Esposito: The First Mafioso

JOE ESPOSITO - The Notorious Man From Sicily - The truth of his origins, his life, even his death - have long been shrouded in mystery and folklore. In the late 1880s, in the U.S. the FBI dubbed him "The First Mafioso" while Italian, British, New York, Chicago and New Orleans newspapers depicted him as an "international serial killer." Orphaned at birth, he tried on multiple new identities, as one would try on new clothes. The author brings him to life against vivid backdrops of post-Civil War Sicily and New Orleans, plantations, brothels, docks, a New York courtroom and the infamous "escape proof" island prison known as "Italy's Alcatraz."

But to discover the "real" Joe Esposito, we meet SERAFINA, the petite, bodacious and strikingly beautiful Sicilian woman who had almost as many aliases as Esposito and for whom Joe endeavored to "walk the line." The people, politics and places and the truth as to whether "Panama Joe" and Serafina were an Italian "Bonnie and Clyde" makes their story all the more compelling.