Biography
Donato Carrillo was born in Sant'Agata di Puglia, Foggia, Italy (his Italian political-police file names his parents as Michele Carrillo and Saveria Soldo). Donato Carrillo was an Italian-American anti-fascist and one of the two defendants in the celebrated Greco–Carrillo case. He was arrested in Brooklyn on July 11, 1927 — one Italian political-police summary gives July 12 — and held with fellow anti-fascist Calogero Greco in the Bronx County Jail as a material witness in the investigation of the May 30, 1927 Memorial Day killing of two Italian Fascists, Giuseppe Carisi and Michele Amoroso, in the Bronx. On July 26, 1927 the two were formally indicted for premeditated murder, with bail set at fifty thousand dollars each; unable to furnish it, they remained jailed throughout the pretrial period. Their trial opened in Bronx County Court on December 9, 1927, with Clarence Darrow leading the defense in a celebrated International Labor Defense campaign that showed the prosecution to be a frame-up built on fascist testimony. After nearly eight hours of deliberation the jury acquitted both men on December 23, 1927, ending about five and a half months of detention, and a victory celebration was held that same day. His surname appears in sources as both Carrillo and Carillo. He died of a heart attack on August 26, 1965 in Los Angeles, California, while visiting a hospitalized comrade; his obituary appeared in L'Adunata dei Refrattari.
Charles Yale Harrison in the Daily Worker of November 19, 1927, identified District Attorney McGeehan as conducting the identification procedure in the Greco-Carrillo prosecution. The issue also reported that both men remained in Bronx County Jail. Harrison alleged that initial questioning took place at an isolated Bronx police station while their families were unable to locate them. The canonical conviction field is No, preserving the established acquittal.
The November 9, 1927 Daily Worker reports that the Bronx County Court refused a defense motion to dismiss the Greco–Carrillo indictment and set a trial for December 5. It identifies the pretrial judge as Albert Cohen in its own spelling, defense counsel Isaac Schorr and prosecutor N. McGeehan. Schorr protested their continuing imprisonment. The scheduled date is not inserted as an actual trial or release day, and the newspaper’s pretrial judge spelling is not silently normalized or treated as the judge of every later proceeding. Existing acquittal and release facts remain unchanged.
The December 12, 1927 Daily Worker account of the Bronx Greco-Carrillo murder trial identifies the presiding trial judge as Cohn in one passage and Cohen in others, including the page 5 continuation. Both printed spellings are retained without supplying a first name or equating every pretrial appearance with this trial. It reports that Assistant District Attorneys Henderson and Foley were conducting the case after their chief, John E. McGeehan, yielded it to them; McGeehan's existing prosecutor attribution is retained. Jury selection had been completed, while the anticipated testimony that morning was still prospective at publication. This procedural account does not change the separately documented acquittal, release or actual detention total.
