Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre
For interviews and research, I relied on Ernest Ingenito Jr.; Mary Ann Larro, research assistant; Sean Dalton, Gloucester County Prosecutor, Bernard Weisenfeld, Public Information Officer for the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office; the staff and volunteers of the Gloucester County Historical Society; the staff of the New Jersey State Archives; Tony Ficcaglia, retired psychologist; Deidre Fedkenheuer, spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Corrections; Judge George Stanger, retired; Judge Ernest Alvino, retired; Mark Falzini, archivist at the New Jersey State Police Museum; Allen "Boo" Pergament, Atlantic City historian; Gretchen McLain, Franklin Township Historical Advisory Committee; Susan Mounier, Director of the Newfield Public Library; Terry Glen Tucker, Esquire; Connie Schuchard; and, as always, the staff of the Vineland Public Library.
Then there are the brave souls who served as my readers: Karen Smith, Ruth Tucker, Ngaire Smith, and Suzie Carano.
In addition, I appreciate that the following people were willing to share their memories: ?ola Mazzoli Siciliano, Barbara Mazzoli Trommello, Frank Mazzoli, Teresa Pioppi San-ford, and others who preferred to remain anonymous.
I'm sorry about them naturally, but I do not feel as though I'm at all responsible"
Ernest Martin Ingenito January 5,1956
Night fell hard and fast in November. Deep in the heart of the dense Pine Barrens, which stretch across the lower half of New Jersey, the stars that were splashed across the black velvet sky cast a bright light on the scattered farms below. There was a hint of water in the air but it was still too warm for snow. Not that it would matter. The crops had long since been harvested and trucked off to the local produce auction for shipment to markets in Philadelphia, Wilmington, and New York. Now was the time for settling accounts and taking care of all those farm chores that took second place when every waking moment was spent in the field tending the crops.
Some said a violent nor'easter was brewing. The storm threatened to reach hurricane proportions by the following week. But the air was still and cool on Friday, November 17, 1950, at a little before nine at night. The only sounds were the raccoons rustling their way through the backyards in search of food and the occasional hoot of an owl nesting in a nearby tree.
There was a lot more quiet to listen to in those days, especially on Piney Hollow Road, a heavily forested stretch on the manure by truck from New Sharon, about twenty miles away, which was then spread as fertilizer across the dormant fields. It was a grueling but necessary job that made their crops the envy of their neighbors. Thankfully, they had finished that day.
As usual, the Pioppis ate supper around five o'clock. After helping her mother-in-law with the dishes, Marion asked her husband to take her to the general store in Downstown. Jino pulled the car out of the garage behind the house around eight o'clock and drove Marion, their daughter Teresa, and his sister Pearl to Clevenger's Store to buy groceries and ice cream. Dominick Biagi, Theresa Pioppi's brother, lived about a mile north of the Pioppi farm on Piney Hollow Road. He passed the house just as the family was climbing into the car. He had asked his daughter Eva to drive him to the Landisville Farmers Club, an organization for local farmers that had been started in the late 1800s. Although Biagi planned to stop and visit his sister on the way home, he first wanted to buy some whiskey at the club. He liked to start each day with a little splash in his coffee.
While the Biagi car rolled toward Landisville, Jino drove into Downstown, a tiny settlement situated on Harding Highway about three miles south of their farm. There, they bought their groceries, then talked for a few minutes with general store owner Mary Clevenger. She was waiting for her daughter Patricia, who had gone home for dinner after minding the store all day. The Clevengers were going to close for the night so that they could go to the movies. When Patricia returned, she noticed Ernie's car parked at Reed's gas station across the street. She never mentioned it to anyone, because it never struck her as important. After saying goodnight to the Cle-vengers, the Pioppis dropped Pearl off at her house, then returned home and dished out the ice cream for the entire family. Even Armando, who had retired early that night, had been happy to enjoy a bowl of ice cream in bed.
eastern boundary of Franklin Township m Gloucester County. Bordering the tiny towns of Landisville and Downstown, the road ran roughly south to north, twisting through a landscape of trees and houses that were strewn about like abandoned toys across a carpet of open fields. It was one of those blink-and-you-miss-it places that few people had ever heard of and still fewer could find. The bright lights of Philadelphia to the west and Atlantic City to the east were only about an hour's drive away. At the southern end of Piney Hollow Road, where it connected to Route 40, or the Harding Highway, the names on the mailboxes that dotted the roadside were predominantly Italian, often related by blood or marriage. A generation or two before, Italian immigrants were first drawn to the region by the promise of owning their own farms, an opportunity that never would have been possible in their homeland.
