Unsolved Mafia murders in Sydney: secrets, revenge, and betrayal
By Elliot Lindsay
The city hummed with the restless energy of a thousand unspoken sins. Rain slicked the streets, pooling in the cobbled alleys and dripping from the iron eaves of old shopfronts. A tram rattled down King Street, its bell a lonely echo in the thick summer air.
A man staggered onto the steps of Newtown Railway Station, clutching his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps, his fine suit dark with something thicker than rain. A blade - a long, cruel Sheffield dagger - was buried deep in his ribs. He took two steps forward, lips parting in an attempt to speak, then collapsed at the barrier. By the time the station porter reached him, his body was already cooling. His killer was gone, swallowed by the labyrinth of backstreets that stretched toward Enmore and beyond.
They said his name was Domenico Belle, but few in Sydney knew him well. Fewer still were willing to speak his name after that day.
Omicido
The murder on February 11, 1930, sent ripples through the city, but in the Italian community, it was a tidal wave. The police at Newtown Station called in the detectives from Central - Inspector Prior and his men, the best the C.I.B. had.
They found little to work with. The few witnesses were vague, their words wrapped in uncertainty and fear. A man had run from the scene, that much was certain. His steps were quick, his features indistinct. He had planned it well. No fingerprints. No immediate motive. Just a dead man with a history no one wanted to discuss.
The first theory was a woman - there’s always a woman.
Belle was handsome in that Southern European way - tall, dark, with a gold chain and a woman’s silver watch in his pocket. He had lived with a Frenchwoman in a small, unimpressive cottage on Campbell Street, Surry Hills, though he was still married to a cousin back in Italy.
The woman, shaken but cooperative, told the police he was secretive, distant. He rarely spoke of his past, and when he did, it was in fragments. There were whispers of debts. Whispers of men who followed him in the night.
The second theory was revenge.
Belle had boxed the ears of one Giuseppe Mammone, a Leichhardt barber with a past that stretched back to Buffalo, New York, where he had served six months for manslaughter. Mammone had debts too, and ties to men no one wanted to name.
The police searched his shop, turning up letters in Italian, cryptic words about “the life” and “the bad life” - phrases the Government interpreter, Dr. Monticone, recognised as references to the Mala Vita, a secret criminal society that had operated in Naples and Sicily for generations.
Still, no one would talk. Not even Belle’s closest acquaintances.
Inspector Prior leaned against the bar of a quiet hotel near Redfern and tipped his glass toward an old informant - an Italian who had been in Sydney long enough to lose his accent but not his fear.
“They know who did it,” the man muttered, staring into his whiskey. “But no one’s saying a damn thing.”
Months passed. The case cooled. The city moved on. But then, another murder.
January 26, 1931
At 3 a.m., while the city slept, a shot rang out on King Street, Newtown.
Guiseppe La Spina, another Sicilian, lay bleeding in his bed behind his fruit shop at the corner of King and Fitzroy Streets. The window was open, a shotgun barrel still warm from the blast. His employee, Frank De Luca, claimed he had been awake, that he had heard a man calling for money before pulling the trigger.
The police moved fast, rounding up Vincenzo Malaponte, another Sicilian, another familiar face in the quiet wars of Sydney’s foreign underworld. De Luca pointed a finger. “It was him,” he swore. “I know his voice.”
Malaponte was calm. Too calm. He denied everything, said he had been at Bondi, looking for work in Pendle Hill, that he had nothing to do with La Spina’s death. He was arrested anyway.
Omertà
At the inquest, the shadows of Belle’s murder loomed. Detective-Sergeant Sherringham was asked if he had heard of the Camorra - one of the oldest and most ruthless Italian secret societies. He nodded. He had heard of it. And if Belle’s murder had been tied to it, so was La Spina’s.
And yet, the evidence was weak.
At the trial, Malaponte’s lawyer, Clive Evatt, argued the case was built on whispers and fear. He even demanded that the jury include six Italians, citing old English law. The judge denied the request, but it didn’t matter. The jury barely deliberated.
“Not guilty.”
Applause erupted from Malaponte’s countrymen in the courtroom. The judge nodded. “I agree,” he said. “The evidence is too contradictory.”
Malaponte walked free. And with him, the secrets of two murders that would never be solved.
The newspapers moved on. The city forgot. But the streets of Newtown, the alleyways of Surry Hills, the shadowed corners of Leichhardt - they remembered.
Men still spoke of Domenico Belle, the mystery man with a dagger in his ribs. They whispered about Guiseppe La Spina, shot dead in his bed. They muttered about Mammone, the barber who lived in the twilight between crime and survival.
And somewhere, in the quiet of the night, the real killer still walked free.
Sydney’s underworld was a maze of dark alleys and deeper secrets. No law could touch it. No detective could map it. The killers had melted into the city, like rain into the pavement.
And the silence held.
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