreale’s slaying and the killing of three men whose bodies were found at the foot of an abandoned mine shaft in Old Forge last winter. Morreale was shot four times in the back, and his body showed three stab wounds. Authorities believe he might have known too much about the Old Forge massacre, and they cite this as a probable motive for his killing,” the Evening News reported.
The bodies of Joseph Morano and George Gene Mitchell were found decomposed and frozen in the Old Forge mine on March 20, 1934, and on April 5, 1934, the body of Lester Levenson was found. Morano, Mitchell, and Levenson were from Scranton, where Morreale conducted his bootlegging business using a clothing store warehouse on Penn Avenue, Scranton.
The Evening News reported Morano and Mitchell worked for Morreale and possibly pocketed money from illegally selling liquor.