A spilled glass of water. A heated argument. Then gunfire shattered a quiet Saturday night in West Scranton.

In this episode, we uncover the shocking true story of the May 21, 1910, murder at Bennie Ricciardi’s store on Scranton Street — a crime that left one man dead, another gravely wounded, and launched a dramatic manhunt stretching from Pennsylvania to New York.

Who was Benedetto Tripodo? Was he a man acting in self-defense… or someone connected to an earlier unsolved killing with possible ties to the feared Black Hand era?

Drawing from newspaper archives, prison records, census documents, and forgotten historical sources, we retrace the events of one of West Scranton’s most compelling early 20th-century crimes — from the fatal confrontation to the railroad escape, capture, plea deal, and the lingering mysteries left behind.

More than a century later, questions remain.

🎙️ A true crime story buried in Scranton history — until now.

#TrueCrime #ScrantonHistory #HistoricalCrime #PennsylvaniaHistory #Genealogy #ItalianAmericanHistory #BlackHand #LocalHistory #HistoryPodcast