Kelayres is a small town — with a population of 533 in 2010 — nestled in the mountains of Schuylkill County, Pa. It’s a place that seldom grabs the national spotlight.
The one notable exception came on election eve, Nov. 5, 1934, when a political feud in the coal mining town erupted into violence. Five died, and dozens were injured in an event remembered as the “Kelayres Massacre.”
Democrats and Republicans both held rallies that night. The Republican rally was small, held in the poolhall of the party’s local leader, Joe Bruno. Known as “Big Joe,” the son of Italian immigrants had controlled the town for more than a quarter of a century through such influential posts as school board president, justice of the peace, and county detective. His relatives held government jobs — tax collectors, bank officials, teachers, and truant officers. There was a Bruno School, and the school buses were stored and serviced in garages owned by the family.
Bruno’s position went unchallenged through the 1920s. Then Democratic rivals, the McAloose family, took aim at the heart of his power in a 1933 election.
When the ballots were counted, it pointed to a Democratic victory for several local offices.
As justice of the peace, Bruno was able to swoop in, snatch the ballot box and take it home, wrote Stephanie Hoover in her 2014 book, “The Kelayres Massacre: Politics and Murder in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Coal Country.” Bruno demanded a recount. To no one’s surprise, the new figures put Republicans on top.
Democrats took the matter to court, but there was no decision for months. Hostilities boiled over in August in a brawl among teachers and political rivals in front of the Bruno School.
“Followers of both factions threw bricks, blacked each other’s eyes and (in the case of the ladies) pulled each other’s hair,” observed the Daily News’ Peter Levins. State police had to break it up.
School opening was postponed that year.
Tempers remained hot all the way up to election eve in November. Jubilant Democrats, confident of a victory this time, turned their rally into an anti-Bruno parade at around 9 p.m. Children rode in trucks at the front of the procession. Marchers followed on foot, shouting, jeering, chanting, waving banners, and carrying lanterns and torches to light the way to the corner in front of Joe Bruno’s darkened house.
“Kelayres Parade Mowed Down By Gunfire,” was splashed across the Pottsville Evening Republican front page on Nov. 6, 1934.
No one really knows how the shooting started. One theory was that the marchers used a gun to announce their presence. Another was that Bruno’s son-in-law, Tony Orlando, fired on the crowd. Still, another blamed Bruno’s son, James, for pulling the trigger.
No matter how it started, the first shot quickly turned into a barrage, so many bullets discharged in such rapid succession that newspapers reported, incorrectly, that the weapon was a submachine gun, wrote Hoover. But it was just Joe and his kin pulling triggers at the same time.
Three men were shot dead immediately, and two more died in the hospital later. At least 26 others were injured during the attack.
Police found an arsenal in Bruno’s house — more than a dozen rifles, shotguns, revolvers, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and 13 sticks of dynamite. Most damning were 19 spent shotgun shells in his second-floor bedroom. There were also guns found in his relatives’ nearby homes.
Police escorted voters to the polls the next day. It was a Democratic landslide both in Kelayres — with 662 votes for the Democratic candidate, 24 for Bruno — and throughout the state. Pennsylvania elected George Earle as Governor, the first Democrat to hold that office in more than 40 years. The results in the little town reflected a Democratic wave that swept the rest of the country.
Thousands of mourners, including the Governor-elect, attended the funerals of the five victims. Widows of the dead men shouted at Earle, “If you don’t send these murderers to the electric chair, we’ll kill them ourselves.”
Bruno and six family members — sons James and Alfred, brother Philip, nephews Paul and Arthur, and son-in-law Tony Orlando — were arrested within days.
At his first trial in January 1935, Bruno denied shooting anyone and said that the marchers threw rocks at his house. After four days of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter. More convictions followed, which meant life in prison. Bruno’s brother also got a life sentence. The other Bruno relatives were convicted of murder and sentenced to up to 20 years at hard labor.
In December 1936, soon after his petition for a retrial was denied, Big Joe got a toothache. Somewhere on the trip from the jail in Pottsville to the town’s dentist, he vanished.
Eight months later, detectives caught up with their fugitive in New York. He was living under an assumed name and in a disguise consisting of new glasses, dyed black hair and a mustache. He was quickly returned to a cell in a secure Pennsylvania prison.
By the mid-1940s, five of the other men convicted in the massacre were paroled. The sixth won a new trial and was freed.
Joe was granted parole in January 1948. He immediately returned to the scene of the crime, his home in Kelaryes, where he stayed until his death in 1951 at age 65. In his obituary, the Associated Press noted that in his last years he was “not active politically.”
JUSTICE STORY has been the Daily News’ exclusive take on true crime tales of murder, mystery and mayhem for nearly 100 years. Click here to read more.
