Mob Talk: Lucchese soldier, Ercole “Herky” Ercolano

Lucchese soldier, Ercole “Herky” Ercolano (NYC, 1927).

In the early 50’s, he was nabbed by five agents, with 100 ounces of pure heroin, valued at $880,000.

He was sitting at a table in a Manhattan apartment with the dope and the paraphernalia for cutting and packaging it before him when the agents, who had been working on the case around the clock burst in upon him at 3 A. M.

Although the agents said it was his first arrest, they declared he stood higher than Frank Madonna, 26, who was nabbed a few days earlier with 50 ounces of heroin as the “kingpin of the Harlem dope racket.” Ercolano, they said, was Madonna’s supplier.

Attorney Mortimer C. O'Brien Jr. said that during these past two years federal agents and narcotics squad detectives had arrested runners employed by Ercolano and seized dope that he owned but never caught up with Herkie himself. Besides the heroin, he had two sieves, scales, five cans of milk sugar and 25 pounds of quinine, a quantity of small cellophane envelopes and a stapler.

Police said Ercolano admitted he took the dope to the apartment in a shopping bag and stashed it there, then returned to prepare it for market.

Ercolano died in 2013.

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