March 28, 2024 • 32 mins
Journalist Jo Piazza’s family has been playing a hundred year long game of telephone about the murder of her great great grandmother Lorenza Marsala. Family members who have gone back to Sicily to discover the truth, including Jo’s dad have been shut down by authorities and threatened by seemingly supernatural forces.
But Jo is determined, maybe even a little obsessed, to cut through the stories, the lies and the mythologies to find out the truth, even if her family members don’t want her to.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, babe. Eh, I'm trying to solve a mystery. Charlie, Charlie,
what do you need? What do you need? Disco Little
Stone War? What's wrong with them? I think you have had
them on upside down?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Man.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm sitting by the pool in Sciapello, Sicily, with my
podcast producer Kate and my three kids and cool easy.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Do you want to hear about the family mystery? No? No, yes,
yeah you want this.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Charlie is much more interested in the very deep pool.
O b is freezing mystery. Everyone's jet lagged, and I'm
questioning every decision that I've ever made about my life because.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you know why we're here in Sicily?
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm trying to solve the mystery of my great great grandmother.
Of her can I say murdered it?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
A three year old? Her death, her deaf, How she died?
Ha ha, We don't know yet. We're trying to figure
it out. We're trying to learn. Do you want to
help me?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm not exactly sure what possessed me when I made
this plan jetting off to Sicily with a five month
old baby, a three year old and a six year
old for a vacation slash Fact funding mission to look
for clues into my investigation into my great great grandmother's
century old murder right here in our motherland.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Do you want to know what her name was? Her
name was, Lorenza. Can you say that, Lorenza.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I keep telling myself that if we can learn something new,
something more concrete, about what happened to her, it will
all be worth it. But just being here, it all
feels more real. She feels more real, and we are closer,
closer to figuring out if my great great grandmother really
(01:55):
was murdered right here on this island. If so, why,
I'm Joe Piazza from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is
the Sicilian Inheritance, Chapter one, Lorenza.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So take me to the Do you like remember the
first time you heard this?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I feel like I've always known this story because Italian
Americans love to tell stories, and they love to embellish stories,
and especially if it's really salacious or it could possibly
have something to do with the mafia.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
They love that shiit.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
Can you just walk me through the Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
The story, the story.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
The story is one that I've known all my life.
I've heard it over and over and over again, not
always in the same way and definitely not with the
same information. It's my family's origin story, the story of
where we the Piazzas came from. It all starts a
little over one hundred years ago with my great great
(03:18):
grandparents back in Sicily, the ancestral homeland. As far as
my dad said the family is concerned, my great great
grandfather Antonino and my great great grandmother Lorenza lived in
this tiny village called Caltibalota, where they had seven children.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
One by one.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Around nineteen ten, Antonino and his son saved up enough
money to sail to the US, passed through Ellis Island,
and settle in the northeast the classic Italian American story.
Lorenzo was supposed to follow them eventually, but she never
made it. She died in Caltibalotta. According to my family's
(03:58):
one hundred year long game of telephone, she was murdered.
For years, this story has just been a mystery for
our family, something we've enjoyed speculating about, swapping different bits
and pieces and versions.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Of the story.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
As you'd say in Italian, La pierra caierra idle gossip.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Hello, Hey, Sharon, how you doing.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I'm okay now I hear you're writing my memoir and
I'm going to become famous now right you are?
Speaker 6 (04:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's the plan, Yeshi.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And the story was always told with a kind of
hand gesture where you push your thumb into your nose
and lower your voice when you say the black hand
or the mafia.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Now in Sicily there's still tons of mafia, and of
course they called it the black.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Hand, which is why for me, for a long time,
I thought the whole thing might be bullshit.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, nobody knows for sure. There's two stories.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
But over the years, as I've heard it more and more,
Lorenza's story and her potential murder have become a bit
of an obsession. Maybe that's because we're a family of storytellers,
sometimes liars, definitely myth makers, myself included. I'm a writer
(05:19):
and recently I turned my fascination with Lorenza into a novel.
It's also called The Sicilian Inheritance, and it is loosely,
loosely based on my family story. A woman is left alone,
there's an unsolved murder, there's just a lot more food
and wine and sex thrown in and look, my obsession
(05:41):
with this story, this family story may have ended there,
but the writing it got me fixated on the real
story and the real woman, who was the real Lorenza
Marsala and what actually happened to her? So I started digging,
and I began with my best sources, my family.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
The first thing I'm doing is asking different family members
what they think the story is, what did they want?
Speaker 7 (06:10):
Good luck with that? Good luck with that?
Speaker 8 (06:14):
Oh, dear Hi, how are you good?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
This is Uncle Jimmy. He's my dad's older brother.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I want to hear everything.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
You know. Well, I don't know any more than probably
you do. But Jimmy and I've been talking about it,
and our one concern is if it's too realistic, you're
going to wind up Startinger Vendetta again. And I'm too
old to go over there and shoot somebody. Jimmy wants
to bring his kids over there.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
Are you too old to go over there and shoot somebody?
Uncle jim are you real?
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Well?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
All no shit, no Vendetta or not.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I kept calling relatives.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
You know that you have this book coming up. I
didn't know what was finished.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
That was Aunt Gail when I was growing up. She
lived down the street. She was like a second to me.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I sat at writing sex scenes.
Speaker 6 (07:02):
Okay, like I am, like, I have to get like
real drunk to write them. I hope you don't write
too many sex scenes.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Drunk all the time.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Cousin Sissy, she's a romance novelist. Cousin Sharon, Cousin Laura.
We have a lot of cousins. We are Italian Americans.
We breed like Rabbit's.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
All I know is just obviously.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So here's what I was told Grandpa. My grandpa said,
the Piazza immigrated to the US. Sons came over with
his siblings, large family and her grand sisters siblings and immigrated.
