They were, on the night of the slayings, unarmed.Yet, by the end of Terranova’s trial, the general consensus would be that the couple had it coming.Seven years earlier, the Riggios had offered the girl an escape from her bleak life in Italy. She was born Josephine Pullare, in 1889 in Sicily, the daughter of a man known as the town drunk. Papa was out of the picture, dead, by the time his daughter was 4 years old. Desperate to save at least one of her eight children, her mother sent Josephine across the ocean to rich relatives in the new world, the Riggios, who owned a prosperous bakery in the Bronx.Things looked bright when the 9-year-old girl stepped off the boat at Ellis Island. The couple met her with hugs and kisses and promised her a beautiful life.That life turned out to be a horror. The Riggios forced her to become their servant, responsible for all the chores in the family’s boarding house, which sometimes had as many as 16 guests. She was given little food. When she got sick, her medicine was a beating.Within two years, her uncle, with the apparent approval of her aunt, took the young girl to his bed. To keep her silent, he used terror.This went on for years, until Josephine’s mother managed to scrape together enough money to bring the whole family to America. Unaware of the abuse, Mama sent another child, Josephine’s younger sister, into the same den of sorrow.In January 1906, Riggio agreed to release the older girl to a suitor, Joseph Terranova, a building contractor from Brooklyn. Terranova, 25, had set eyes on Josephine six months earlier and was smitten by the girl, who, despite her circumstances, had matured into a beauty.The couple married in a civil ceremony on Jan. 28, 1906 and, as was the custom, she went back to her uncle’s house. There, contrary to custom, she spent the night in her uncle’s bed.