A bang rocked the sleepy town of Hillsdale. A bomb had destroyed the Cascarelli Fruit Store.
The town, nestled in the heart of southern Michigan’s farmland, which is home to conservative Hillsdale College, had been booming since the railroad in the 1850s. Like many American cities, it had been attracting Italian immigrants like Peter Cascarelli since the early 1900s.
Cascarelli ran a fruit store on the main drag through town, according to the Hillsdale County Historical Society. He, his son Joseph, and nephew Frank were sleeping in an apartment above the store on June 24, 1923, when an explosion burst behind the store at 3 a.m. It busted windows down the block and even woke residents at a farm south of town.
At the time, Sheriff W.H. Bates was at the jail downtown. He was an experienced investigator, just months earlier helping arrest a wife in her husband’s poisoning. The blast woke him from his slumber.
Bates ran down the block, thinking someone was breaking into the First National Bank. Then he found the carnage behind the Cascarelli Fruit Store. Someone had placed a bomb along the building’s back wall.
The Cascarellis escaped from the explosion. But more than 100 years later, no one knows why the bombing happened.
The Black Hand
Rumors soon spread across town that the infamous Black Hand Gang, or La Mano Nera, had bombed Cascarelli’s store.
“The bombing is believed to have been the work of blackhanders from out of the city but Cascarelli claims to have no enemies,” reported the Lansing State Journal. “No arrests have been made.”
The Black Hand is often considered the first organized crime ring in America. The group was an extortion racket run by Italian gangsters, with major hubs in cities like Chicago. It often extorted local merchants, sending notes with black hands threatening to kill them or destroy their property—unless they paid up.
Rumor spread that Cascarelli knew the bomber. An Italian had visited him the Saturday before, and an argument ensued—leading to a threat against him and his business, according to the Hillsdale County Historical Society.
Bates and his deputies speculated “even if Mr. Cascarelli knew, he might not tell, fearing that greater vengeance might be wrecked upon him,” the Hillsdale Daily News reported at the time, per the historical society.
Cascarelli’s younger cousin, Don, suggested the store owner refused to be threatened and was prepared to defend himself and the property. He reportedly said the Italian visitor was from the Black Hand—and that Pete, Joe, and Frank were preparing for the attack.
“Don tells about Pete and Joe sitting in their store through the night of June 23/24, 1923 with their rifles at the ready, not upstairs in their apartment, as they told Sheriff Bates,” the historical society’s website reads.
But Cascarelli’s great nephew Robert said the bomb sent Frank and Joe flying out of bed.
“It was not a small bomb,” Robert Cascarelli said. “It was meant to do damage.”
He confirmed that Peter Cascarelli was “closed mouth,” and dealt with matters himself rather than going to the authorities. He also suggested someone tried to extort him. “Italians took advantage of their own race.”
The Albion Connection
Cascarelli’s brother, also named Robert, owned a store in the nearby town of Albion at the time. The store is still running as an Italian restaurant—Cascarelli’s of Albion—to this day.
After the bombing, Peter Cascarelli reportedly got a call from Robert that “the guy” had shown up in Albion to collect money and was at the Stag Bar next door. Peter rushed over, where he found the man, then stuck a pistol in his ear and “made it bleed like hell.”
“You tried to put me out of business, blew up the whole block in Hillsdale, and I’m still not going to pay you,” Peter said, according to the Hillsdale Collegian. “I understand my brother Robert is willing to pay you, but if you ever come back to Albion, if you ever go near my brother, I will kill you.”
An Unsolved Mystery
While most evidence seems to suggest The Black Hand, several different groups could also have been behind the bombing.
Robert Cascarelli’s store in Albion was directly across the street from a recurring meetup for The Purple Gang—Detroit’s most notorious Prohibition-era crime syndicate.
The Purple Gang was so present in Albion that the city has a walking tour of different sites. From the Bohm Theater, where mobsters met on Sundays, to the junkyard they used as a front, members of the gang were highly present in the town through the 1920s and 1930s. Notably, members of the Purple Gang in Detroit faced extortion charges at one point.
The youngest, Robert, also said Cascarelli’s brother had been paying a group from Cicero, Illinois. Al Capone made Cicero a “fiefdom” for his syndicate—which specialized in bootlegging alcohol—starting in 1924. A local historian also noted Cascarelli was accused of bootlegging. So theoretically, “Scarface” and his outfit may have been involved in the bombing.
While numerous Italian immigrants thrived in a Hillsdale neighborhood known as “Little Italy,” this also attracted unwanted attention—including from the Ku Klux Klan.
The KKK came to Hillsdale in 1923, the same year as the bombing, according to the Hillsdale County Historical Society. The klan held a cross burning on an Italian family’s front lawn, and one historian even blamed the group for the explosion.
“The building was reportedly bombed by the KKK in 1923,” reads one document from the historical society.
While the Cascarelli bombing remains a mystery after more than 100 years, we do know that a man stood firm against pressure—and ultimately paid the price.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer for The Dallas Express. He was previously an elections correspondent for The Federalist and editorial assistant for Christopher Rufo. He is a graduate of Hillsdale College.