Speaker 6 (07:41):
The boys came over to kind of settle in and
you know all of that. So they came through out
of island, settled in New York.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
The boys came over from Italy to by two immigrated.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Then Dad came with him, but they left mom behind.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
They left their mother behind, the mother to sell the farm.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
His wife stayed behind to tend to She said they
had a family farm. What I heard was that the
mom was interested in her land. She refused to sell.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Now this part, I don't know if it's true. I
don't know who told me, whether it was or not
or somebody else, but they had a vineyard and the
black Hand took over the vineyards, so they have not
get access to the vineyards.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
The black Hand.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That's how my family tends to refer to the mafia
in this story. It is not how Sicilians refer to
the mafia. I just want everyone to know that. But
this right here, this is the reigning theory of how
Lorenzo was killed. And it's the version of the story
that's been in my head the longest. It's the version
where the Piazzas owned a farm or a vineyard, it
(08:55):
is unclear. And once Antonino and all of Lorenzo's sons
had been gone in the US for over a decade,
the mafia killed Lorenza to get that land.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
They owned a farm, and they left her behind it
us a transaction and did mafia leisurely strole it from
her and killed her.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
She sold the farm and all the money was in
the house, and they killed her for the money.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
She was murdered while the boys were over here.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Maybe she had already sold the land and the mafia
then killed her to get the money. From the land.
Maybe it was that money that she was planning to
use to leave Cecily and finally reunite with her family.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
They were kind of stupid to leave all that money,
but there were no bank center or anything, and that
was the money she was going to be using to
come to the United States and get them started. But
they were kind of stupid to leave her there alone
like that.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
What was her name?
Speaker 5 (10:00):
The name of whom.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The great great grandmother who was murdered?
Speaker 7 (10:06):
Oh, oh, I forget, I forget her name, Oh, Lorenzo
and Marcelle.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
For all the times that I've heard the story about
Lorenza being murdered, all the tellings and retellings, talking to
my relatives this time made me realize how little any
of us knew about her actual life or her death.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
For that matter.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Did you hear how they killed her?
Speaker 4 (10:33):
No?
Speaker 7 (10:34):
I never heard any details of her death.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Fancy and I didn't give any details. I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
There have never been any real details when this story
gets told, things that you can prove, And that's always
what's made me skeptical, Like maybe it was never a murder.
Maybe her story could be as open and shut as
a case of the foo. Maybe she got sick and
that's why she didn't make it over. A tragedy for
(11:05):
sure for her sons and her daughters, but not exactly
worth the legend status. Maybe the family needed to make
her death into something more than just a virus. I mean,
my dad was a claims attorney, my uncle Jimmy's a judge. Like,
we're like, we're a very basic Italian American family. But
(11:28):
they love imagining that there's some kind of adventure and
romance in possibly being adjacent to the mafia, even though
they're absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And this story gives it to them.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
This story does give them that, this story gives them
some kind of connection, And I think that's what they
love about this story, Like if she was possibly killed
by the mob, why and like that gives them this
link to you know, Goodfellows as Apana's the Godfather. When
I started writing my novel, I didn't want to know
the real story. I wanted to use the small bits
(12:02):
and pieces that I knew about Lorenza to get started
and then let my imagination run wild with the rest.
But once the book was put to bed, I got
this tug in my gut something told me the story
wasn't finished, and that's when I needed to know the
truth about what happened to Lorenza. I became obsessed. What
(12:25):
really sent me looking for answers was this email from
my dad from about a decade ago. Toward the end
of his life, he used to send me dozens of
emails a day, and one day a couple years ago,
when I was cleaning out my inbox, one of those
unopened emails caught my eye. It was his grandfather's birth certificate,
Santo's birth certificate, and in the email, my dad remarked
(12:48):
on how beautiful the mother's name was, Lorenza. She was
the one who was murdered, he reminded me in all caps.
That email got me to start doing a little more digging,
(13:09):
just a little bit of reporting, and as soon as
I scratched the surface, it started to look a lot
like I had one hundred year old murder mystery on
my hands.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Would there be a peace record, yes, only in the case.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Of Mark one that I'm pretty sure I'm going to
be able to solve.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Why would they be muttered together.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
More after the break?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Do you hear that? Do you hear that?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That's the gentle lapping of the Mediterranean Sea on the
fine golden sand. By the magic of podcasting, you can
almost feel the heat of the sun, the cool of
the water, and the smell of the orange blossoms.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Now, with a.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
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today at Cardenas Taproom. Check the show notes for the
link and all the details to buy. It's not only
an incredible olive oil, but it will completely transport you
(14:47):
to the beautiful and sometimes dangerous island of Sicily. So
please do check out the show notes now and thank you.
Also enjoy with something delicious. I just spent three hundred
(15:10):
dollars on ancestry dot com. Oh did as I tried
to solve this mystery. I forced my husband Nick to
be my enthusiastic sounding board for all of my discoveries.
Here is Santa, I've got all the dates. There's there
she is.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
That's her.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Wow, which, of course involved immediately googling genealogy websites.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
There's a picture of her.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
No way, look at that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Have you ever seen No, I've never seen this.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
She looks.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
She looks unhappy. When you imagine an Italian Nona, what
do you think of got chubby lady in the kitchen
making pasta That is not Lorenza. Lorenza looks like she
could kill you with her stare. Her cheekbones alone could
cut glass. She looks like someone who might have been
involved in some shit. But this is very helpful because
(16:05):
now we have the death date.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Yeah, or with the death date right, yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Whoa cool panda.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
So before we go much further, I think I need
to draw my family tree for you all. In fact,
I now have a massive wall in my house where
I sketched it all out. Lorenzo Marsala my great great
grandmother on my dad's side. She was born in eighteen
sixty two. She married Antonino Piazza. Quick note here, just
(16:33):
to make things extra confusing. In Italy, women don't take
their husband's last names. Did you know that? I didn't
until we started doing this, So Lorenza kept the last
name Marsala Lorenza Marsala sounds like a pasta dish. Anyway,
Lorenza and Antonino had seven children who lived to adulthood.
