Johnston boy’s nightmare led police to missing playmate

Eight-year-old Antonio Testa, the son of shoemaker Saverio Testa and his wife Mary of Penn Street in Johnston, awoke in the middle of the night on August 23, 1923. His loud crying attracted his mother’s attention and she went into his room. “I can see Mike,” he sobbed. “I can see his shadow.” The boy’s nine-year-old friend and neighbor Michael Turgio had disappeared two days earlier. Mary comforted her son following his nightmare and encouraged him to go back to sleep.

The next morning, Antonio was still talking about Michael and the awful dream he had. “Mike is dead in a swamp,” he told Mary. Antonio told his mother that Michael had been playing with a gun and accidentally shot him-self. Mary quickly contacted police. Taking Antonio with them, police were led that morning to a secluded swamp off King Philip Road near the Johnston town line. There, they found the body of Michael.

When police learned that Antonio had been with another boy – Henry Rossi – on the day that Michael disappeared, they went to the Penn Street home of Thomas and Mary Rossi and asked to speak to their 13-year-old son. The two boys denied knowing anything about the death of their friend until Antonio broke down. He told police that the three of them had been playing in a wooded area of the Rossi farm on King Phillip Road when, around 4:00, he was climbing on an old wagon while the other two boys were in a nearby shack. His attention was suddenly caught by the earth-shattering crack of a gunshot. He went to the doorway of the shack and Henry was holding his father’s double-barreled shotgun which had been left in the structure. Michael was lying on the ground.

Antonio told police that Henry
instructed him to go and get a wheelbarrow. They loaded Michael’s body into the wheelbarrow along with an old piece of carpet from inside the shed and pushed it about 400 yards to the top of a hill. The two boys then transferred the body of their playmate to the piece of carpeting and dragged it down to the hill toward the swamp. After depositing the body in the water, they covered it over with the carpet. Antonio confessed that he picked up the exploded shell and disposed of it.

“I didn’t know the gun was loaded,” Henry told police. He explained his fear and the amount of trouble he knew he would be in if his father discovered he had been playing in the shack, had touched the gun, had killed someone. Antonio was released from the custody of the Johnston police and his parents took him home. Henry was transported to the boys’ reform school in Cranston to await court action. Despite admitting that he had shot and killed his friend, the court entered a “not guilty” plea for him in order to give him a chance at a defense of some sort as he faced a manslaughter charge.

On September 28, the coroner’s report was submitted to the court, making the determination that Michael’s death was accidental. Henry was released.

Michael, the son of file-cutter Vincenzo Turgio and his wife Filomena (Vuocolo) was buried at Saint Ann’s Cemetery in Cranston. Besides his parents, he left several siblings to mourn an unspeakable loss.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.