Such an one was Guiseppe Petrosino, a great detective, and an honest, unselfish, and heroic man, who united indefatigable patience and industry with reasoning powers of a high order.

The most thrilling evening of my life was when I listened before a crackling fire in my library to Joe's story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the night before I was going to prosecute the case.

Sitting stiffly in an arm-chair, his ugly moon-face expressionless save for an occasional flash from his black eyes, Petrosino recounted slowly and accurately how, by means of a single slip of paper bearing the penciled name "Sabbatto Gizzi, P.O.Box 239, Lambertville, N.J.," he had run down the unknown murderer of an unknown Italian stabbed to death in the park's shrubbery.
Petrosino's physical characteristics were so pronounced that he was probably as widely, if not more widely, known than any other Italian in New York.

He was short and heavy, with enormous shoulders and a bull neck, on which was placed a great round head like a summer squash.

His face was pock-marked, and he talked with a deliberation that was due to his desire for accuracy, but which at times might have been suspected to arise from some other cause.