MOB TOWN: 'MAFIA' MURDER OF ITALIAN COP IN DENVER

A rookie Italian-American police officer was slain in a hail of 28 bullets - an early victim of Colorado's years-long mob war over the bootleg liquor trade during Prohibition.

Officer Richie Rose, 30, was ambushed by a platoon of gunmen while on foot patrol in Denver's Little Italy before dawn on Oct. 31, 1922 - ostensibly because he refused bribes.

Rose, still a rookie, was one of the few Italians on the force - but there were plenty of Italian bootleggers in Colorado, and at least one in his extended family.

"Mafia, Mafia, Mafia," were his dying words, according to some newspaper reports, which may have been somewhat exaggerated. The assailants likely hailed from out of state to evade capture - and were by all accounts Italian, too.

Rose was on hand for at least seven bootleg arrests in 1921 and 1922, based on police records obtained by the Rocky Mountain News. 

However, the case quickly went cold - and over 14 years the mob war claimed more than 30 lives across the state, including Rose's brother-in-law, bootlegger Vincenzo Urso in Pueblo the next year. Urso was slain by a shotgun blast while riding in the backseat of a car on June 19, 1923.

Rose was survived by his pregnant wife, Jennie, three sons and a daughter. Their fifth child, a girl, was born in April. They resided at 3738 Kalamath Street. Mrs. Rose heard the shots, ran to the scene in her nightgown and rode in the ambulance carrying her husband to Denver General Hospital.  

Reviewing the case years later, Rocky Mountain News reporter Bernard McSherry wrote: "Manager of Safety Frank M. Downer closed up Little Italy tighter than a drum. ... Every suspicious Italian in Denver was rounded up. But none of them broke."  

Rose's mother, Mary Decicco of 3715 Mariposa Street, offered a $50 reward that went toward a larger fund for information leading to the arrest of the killers.

[Photo: Denver Police Department, Rocky Mountain News]

Crime scene photo showing where Richie Rose fell. Photo of wife Jennie and children, Philip, Angelo, Eva and Joseph.