Sicily - Blog 2.0 - Gangsters Inc. - www.gangstersinc.org
2024-03-29T10:17:49Z
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/Sicily
Profile of Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-bernardo
2013-05-21T19:00:00.000Z
2013-05-21T19:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236982066,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2006 - Updated in 2016</p>
<p><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-of-bosses-bernardo-provenzano-dead-at-83">Cosa Nostra boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano dead at 83</a></strong><br /> <br /> Bernardo Provenzano was born on January 31, 1933 in Corleone, Sicily. After the second World War Provenzano joined the Mafia Family of boss Michele Navarra and became an enforcer for Luciano Leggio in that Family. In a short time Provenzano and another young man named Toto Riina, who would later become known as one of the most vicious Mafia bosses ever, became Leggio's most trusted enforcers. They were feared and had a reputation. Leggio said of Provenzano: "he has the brains of a chicken but shoots like an angel". He also gained the nickname "The Tractor", because "he mows people down". With people like Riina and Provenzano and his own fearsome reputation Leggio grew more powerful and eventuelly became a threat to Navarra. Navarra acknowledged the threat and decided it was time to eliminate Leggio so he could continue his rule. Navarra sent a group of his men to ambush Leggio and whack him, they failed and only wounded him, with the help of Riina he escaped. Now it was Leggio's turn to strike. He put together a group of hitmen, which included Provenzano and Riina, to take out Navarra. And Leggio's group of hitmen succeeded where Navarra's men failed, Leggio's group ambushed Navarra while he was driving back from a meeting. The group of young assassins riddled the car in which Navarra sat with bullets. In the end the car was pumped with 112 bulletholes and Navarra and another person who happened to be along for the ride were dead. With Navarra out of the way Luciano Leggio became the new Godfather.<br /> <br /> Navarra's death made a lot of Mafiosi unhappy and not only because they lost an ally but also because it was a breach of the Mafia code that you didn't whack your boss. These Mafiosi as well as Navarra supporters who wanted to avenge their boss made it very dangerous for Leggio and his two enforcers Provenzano and Riina. In the early 1960s the heat became too much for Provenzano, sensing that he would soon be arrested or whacked he took off and disappeared in the countryside of Sicily. While he was on the run he became the father of his two sons and spent his days looking over his shoulder. The Italian authorities had declared him a missing person and eventually thought he was whacked and his body would soon be found. But they couldn't be further from the truth. While on the run Provenzano had continued his criminal career, a career that came to new heights when his old pal Toto Riina became the new boss. While Riina took care of the violent aspect of mob business and stept into the front, Provenzano was hidden taking care of the money aspect of mob business. Provenzano made sure everybody paid and all the Mafiosi got their share.<br /> <br /> As the drug money came flowing in a powerstruggle started over who was to control it. Riina went on a rampage in a war that would leave 800 Mafiosi dead. And when the government decided that it was enough and started cracking down on the Mafia Riina hit back. Two top prosecutors were killed by bombs. Anyone who opposed was found dead. The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mafia-state-trial-exposes-italy-s-corrupt-political-system">campaign of terror</a> that was supposed to scare off the people and government had the opposite effect, the government went on even harder and the public was now in their favour. The people had seen the brutal image of the Mafia and were sickened by it. As the hunt for Riina became more intense Provenzano was still hidden from everybody and presumed dead. When in 1992 his wife and children returned from the countryside and back in the open, talk about Provenzano's death flared up. However without a body who could be sure.<br /> <br /> On January 15, 1993 in Palermo, Sicily <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Toto Riina</a> was arrested by Italian police. The arrest of Riina placed Provenzano at the top of a criminal empire under fire by competition and law enforcement, changes needed to be made. Under Provenzano the Sicilian Mafia steered away from it's terror tactics towards the government and went back into the underworld. Out of sight the Mafia restructured, returning to it's roots. Under Provenzano the Sicilian Mafia had once again become the invisible power and had expanded it's interests while keeping clear from law enforcement. Provenzano commanded his troops via cryptic, handwritten notes transported by key members. There were occasional visits and very occasional summits with Mafia leaders, but otherwise Provenzano was a ghost, presumed dead but feared to be running the most powerful Sicilian Mafia in decades. Police believed he spent most of his time in western and central Sicily going from one safe house to the other. In January of 2001 police intercepted several letters by Provenzano to his family. Proof that he was still very alive. The letters were as close as police got to Provenzano he seemed unfindable. While other bosses and Mafiosi had been caught one by one Provenzano had now been on the run for over 40 years.