Maybe he was.

After the smoke had cleared away, however, he disappeared with all his depositors' money, and now it has been discovered that the man he killed was a depositor and not a Black Hander.

The police are still looking for him.
This case seems a fairly good illustration of the endless opportunity for wrong-doing possible in a state of society where extortion is permitted to exist--where the laws are not enforced--where there is a "higher" sanction than the code.

Whether Patti was a good or a bad man, he might easily have killed an enemy in revenge and got off scot-free on the mere claim that the other was blackmailing him; just as an American in some parts of our country can kill almost anybody and rely on being acquitted by a jury, provided he is willing to swear that the deceased had made improper advances to his wife.
The prevention of kidnapping, bomb-throwing, and the other allied manifestations of the Black Hand depends entirely upon the activity of the police--particularly the Italian detectives, who should form an inevitable part of the force in every large city.

The fact of the matter is that we never dreamed of a real "Italian peril" (or, more accurately, a real "Sicilian peril") until about the year 1900.