Who was Mario Contasino, really?

A British game company is about to release an "alternate reality" video game called "Turning Point: Fall of Liberty." It is my understanding that this is one of a series of games they've produced that takes a moment in history that went one way, and imagines what would have happened if something else had happened.

Here's the scenario:

On December 13, 1931, a man looked the wrong way before crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City and was struck by a car going 30 miles an hour. He was badly injured and spent the next 8 days in Lennox Hill Hospital. The New York Times said the car was driven by a man named Mario Contasino, who lived at 300 Yonkers Ave. in Yonkers, N.Y, and who had been driving more than 8 years without an accident. He was the sole support of his father, who had been in the U.S. for 50 years, and his 2 sisters.



The pedestrian was a fellow named Winston S. Churchill. Churchill blamed himself (another Englishman looking the wrong way before crossing) and autographed a book (according to the Times) for Mr. Contasino.

What would have happened to the world if Churchill had been killed? That's the premise of the video game.

To kick off the PR for the game, the company is trying to find Mario Contasino or, more likely, his descendants. So they've enlisted an Oxford historian to help them out, and the historian has enlisted the volunteer help of genealogists in the United States. And here's what's been produced so far:

There is no record in the U.S. Census, from 1790 - 1930, of anyone with the last name of Contasino. A street-by-street check of the Yonkers Census in 1930 indicates there is no street address of 300 Yonkers Ave. A search of Ellis Island and Castle Garden immigration records records only one Contasino, Giuseppe, who arrived in 1913 at the age of 1. There are no Social Security records that record the death (from 1950 to present) of anyone named Contasino.

So far, it's a dead end.

Do you think it's possible the hospitalization was a cover-up to explain why Churchill was not seen for a while, while he travelled to [fill in the blank] to meet with [fill in the blank] about [fill in the blank]? Conspiracy theorists will have a hey-day.