<br /> <br /> Then on April 11, 2006 the unbelievable news broke: Bernardo Provenzano had been captured. Provenzano was arrested while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily. Authorities said their lucky break came when they tracked a package (it turned out to be clean laundry) that had been sent to Provenzano by his wife, who lived in Corleone. Provenzano put up no resistance and acknowledged his identity after first denying it. He appeared surprised to be caught, police said. He was flown to Palermo and taken to the main police station there.<br /> <br /> Provenzano will live the last years of his life in prison. He had been sentenced in absentia to life in prison for more than a dozen murders including the murders of anti Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.<br /> <br /> <strong>Also read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/italian-prison-too-tough-on-mafia-boss-provenzano">Italian Prison Too Tough On Mafia Boss Provenzano?</a></strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
The Slaughter at Slaughterhouse Square
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-slaughter-at-slaughterhouse-square
2011-09-16T11:00:00.000Z
2011-09-16T11:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-slaughter-at-slaughterhouse-square"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003461,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237003461?profile=original" width="487" /></a>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> It was bloodletting out of all proportion, even for the men who ran the Mafia in Sicily.<br /> <br /> Eight men killed for eighteen horses.<br /> <br /> 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 act that many historians believe was in fact instigated by the Mafia on behalf of political patrons in Palermo and Rome. <br /> <br /> Those people died to protect the ambitions of others and the reputations of men who never had them to start with.<br /> <br /> The dead in Palermo’s Settecannoli district were gunned down to feed revenge and perhaps again, to satisfy Mafia politics. <br /> <br /> Sometime during the late evening of October 17th, 1984, a group of gunmen entered a squalid, dingy, group of stables, on a narrow lane leading off the Piazza Scaffa in the working-class district known as the ‘Bronx’ of the city, lying to the south and east of the main Palermo central city area, and killed eight men. <br /> <br /> Next morning, the police received two telephone calls, informing them of a shooting at the stables. The first ‘Flying Squad’ cars came hurtling down the Corso dei Mille, lights flashing, horns blaring everyone awake.<br /> <br /> They arrived just after eight, turning off the Piazza Scaffa and crawling down the dirt track, north, past the piles of wreckage, rusting auto hulks and small mountains of garbage and junk. <br /> <br /> As they pulled up in the small square, <em>Cortile Macello</em>, Slaughterhouse Square, outside the stables, they saw an elderly man dragging a blood soaked corpse out of the building and towards a battered old Fiat 127. They stopped him and checked the body, the mutilated head, wrapped in a wool sweater. The dead man was subsequently identified as Paolo Canale, a young man, twenty-four years old, who lived by scavenging junk and rubbish in the area.<br /> <br /> The man told the officers that horses were running wild in the stables and that they were trampling on his son’s face. He couldn’t bear to see that, and so he was taking him home. <br /> <br /> Moving into the feculent atmosphere of the dilapidated courtyard, the officers found two dead men lying face down in the mud and animal manure, next to a water trough, horses wandering around, stepping over the corpses.<br /> <br /> Moving cautiously into the first of the two stable buildings, through the mass of skinny, red-skinned foals, the ram-shackled building lit only by a single, naked light bulb swinging gently in the morning breeze, they found among other horses, hooves splashed in bright red blood, two more men, sprawled loosely in death. Moving into the second building, overpowered by the stink of animal ordure and rotten straw, the policemen found inside, three more dead.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004053,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004053?profile=original" width="487" /></a>The courtyard and buildings were soon filled with a mass of police investigators. Hardened as they must have been to the violence and death which filled their lives, wading as they did, through the never-ending sewer of crimes flooding a city which had become more like Beirut than Palermo since the explosion of the second Great Mafia War in 1981, many of these men must have found it hard to keep their breakfasts where they belonged.<br /> <br /> The medical experts and forensic specialists arrive and soon determine that all the bodies have been shot, repeatedly. Autopsies would disclose each man received wounds from shotguns and pistols.