This is Part 8 of a Moral Quandary and the end of our story. Click here to read Part 1.

Musical accompaniment: Baby, Did You Hear? performed by Dinah Washington

 

After his second trial and guilty plea, the papers no longer mentioned Francesco Caruso. Apart from a passing reference to him due to a similar case years later, I couldn’t find a thing.

I was curious how much time Francesco actually served and what his life was like when he came out of prison.

I found something that stunned me! Caruso was sentenced to 10-20 years on February 14, 1928.

Yet a search of vital records shows Caruso was living with his wife, four children, and father-in-law on April 8, 1930 when the census was taken.

He must have been pardoned but I couldn’t find anything to support it, apart from the fact the census proved he was clearly living at home with the family again. Had he been in Sing Sing, he would be on the prison’s census record. Do you notice anything else in the census record?

New York has a record of executive clemency actions but I could find nothing pertaining to Caruso there. I looked in the archives but found no record of a pardon or a commutation of his sentence.  There were no stories in the paper.

How Francesco Caruso came to rejoin his family, I have no idea. Like so many things about this story, it seems impossible that it could have happened.

After the 1930 census, I couldn’t definitively trace the family any further. They vanished from the public record.

What of Helen Pendola?

The doctor’s widow lived until December 1975 and never remarried. She walked through the long years of life alone. Let’s hope her daughter was a comfort to her and she managed to find some joy in living. Catherine lived until 1997.

Maria Caruso lost two children and she lost her husband for years. She was left without a penny to her name while her husband battled for his life. But one day her husband did return.  Helen lost her husband forever. Though Francesco Caruso murdered Dr. Pendola when he was overcome with grief and rage, the impact on Helen was the same as though he’d done it in cold blood.

I don’t know what to make of the doctor. I’m slow to condemn him for laughing after he was told the child had died because we don’t know if he really did that. There’s no reason to doubt Caruso’s word except that it’s such a monstrous and unnatural reaction. Some people laugh in the first moments of shock before their brains can process what is happening. Caruso’s memory may have gotten jumbled. Or maybe the doctor did laugh. We can’t know because he didn’t live to tell his side of the story.  Maybe he was only there to help from the goodness of his heart. Certainly that’s what his wife believed.

The case of Francesco Caruso is a curious one. It’s one of the few cases in which insanity has been advanced as a defense that seems completely legitimate to me. He was a father who loved his child dearly. After frantically watching the little boy get more and more ill, he summoned a doctor for the first time in his life. He saw the doctor inject little Joey and, within hours, the child died.  He believed the doctor had deliberately killed the son he loved so much. That’s enough to drive anyone out of their mind.

I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this case!

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