Woman sets out to solve 100-year-old cold case MURDER of her great-great-grandmother – after her family spent years being plagued by the mysterious death and the wild WITCHY conspiracy theories surrounding it

A woman investigates the 100-year-old cold case murder that has plagued her family for decades.

Jo Piazza, from Philadelphia, had grown up hearing that her great-great-grandmother Lorenza Marsala had been murdered in Sicily before she could join the rest of the family on their move to America.

The mother-of-three, author and podcast maker, was forced to unravel a raft of wild theories about death – including speculation that the town had turned against her because she was a witch or that she owned land owned by the mafia. wanted to take matters into their own hands.

Jo said members of her family had tried to warn her not to delve into the case at the risk of ‘opening old wounds’, but she was undeterred.

The intriguing story began after Jo’s father passed away in 2015.

Tellingly, she was pregnant at the time, newly married, recently moved and lost her job Today: ‘I didn’t have time to grieve… It’s all a blur.’

The loving daughter was forced to clear out some of his belongings so her mother could make a fresh start, including his computer.

But Jo came to regret throwing it away after she came across some emails from her father when she was clearing out her inbox a few years later.

She said she responded to most of them at the time, but a handful remained unopened.

‘One of them caught my attention. It was his grandfather’s birth certificate. He had noticed that the mother’s name, Lorenza, was so beautiful. “She was the one who got killed,” he reminded me in all caps,” she said.

Jo revealed her father had become ‘obsessed’ with discovering the truth about her death – and even made several trips back to the island.

Ultimately, however, he had to limit his research to what she could do online after suffering from a rare form of muscular dystrophy.

His mobility deteriorated and he instead turned his attention to collecting stories from other family members and searching archives on the Internet.

“My father was never able to finish his work… (He) cared so much about this research and I should have done it with him,” Jo reflected.

She said she decided to pick up where he left off as a “way to connect” with her late father, adding, “It often felt like he was right with me.”

Jo started her own research on Ancestry.com, but had to start all over again after failing to guess her father’s passwords to access his accounts.

There she had access to a whole series of documents that shed more light on Lorenza’s life.

She was born on February 14, 1862 and died on February 24, 1916 – both in the small village of Caltafellotta.

Lorenza gave birth to her first child at the age of twenty and husband Antonino Piazza left for America in the early 20th century.

Jo’s research led her to Ellis Island, New York, which was previously the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States.

Together with the help of historian Stephen Lean, she was able to paint a more complete picture of her family’s immigration journey.

It showed that Lorenzo’s children – Santo, Joseph, Josephine, Paulina, Rosa, Calogero and Antonino – all followed in their father’s footsteps when they moved to the US.

But the family matriarch, who worked as a farmer’s wife, was murdered before she could be reunited with them.

The writer and podcaster was warned by family and friends to be careful with her research.

She said People that her uncle had said half-jokingly: ‘Why are you opening old wounds? You’re going to end up starting our vendetta again.”

Barbie Latza Nadeau, an expert on the Italian mafia, also told her: ‘You always have to be careful what you dig up when you go through the ashes because you may find something that someone doesn’t want. what you want to learn more about.

“I’m not trying to scare you. I think you just have to be vigilant.”

Nevertheless, Jo traveled to Caltafellotta to find out more and began recording a true crime podcast about Lorenza’s death.

There she visited the local municipal office where she was shown the handwritten ‘Book of the Dead’ in which all deaths in the village, dating back more than a century, were recorded.

She found her great-great-grandmother’s name under the section devoted to “unnatural causes, accidents or murders,” but no actual cause was given.

“It was the first real evidence I had that she had been murdered more than a century earlier,” Jo told the newspaper.

“My whole body tensed as I looked at the page. Here she was. This was real. It was no longer just a story told over cocktails at a family wedding. Lorenza Marsala was born here and died here, possibly in a terrible way.’

Jo’s suspicions were only heightened when the document also revealed that a man named Nicolo Martino – a name she had never heard before – was murdered at the exact same time and location as Lorenza.

Rumors continued to circulate about her death, including mentions that she was a witch or that the mafia was involved.

There was also speculation that one of her sons had returned to the Italian region to avenge the killing during a rabbit hunt before disappearing.

Jo discovered from her research that Lorenza’s son Joseph was sent to Europe after joining the army in 1918.

He then disappeared from the radar for 40 years, adding, “I finally have a piece of evidence that one of Lorenza’s sons may have avenged their mother’s death.”

The exact details of the matriarch’s death currently remain unclear, as Jo promises to unravel the truth in her podcast.

Elsewhere, Jo has since written a fictional murder mystery novel loosely based on her findings, entitled The Sicilian Inheritance.