Carina Favato was a ringleader in Philadelphia’s “Arsenic
Incorporated” murder syndicate. She pled guilty to poisoning three men, Charles
Ingrao, Philip Ingrao, and Guiseppi DiMartino, at her trial on April 21, 1939.
She may have murdered Antonio Romualdo as well. She was sentenced to life
imprisonment.
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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 6): Mrs. Carina Favato, 45, of
Bouvier st., near Wingoshocking, was held without bail yesterday as the third
person the police accuse in an alleged “poison murder syndicate.”
Mrs. Favato was charged with with having knowledge of the
death of Philip Ingrao, son of her common-law husband, by poisoining, in what
police said was a killing for insurance.
The others previously held are Herman Petrillo, of
Langhorne, and Mrs. Stella Alfonsi, 29, of Ann st., near Belgrade, who were
charged with the poison murder of Mrs. Alfonsi’s husband, Ferdinand.
~ TO DISINTER BODY
Meanwhile, police prepared to seek the disinterment today of the body of Charles Ingrao, Philip’s father, and said to have been Mrs. Favato’s common-law husband, to determine whether his death in August, 1935, was caused by poisoning.
Meanwhile, police prepared to seek the disinterment today of the body of Charles Ingrao, Philip’s father, and said to have been Mrs. Favato’s common-law husband, to determine whether his death in August, 1935, was caused by poisoning.
Mrs. Favato was arraigned before Magistrate Beifel in City
Hall, where she denied the charges in full. When police told the Magistrate,
however, that she had $6700 in life insurance on Philip when he died, Beifel
held her without bail.
She is charged by police with having collected some $8000 in
insurance on the life of Charles Ingrao. At present, detectives said, she
carries $2000 on the life of Michael Ingrao, brother of Philip, and an
examination of him will be made to determine whether any arsenic has been given
him.
Mrs. Favato was arrested after an autopsy of the body of
Philip Ingrao, who died last June 25, disclosed arsenic in his liver and
stomach.
Detectives’ attention was directed to his case when it
became known that Ingrao had been friendly with Petrillo, already held in
Alfonsi’s death.
Lieutenant James Kelly, of the homicide squad, testified at
the hearing that Petrillo had also been friendly with Mrs. Favato, boarding at
her home at the time Philip died.
~ CITES EVIDENCE
Kelly said the woman made fraudulent statements in obtaining
insurance on the boys, and made false and misleading statements to detectives.
City Councilman Edward A. Kelly, representing Mrs. Favato,
said there was no evidence that she had administered the poison.
“We don’t charge her with administering poison,” Lieutenant
Kelly replied. “We do charge that poison was administered with her full
knowledge and consent.”
Petrillo and Mrs. Alfonsi were held without bail last
Thursday [Nov. 3, 1938]. Petrillo was accused of wooing Mrs. Alfonsi and
enlisting her aid in causing the death of her husband to collect $2000 in
insurance.
[“3d Suspect Held In Death Syndicate – Police Prepare to
Disinter More Bodies For Evidence,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (Pa.), Nov. 4, 1938, p. 2]
***
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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 6): Philadelphia, April 21 – Mrs.
Carina Favato, 44, boarding house keeper charged with poisoning her stepson to
collect his life insurance, interrupted her trial today to plead guilty to
three murders.
Mrs. Favato was faced with testimony by an insurance
salesman that she had invited him to join in a wide-spread poisoning scheme to
collect insurance, and by Mrs. Susie di Martino, a co-defendant who turned
State’s witness, that Mrs. Favato collected $1,979 insurance after poisoning
Guiseppe di Martino, her husband.
Mrs. Favato’s decision to plead guilty took the case from
the jury and left her punishment to the decision of three judges.
Herman Petrillo, first to go on trial, was convicted by a
jury of first degree murder for which a death sentence is mandatory.
At the conclusion of the summation of the testimony for the
court, Trial Judge Edwin G. Lewis announced:
“I am sure the other judges will agree with me that we will
take into consideration Mrs. Favato’s attitude and what co-operation she gives
the district attorney’s office whether the punishment will be the electric
chair or life imprisonment.”
