Wandering Family

Wandering Family

Native Name	Famiglia Vagabonda
Also Known As	Famalie Vagabonda Family of Vagabonds
Origins
Founding Location	Fairmont, West Virginia, United States
Territory	Fairmont Clarksburg
Headquarters	Rear of a barber shop on Water Street, East Fairmont
Profile
Structure	Fairmont and Clarksburg branches with officers
Ethnicity	Italian
Activities	Extortion Prostitution Narcotics Dynamiting Murder
Politics
Leader	Joe Urso (Fairmont) “Big Jim” Centeniene (Clarksburg)
Notable Members	Rocco Fioiello Richard “Dick” Ferri Pasquale “Patsy” Corbi
Neutralized Persons	Francesco Napolitano, known as Frank Naples
Activity
Status	Defunct
Years Active	1921–1923
Founded Date	1921
Dissolved Date	1923
Dissolution Cause	Arrests Prosecutions

The Wandering Family—usually rendered in Italian as Famiglia Vagabonda and recorded by Fairmont detective John C. McKinney as the “Famalie Vagabonda”—was an Italian criminal organization active around Fairmont and Clarksburg, West Virginia, during the early 1920s. Authorities and newspapers generally described its members as Black Handers.

History

McKinney distinguished the Wandering Family from an earlier Marion County Black Hand society. He dated the earlier group to 1908, identified Frank Pisconeri as its president and wrote that prosecutions suppressed it for several years. He placed the next appearance of organized Black Hand activity in 1921, when investigators identified Water Street in East Fairmont as a headquarters and connected crimes there to activity in Clarksburg.

According to McKinney, police seized an Italian-language constitution, bylaws and meeting minutes. The organization had Fairmont and Clarksburg branches and officers including a president, secretary and designated executioner. Its Fairmont headquarters was behind a barber shop on Water Street. McKinney attributed extortion, brothel operation, narcotics activity and the dynamiting of at least ten Fairmont homes to the organization. The West Virginia Encyclopedia independently describes Black Hand extortion of Italian immigrants and businessmen in the region and reports that eight members were arrested in Harrison County on February 11, 1923, after several alleged gangland killings.

Corbi family and Frank Naples

Accounts referring to “Corbin brothers” appear to mean the Corbi family. Historical researcher Justin Cascio identifies Pasquale “Patsy” Corbi and his brothers Tony and Frank as sons of Baltimore grocer Vito Corbi. Cascio connects Patsy Corbi to associates of the Wandering Family in Clarksburg, but the evidence located does not establish that all three brothers participated in the same West Virginia crimes.

Cascio identifies Frank Naples as Francesco Napolitano, a rival for control of Clarksburg's underworld after the December 1921 killing of local leader “Big Joe” Cignetti. He writes that five of Cignetti's associates—including Richard Ferri and Patsy Corbi—searched for Naples and another rival, and that Naples was lured from hiding and killed on February 16, 1922. A contemporary West Virginia newspaper later reported that a Harrison County jury convicted Patsy Corbi of first-degree murder as an accessory before the fact in Naples's killing, rejecting testimony that Corbi had been ill in Baltimore when Naples was killed. The sources therefore connect the Corbi family and Wandering Family associates to the Naples homicide, but do not support describing every member of the organization—or every Corbi brother—as a shooter.

Downfall

The 1923 arrests led to prosecutions in Harrison and Marion counties. McKinney wrote that a secretary of the organization testified for the state and produced its internal records; he credited cooperation between the two counties' prosecutors with breaking up the group.