Anna Di Puma was shot in the back and killed two days later while she was sitting on the door-step of a neighbor's store.
Morello was arrested and charged with the murder of the Di Puma woman. He was held in prison to await trial, but powerful influences of the Mafia were set to work and Morello was discharged for lack of evidence. The only witness to the murder of Vella was dead. Two lawyers of his band testified that Morello was in Palermo with them and not in Corleone on the night the Di Puma woman was murdered.
Michele Guarino Zangara, living in the next apartment to Morello, who noticed when the "Black-Hander" arrived home and overheard the conversation that followed between Morello and his mother, was also murdered. He was thrown off a bridge one night while on his way home. He was found the next morning under the bridge dead. This man Zangara had gone to the accused man's house, three or four days after the Chief of the Sylvan Guards was murdered, and told the family of the man unjustly arrested for the crime that he (Guarino) had overheard Mrs. Morello say to her son:
"Peppe, what have you done? Now they will come and arrest you," and in response to this Morello said, "Shut up, mother, they have gone on the wrong scent."
Zangara, being a man with a large family, feared to tell what he knew because he felt sure that Morello would murder him just as he had slain the Di Puma woman. However, when the accused man, Francesco Ortonello, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, Zangara came to the front, declaring that his conscience troubled him to see an innocent man sent away for the murder of Vella. He went to the authorities and told them that he was willing to risk his life and tell the truth for Ortonello. The authorities told Zangara that it would have been better had he told it during the trial. Now it was too late.
A few days after this the murder of Zangara took place.
Morello was on his way to America at this time, but the "Black-Hander" had many powerful friends still watchful for his interests, and some of these attended to Zangara.
Pietro Milone, a police officer who tried hard to clear Ortonello, was murdered one night on his way home. The one who slew the officer was never punished.