The Fruit Store on North Main — and the Black Hand Case That Put Marion at the Center of It

MARION, Ohio — In 1909, federal investigators identified a fruit and grocery business on North Main Street as the headquarters of a Black Hand extortion network operating across multiple states.

The business was run by Salvatore “Sam” Lima.

It was called S. Lima & Co.—a fruit commission merchant and imported grocery store. It served customers. It handled produce. It sat on a normal stretch of street, part of the daily rhythm of Marion at the time.

And according to investigators, it also served as the operational center of a criminal organization that used threats, violence, and the U.S. mail to extract money from victims across Ohio and beyond.

A storefront in plain sight

Photographs from the period show a working business. Crates of fruit stacked outside. Bananas hanging in the window. Family members standing near the entrance. A delivery wagon nearby. Nothing about it suggests secrecy.

Sam and Sebastiano Lima and their families in front of their store in Marion, Ohio. Source: National Postal Museum, care of History of Marion, Ohio page on Facebook, posted 18 August 2013. 

That’s part of what makes the case difficult to ignore.

The activity investigators later described—meetings, record-keeping, financial coordination—was not happening in a hidden location. It was taking place inside a storefront on North Main Street, embedded in the everyday life of the city.

Later research would identify the back room of that shop as the meeting place for a group known as the Society of the Banana.

Much of the detail behind the Marion case has been clarified in recent years through archival research and published accounts.

One of the most detailed narratives comes from Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society by William Oldfield and Victoria Bruce. The book focuses on the work of U.S. Postal Inspector Frank Oldfield, who led the federal investigation into the Black Hand network tied to the Marion operation.

Drawing from postal records, correspondence, and investigative files, the authors detail how inspectors tracked letters moving through the mail, marked postage, and followed suspects across multiple cities. The account outlines how the case developed from scattered threats into a coordinated federal prosecution, built largely on evidence tied to the postal system rather than individual acts of violence.

The book also places the Marion storefront within a broader network of activity, showing how a local business became part of a multi-state investigation that reached from Ohio to other parts of the country and overseas.

The Society of the Banana

Weapons from the Black Hand trial. Courtesy of William H. Oldfield

The name appears almost incidental at first. It wasn’t. According to modern historical research and reporting, the Society of the Banana was the name used by a network of Black Hand operators tied to produce and grocery businesses across Ohio and other states. The group drew heavily from Italian and Sicilian immigrant communities and focused its efforts on those same communities.

The structure was organized. This was not a loose collection of individuals sending random threats. Accounts tied to the case describe leadership roles, internal rules, and coordinated operations. Members met. They discussed targets. They assigned payment amounts. They tracked responses.

Original stamp marked by Post Office inspectors during the Black Hand investigation. The letter “O” in “two cents” was filled in with red ink to mark stamps on letters sent by members of the Society of the Banana. | Oldfield Collection

In one documented meeting, roughly a dozen men gathered in Lima’s shop. They reviewed names, addresses, and dollar figures tied to victims. The setting was cramped. Fruit crates stacked nearby. Cigarette smoke in the air. Decisions made in a room that, hours earlier, had been used for normal business.

The details come not just from early reporting, but from later reconstruction by researchers who revisited the case with access to federal records and archived material.

How the operation worked

The method was consistent. Victims received letters.

The letters demanded money—sometimes hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands. The threats were explicit. Pay, or face violence. Pay, or risk your family. Pay, or risk your business.

The tone was direct. No ambiguity. In some cases, symbols or references associated with the Black Hand accompanied the message.

Many victims were business owners—fruit dealers, grocers, saloon operators—often immigrants who shared language and trade connections with members of the group. That connection mattered. It gave the organization access. It also made enforcement easier.

A translation of a fourth threatening letter to John Amicon in spring 1909. Inspector Oldfield hired several Sicilian translators to interpret correspondence during the Black Hand investigation. | Oldfield Collection

Victims often feared retaliation or mistrusted authorities, and many chose not to report what they received.

Some paid. Some didn’t. Those who refused sometimes faced consequences.

Contemporary reporting tied the group to bombings and violent threats. In one case, a bomb damaged a residence connected to a victim who ignored demands. In others, letters warned of kidnapping or death.

The case might have remained fragmented if not for one detail: the mail. Letters moved through the U.S. postal system. Money moved through money orders. That shifted the investigation beyond local authorities.

U.S. postal inspectors took the lead. Frank Oldfield, a federal postal inspector, became central to the case. His role is documented in both historical reporting and later interviews, including a 2018 NPR segment featuring his descendant.

Federal US Postal Inspector, Frank Oldfield

Oldfield and his colleagues tracked letters across cities. They worked with postal clerks. They marked stamps. They monitored suspicious activity. They followed individuals moving between the store and the Marion post office.

At the time, the post office in Marion operated out of a building on South Main Street. Investigators observed individuals tied to Lima’s operation walking from the store to the post office and sending money orders overseas.

Giovanni Amicone, known as John Amicon (right), walks on Naughten Street in Columbus, Ohio, in 1909 outside Amicon Brothers Fruit Distributors with a U.S. marshal. He later became the key witness in the case, risking everything to testify in the 1910 federal Black Hand trial in Toledo.

Money moved regularly. In some cases, thousands of dollars were sent to contacts in Sicily.

The scale was not local.

Building the case

The investigation took time. One of the biggest challenges was cooperation. Victims often refused to come forward. Some denied receiving letters. Others declined to provide evidence, even when investigators approached them directly.

Mug shots commissioned by Frank Oldfield after the Black Hand captures. From left-right, from top: Sam Lima, Guiseppe Ignoffo, Severio Ventola, Sebastian Lima, Salvatore Arrigo, Vincenzo Arrigo, Francesco Spadaro and Augustino Marfisi. | Oldfield collection.

That hesitation slowed progress. Still, inspectors continued to gather material. Letters. Handwriting comparisons. Payment records. Observations of who was sending what, and where. By mid-1909, they moved.

The raid and arrests

In June 1909, authorities carried out coordinated arrests. According to The New York Times, Lima was taken into custody in Marion along with other suspects. Additional arrests occurred in other towns tied to the network.

Investigators searched Lima’s store. They found letters. Records. Evidence linking the operation to victims across multiple cities. Officials described the Marion location as the headquarters of the organization.

The case moved into federal court. Prosecutors relied on mail-related charges—mail fraud and related statutes—rather than attempting to prove each act of violence directly. The strategy allowed them to connect the network’s activity across state lines. It worked.

Reconstructing the story

For decades, the Marion case remained largely a historical footnote. That changed with the work of researchers who went back and rebuilt it.

David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker are among the most prominent voices in that effort. Their book, Ohio’s Black Hand Syndicate: The Birth of Organized Crime in America, examines the Lima operation and the broader network in detail.

Their work pulls from federal records, newspaper archives, and investigative material tied to the original case. It connects the Marion storefront to a structured criminal organization operating before the more widely recognized rise of organized crime in cities like Chicago and New York.

They argue the case represents an early form of organized crime in the United States—not isolated threats, but coordinated, multi-state activity with leadership, systems, and financial flow.

That interpretation is echoed in other modern accounts, including reporting in Politico Magazine and the NPR interview tied to the Oldfield investigation. Listen here:

The claim is not presented as myth. It is presented as a conclusion drawn from documented evidence. The Marion case did not stay buried in old court records.

More than a century later, researchers, authors and journalists have continued returning to it because of what the evidence shows: a structured extortion network operating from a storefront in a Midwestern city, years before the better-known crime syndicates became part of American history.

That is why the story still carries weight. It happened here.