<br /> <br /> The investigators re-constructed the massacre:<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004090,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004090,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004090?profile=original" width="335" /></a>A group of gunmen, maybe ten or more (although later reports indicated it may have been as few as two) had arrived late the previous evening, probably around midnight or 1: AM. <br /> <br /> They kill the first three victims. This group including Paola Canale, died outside the stables, near the water trough. The five survivors retreated into the stables where two are shot down in the first chamber. The three remaining men scrambled into the second stable where they were trapped-no external doors or windows. Lined up against a back wall they are cut down, collapsing in a tangled heap in this dark, smelly chamber of death. It is all over in minutes. <br /> <br /> The killers leave. Night takes over. <br /> <br /> The dead are all young men. The oldest thirty-eight, the youngest twenty-three. Four are linked by kinship, the others connected by friendship or job opportunity. Shot repeatedly, some are initially unrecognizable-ruptured flesh, shattered bones and brain matter sprinkled around and on the bodies, the confetti of violent death broadcast by grim reapers who come, kill and disappear without any apparent dislocation to the people who live all around in this miserable part of the city. News of the massacre was in fact circulating around the neighbourhood before the police arrived.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004276,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004276,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004276?profile=original" width="408" /></a>Among the detritus of the stables-old saddles, bridles, bits and other horse-tack, the investigators find a religious card pinned to a beam. It says:<br /> <br /> <em>Heart of Jesus bless and protect our family</em>. <br /> <br /> The bodies are collected in sheets and carried by undertakers wearing rubber gloves out of the buildings, and placed into wooden coffins before being shipped by vans into Palermo City and the morgue.<br /> <br /> Slaughterhouse Square was the property of a man well-known to the law in an area often under police observation, as a place where drug-dealers, extortionists and petty criminals would gather.<br /> <br /> The stables belonged to a man called Giovanni Ambrogio, father of eighteen children, who had himself, according to pentiti Stefano Calzetta, been shot dead in March 1981 by the men of the Corso dei Mille Mafia clan, lead by the fearsome and unpredictable Filippo Marchese, a man who it was claimed personally murdered fifty-eight of his victims and at times would masturbate as he watched them die lingering deaths. <br /> <br /> Ambrogio was repairing a scooter in the yard when a gunmen walked up and shot him four times in the head. A junk dealer (scrap metal), Ambrogio was a man who operated on the fringes of the Palermo underworld. He had apparently fallen foul of Marchese’s clan in a dispute over stolen trucks.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005661,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005661,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005661?profile=original" width="133" /></a>Marchese himself was murdered in 1982 and his place was taken by Pietro Vernego (right), a major drug trafficker, known as ‘Bazooka Eyes’ because of his piercing stare. An equally terrifying man, it was claimed he had personally murdered 100 men, burying their bodies in liquid cement or having them dissolved in acid.<br /> <br /> In their initial investigation of the mass killing at Slaughterhouse Square, the police were certain of only one thing. Vernego would have had to give his blessing. Nothing of this magnitude could have gone down without his okay. An act as egregious as this needed to be signed off by the Mafia potentate of Settecannoli/Brancaccio at least; maybe endorsed by others.<br /> <br /> Two days after the massacre, the families of the dead men congregated in the mortuary on the ground floor of The Institute of Forensic Medicine in Ospedale Cirico on Via Carmelo Lazzaro in Palermo City.<br /> <br /> Pushing the police guards aside, they performed the age-old Sicilian ceremony of dressing and preparing their dead for burial. It was a short journey from the hospital to the Cemetery of Sant’Orsola. It’s unlikely any of the two hundred people who gathered for the burial service, humble people accustomed to living with hardship and violence in their lives, would have dwelt on the significance of the graveyard and the nearby Chiesa dello Spirito Santo-church of the Holy Spirit. It was here, according to legend, that Sicilians had risen up against the tyranny of the French occupation forces in 1282, leading it was believed, to the formation of the Mafia.<br /> <br /> If any of them had, the irony of the situation would surely have not been lost: the Mafia created according to this legend, by the workers to protect the workers gathered in this very graveyard, was now responsible for welcoming eight of those same workers to their graves in this same place.<br /> <br /> Within days, the police had pieced together the movements of the dead on that final, and truly fateful day.