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