(16:53):
I personally have three children, and I think seven is
a lot of children. Anything more than one is a
lot of children.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Lorenzo and Antonino's kids, first, we've got Santo, he's my
great grandfather. Then Joseph also known as Giuseppe, Veto and
Caligaro also known as Charlie, and the daughters Josephine, Paulina
and Rosa. All of them would eventually come to America.
The men first, Santo, the oldest son, and Giuseppe left
(17:24):
Sicily in nineteen oh five. Now, just to set the
scene picture this pre World War One turn of the century.
A lot of Italians were immigrating back then, especially the
ones living in intense rural poverty in southern Italy and Sicily.
Between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten, more than two million
(17:45):
Italians made their way across the Atlantic Ocean, and among
them were Santo and his.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Brother, Lorenza's son.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Santo is my dad's grandfather, got it and he worked
in the coal mines and was also a farmer. This
is me trying to explain it all to Kate. It's
really hard to keep all this straight, and not that
Kate is the best at keeping it straight either.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And presumably Santo told him.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
No, that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So Santo, like a lot of other Sicilians at the time,
settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he goes to work in
the coal mines. Two years later, their father Antonino joins them,
bringing along another son. By nineteen twelve, most of the kids,
all of the sons are in the States. Lorenza and
(18:35):
two of her daughters are still in Sicily. In nineteen sixteen,
Lorenza dies and a few years later her daughters would
immigrate to the US. Two Now Santo, the eldest son.
He starts my particular branch of the family tree. Santo
is the grandfather or great grandfather to all of my
(18:55):
relatives that you've heard so far.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
They held they reunion one time where all of the
first generation Piazzas were there. They were fantastic. All my
uncles and my dad were playing more which is the
finger game. You know, rock Stone scissors are most and
they played bacci on a dirt road and it was
(19:20):
a great time. And it's one of the few times
I have memories of seen all Santo's brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Santo also had a lot of children, ten of them,
and here the family tree gets even more confusing for
a lot of reasons, namely because everyone seems to have
the same names. There's so many Giuseppes, Giuseppas, Josephine's, Vetos, Vinnie's,
and then the names they get anglicized when people come
to the US. The Giuseppas become Joe's, the Lorenzo's become Lauras,
(19:52):
the Veto's become Vinnie's.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
You get the picture.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Santo at some point lived with each of his children,
and for as Sicilian as Santo was, he didn't like
to talk about Italy.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
I remember going there and my old great aunts would
get my face and squeeze it and hurt the hell
out of me and talking Italian.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Cousin Sharon, she's my second cousin. I think I'm bad
with the seconds and the thirds. Her mom, Rose was
one of Santo's children.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Santa was very quiet about his past growing up. I
remember he wouldn't He didn't even want to acknowledge that
he was Italian for a while there, really, but yeah, yeah,
it was very strange. Somebody would come to the door
and see that he was clearly Italian with his you know,
deep accent, and he'd say, you're in America. You speak English,
(20:48):
no Italian. I mean, she didn't want It was strange.
He was very close mouth about much of his younger life,
very close mouth. So it's worth to investigate and looking into.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Santo definitely didn't talk about what happened to his mother, Lorenza.
Speaker 8 (21:08):
Your dad knew the most, I think, didn't I know,
But John, my dad and his siblings and cousins are
the complete opposite.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
They're obsessed with their Sicilian roots. Santo was first generation.
He wanted to hide being Sicilian so he could fit
in in this country, which for some immigrants was a
pretty common reaction. My dad, on the other hand, he
used to say things like capiche instead of understand, or
(21:40):
mazzao instead of mozzarella.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
Pitch you this Sicily nineteen twelve, so.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
That everyone would know he was Italian.
Speaker 9 (21:49):
Everything from Sicily means something.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
My dad loved to pretend to be this kind of
tony soprano tough guy, especially with my high school boyfriends.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Sorry Curtsey, not.
Speaker 7 (22:00):
With this Sicilian thing that's been going on for two
thousand years.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
In the early two thousands, my dad started to get
really sick with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. But
instead of saying housebound or just feeling sorry for himself
in bed, Lorenzo's story became this kind of unfinished business,
and it seemed to light a fire in him. He
started researching genealogy and taking trips to Sicily. By that
(22:31):
time he had to use a cane and a walker
to get around, and his obsession had gone into overdrive.
It's like falling in love with Sicily and with learning
new things about his family gave him this way to
escape his broken body. He did some crazy stuff too.
He started he got this hair brained idea to start
(22:53):
importing Sicilian organic olive oil, and he bought a shit
ton of it. I think he blew probably about one
hundred grand on locals.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Silly and olive oil, and then there was something wrong
with the.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Caps and the labels and they leaked, and it just
sat in our garage for years and years, and he
just pissed away all of his remaining money on this
business that would never exist. But that was yet another
way to keep him going.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Back to Sicily.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
As he got sicker and less mobile, my dad could
still sit at a computer making calls and researching his
leads on Lorenzo's murder. At the time, I found all
of it a little bit silly. I was so disinterested
in this. And if you think about two thousand, I
was in college. I was twenty years old, graduate, I
(23:45):
moved to New York. I'm not living with my parents.
I could care less about my dad's obsession with Cicily.
I'm like, that seems like a nice hobby for you, Dad,
I'm happy for you. But we never talked about it,
and now I really wish that we had. Like now,
I really wish that I'd paid more attention and I'd
listen to the things that he was finding out, because
(24:05):
so much of it is also just now gone. I
can't find anything in his email, I can't Facebook won't
let me into his Facebook account, So a lot of
what he learned died with him. A lot of parts
of him are gone, and he would hate that. He
wanted to know the answer to this mystery, and I
(24:27):
wish that I'd been there to help him, but I
was on my own journey, searching for a life partner,
falling in love, getting married, getting pregnant, and.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Then he was gone.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I never properly grieved for him at the time, and
it's just been hitting me now his legacy and what
he left unfinished, and now I feel like I owe
him something by finishing what he started.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
And why do you think you care about it?