At the heart of Piney Hollow Road was the Pioppi farm, a sprawling fifty-seven-acre spread west of the road that had been settled about forty years before by Armando and Theresa Pioppi. By 1950, the farm was prospering under Theresa's management, with the help of their two sons, John and Jino. Unlike some of their neighbors, who still used horses to pull their plows, the Pioppis could afford modern equipment, like a tractor, which allowed them to till the soil and harvest their crops more quickly and efficiently. At eighty-two, Armando was happy to let Theresa, fifteen years his junior, and the boys take care of the business. Although thirty-one-year-old Jino was their youngest, he had a good head on his shoulders and his mother relied on him to get the work done. Like his father, Jino stood more than six feet tall. Dark-haired and handsome, he was lean and well-muscled from years of hard work. At forty-six, John was already going gray; although he was a little slow when it came to understanding some things, he was a hard worker who willingly tackled any job.
The rhythm of life on Piney Hollow Road was rarely interrupted. Only once in recent memory had anything dramatic occurred. In the early 1930s, a TWA airplane was forced to make an emergency landing in the Pioppis' fields, a local resident recalled. The craft, carrying actors headed to Atlantic City, tore up the sweet potato crop, which outraged Theresa Pioppi. Some neighbors considered the Pioppis a little money hungry, and they chuckled as she ran out into the fields, screaming at the pilot that his company was going to pay. But it is not surprising that Theresa was upset. The crops were their livelihood -- without produce, the bills didn't get paid and the family didn't eat.
The Pioppis had good reason to be proud of their thriving farm. By 1950, they were successful enough to rent an adjoining twenty-three acres that overflowed with produce each fall. Across the street lived the Pioppis' daughter, Pearl, who had married Mike Mazzoli in 1925. They had twenty-one acres received as a dowry from her parents. Mike's family had settled many years before in neighboring Buena Vista Township. He was a quiet, hardworking man who had spent most of his life farming, and he was still close to his brothers and sisters, who all lived just a few miles away. Although he had his share of youthful indiscretions, Mike was devoted to his Pearl and their only daughter, Theresa, named in honor of her maternal grandmother. Known to everyone as Tessie, she had been a cheerful baby from the time she was born on May 24, 1926, and had grown up to be a gentle, sweet young woman.
Unfortunately, the families had been having a problem lately. Three years earlier, Tessie Mazzoli had married Ernest Ingenito, an outsider who resented the amount of farmwork his in-laws had expected from him. Tessie, with her shoulder-length dark hair and brown eyes, looked so pretty on her wedding day. She sparkled in her big picture hat and white suit
trimmed in plaid ribbon. Her groom, in his fashionable brown plaid suit, looked so happy. How had things gone so wrong, so fast? Part of the reason seemed to be that Ernie had grown up on the streets of Wildwood and Philadelphia. He was not familiar with the "old ways," those traditions that demanded individual sacrifice for the greater good of the family. The Mazzolis were sorry they had ever permitted the marriage to take place.
Ernie never understood why, when he later held an outside job, he was still expected to help out on the farm. Although he had seemed happy enough to work in the fields during his first year with Tessie, his attitude grew increasingly antagonistic, especially toward his mother-in-law.
Pearl found it difficult to hide her dislike of Ernie. She saw him as lazy and untrustworthy. Perhaps she believed some of the rumors that he had physically abused Tessie during the brief time they lived in Philadelphia right after they married. But Pearl kept quiet and never complained about such matters, not even to other family members. She only knew that Tessie no longer seemed comfortable with the thought of being alone with her husband. So Pearl was always on guard, determined to make sure nothing bad happened to her only child while under her roof.
The final insult for the Mazzolis came in October when Mike heard that Ernie was fooling around with other women. Although Mike rarely lost his temper, he threw the younger man out of the house one Sunday and told him not to come back. Despite Ernie's pleas, his wife refused to go with him; she was not willing to leave behind the only place she thought of as home. Ernie later persuaded some of Tessie's other relatives to speak to Mike and Pearl on his behalf, but his in-laws refused to budge. There was no way he was ever going to set foot in their house again, not without a court order. The Piop-pis firmly supported the Mazzolis' position, and Tessie, like a good daughter, did as she was told. Despite the upset, life went on for the two families, who when not working spent almost all of their free time together. Some of the neighbors saw them as a little too clannish, but the Mazzolis and Pioppis couldn't have cared less. Family came first.
In 1950, the average cost for a home in South Jersey was around $10,000. As far as the Pioppis were concerned, however, no price could be placed on their property and what it meant to them. The substantial two-story stucco farmhouse with the big, white-painted front porch had grown through the years to accommodate the increasing size of their household. Inside, the gleaming dark wood staircase rose from a hallway that evenly divided the downstairs rooms, decorated in the latest style. Except for special occasions, the family crowded around the chrome table in the kitchen for their meals. The house's living room and small sitting room were filled with plush sofas and chairs in deep burgundy, while flowered carpeting covered most of the floors. The furniture meshed with traditional art and sculpture, which sat side-by-side with a modern stereo system in one room and a new television set in the next. In addition to Armando and Theresa Pioppi and their sons John and Jino, the farmhouse was home to Jino's twenty-eight-year-old wife, Marion, and their three children, nine-year-old Jeannie, seven-year-old Armando, and thirteen-month-old Teresa, also named for her grandmother.