<br /> <br /> The eight men, arriving from different parts of the city, converged on the stables at Slaughterhouse Square with the inevitability of a train heading for a viaduct that was no longer there. <br /> <br /> Cosimo and his brother Fransceso Quattrocchi were horse traders and butchers. Cosimo and his wife, Pietra Lo Verso, also ran a butcher shop in the city, in the famous market at Piazza di Ballarò. <br /> <br /> Salvatore Schimmenti, who was known to the police, but as more of a ‘minor’ delinquent than a serious criminal, was employed by the Aquedotto Sicilliano, the national water supply agency for Sicily, and was also involved in the horse trading business, working part-time for the Quattrocchi brothers. Cosimo and Marcello Angelli were cousins of the Quattrochis, and worked for them from time to time as required.<br /> <br /> The previous September, Francesco Quattrocchi and Schimmenti had travelled over to Molfetta in Puglia to purchase a small herd of horses, mainly foals, which arrived late on Thursday evening at the Palermo railway station. The five men had herded the horses into a large van, making two trips to deliver them to the stables in Settecaloni.<br /> <br /> Waiting there to meet the deliveries were three men:<br /> <br /> Giovanni Catalanotti, who hawked fruit and vegetables around the neighbourhood of Corso Dei Mille, and stabled his horse here. Another minor criminal, he has been arrested for carrying an illegal weapon. <br /> <br /> Also at the yard were Paolo Canale, a trader in scrap metal and junk, who nevertheless, according to his wife Lucia Russo, made a good living, earning up to 100,000 lira a day, and Antonino Federico, an unemployed bar-hopper, well-known in the Piazza Scaffa area. His father, Raffaele and his five brothers were all fishermen. He was the only one not to take to the sea as a livelihood.<br /> <br /> The eight all died in a blazing crescendo of noise and light and were left scattered around the yard and stables like broken and discarded dolls.<br /> <br /> The father of Paolo Canale, worried why his son had not returned home the previous night, had arrived at the stables to find himself in a parent’s worst nightmare and in his grief and confusion only wanted to return his dead son to the family. He was trying to do this just as the first police arrived on the scene. <br /> <br /> The authorities puzzled over the motives for this mass murders. A killing of this magnitude seemed to indicate a powerful force in play. In Sicily, this would almost always indicate the Mafia.<br /> <br /> Among the many hypothesis explored were:<br /> <br /> Perhaps the Quattrocchi brothers had decided to stop paying the local Mafia family protection and had been taught a lesson as an example to others.<br /> <br /> Had the men been involved in some sort of drug trafficking operation that had gone badly wrong? The police scoured the stables and surrounding areas using trained drug dogs and even X-Rayed some of the horses in case they had been forced to swallow bags of drugs.<br /> <br /> Did the killings link into the lucrative world of clandestine horse racing in Palermo, or the black market in butchering and selling the meat of stolen horses? Illegal racing of horses was endemic in Sicily, with at times whole streets in cities sometimes closed off for events to take place. It was estimated that the Mafia could be making up to $500 million a year from this enterprise across the island.<br /> <br /> Gery Palazzotto, the author of <em>Fotofinish</em>, a book on the subject of illegal racing in Sicily, claimed ‘it is absolutely clear that Cosa Nostra was up to its neck in these races.’<br /> <br /> Was there a connection into the murder of a Quattrocchi cousin, another Cosimo, shot dead in a pig-sty in February, 1982, in Misilmeri, nine miles south of Palermo City?<br /> <br /> Did the brothers Quattrocchi use their premises for illegal gambling and did this lead to the murders?<br /> <br /> Days before the killing, pentiti, Tommasso Buscetta’s evidence had led to arrest warrants being sworn out against 366 suspected Mafiosi across Sicily. Perhaps the slaughter in Settecannoli was simply confirming that despite the police crackdown, the Mafia families of Palermo were still all-powerful and fully in control of their districts. They could kill when and how they pleased. This mafia had no intention of raising the white flag! The killings were simply affirmation of their power.<br /> <br /> Pietra Lo Verso, the wife of Cosimo Quattrocchi was questioned by the chief of police at the Carini barracks.<br /> <br /> ‘Your husband did something, or they would not have killed him,’ he said.<br /> <br /> ‘It was Antonino Fisichella from Catania who did it,’ she said. Lo Verso knew what she knew, and it was this:<br /> <br /> One day, her husband had brought home for lunch, five men from the province of Catania. One of them he called ‘Uncle Ninu’, a tall, distinguished looking horse-trader named Antonino Fisichella who lived and ran his business in Zafferana Etnea. Cosimo entered into an agreement with him to purchase horses for his butchering business. Fisichella guaranteed Cosimo protection from any outside interference, but only on condition that the Quattrocchi’s bought their animal stock only from him.