On this day in 1881 Sicilian bandit and refugee from justice in Sicily, Giuseppe Esposito, is captured in New Orlean’s Jackson Square by cousins Michael and David Hennessey. Espositto is shipped to New York for an extradition hearing and eventually sent back to Palermo where he reportedly dies in prison.

On the 6th of July, 1881, one of the most wanted men in Sicily found himself abruptly running out of road in the most unlikely of places — the sun-baked streets of New Orleans, Louisiana. Giuseppe Esposito, a hardened Sicilian bandit and fugitive with a fearsome reputation stretching back across the Atlantic, was captured in Jackson Square by two young and ambitious cousins, Michael and David Hennessey. It was a moment that sent shockwaves through both the criminal underworld and law enforcement communities on two continents.

Esposito had fled Sicily after a string of violent crimes that included kidnapping, extortion, and murder. Among his most notorious acts was the abduction of a British clergyman, Reverend John Rose Nicholson, whom he held for an enormous ransom in the Sicilian countryside. When Italian and British authorities closed in, Esposito made his escape to the United States, eventually settling in New Orleans, which had by that time developed a substantial and growing Sicilian immigrant community. He is widely believed to have been among the earliest figures to bring organised Sicilian criminal networks to American shores, laying a crude but consequential foundation for what would later evolve into the American Mafia.

The Hennessey cousins, who would both go on to careers in New Orleans law enforcement, acted on a tip and collared Esposito without significant incident near Jackson Square. David Hennessey in particular would become a celebrated and controversial figure, eventually rising to Chief of Police in New Orleans before his own violent murder in 1890 — an assassination widely attributed to the local Mafia and one that triggered a notorious mass lynching of Italian immigrants the following year. It was a grim illustration of just how deeply Sicilian criminal influence had already taken root in American soil.

Following his arrest, Esposito was transported to New York to face extradition proceedings. The legal machinery ground slowly but ultimately in favour of the Italian authorities, and Esposito was shipped back to Palermo to face justice. He reportedly died behind bars, though the precise details of his end remain murky, as tends to be the case with men of his ilk.

Esposito's capture stands as an early and significant moment in the long, tangled history of organised crime in America. The criminal networks he helped introduce to New Orleans would eventually feed into the national syndicate structures that figures like Lucky Luciano would later refine into a sophisticated and far-reaching criminal empire.