Det. Joseph Pucciano died of pulmonary tuberculosis and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Green-Wood Cemetery.
For nearly 100 years, no one knew he was buried at the unmarked grave until last year when the detectives' union gave his partner a headstone.
"He was a tough, seasoned, smart, savvy, investigator, and he was, and he was dubbed by the press as the master detective the Italian Sherlock Holmes," said Scott Munro with the Detectives' Endowment Association.
He was born in Calabria, Italy, and grew up on the Lower East Side. He spoke four languages including Italian, English, Chinese and Albanian.
He joined the NYPD in 1905 and quickly rose to detective, helping to bust gangsters in Brooklyn.
His family said he was a prolific detective back in the day.
"His big achievement, there was an earlier mafia gang called the Navy Street Gang and that was his baby, that was his case, and over his career, he sent over 30 members of that gang to either prison or the electric chair, wiped out an entire mafia family, including the don," his grandson Ken Gulmi said.
Pucciano was the partner of Det. Bernardino Grottano, who was shot and killed in the line of duty in 1924, and buried in an unmarked grave.
Last year, the detectives' union similarly gave Grottano a headstone and proper funeral. That is when they discovered that Pucciano was buried right next to him.
Pucciano has three children, including a son who became a police officer himself.
On a sunsplashed spring day, Pucciano's family, including some from Georgia and South Carolina, stood atop the tallest spot in Brooklyn to officially pay their respects to one of New York's Finest, dubbed the master detective who seems to have solved one last mystery even in death.
"For us, the real joy is knowing my mom, his dad, somewhere they're up in heaven grinning about this, they were so proud of their dad they really were," Gulmi said.
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