GREENWOOD HEIGHTS — It took nearly 100 years, but the Pucciano family finally got to say a proper goodbye to NYPD Detective Joseph Pucciano, famous for his savvy investigative skills and crime-fighting abilities in New York City.
Pucciano, a Calabria-born Italian immigrant with a Catholic upbringing, died of tuberculosis in 1928 after he climbed the ranks of the NYPD to become a Detective.
At the time, his family was not in a financial position to afford a headstone, and he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
On May 20, dozens of his descendants came together for a burial and memorial service, in which his gravesite was also given a proper headstone.
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“When I have read different things about grandpa, he really did seem to be a special detective. Nowadays, there are so many things that can be used, such as DNA evidence,” Frank Pucciano, grandson of Pucciano, told The Tablet. “Back in those days, the work the detectives had to do was a lot of reasoning, deduction, and putting together bits of evidence to form a story to catch the bad guys.
“He really was a pretty amazing guy in that respect.”
He was nicknamed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes” by newspapers in his active years, having served on the NYPD’s former Italian Squad that investigated Mafia-related crimes.
It was reported in Pucciano’s obituary in the New York Daily News that he “locked up” 95% of the men he went after. His achievements included working alongside Prohibition legends Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, freeing an innocent man from death row, and taking down the Navy Street Gang.
He also had a unique way of connecting with New York City’s immigrant communities, speaking four languages: English, Italian, Albanian, and Chinese.
“He didn’t care. He declared war on the mafia, and that’s part of why he was held in such high regard,” said Ken Gulmi, Pucciano’s grandson. “He was absolutely indifferent to being intimidated.”
The decision to honor Pucciano with a burial service and headstone 96 years later came about after a descendant of Detective Bernardino Grottano — Pucciano’s cousin by marriage and partner on the NYPD’s former Italian Squad — reached out to retired police Lieutenant Bill Markowski to have the same done for his ancestor.
Grottano was killed in a shootout in 1924. It turned out that Pucciano and Grottano had been buried alongside each other in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Markowski spearheaded the effort to recognize both the late detectives’ lives and legacies with marked graves by reaching out to the NYPD’s Detectives’ Endowment Association, which purchased the monuments.
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“Two years ago, my wife and I went out to the cemetery … and we said, ‘I wonder if we can get him a gravestone.’ We didn’t know if that was even possible,” Frank said.
“Our intent was to try to put something there in 2028 — the 100th anniversary of grandpa, and then all of a sudden we hear the police department’s gonna do it,” he added. “It definitely has a spiritual meaning to me. I’ve always thought Grandpa should have more respect than nothing.”
Although he never got to meet his grandfather, Gulmi said that it’s highly likely that Pucciano’s Catholic upbringing as an Italian-American helped shape his police work.
“Given his moral outrage at what was happening in the Italian immigrant community, I would say [his faith] must have had some effect,” he said. “It certainly gave him a strong sense of what was right and wrong.”
Pucciano was also a family man. He went on to have three children — Eleanor, Frank, and George Vincent — the latter following in his father’s footsteps by becoming an NYPD officer.
He has several grandchildren and great-grandchildren residing all around the country — many of whom came together in Brooklyn to honor his legacy.
“What this has done is it’s brought our family all together again. I’m meeting people, blood relatives, that I’ve never met before. It was delightful,” Gulmi said. “And I really do think my mom and uncles are up in heaven grinning from ear to ear seeing this.”