Speaker 6 (25:12):
Is it really like to do this thing for your dad?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Do you feel that you have the same motivation.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
He did or I think my motivation is different than Dad's.
There's a part of me that wants to do this
because he didn't get to finish it, And there's another
part of me that wants to do it because I
feel like this woman's real story deserves to be told,
like for people to really know the truth about what
(25:37):
happened to her, instead of just becoming a character in
everybody else's life. Lorenzo Marsala was born in this village
called Caltabalota, had a bunch of kids, and died there
at age fifty four. That's pretty much all we know
of her life. When she died, it was nineteen sixteen.
(25:57):
She still had two young daughters at home. The First
World War had just broken out. Now that I'm a
wife and a mother of three children, thank god it's
not seven, her story just hits different. I'm getting closer
to Lorenzo's age every year, and I can't stop thinking
(26:19):
about our family story. From her perspective, how did she
feel about being left behind by her husband for more
than a decade. Did she miss him or was it
liberating to finally not just be someone's wife, to finally
not be getting pregnant almost every single year. Did she
(26:41):
feel safe in her own village? Was it okay because
she had a lot of her family members around her,
or maybe she was in constant danger in this village
surrounded by mafia bandits.
Speaker 9 (26:53):
I was asking somebody about her, and they just looked
at me and they kept saying morte, morte no, and
they're like they shut it down.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
They wouldn't talk.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Really, you just said the name.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
You're like Lorenzo Marsala piazza, and they.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Were like.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Over the years, many of the piazzas have gone back
to Sicily looking for answers about our families past, and
a lot of them have returned with stories of dead
ends and also unsettling experiences that happened when they tried
to find out more about Lorenza.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
They knew about the murders.
Speaker 8 (27:34):
They knew about it, right.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
Yeah, they did.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
My uncle Jimmy claims that when he was in call,
a bunch of police officers warned him off this case.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
He should, you'd better drop it, not in any trevening
matter whatsoever, but just just as a matter of the
you don't want to start it off, you know, you
don't want the vendetta to continue.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
And if the warnings from the cops weren't enough, they
also got a sign from above.
Speaker 7 (28:05):
When we were there.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
We were at the church.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
Lightning struck the church. Okay, we were actually yeah, we
were in the church where they got married, and lightning
struck the steeple. And while you were in it, while
we were yeah, while we were yeah, while we were.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
In the church.
Speaker 7 (28:25):
We were in with the priest going through the records
right in the in the rectory and lightning struck the
top of the church. We had to get out. Wow,
my sister and Lassa, that is a sign get us
out of here.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I'm starting to think that maybe my family doesn't want
to know what really happened. They're pretty attached to the
stories that they've been telling themselves for all these years.
Well that's interesting because I wonder how people will feel,
like if we actually get to like a truth, will.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It be disappointing or satisfying or you know, I.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Don't know if my family wants to know the actual truth.
That's the interesting thing. Like, for as much as people
have come back here and tried to like dig up
more information, I think if the truth ended up being
less interesting than their story, I don't think they're going
to change their story. I think they're going to continue
(29:31):
to tell the story the way they want to tell
the story. But I need to know. I have to
solve this mystery. I don't know if it's for me,
or for my dad or for Lorenza, but I have
to solve it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
So here I go.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I'm looking for long lost relatives. I'm digging through archives
covered in dust and trying to trace back a family
history that's been twisted by secrets, omissions, and vengeance. I
can't do all of this from my desk in filid Alia.
I've got to go back back to, as my dad
(30:05):
liked to call it, the Motherland. I've got to go
to Sicily, to the village of Caltabalota, where all of
this happened in the first place, back to where Lorenzo
was born, and maybe just maybe back to the very
spot where she was murdered.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
A landside, there's a landslide. This is a place.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
We have the absolutely certainty one hundred and ten.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Honestly, a picture and she died.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
We don't have a picture of that.
Speaker 6 (30:36):
Actually a video you.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Can see a video. Videos didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I'm bringing all of you on my summer vacation with
my husband, three kids under the age of seven. Everyone
is coming to Sicily with me to solve this one
hundred year old murder. Now, I think it's pretty clear
that something bad did happen to her.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Your father had his story that she was like the
witch doctor.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Could Lorenzo have been killed by the mafia for being
a witch?
Speaker 6 (31:05):
So I'm wondering, how is the story similar or different
than what you got so I heard two stories. One
story is over Land and the other story is that
she was a witch. Well that's even more interesting.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
That's all coming up on the Sicilian Inheritance.
Speaker 7 (31:24):
I'd love to know what the hell happened. It wouldn't
it be great to solve this mystery.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I feel good my Sicilian witchy powers. I feel like
we're on the right path.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
The Sicilian Inheritance is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. The series is produced by Jen Kinney, Kate Osborne,
Dara Potts, and me Joe Piazza, with key help from
Laura Lee Watson of Digging Up Your Roots in the
Boot and Chiro Grillow of Sicily Roots. Many thanks to
Julia Pairvi and theancestry dot com research department. You can
(32:04):
get your copy of The Sicilian Inheritance the novel right
now at Truly anywhere that you get your books, anywhere
you get your books. It's got the same name as
the podcast, but with more food, wine, and sex. Also,
do not forget to get a taste of Sicily in
the form of delicious Sicilian olive oil at Cardena's tap Room.
(32:25):
Make sure to check out our show notes for a
link to buy it, or if you find yourself in Philly,
just stop by. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, mangsh Hetikador,
Costas Linos.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And Oz Wolloshan.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
From iHeart, executive producers are Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Etour.
