All Blog Posts Tagged 'Catania' (17)

By David Amoruso

A Sicilian Mafioso, who in the 1990s decided to testify against his Cosa Nostra colleagues, was shot to death on Tuesday evening in a parking lot in Chiavari, a city in Northern Italy. 70-year-old Pino Orazio was allegedly killed by a bullet to the neck fired from close range.

Orazio was known to…

By Thom L. Jones

"By knowing the men of honor, I have learned ……..that Mafia logic is the logic of power, and it always works towards a purpose. Sometimes those Mafiosi strike me as the only rational beings in the world populated by madmen." - Giovanni Falcone to Marcello Padovani

"You’re the Maradona of the law:…

This is part 2 of Three good men and their fight to the death against the Sicilian Mafia: Giovanni Falcone. To read part 1 click here.

By Thom L.…

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 Gangsters Inc. Editors

A relative of fugitive Cosa Nostra boss of bosses Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested yesterday along with five…

By David Amoruso

How much money does the Italian Mafia make? How many billions of dollars go up the chain through the organizations of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, Campania’s Camorra, and Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta? Criminology professor Francesco Calderoni did the math and came up with some very interesting numbers, numbers that many deem the most…

By David Amoruso

Italian police arrested 51-year-old Carmelo Piacente and his girlfriend, 31-year-old Simona Puccio - both pictured above - and charged them with weapons smuggling. Piacente is the reputed leader of the Ceusi clan, part of the…

By Thom L. Jones

Italians know Corleone as a small, inland town of about 12000 inhabitants, situated in the highlands of Western Sicily, approximately mid-way between Palermo and Agrigento.

We mostly know Corleone as the name of a fictitious Mafia boss-Don Corleone- the central character in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather. Although…

By Thom L. Jones

Omertà: Good is he who sees and is silent.

                                             Old Mafia saying.

Sicily is an intricate web of favors done in exchange for other favors owing among people of all class, from the humblest to the highest. The trick is to never over-estimate…

Pierre de Champlain is one of Canada’s foremost experts on organized crime. As an intelligence analyst for the RCMP he got an up close and personal look at gangsters and crimes. As an author he shared his knowledge with readers around the world. On February 26, his new book about the history of organized crime in Montreal will hit stores.

By Pierre…

By Thom L. Jones



It was bloodletting out of all proportion, even for the men who ran the Mafia in Sicily.



Eight men killed for eighteen horses.



The worst day of mass killing in its history since May 1947, when 11 people were shot dead and 33 wounded by Salvatore Giuliano’s bandit gang at Portella della Ginestra, near San Giuseppe Jato; an…

By David Amoruso

Posted on December 24, 2010



Merry Christmas everybody! And may Santa bring you all the gifts you wished for.



It seems Santa is already hard at work. Yesterday, an Italian police officer dressed up as Santa arrested a member of the…