It was New Year’s Eve when Guiseppi Sandillo joined his co-workers in a friendly game of poker. The men, all Italian immigrants, had been building a power plant for International Paper in Jay. While the job lasted, Cummings Construction provided living quarters for them in a boarding house along the Androscoggin River. Most of the young men had left Italy only a few months before, and their life in this country was rootless. Once the project was over the crew would move on to another site.

All but Joseph Sandillo, whose life was cut short on the last day of the year in 1913.

Two lanterns cast a hazy, smoky light on the dining room where the poker game took place next to the company store. In the storeroom was Amato DeMarco, whose job it was to dispense beverages through a window and charge the laborers against their paychecks. A few workers lounged around the store, leaning against the counter or sitting on a bag of beans. The atmosphere was lighthearted and relaxed. When Arcangelo Turrieri lost at poker, he had to buy a round of beer but the game had been a friendly one; everybody seemed to be enjoying their New Year’s Eve.

Then, suddenly and tragically, the situation changed.

DeMarco charged Turrieri for a beer which Turrieri claimed he didn’t get, and after a little conversation, DeMarco handed him one. The exchange turned ugly from there.

“If you hadn’t given me that beer, I would have shown you what I carry,” Turrieri told the clerk as he reached into his hip pocket.

“What’s the matter? Do you want to kill me? If you’re going to shoot me, I’ll shoot you first,” countered DeMarco, impulsively pulling a revolver from a drawer. Before anyone else knew that trouble was even brewing, a gun fight had broken out. DeMarco fired at Turrieri, hitting him in the arm. Turrieri fired back. The bullet went through DeMarco’s hat, missing his head by a fraction of an inch.

DeMarco fired again. Turrieri dodged the bullet by running behind his friend Sandillo.

The bullet meant to hit Turrieri caught Sandillo in the head. He died instantly.

“What made you shoot this poor innocent?” someone asked DeMarco in Italian as everyone looked at Sandillo’s body in shock. DeMarco didn’t answer but only cried. “Give yourself up,” an onlooker told DeMarco.

But instead DeMarco disappeared.

“Where is the clerk?” Turrieri kept asking as he ran from one end of the boarding house to the other, his revolver held tightly in one hand, a knife in the other. “I’m going to kill him.”

But DeMarco had fled. The next day, authorities arrested him when he tried to board a train in Lewiston.

DeMarco got off with a surprisingly light sentence thanks in part to a team of defense attorneys from Lewiston and Boston, presumably hired by his construction company. He was found guilty of manslaughter and served only 11 months in the Farmington Jail.

Guiseppi Sandillo, the innocent victim of a hot-headed dispute over a mere bottle of beer, rests in a western Maine grave, far from family and home.

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past nine years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington. Additional research for this column by UMF student David Farady.

Luann Yetter teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington. Additional research for this column by UMF student David Farady.

Copy the Story Link