We also want to thank Will Pearson, connel Byrne, Bob Pittman,
and John Mary Napolis
Hi, babe. Eh, I'm trying to solve a mystery. Charlie, Charlie,
what do you need? What do you need? Disco Little
Stone War? What's wrong with them? I think you have had
them on upside down?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Man.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm sitting by the pool in Sciapello, Sicily, with my
podcast producer Kate and my three kids and cool easy.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Do you want to hear about the family mystery? No? No, yes,
yeah you want this.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Charlie is much more interested in the very deep pool.
O b is freezing mystery. Everyone's jet lagged, and I'm
questioning every decision that I've ever made about my life because.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you know why we're here in Sicily?
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm trying to solve the mystery of my great great grandmother.
Of her can I say murdered it?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
A three year old? Her death, her deaf, How she died?
Ha ha, We don't know yet. We're trying to figure
it out. We're trying to learn. Do you want to
help me?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm not exactly sure what possessed me when I made
this plan jetting off to Sicily with a five month
old baby, a three year old and a six year
old for a vacation slash Fact funding mission to look
for clues into my investigation into my great great grandmother's
century old murder right here in our motherland.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Do you want to know what her name was? Her
name was, Lorenza. Can you say that, Lorenza.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I keep telling myself that if we can learn something new,
something more concrete, about what happened to her, it will
all be worth it. But just being here, it all
feels more real. She feels more real, and we are closer,
closer to figuring out if my great great grandmother really
(01:55):
was murdered right here on this island. If so, why,
I'm Joe Piazza from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is
the Sicilian Inheritance, Chapter one, Lorenza.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So take me to the Do you like remember the
first time you heard this?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I feel like I've always known this story because Italian
Americans love to tell stories, and they love to embellish stories,
and especially if it's really salacious or it could possibly
have something to do with the mafia.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
They love that shiit.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
Can you just walk me through the Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
The story, the story.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
The story is one that I've known all my life.
I've heard it over and over and over again, not
always in the same way and definitely not with the
same information. It's my family's origin story, the story of
where we the Piazzas came from. It all starts a
little over one hundred years ago with my great great
(03:18):
grandparents back in Sicily, the ancestral homeland. As far as
my dad said the family is concerned, my great great
grandfather Antonino and my great great grandmother Lorenza lived in
this tiny village called Caltibalota, where they had seven children.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
One by one.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Around nineteen ten, Antonino and his son saved up enough
money to sail to the US, passed through Ellis Island,
and settle in the northeast the classic Italian American story.
Lorenzo was supposed to follow them eventually, but she never
made it. She died in Caltibalotta. According to my family's
(03:58):
one hundred year long game of telephone, she was murdered.
For years, this story has just been a mystery for
our family, something we've enjoyed speculating about, swapping different bits
and pieces and versions.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Of the story.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
As you'd say in Italian, La pierra caierra idle gossip.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Hello, Hey, Sharon, how you doing.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I'm okay now I hear you're writing my memoir and
I'm going to become famous now right you are?
Speaker 6 (04:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's the plan, Yeshi.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And the story was always told with a kind of
hand gesture where you push your thumb into your nose
and lower your voice when you say the black hand
or the mafia.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Now in Sicily there's still tons of mafia, and of
course they called it the black.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Hand, which is why for me, for a long time,
I thought the whole thing might be bullshit.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, nobody knows for sure. There's two stories.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
But over the years, as I've heard it more and more,
Lorenza's story and her potential murder have become a bit
of an obsession. Maybe that's because we're a family of storytellers,
sometimes liars, definitely myth makers, myself included. I'm a writer
(05:19):
and recently I turned my fascination with Lorenza into a novel.
It's also called The Sicilian Inheritance, and it is loosely,
loosely based on my family story. A woman is left alone,
there's an unsolved murder, there's just a lot more food
and wine and sex thrown in and look, my obsession
(05:41):
with this story, this family story may have ended there,
but the writing it got me fixated on the real
story and the real woman, who was the real Lorenza
Marsala and what actually happened to her? So I started digging,
and I began with my best sources, my family.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
The first thing I'm doing is asking different family members
what they think the story is, what did they want?
Speaker 7 (06:10):
Good luck with that? Good luck with that?
Speaker 8 (06:14):
Oh, dear Hi, how are you good?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
This is Uncle Jimmy. He's my dad's older brother.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I want to hear everything.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
You know. Well, I don't know any more than probably
you do. But Jimmy and I've been talking about it,
and our one concern is if it's too realistic, you're
going to wind up Startinger Vendetta again. And I'm too
old to go over there and shoot somebody. Jimmy wants
to bring his kids over there.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
Are you too old to go over there and shoot somebody?
Uncle jim are you real?
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Well?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
All no shit, no Vendetta or not.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I kept calling relatives.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
You know that you have this book coming up. I
didn't know what was finished.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
That was Aunt Gail when I was growing up. She
lived down the street. She was like a second to me.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I sat at writing sex scenes.
Speaker 6 (07:02):
Okay, like I am, like, I have to get like
real drunk to write them. I hope you don't write
too many sex scenes.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Drunk all the time.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Cousin Sissy, she's a romance novelist. Cousin Sharon, Cousin Laura.
We have a lot of cousins. We are Italian Americans.
We breed like Rabbit's.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
All I know is just obviously.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So here's what I was told Grandpa. My grandpa said,
the Piazza immigrated to the US. Sons came over with
his siblings, large family and her grand sisters siblings and immigrated.
