Catherine Denino, The Girl Who Sought Vengeance
A young girl travels across the country to shoot her cousin as he came out of a barbershop, but as the story unfolded…
The Staccato Bark of a Pistol
Young Catherine Denino went to Chicago to borrow a handgun [12]. Using the last of her savings, she traveled to and rented a room in New York [16].In a drama worthy of the cinema, she started her search for Louis Fino who had attacked her four years previous. Because he had tried to blackmail her to expose his crimes scandalously, her life was now in ruin [7]. Catherine sought her target for days, even donning glasses to disguise herself [6, 15]. When she received information that he went to the same barber every week, she decided to lay in wait. On November 13th 1926, she waited 9 hours outside his favorite barber with the intent to shoot him dead [20, 41].
“Above the roar of the street rose the staccato bark of a pistol” , a newspaper later poetically described [41]. She shot, first striking him in the chest, and then again shot him as he lifted his arm to shield himself [1, 28]. As he lay on the ground, bloody and twitching, she stood over him and fired a fatal shot. And then put the gun to her own mouth ready to end her life, but the gun did not fire, the last bullet jammed [12, 19, 28].