~ Collected $25,000.
Besides the poisoning of her stepson, Philip Ingrao, 17, a
year ago, Mrs. Favato pleaded guilty to charges she pleaded guilty to charges
she poisoned his father, Charles Favato, four years ago, and Guiseppe di
Martino in 1937.
Mrs. Favato also pleaded guilty to defrauding insurance
companies of about $28,000 on the lives of the three, and to a charge of
conspiring with others to murder.
Police have ordered more than a dozen bodies exhumed in
their investigation. Mrs. Di Martino and Paul Petrillo, uncle of Herman
Petrillo, are awaiting trial.
[“Woman Pleads Guilty to Killing 3 – Got $28,000 In
Insurance,” The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), Apr. 22, 1939, p. 3]
***
FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 6): Philadelphia – Additional
precautions were taken last night to guard a confessed woman principal in a
widespread insurance-poison ring who twice attempted suicide while shouting
“witches” were chasing her.
High police officials said no official report had been made,
but guards declared on one occasion they found Mrs. Carina Favato with a
handkerchief knotted around her neck. Several hours later, they said, she
plunged a safety pin into her arteries.
The two suicide attempts occurred during a hysteria, the
guards said, in which the 200-pound confessed poisoner screamed repeatedly from
her cell:
“They’re coming in here. There’s no use keeping the door closed. They’re coming.”
“They’re coming in here. There’s no use keeping the door closed. They’re coming.”
To a guard’s question she replied:
“I mean the witches.”
The widow’s confession during her trial two weeks ago that
she killed her step-son, her common-law husband, and another man led to the
arrest of several others.
Eleven in all have been taken into custody on charges of
homicide in connection with the murder of possibly 100 persons in several
eastern states by a gang that collected an untold amount of insurance. Two
others were sought.
Herman Petrillo, convicted and facing a sentence to the
electric chair, has been quoted by District Attorney Charles F. Kelly as saying
he sold “witch’s brew” – a solution of poison which sold at $300 a pint – to
other members of the ring.
The district attorney said the 40-year-old Petrillo and
Rafaele Poselli, 55, taken into custody Friday [Apr. 28], admitted they had a
part in the vpoisoning of 11 persons.
Poison has been found in five bvodies, four of which were
exhumed months after burial. Other graves will be opened this week.
One of the two fugitives is known as “Louie the Rabbi.”
Investigators believe he was a ringleader. The second is a “professional widow”
who, detectives say, poisoned several husbands.
[“Guard Doubled Over Woman Who Confessed Poisonings,”
Democrat Chronicle (Rochester, N. Y.), Apr. 30, 1939, p. 17A]
***
FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 6): Philadelphia, Sept. 13 – A steak
and chicken “breakfast of death” for four, including coffee containing a “witch
doctor’s” potion, was described by a 200-pound woman today at the trial of
Cesare “Jumbo” Valenti, alleged “strongarm man” for Philadelphia’s
insurance-murder ring.
Speaking through an interpreter, Mrs. Carina Favato, who has
pleaded guilty to three poisonings, said the “guest of honor” was her
common-law husband, Charles.
Valenti, Mrs. Favato testified, brought the “portion” and
poured it into her husband’s coffee.
Favato died nine days later.
Asked what else was served at the breakfast, Mrs. Favato
said:
“Two gallons of wine, scrambled eggs, five pounds of steak,
three Spring chickens and salad and hot peppers.”
The dry-eyed witness said Valenti promised her if she would
also drink some of the coffee “no one or any witch doctor could harm me.”
“He told me,” she said, “not to worry, that it would make my
husband good or die.”
Mrs. Favato named the fourth breakfast guest as Randall
Polsell self-styled “errand boy” for the murder ring, who pleaded guilt to one
poisoning.
Favato’s death was one of the first ascribed to the murder
ring, now blamed by investigators for 50 to 100 deaths. Mrs. Favato pleaded
guilty the past April to poisoning her husband, his son by another marriage and
a third man.