Speaker 6 (07:41):
The boys came over to kind of settle in and
you know all of that. So they came through out
of island, settled in New York.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
The boys came over from Italy to by two immigrated.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Then Dad came with him, but they left mom behind.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
They left their mother behind, the mother to sell the farm.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
His wife stayed behind to tend to She said they
had a family farm. What I heard was that the
mom was interested in her land. She refused to sell.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Now this part, I don't know if it's true. I
don't know who told me, whether it was or not
or somebody else, but they had a vineyard and the
black Hand took over the vineyards, so they have not
get access to the vineyards.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
The black Hand.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That's how my family tends to refer to the mafia
in this story. It is not how Sicilians refer to
the mafia. I just want everyone to know that. But
this right here, this is the reigning theory of how
Lorenzo was killed. And it's the version of the story
that's been in my head the longest. It's the version
where the Piazzas owned a farm or a vineyard, it
(08:55):
is unclear. And once Antonino and all of Lorenzo's sons
had been gone in the US for over a decade,
the mafia killed Lorenza to get that land.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
They owned a farm, and they left her behind it
us a transaction and did mafia leisurely strole it from
her and killed her.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
She sold the farm and all the money was in
the house, and they killed her for the money.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
She was murdered while the boys were over here.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Maybe she had already sold the land and the mafia
then killed her to get the money. From the land.
Maybe it was that money that she was planning to
use to leave Cecily and finally reunite with her family.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
They were kind of stupid to leave all that money,
but there were no bank center or anything, and that
was the money she was going to be using to
come to the United States and get them started. But
they were kind of stupid to leave her there alone
like that.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
What was her name?
Speaker 5 (10:00):
The name of whom.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The great great grandmother who was murdered?
Speaker 7 (10:06):
Oh, oh, I forget, I forget her name, Oh, Lorenzo
and Marcelle.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
For all the times that I've heard the story about
Lorenza being murdered, all the tellings and retellings, talking to
my relatives this time made me realize how little any
of us knew about her actual life or her death.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
For that matter.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Did you hear how they killed her?
Speaker 4 (10:33):
No?
Speaker 7 (10:34):
I never heard any details of her death.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Fancy and I didn't give any details. I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
There have never been any real details when this story
gets told, things that you can prove, And that's always
what's made me skeptical, Like maybe it was never a murder.
Maybe her story could be as open and shut as
a case of the foo. Maybe she got sick and
that's why she didn't make it over. A tragedy for
(11:05):
sure for her sons and her daughters, but not exactly
worth the legend status. Maybe the family needed to make
her death into something more than just a virus. I mean,
my dad was a claims attorney, my uncle Jimmy's a judge. Like,
we're like, we're a very basic Italian American family. But
(11:28):
they love imagining that there's some kind of adventure and
romance in possibly being adjacent to the mafia, even though
they're absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And this story gives it to them.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
This story does give them that, this story gives them
some kind of connection, And I think that's what they
love about this story, Like if she was possibly killed
by the mob, why and like that gives them this
link to you know, Goodfellows as Apana's the Godfather. When
I started writing my novel, I didn't want to know
the real story. I wanted to use the small bits
(12:02):
and pieces that I knew about Lorenza to get started
and then let my imagination run wild with the rest.
But once the book was put to bed, I got
this tug in my gut something told me the story
wasn't finished, and that's when I needed to know the
truth about what happened to Lorenza. I became obsessed. What
(12:25):
really sent me looking for answers was this email from
my dad from about a decade ago. Toward the end
of his life, he used to send me dozens of
emails a day, and one day a couple years ago,
when I was cleaning out my inbox, one of those
unopened emails caught my eye. It was his grandfather's birth certificate,
Santo's birth certificate, and in the email, my dad remarked
(12:48):
on how beautiful the mother's name was, Lorenza. She was
the one who was murdered, he reminded me in all caps.
That email got me to start doing a little more digging,
(13:09):
just a little bit of reporting, and as soon as
I scratched the surface, it started to look a lot
like I had one hundred year old murder mystery on
my hands.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Would there be a peace record, yes, only in the case.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Of Mark one that I'm pretty sure I'm going to
be able to solve.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Why would they be muttered together.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
More after the break?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Do you hear that? Do you hear that?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That's the gentle lapping of the Mediterranean Sea on the
fine golden sand. By the magic of podcasting, you can
almost feel the heat of the sun, the cool of
the water, and the smell of the orange blossoms.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Now, with a.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Few short clicks, you can taste it too, because we
have actually imported the finest Sicilian olive oil. Inspired by
this very podcast, We've partnered with Philadelphia's own Cardanus Gourmet
Foods to bring you the Sicilian Inheritance Olive Oil, a
flavor journey from the volcanic soil of ancient groves through
(14:24):
special teoir that family secrets and inherited stories provide. It's
got a taste of fresh off the vine, tomatoes and
a hint of almonds. You can get your own bottle
today at Cardenas Taproom. Check the show notes for the
link and all the details to buy. It's not only
an incredible olive oil, but it will completely transport you
(14:47):
to the beautiful and sometimes dangerous island of Sicily. So
please do check out the show notes now and thank you.
Also enjoy with something delicious. I just spent three hundred
(15:10):
dollars on ancestry dot com. Oh did as I tried
to solve this mystery. I forced my husband Nick to
be my enthusiastic sounding board for all of my discoveries.
Here is Santa, I've got all the dates. There's there
she is.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
That's her.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Wow, which, of course involved immediately googling genealogy websites.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
There's a picture of her.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
No way, look at that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Have you ever seen No, I've never seen this.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
She looks.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
She looks unhappy. When you imagine an Italian Nona, what
do you think of got chubby lady in the kitchen
making pasta That is not Lorenza. Lorenza looks like she
could kill you with her stare. Her cheekbones alone could
cut glass. She looks like someone who might have been
involved in some shit. But this is very helpful because
(16:05):
now we have the death date.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Yeah, or with the death date right, yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Whoa cool panda.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
So before we go much further, I think I need
to draw my family tree for you all. In fact,
I now have a massive wall in my house where
I sketched it all out. Lorenzo Marsala my great great
grandmother on my dad's side. She was born in eighteen
sixty two. She married Antonino Piazza. Quick note here, just
(16:33):
to make things extra confusing. In Italy, women don't take
their husband's last names. Did you know that? I didn't
until we started doing this, So Lorenza kept the last
name Marsala Lorenza Marsala sounds like a pasta dish. Anyway,
Lorenza and Antonino had seven children who lived to adulthood.
