# The United States vs. Salvatore Lo Bue: threatening-letter case, Chicago, 1915 (case file)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/nara-355459444-us-v-lo-bue-1915/

National Archives case file from the federal court at Chicago: the catalog note says Lo Bue was accused of mailing letters demanding $1,000 from Frank D'Amico on pain of death to a family member and the destruction of his house; the file holds letters with drawings of an attack and of a tomb.

The National Archives catalogs this file as "The United States vs. Salvatore Lo Bue," a criminal case file of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, with 35 digital pages. The catalog note says Lo Bue was accused of sending threatening letters through the mail to Frank D'Amico, demanding $1,000 on pain of death to a family member and the destruction of his house, and was charged under section 215 of the Criminal Code with using the mails in a scheme to defraud. It quotes one of the letters as including "a crude drawing of one individual attacking another, and also a drawing of a tomb with a cross above it," and says: "The paper may contain human blood." The note does not state the outcome of the case.

File page 1, shown here, is a notice from Charles F. Clyne, United States Attorney, to the defendant's lawyer that on Friday, 3 December 1915, he would ask Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, in the Federal Building at Chicago, to set the case for trial; the caption on that page reads "No. 5750." The research record for this file does not list that number, so it is given here only as a reading of the page, not as a catalogued docket. The indictment and two letters are filed as their own pages: [indictment](/items/nara-355459444-lo-bue-indictment-p21/), [letter with drawings](/items/nara-355459444-lo-bue-letter-drawing-p23/) and [letter with crosses and a coffin](/items/nara-355459444-lo-bue-letter-coffin-crosses-p30/).

Neither the catalog note nor the pages opened use the words "Black Hand" for this case. It is filed with the section because it is a federal threatening-letter prosecution of the same kind. No addresses are reproduced.

## Sources

- National Archives Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/355459444