The Disappearance of Carmen Bueno

By Liza Stewart

Carmen first came to the attention of her fellow countrymen with the launch of her career as an actress. With her medium length dark hair cut into a sophisticated modern style and her dark eyes, her natural beauty soon caught the attention of filmmakers...until she became a filmmaker herself and while investigating some shady characters...went missing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201329808

Book preview

THE MURDER OF SAL MINEO

AMY DUNCAN

Sal Mineo

Being in the same room with him and looking at him, I realized that one day I would be in the same position as he, facing death. Before it happens I mean to do the things I want to do. I will not end up saying, I wish I had".[1]

When Sal Mineo said those words about his dying father, nobody could have predicted that just four short years later, he would, himself, be facing death.[2]

Salvatore and Josephine

Salvatore Mineo Sr moved to America from Sicily in 1929, when he was just 16 years old. He had a strong work ethic and took on any job he could get to earn money, mostly manual labor. He could turn his hand to most things, and worked as an apprentice of sorts to carpenters and builders alike, sawing wood and laying bricks. To supplement his income he also sold small animal figurines, which he would carve out of wood or ivory.

It didn’t take the young Sicilian long to find love in the Big Apple, and he set his sights on Josephine Alvisi - an American-born Italian girl who wouldn’t even entertain the idea of dating Salvatore until he could speak English. So he learned, amazing Josephine with the speed with which he had picked up the language.

Josephine was impressed with her young suitor’s determination and felt it boded well for the future. So much so, in fact, that the couple married at the age of just 18, in 1931.

By the time their first child, Victor, was born in 1935, Salvatore had a steady job working as a cabinet maker. Two years later Josephine gave birth to Michael. According to Sicilian custom, a third son is named after his father so when, on January 10th, 1939, another baby boy was born to the couple, he was named Salvatore.

The family home was a Harlem apartment, but when, shortly after Salvatore’s birth, a murder took place outside the building, Josephine and Salvatore Sr. moved their family to a fourth-floor apartment in the Bronx.

By the time Salvatore Jr. came along, his father was working as a casket maker for the Bronx Casket Company. The determination which had so impressed Josephine in the beginning continued, and Salvatore Sr. worked hard, sometimes late into the night to provide for his family. Josephine would tell him that he should be working for himself instead of for someone else, and after their fourth child, Sarina, was born three years after Sal, the family started to seriously think about setting up in business for themselves.

The couple had no money – it was hard scraping by on Salvatore’s wage, but friends and family gave him the collateral he needed, and in 1946 the Universal Casket Company was born.

Sal’s Early Years

The basement of the building which held the Mineo’s apartment was home, in the beginning, to the company. It was slow work – Salvatore Sr. was a meticulous worker and would turn out one or two caskets a week. While her husband was the craftsman of the business, it was Josephine who was the driving force. She saved hard and when she had managed to collect $160 (around $2000 today[3]) she enrolled on a course in business studies. Not only did she take over the bookkeeping of the business, but the ambitious young mother and wife also undertook the securing of orders so that her husband could concentrate on making the caskets.

Although the business premises were in the same building as the apartment, it was a struggle with four young children. Left to their own devices while both their parents worked downstairs the siblings would get into all kinds of mischief – playing on fire escapes, on the street, and even filling balloons with urine and dropping them from the