<br /> <br /> At some stage, the Catania horse-dealer started sending Cosimo butchered meat in contravention of Palermo’s bye-laws that meat had to be slaughtered locally. In due course, the authorities discovered the infringement, and suspended Cosimo’s license.<br /> <br /> It seemed the problem was eventually resolved, and Fisichella sealed their arrangement with a gift-a gilded, ornamental clock, embraced by painted shepherds, topped with a fake Fabergé egg. <br /> <br /> Cosimo however, had lost faith in the dealer from the other side of the island, and started negotiating to buy animals from a dealer on the mainland.<br /> <br /> When he was away organizing the purchase, Fisichella phoned asking for him, and in all innocence, Pietra told him her husband was in Bari.<br /> <br /> As Clara Hemphill said in her article <em>Life and Death in Palermo</em>:<br /> <br /> ‘Don’t eliminate the middleman when the middleman is a Mafioso.’ <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005873,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005873,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005873?profile=original" width="145" /></a>Pietra Lo Verso would wonder in the months to come whether or not she had signed off her husband’s death certificate while he was still alive.<br /> <br /> Six weeks after the killings, the police arrested three men from Catania province.<br /> <br /> The warrants were signed off by Palermo judiciaries Guido Lo Forte, Dino Cerami and Paolo Giudici following intensive investigations between Palermo and Catania involving the wholesale meat trade and the part played in it by the Mafia. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005694,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005694?profile=original" width="243" /></a>The three men were all connected into the Mafia clans of Catania run by Salvatore Pillera (left), or by Benedetto Santapaola (right), who himself was on the run from the law for his involvement in the killing of Vito Lipari, the mayor of Castelvetrano. <br /> <br /> The police also indicted the two main clan heads of the areas adjacent to the killing site:<br /> <br /> Pietro Vernengo, boss of Corso dei Mille and Carmelo Zanca, who called himself, <em>Senor Lupo</em>, and who headed up the Torrelunga cosca just to the south.<br /> <br /> The three men from Catania were: Antonino Fisichella, Antonino Resina and Agatino Castorina.<br /> <br /> Giuseppe Marchese, a nephew of Fillipo, who became a pentiti or informer for the state against the Mafia, confirmed that Salvatore Riina the Sicilian boss of bosses had wanted to embarrass ‘Pino’ Greco the head of the <em>mandemento</em> that controlled the area of Brancaccio/Settecaloni. This is, in the Sicilian Mafia, a district of generally three or more geographically contiguous Mafia families controlled by a senior capo or boss. <br /> <br /> Riina was at odds with Greco, and for him (Riina) to endorse a crime of this magnitude without informing the man who controlled the whole district would send a strong message to the rest of the Mafia clans across the island. ‘Pino’ was out of favor. He was no longer in Toto Riina’s heart, so to speak. <br /> <br /> Riina would often de-legitimize an opponent in the Sicilian Mafia by the spread of slander or by ‘sneak’ moves like this as a prelude to weakening his support within the organization.<br /> <br /> ‘Pino’s own time would come late in the following year when he was shot dead by two of his best friends in his home, in September 1985. By then he had developed, according to informants, into a hopeless cocaine user, becoming not only an embarrassment for Cosa Nostra but, also a real danger because of his addiction. Riina had the body dissolved in acid and then spread the rumor that ‘Pino’ had skipped to America to lay low for a while. A long while as it turned out.<br /> <br /> Paolo Borsellino the famous anti-Mafia judge who was murdered in 1992, was allocated the case of the murdered horse dealers et al. He and his team of prosecutors gathered the evidence and presented it at trial.<br /> <br /> It was generally suspected that the killers were after Cosimo Quattrocci and that the other seven victims were collateral damage. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were witnesses to the murder of the butcher, and so were eliminated.<br /> <br /> The first trial was adjourned in favor of the defendants as was the second. All the accused were acquitted by order of the Palermo Corte di Assise d’Appello.<br /> <br /> Attorney General Vittorio Algro said of the judgment:<br /> <br /> ‘The contested decision is the result of incomplete and biased assessment of the findings of the proceedings. It is flawed in several respects and unacceptable in the inconsistencies and illogical interpretations of what was determined.’<br /> <br /> The crux of the appellants appeals were based on the testimony of pentiti Vincenzo Sinagra, and the disclosures of Tommaso Buscetta, a Mafioso who had returned to Sicily to help the anti-Mafia judges lay the groundwork for what became known as ‘The Maxi-Trial’ in which hundreds of Mafiosi were tried and convicted, in Palermo, in 1986.