As Valenti’s trial went to the third day, another defendant
was placed on trial in another courtroom. He is Paul Petrillo, 45-year-old
South Philadelphia tailor who, detectives say, dabbled in the “black arts” and
courted women whose husbands later were poisoned.
Charged with six poison deaths, he was on trial charged
specifically with killing Luigi La Vecchio in 1932.
[“Husband’s ‘Death Supper’ Described By Widow,” Pottsdown
Mercury (Pa.), Sep. 14, 1939, p. 13]
***
FULL TEXT (Article 5 of 6): Philadelphia, Oct. 3. – Herman
Padillo, erstwhile Langhoene spaghetti salesaman, today was doomed to death in
the electric chair, and Mrs. Carina Favato, self-confessed slayer of three
arsenic victims, must spend her life in prison for their roles in the notorious
Philadelphia murder-for-insurance conspiracy.
Petrillo was found guilty at separate trials for the murders
of Ferdinand Alfonsi, slain by arsenic after his life had been heavily insured,
and the drowning of Rafaele Garuso, a cripple, who was shoved into the
Schutlkill River.
Mrs. Favato pleased guilty to slaying her husband, Charles
Ingrao; her stepson, Philip, and a neighbor, Guiseppe De Martino. The court
granted her leniency because her cooperation with authorities aided in trapping
other members of the ring, which killed upwards of 100 persons for profit.
Petrillo is a cousin of Paul Petrillo, dapper South
Philadelphia, dapper South Philadelphia tailor and reputed brains of the
conspiracy, who was sentenced to death last February for the arsenic death of
Luigi La Vecchio.
[“Petrillo Doomed To Death Chair,” The Evening News
(Harrisburg (Pa.), Oct. 3, 1940, p. 34]
***
FULL TEXT (Article 6 of 6): Early on in the proceedings,
Mrs. Carina Favato, a 45-year-old housewife, stopped her trial by dramatically
pleading guilty on the witness stand to killing her husband, her stepson and a
husband’s friend by feeding them arsenic at breakfast.
“I might as well get this over with. Let them send me to the
chair. What have I got to live for? She told the stunned courtroom.
She was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
[Coleen Dee Berry, “Recalling the last ‘Tylenol’ case,”
Asbury Park Press (N. J.), Nov. 7, 1982, p. 1]
***
Trial testimony:
Raymond Pace Alexander, attorney for accused husband-killer,
Stella Alfonsi : “Isn’t fattura really
a love potion?”
Carina Favato, convicted murderess: “Yes it is, but it gives
death. All those who took it died.”
[George Cooper, Poison
Widows: A True Story of Witchcraft, Arsenic and Murder, 1999, St. Martin’s,
Press, p. 180]
***
Aug. 1935 – Charles Ingrao dies.
1937 – Guiseppe di Martino dies; Favato collected $1,979
insurance; co-conspirator Mrs. Susie di Martino (indicted Mar. 30, 1939).
Jun. 25, 1938 – Philip Ingrao, 17, dies.
1938 – Acting Lieutenant Samuel Riccardi investigated her
[CF’s] “charges that another woman had tried to defraud her by witchcraft.”
[Philadelphia Inquirer (Pa.), Oct. 20, 1957, B26]
Nov. 2, 1938 – Favato held without bail in suspected murder
of Philip Ingrao, common law step-son.
Nov. 23, 1938 – Internment of corpse of Charles Ingrao, CF’s
common law husband.
Dec. 13, 1938 – arsenic found in corpse of P. I.
Apr. 21, 1939 – Favato interrupts trial to plead guilty.
Apr. 24-25, 1939 – Favato makes full confession to police.
Sep. 13, 1939 – Favato testifies.
Oct. 3, 1940 – Favato sentence to life in prison (rather
than electric chair; leniency for cooperation with investigation).
***
SEE: Philadelphia's "Arsenic Incorporated" &
Its Self-Made Widows - 1939
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For more than two dozen similar cases, dating from 1658 to 2011, see the summary list with links see: The Husband-Killing Syndicates
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[1480-1/30/19]
***
For more than two dozen similar cases, dating from 1658 to 2011, see the summary list with links see: The Husband-Killing Syndicates
***
[1480-1/30/19]
***
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