All Blog Posts Tagged 'Palermo' (41)

By David Amoruso

A secret pact between the Sicilian Mafia and the Italian State has resulted in the conviction of eight men, including Mafia bosses and police and government officials, among them a close political associate of Silvio Berlusconi. The pact was made in the 1990s to bring a halt to Cosa Nostra’s bloody war…

By David Amoruso

Organized crime in New Jersey goes way back and features some of the most colorful characters and powerhouses one can imagine. Gangsters Inc. sat down with mob author Scott Deitche, who details this rich and violent history in his new book Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New…

By Thom L. Jones

The media called them raggazzi di una stagione ‘straordinaria: “The boys of an extraordinary season.”

Beppe Montana and Calogero Zucchetto and Pippo Giordano and Roberto Antiochia and Natale Mondo and Ninni Cassarà and the rest of the Squadra Mobile, the Flying Squad. They knew what they had to do and lived their lives doing…

By Thom L. Jones

Sometimes, history makes us remember and then, at times, helps us to forget.

It’s easy to recall the first iPhone that was launched in 2007 and would come to change everything we have ever known about personal communication. Mention a judge who was blown up by the Mafia in 1983, and eyes glaze and heads shake and no one…

By Thom L. Jones

If you Google ‘Mafia’ you will get 163,000,000 hits.

If you Google ‘Cosa Nostra’ you will get 5,280,000 hits.

In 1950 the Mafia did not exist, publicly that is. Sicily knew about it, but even then, to the…

By David Amoruso

Enough is enough. In the land of Cosa Nostra and omerta, a growing number of citizens is successfully standing up to the Mafia, creating a new mindset among Sicilians. “The idea that now it is possible not to pay, that it’s safe to rebel against the Mafia, that the institutions are by your side.”

For over a…

By Thom L. Jones

These are murderers who killed a man, killed a thought, a hope, a way of being, the very idea of humanity.

- Lorenzo Matassa. Public Prosecutor. Court of Palermo, February 23rd, 1998.

In the early 1990s, a courageous Catholic priest, Giuseppe 'Pino' Puglisi, took over…

By David Amoruso

Tommaso Buscetta was the first boss of the Sicilian Mafia to break omerta and tell authorities (almost) all he knew about the secretive criminal brotherhood. Now, Italian filmmakers will produce a big-budget film to tell the story of his life and how he became The Traitor.

That, by the way, is also the movie’s…

By David Amoruso

Giuseppe Salvatore Riina, the son of Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the former boss of bosses of the Sicilian Mafia, is causing outrage in Italy this week with the release and promotion of his book Riina Family Life. While calling his father a “hero,” he refuses to discuss Cosa Nostra or his father’s murderous acts, which caused…

By David Amoruso

Mario Cuomo would’ve made an excellent cadaver, Sicilian Mafia bosses thought. The New York governor was targeted for assassination by Cosa Nostra during a trip to Italy in 1992, a time when the Sicilian mob was waging an all-out war on the Italian state, resulting in the deaths of countless policemen, judges, and…

By David Amoruso

Vincenzo Bontà, the son-in-law of Sicilian Mafioso Giovanni Bontade, was shot dead in Palermo yesterday. Bontà (45) was killed along with 53-year-old Giuseppe Vella. The pair was murdered in a very narrow part of the Via Falsomiele in Palermo, leaving them no chance to escape. Two suspects have been arrested by…

AMERICA’S BOSS OF BOSSES MURDERED AT HIS OFFICE

By David Amoruso

Salvatore Maranzano had made it. After eliminating his arch rival, Joe Masseria, in April of 1931, he had become capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses, of …

“FREEZE!” SO I CAN SHOOT YOUR HEAD OFF!

By David Amoruso

Before he became Cosa Nostra’s boss of bosses and his leadership style earned him the nickname The Accountant, Bernardo Provenzano was known as The Tractor. Long explanation short: He was a mean SOB and stone cold…

AL CAPONE WISHES RIVAL GANGSTERS A HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

By David Amoruso

On Valentine’s Day most people are thinking about their loved ones. Husbands browse the stores in search for that one gift to tell the wife how much they love her, while…

MOB COPS: LICENSE TO KILL

By David Amoruso

As you have read in our three other stories, a gangster in police uniform is one deadly motherfucker. Still, he has nothing on an actual police detective who has no qualms about pulling the trigger on whoever and who has the ability and power to operate above the law.…

Photo: The aftermath of the bomb attack on the A29 motorway near Capaci, Sicily, that killed anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards.

By David Amoruso

As ISIS’ reign of terror is sending shockwaves through Europe, many of us are left guessing and…

By David Amoruso

Palermo businessmen have had enough. For years they’ve been extorted by local Mafia clans who came to collect the “pizzo,” but today, ANSA reports, 36 of them made a firm statement by helping police bust 22 Mafiosi who were terrorizing their shops and lives.

Thanks to the businessmen police were able to identify and…

By Thom L. Jones

The photograph has been appearing for over thirty years. It is one of the most iconic and yet at the same time, distorted images of what the Sicilian Mafia is about: Control by force. It is almost always headed a Mafia killing in Corleone. This is the misrepresentation. The act of violence occurred, in fact, in a suburb of Palermo.

It has appeared in…