<br /> <br /> Both of the these men had in effect confirmed that the massacre could not have taken place without the consent and approval of the local clan heads. And Fisichella would not have had the power to operate in Palermo without the approval of Benedetto Santapaola who in turn would have sought the blessing of the Mafia’s omnipotent czar in Sicily, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina. <br /> <br /> The prosecutors in their summary, had hammered away at their belief that the crime was undoubtedly a crime of the Mafia. It was unthinkable that the murder of eight people committed in an area of strong Mafia presence, could be carried out without the permission of the Mafia boss of that area.<br /> <br /> However, the presiding judges determined in their own strange and convoluted way that as these men, the boss of Catania and the two local clan chiefs, were not currently ‘on board’ so to speak, all three of them being fugitives from justice, then they could not have given their approval, and therefore could not have been responsible for what happened. There could be no connection. Therefore there could be no verdict of guilt.<br /> <br /> Without this link being proved to the judge’s satisfaction, the case in their opinion, had no legs. Two minor players in the case, horse traders from the mainland, Biagio D’Amico and Rocco La Torre were acquitted on their charges of perjury<br /> <br /> It may well have been a classic attribute substitution cognitive bias-making a complex, difficult judgement by unconsciously substituting an easier judgement<br /> <br /> The judge’s decision was handed down on April 12th. 1988.<br /> <br /> The wives and families of the murdered men had to gather together the broken threads of their lives and somehow carry on.<br /> <br /> Pietra Lo Verso was the only one to come forward as a plaintiff at the trial.<br /> <br /> In court, she came face-to-face with Antonino Fisichella, identifying him for the judge.<br /> <br /> ‘I’ve never seen this woman before in my life,’ he said.<br /> <br /> ‘You’ve had dinner in my house,’ Pietra replied. ‘I can tell you what you had to eat.’<br /> <br /> The horse trader looked down at her and told her she was mad.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately the judges agreed, and concluded her story was a wild exaggeration.<br /> <br /> Following the furore generated by notorious Mafia killings prior to Piazza Scaffa- the 1971 assassination of Judge Pietro Scaglione, the murder of Carabinieri Colonel, Giuseppe Russo in 1977, and the blatant hit on the chief of the Palermo Squadro Mobile, Boris Giuliano, in a bar, in 1979, as well as the killing of Michele Reina, the Palermo head of the Democratic Party, in the same year, followed by the murders of Piersanti Mattarella, president of the Region of Sicily and Captain Emanuele Basile of the Carabinieri in 1980, and then the wholesale attack against the judicial system with the killing of Chief Prosecutor Gaetano Costa in August 1980, and the slaughter in 1983 of Judge Rocco Chinici and three others by a bomb placed in a car outside his apartment building- the massacre at Settecannoli/Branccacio aroused the interest of the Italian Parliament. <br /> <br /> On October 23rd at a session of the IX Legislature in Rome, Vice-President Giuseppe Allaro fielded questions about the recent killings. Politicians demanded to know what measures the government intended to take for the prevention and repression of Mafia crimes. Slaughterhouse Square represented a most serious and blatant attack on society-a level of intimidation above and beyond the mere settling of score between gangs of criminals, but more an attack by the Mafia on the whole community.<br /> <br /> The Mafia, for the previous 50 years, like Leafy Spurge, the weed that plagues the American West had been digging down and establishing roots that once established would be almost impossible to eradicate. Giuseppe Allaro and every sane man in the government knew it was not going away quickly.<br /> <br /> The rampage and killings of the 70s and 80s, became a reign of terror generated by the ambition of Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina, the psychopathic terminator from the Corleone clan. He instigated the slaughter of hundreds of people- rivals in the Mafia, members of the judiciary, investigators and policemen, both state and carabinieri, reporters, businessmen, and the ones that would be known as <em>excellent cadavers</em> or ‘distinguished corpses,’ the servants of the state <br /> <br /> And the hundreds of others- people simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, including wives and children as well as husbands and brothers and fathers and boyfriends – using sawn-off shotguns, Kalashnikovs, acid vats, liquid cement, and the bombs, so many bombs, going off all over the island. And even worse if that could ever be possible, the ones who simply disappeared, recipients’ of what was known in the trade as <em>lupara bianca</em>, the white shotgun. <br /> <br /> To paraphrase William Shakespeare, the politicians could protest too much, but to what avail? <br /> <br /> Jonathon Jones a journalist with The Guardian newspaper claims the art of politics is an Italian invention - politics as a self-conscious way of acting and thinking. A modern awareness that human affairs are not transparent, but devious, complex and unpredictable, dates from the Italian Renaissance with its mixture of ruthlessness, ambition, fantasy, failure and self-knowledge given voice by the first modern political thinker, Niccolò Machiavelli. The Mafia may have been alive then, in some form or another, and if so, would have undoubtedly agreed.