A woman sets out to investigate the 100-year-old unsolved murder case that has tormented her family for decades.
Jo Piazza of Philadelphia had grown up hearing that her great-great-grandmother Lorenza Marsala was murdered in Sicily before she could join the rest of the family on their move to the United States.
The mother of three, author and podcaster, was forced to unravel a host of wild theories about the death, including speculation that the town had turned against her because she was a witch or that she owned mafia land. she wanted to have it in her hands.
Jo said members of her family had tried to warn her not to delve deeper into the case at the risk of “opening old wounds”, but she was undeterred.
Jo Piazza of Philadelphia is set to investigate the 100-year-old cold case murder that has tormented her family for decades.
She had grown up hearing that her great-great-grandmother Lorenza Marsala was murdered in Sicily before she could join the rest of the family on their move to the United States.
The intriguing story began after Jo’s father passed away in 2015.
She was pregnant at the time, newly married, had recently moved and had lost her job, she said. Today: ‘I didn’t have time to cry… Everything is blurry.’
The loving daughter was forced to collect some of her belongings so her mother could start over, including her computer.
But Jo regretted throwing it away after finding some emails from her father when she was cleaning out her inbox a few years later.
He said he had responded to most of them at that time, but there were some that had not been opened.
‘One caught my attention. It was his grandfather’s birth certificate. He had commented that her mother’s name, Lorenza, was so beautiful. “She was the one who was murdered,” he reminded me of her in all caps,” she shared.
Jo revealed that her father had become “obsessed” with discovering the truth about her death, and even made several trips back to the island.
However, she eventually had to limit her research to what she could do online after suffering from a rare form of muscular dystrophy.
He was born on February 14, 1862 and died on February 24, 1916, both in the small town of Caltabellotta (pictured).
Jo traveled to Caltabellotta to learn more and began recording a true crime podcast about Lorenza’s death.
His mobility deteriorated and he instead focused his attention on collecting stories from other family members and trawling through files on the Internet.
‘My dad never finished his work… [He] “I was very concerned about this investigation and should have done it with him,” Jo reflected.
She said she decided to pick up where he left off as a “way to connect” with her late father, adding: “I often felt like he was with me.”
Jo began her own research on Ancestry.com, but was forced to start from scratch after failing to guess her father’s passwords to access his accounts.
It was there that he had access to a large number of documents that shed more light on Lorenza’s life.
He was born on February 14, 1862 and died on February 24, 1916, both in the small town of Caltabellotta.
Lorenza gave birth to her first child at age 20, and her husband Antonino Piazza moved to the United States in the early 20th century.
Jo’s investigation took her to Ellis Island, New York, which was formerly the busiest immigration inspection and processing station in the United States.
She, along with the help of historian Stephen Lean, was able to piece together a more complete picture of her family’s immigration journey.
It showed that Lorenzo’s children (Santo, Joseph, Josephine, Paulina, Rosa, Calogero and Antonino) followed in their father’s footsteps by moving to the United States.
But the family matriarch, who worked as a farmer, was murdered before she could join them.
But family and friends warned the writer and podcaster to be careful with her research.
Elsewhere, Jo has since written a fictional murder mystery novel loosely based on her findings titled The Sicilian Inheritance.
Family and friends warned the writer and podcaster to be careful with her research.
She said People that his uncle had said to him half jokingly: ‘Why do you open old wounds? You’re going to end up starting our vendetta again.
Barbie Latza Nadeau, an expert on the Italian mafia, also told him: ‘You always have to be careful what you’re digging up when you’re sifting through the ashes because you can end up stumbling upon something that someone doesn’t want.’ that you find out.
‘I’m not trying to scare you. I just think you have to be attentive.’
However, Jo traveled to Caltabellotta to learn more and began recording a true crime podcast about Lorenza’s death.
It was there that he visited the local municipal office where he was shown the handwritten ‘Book of Death’ that recorded all the deaths in the town for more than a century.
He found his great-great-grandmother’s name in the section dedicated to “unnatural causes, accidents or homicides,” but no actual cause was provided.
“It was the first real evidence I had that she had been murdered more than a century earlier,” Jo told the outlet.
‘My whole body tensed as I looked at the page. Here she was. This was real. It was no longer just a story told during a cocktail party at a family wedding. Lorenza Marsala was born here and died here, possibly in a terrible way.
Jo’s suspicions only increased when the document also revealed that a man named Nicolo Martino, a name she had never heard before, was murdered at exactly the same time and in the same place as Lorenza.
Rumors about her death constantly circulated, including mentions that she was a witch or that the mafia was involved.
There was also speculation that one of his sons had returned to the Italian region to avenge the massacre during a rabbit hunt before disappearing.
Jo discovered in her research that Lorenza’s son Joseph was sent to Europe after joining the army in 1918.
He was then off the grid for four decades, adding, “I finally have proof that one of Lorenza’s sons may have avenged his mother’s death.”
The exact details of the matriarch’s death are still unclear, as Jo promises to unravel the truth on her podcast.
Elsewhere, Jo has since written a fictional murder mystery novel loosely based on her findings titled The Sicilian Inheritance.