Sergio Vincenza (1847-1898) was an Italian-American anarchist terrorist, sharpshooter, and political agitator. In 1898, he was wanted for the attempted assassination of the Governor of Louisiana in a planned bombing of the state capitol, and he was tracked down to rural Arkansas by the bounty hunters Arizona Kid and Iron-Sights Jones and killed in the ensuing shootout.
Biography[]
Sergio Vincenza was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Austrian Empire in 1847, and he was exposed to the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin from a young age, as his parents had supported the revolutionary Republic of San Marco in 1848 and raised Vincenza with radical political views. Vincenza's anarchist activities led to Vincenza being forced to flee to the United States rather than be imprisoned in Italy, and he settled in New Orleans, Louisiana, a city with a large Italian emigrant community. He joined the US Army and acquired immense skills as a sharpshooter, fighting against Native Americans on the Great Plains. After leaving the military, Vincenza, now a trained killer and an indoctrinated radical, turned his rifle against the American government and began agitating for anarcho-communism, preaching collectivism to the workers of New Orleans and other industrial cities along the Mississippi River. He soon gathered a small army of radicalized anarchists, and, in 1898, he planned to bomb the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge and assassinate the Governor, Murphy J. Foster. The government caught wind of his plans, forcing Vincenza to go on the run with his militant followers; they holed up at a fire lookout tower near Board Camp, Polk County, Arkansas. The government posted a hefty bounty for the death or capture of Vincenza, leading to the bounty hunters Arizona Kid and Iron-Sights Jones accepting his contract. They assaulted his tower guns blazing, and Vincenza attempted to pick them off with his sniper rifle. However, Iron-Sights returned fire and killed Vincenza, whose body was delivered to Annesburg for confirmation of his death, and for payment.
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