<br /> <br /> As long as the balance of power within the Christian Democratic Party lay with the votes controlled by the men of the Mafia in Sicily, the truth would also be the first victim.<br /> <br /> In the exquisite novel <em>The Leopard</em>, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, about a Sicily in perpetual transition, the author describes the instability of truth in Sicily: ‘Nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily: a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, annihilated by imagination and self-interest: shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves on the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether’<br /> <br /> Giuseppe di Lampedusa ruminated in his book:<br /> <br /> ‘This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments to the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us... All these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.’ <br /> <br /> The principal character in the book, the Prince of Salina, claims that Sicily’s passion is a love affair with death; that a desire for the grave obsesses the island's culture and will seep out of Sicily to poison the new Italy.<br /> <br /> ‘Our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our languor, our exotic vices, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death again.’<br /> <br /> In Sicilian tradition, the drive for power and the accumulation of riches are considered a prelude of death. The Mafioso acts with the finality of someone running a race he knows he is destined to lose. Giovanni Falcone, in his last interview with French journalist Marcelle Padovani referred to the Mafia as the ‘culture of death,’ insisting that this qualification applied not only to the Mafia, but also to everything<br /> Sicilian. He went on to say:<br /> <br /> ‘Solitude, pessimism, death are the themes of our literature from Pirandello to Sciascia. It is as if we were people who have lived too long and all of a sudden feel tired, drained, emptied, like Don Fabrizio in <em>The Leopard</em>. Affinities between Sicily and the Mafia are many. I surely am not the first to say so. If I do it is not to incriminate all Sicilians. On the contrary I do it to make clear what is the battle against Cosa Nostra. It requires not only a specialization in the subject of organized crime, but also a special interdisciplinary preparation.’<br /> <br /> As 1984 was drawing to a close, Sicily had to be content with the anguish and sorrow generated by the slaughter at Slaughterhouse Square of the eight unfortunates who were simply trying to make a living in a city that at times seemed a hopelessly inhospitable place, as a way of satiating this desire.<br /> <br /> It was becoming all too obvious that the state had become a sclerotic element in the presence of Mafia intimidation-a simulacra of a government lost to the trade-winds of a force beyond its control.<br /> <br /> There were at least ten more years of agony and heartbreak ahead for an island in the sun that seemed to live most of the time in the dark shadow of death.<br /> <br /> Pietro Vernego, Benedetto Santapaolo and Carmelo Zanca were all eventually arrested and are now serving life sentences at prisons across Italy for various acts of criminality. Antonino Fisichella and the two other men from Catania province disappeared from public view and are now merely names on documents archived and consigned to history.<br /> <br /> Clara Hemphill, the American author and former CBS television reporter, visited the widows of the slain men in November, 1984. She found them living in vast, anonymous housing estates in the poor, working-class districts of the city.<br /> <br /> With their husbands dead, they struggled to manage their family lives and survive in a society that seemingly had little time for people who lived on the fringes of the underworld. The deck was stacked against them, these <em>popolini</em>, the underclass of Sicily, and their future was uncertain. Their will to even just survive, would be a true <em>sfrida</em>, a challenge, but one beyond monumental.<br /> <br /> The men who killed the butcher Quattrocchi and the other seven men that night, not only destroyed their victims, they also dislocated their families for a generation, or more. And what may have been worse, with their men gone, it was after all for really nothing, and the dead were soon like all the dead, history.<br /> <br /> Giovanna Terranova the widow of Judge Cesare Terranove, assassinated by the Mafia five years before Slaughter House Square, remembered, ‘Being killed is terrible, but being forgotten is even worse. It’s like dying twice.’<br /> <br /> And for why?<br /> <br /> To satisfy greed or anger or avenge an insult? <br /> <br /> Or did the killings take place simply to send this message to the authorities: <br /> <br /> The Mafia was still the boss, and that the revelations of Buscetta and Contorno and all the pentiti to follow, and the Maxi-Trial and the prison sentences, would simply create a stumble, but the Mafia would never fall down, no matter what the State tried to do.<br /> <br /> It was here to stay and everyone would have to just settle down and accept that.<br /> </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Thom L. Jones' Mob Corner</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Thom L. Jones & Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