(16:53):
I personally have three children, and I think seven is
a lot of children. Anything more than one is a
lot of children.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Lorenzo and Antonino's kids, first, we've got Santo, he's my
great grandfather. Then Joseph also known as Giuseppe, Veto and
Caligaro also known as Charlie, and the daughters Josephine, Paulina
and Rosa. All of them would eventually come to America.
The men first, Santo, the oldest son, and Giuseppe left
(17:24):
Sicily in nineteen oh five. Now, just to set the
scene picture this pre World War One turn of the century.
A lot of Italians were immigrating back then, especially the
ones living in intense rural poverty in southern Italy and Sicily.
Between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten, more than two million
(17:45):
Italians made their way across the Atlantic Ocean, and among
them were Santo and his.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Brother, Lorenza's son.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Santo is my dad's grandfather, got it and he worked
in the coal mines and was also a farmer. This
is me trying to explain it all to Kate. It's
really hard to keep all this straight, and not that
Kate is the best at keeping it straight either.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And presumably Santo told him.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
No, that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So Santo, like a lot of other Sicilians at the time,
settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he goes to work in
the coal mines. Two years later, their father Antonino joins them,
bringing along another son. By nineteen twelve, most of the kids,
all of the sons are in the States. Lorenza and
(18:35):
two of her daughters are still in Sicily. In nineteen sixteen,
Lorenza dies and a few years later her daughters would
immigrate to the US. Two Now Santo, the eldest son.
He starts my particular branch of the family tree. Santo
is the grandfather or great grandfather to all of my
(18:55):
relatives that you've heard so far.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
They held they reunion one time where all of the
first generation Piazzas were there. They were fantastic. All my
uncles and my dad were playing more which is the
finger game. You know, rock Stone scissors are most and
they played bacci on a dirt road and it was
(19:20):
a great time. And it's one of the few times
I have memories of seen all Santo's brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Santo also had a lot of children, ten of them,
and here the family tree gets even more confusing for
a lot of reasons, namely because everyone seems to have
the same names. There's so many Giuseppes, Giuseppas, Josephine's, Vetos, Vinnie's,
and then the names they get anglicized when people come
to the US. The Giuseppas become Joe's, the Lorenzo's become Lauras,
(19:52):
the Veto's become Vinnie's.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
You get the picture.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Santo at some point lived with each of his children,
and for as Sicilian as Santo was, he didn't like
to talk about Italy.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
I remember going there and my old great aunts would
get my face and squeeze it and hurt the hell
out of me and talking Italian.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Cousin Sharon, she's my second cousin. I think I'm bad
with the seconds and the thirds. Her mom, Rose was
one of Santo's children.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Santa was very quiet about his past growing up. I
remember he wouldn't He didn't even want to acknowledge that
he was Italian for a while there, really, but yeah, yeah,
it was very strange. Somebody would come to the door
and see that he was clearly Italian with his you know,
deep accent, and he'd say, you're in America. You speak English,
(20:48):
no Italian. I mean, she didn't want It was strange.
He was very close mouth about much of his younger life,
very close mouth. So it's worth to investigate and looking into.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Santo definitely didn't talk about what happened to his mother, Lorenza.
Speaker 8 (21:08):
Your dad knew the most, I think, didn't I know,
But John, my dad and his siblings and cousins are
the complete opposite.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
They're obsessed with their Sicilian roots. Santo was first generation.
He wanted to hide being Sicilian so he could fit
in in this country, which for some immigrants was a
pretty common reaction. My dad, on the other hand, he
used to say things like capiche instead of understand, or
(21:40):
mazzao instead of mozzarella.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
Pitch you this Sicily nineteen twelve, so.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
That everyone would know he was Italian.
Speaker 9 (21:49):
Everything from Sicily means something.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
My dad loved to pretend to be this kind of
tony soprano tough guy, especially with my high school boyfriends.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Sorry Curtsey, not.
Speaker 7 (22:00):
With this Sicilian thing that's been going on for two
thousand years.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
In the early two thousands, my dad started to get
really sick with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. But
instead of saying housebound or just feeling sorry for himself
in bed, Lorenzo's story became this kind of unfinished business,
and it seemed to light a fire in him. He
started researching genealogy and taking trips to Sicily. By that
(22:31):
time he had to use a cane and a walker
to get around, and his obsession had gone into overdrive.
It's like falling in love with Sicily and with learning
new things about his family gave him this way to
escape his broken body. He did some crazy stuff too.
He started he got this hair brained idea to start
(22:53):
importing Sicilian organic olive oil, and he bought a shit
ton of it. I think he blew probably about one
hundred grand on locals.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Silly and olive oil, and then there was something wrong
with the.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Caps and the labels and they leaked, and it just
sat in our garage for years and years, and he
just pissed away all of his remaining money on this
business that would never exist. But that was yet another
way to keep him going.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Back to Sicily.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
As he got sicker and less mobile, my dad could
still sit at a computer making calls and researching his
leads on Lorenzo's murder. At the time, I found all
of it a little bit silly. I was so disinterested
in this. And if you think about two thousand, I
was in college. I was twenty years old, graduate, I
(23:45):
moved to New York. I'm not living with my parents.
I could care less about my dad's obsession with Cicily.
I'm like, that seems like a nice hobby for you, Dad,
I'm happy for you. But we never talked about it,
and now I really wish that we had. Like now,
I really wish that I'd paid more attention and I'd
listen to the things that he was finding out, because
(24:05):
so much of it is also just now gone. I
can't find anything in his email, I can't Facebook won't
let me into his Facebook account, So a lot of
what he learned died with him. A lot of parts
of him are gone, and he would hate that. He
wanted to know the answer to this mystery, and I
(24:27):
wish that I'd been there to help him, but I
was on my own journey, searching for a life partner,
falling in love, getting married, getting pregnant, and.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Then he was gone.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I never properly grieved for him at the time, and
it's just been hitting me now his legacy and what
he left unfinished, and now I feel like I owe
him something by finishing what he started.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
And why do you think you care about it?
Speaker 6 (25:12):
Is it really like to do this thing for your dad?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Do you feel that you have the same motivation.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
He did or I think my motivation is different than Dad's.
There's a part of me that wants to do this
because he didn't get to finish it, And there's another
part of me that wants to do it because I
feel like this woman's real story deserves to be told,
like for people to really know the truth about what
(25:37):
happened to her, instead of just becoming a character in
everybody else's life. Lorenzo Marsala was born in this village
called Caltabalota, had a bunch of kids, and died there
at age fifty four. That's pretty much all we know
of her life. When she died, it was nineteen sixteen.
(25:57):
She still had two young daughters at home. The First
World War had just broken out. Now that I'm a
wife and a mother of three children, thank god it's
not seven, her story just hits different. I'm getting closer
to Lorenzo's age every year, and I can't stop thinking
(26:19):
about our family story. From her perspective, how did she
feel about being left behind by her husband for more
than a decade. Did she miss him or was it
liberating to finally not just be someone's wife, to finally
not be getting pregnant almost every single year. Did she
(26:41):
feel safe in her own village? Was it okay because
she had a lot of her family members around her,
or maybe she was in constant danger in this village
surrounded by mafia bandits.
Speaker 9 (26:53):
I was asking somebody about her, and they just looked
at me and they kept saying morte, morte no, and
they're like they shut it down.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
They wouldn't talk.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Really, you just said the name.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
You're like Lorenzo Marsala piazza, and they.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Were like.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Over the years, many of the piazzas have gone back
to Sicily looking for answers about our families past, and
a lot of them have returned with stories of dead
ends and also unsettling experiences that happened when they tried
to find out more about Lorenza.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
They knew about the murders.
Speaker 8 (27:34):
They knew about it, right.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
Yeah, they did.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
My uncle Jimmy claims that when he was in call,
a bunch of police officers warned him off this case.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
He should, you'd better drop it, not in any trevening
matter whatsoever, but just just as a matter of the
you don't want to start it off, you know, you
don't want the vendetta to continue.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
And if the warnings from the cops weren't enough, they
also got a sign from above.
Speaker 7 (28:05):
When we were there.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
We were at the church.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
Lightning struck the church. Okay, we were actually yeah, we
were in the church where they got married, and lightning
struck the steeple. And while you were in it, while
we were yeah, while we were yeah, while we were.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
In the church.
Speaker 7 (28:25):
We were in with the priest going through the records
right in the in the rectory and lightning struck the
top of the church. We had to get out. Wow,
my sister and Lassa, that is a sign get us
out of here.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I'm starting to think that maybe my family doesn't want
to know what really happened. They're pretty attached to the
stories that they've been telling themselves for all these years.
Well that's interesting because I wonder how people will feel,
like if we actually get to like a truth, will.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It be disappointing or satisfying or you know, I.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Don't know if my family wants to know the actual truth.
That's the interesting thing. Like, for as much as people
have come back here and tried to like dig up
more information, I think if the truth ended up being
less interesting than their story, I don't think they're going
to change their story. I think they're going to continue
(29:31):
to tell the story the way they want to tell
the story. But I need to know. I have to
solve this mystery. I don't know if it's for me,
or for my dad or for Lorenza, but I have
to solve it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
So here I go.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I'm looking for long lost relatives. I'm digging through archives
covered in dust and trying to trace back a family
history that's been twisted by secrets, omissions, and vengeance. I
can't do all of this from my desk in filid Alia.
I've got to go back back to, as my dad
(30:05):
liked to call it, the Motherland. I've got to go
to Sicily, to the village of Caltabalota, where all of
this happened in the first place, back to where Lorenzo
was born, and maybe just maybe back to the very
spot where she was murdered.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
A landside, there's a landslide. This is a place.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
We have the absolutely certainty one hundred and ten.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Honestly, a picture and she died.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
We don't have a picture of that.
Speaker 6 (30:36):
Actually a video you.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Can see a video. Videos didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I'm bringing all of you on my summer vacation with
my husband, three kids under the age of seven. Everyone
is coming to Sicily with me to solve this one
hundred year old murder. Now, I think it's pretty clear
that something bad did happen to her.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Your father had his story that she was like the
witch doctor.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Could Lorenzo have been killed by the mafia for being
a witch?
Speaker 6 (31:05):
So I'm wondering, how is the story similar or different
than what you got so I heard two stories. One
story is over Land and the other story is that
she was a witch. Well that's even more interesting.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
That's all coming up on the Sicilian Inheritance.
Speaker 7 (31:24):
I'd love to know what the hell happened. It wouldn't
it be great to solve this mystery.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I feel good my Sicilian witchy powers. I feel like
we're on the right path.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
The Sicilian Inheritance is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. The series is produced by Jen Kinney, Kate Osborne,
Dara Potts, and me Joe Piazza, with key help from
Laura Lee Watson of Digging Up Your Roots in the
Boot and Chiro Grillow of Sicily Roots. Many thanks to
Julia Pairvi and theancestry dot com research department. You can
(32:04):
get your copy of The Sicilian Inheritance the novel right
now at Truly anywhere that you get your books, anywhere
you get your books. It's got the same name as
the podcast, but with more food, wine, and sex. Also,
do not forget to get a taste of Sicily in
the form of delicious Sicilian olive oil at Cardena's tap Room.
(32:25):
Make sure to check out our show notes for a
link to buy it, or if you find yourself in Philly,
just stop by. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, mangsh Hetikador,
Costas Linos.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And Oz Wolloshan.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
From iHeart, executive producers are Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Etour.
We also want to thank Will Pearson, connel Byrne, Bob Pittman,
and John Mary Napolis
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