La Primula Rossa: The story of Luciano Leggio (Part 1)
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/la-primula-rossa-the-story-of
2011-02-10T08:00:00.000Z
2011-02-10T08:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/la-primula-rossa-the-story-of"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995290,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236995290?profile=original" width="428" /></a><br /> <strong>Part One</strong><br /> <br /> By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> <em>There is only one Mafia, neither old or young, neither good nor bad, there is only the Mafia that is a criminal association.</em><br /> <strong>Cesare Terranova. Order of Indictment gainst Luciano Leggio+115 August 1965, Antimafia: Doc.,Vol 4, t. XVII, pp 506ff.</strong><br /> <br /> Antonino Calderone, the under boss of the Catania Mafia clan in eastern Sicily, described Luciano Leggio to the authorities, as he was being debriefed by them in 1987, following his decision to cooperate with the law:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>He liked to kill. He had a way of looking at people that could frighten anyone, even us Mafiosi. The smallest thing set him off and then a strange light would appear in his eyes that created silence around him. When you were in his company you had to be careful how you spoke. The wrong tone of voice, a misunderstood word, and all of a sudden that silence. Everything would instantly go hushed, uneasy, and you could smell death in the air.</em>’ <br /> <br /> John Dickie in his book Cosa Nostra recalled, ‘<em>his features were an emblem of capricious terror</em>.’<br /> <br /> Another who knew of him, said he was a ‘<em>dog with no master, ready to go for a priest, an old woman, a policeman or anyone else.</em>’<br /> <br /> He ruled the small town of Corleone like some feudal lord of the manor, and became at times, the driving force of the Sicilian Mafia in the second half of the twentieth century, with power so absolute, he was able to exercise his will over it at times, even from the confines of a prison cell. If the pathology of power was exercised across the island by forces legal and illegal, none did it better than the man with more nicknames than any character dreamed up by Theodore Seuss, the most appropriate by far being il sanguinoso -the bloodthirsty one!<br /> <br /> Corleone translated from the Sicilian Cunigghiuni, in English means something close to ‘Lionheart.’ But the small, undistinguished community, established in the ninth century by Muslim invaders, squatting beneath rocky crags, a thousand feet above sea level, had the look more of a ghost town, with its shuttered windows, houses narrowed in on each other, crumbling buildings, and a minatory procession of deserted streets and blind alleyways scoured dry in the summer months by the hot Sirocco wind blowing in from North Africa and the Sarah Desert. Outside the town, as Tomasi di Lampedusa described it in his iconic novel on Sicily, Il Gattopardo: <br /> <br /> ‘<em>lay the boundless countryside of feudal Sicily, desolate without a breath of air, oppressed by the leaden sun</em>.’<br /> <br /> The town square stood guarded by an imposing statue of St. Francis, its hands raised to the skies, ostensibly in hope, in reality, probably in desperation. It was a place that had lived in perpetual hopelessness, as generations of its men folk had either become part of the Mafia, or had been destroyed by it. The people who lived here, measured the passing of days by the dates of men killed on the streets rather than passing of seasons. <br /> <br /> Il Giorno del Morti-the Day of the Dead- is celebrated throughout Sicily in November. Here. in the dismal nightmare of Corleone, every day would be an anniversary day. People accepted egregious behaviour as the norm rather than the exception.<br /> <br /> The cemetery was the most colourful place in town, only a short distance from the town centre. Immaculately kept, filled with flowers, its rows of graves and avenues of tombstones testimony to the busiest industry in the area.<br /> <br /> It took a writer from Brooklyn called Mario Puzo, and a Hollywood movie director called Francis Ford Coppola, to shape the name into something more, romanticizing the bleak in-hospitality of this lost part of the mezzogiorno into a fable of gangsters with heart, using the appellation of the town as a synonym to perpetrate a great myth about the Mafia. <br /> <br /> The fictitious Don Corleone of ‘The Godfather’ and the real Corleone of central-western Sicily (photo below) have commonality only in the imagination of the most ardent romantic dreamer. For the hundreds of men who died in and around this Sicilian heartland, the town’s name evoked images of a darker nature. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995895,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995895,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236995895?profile=original" /></a><br /> <br /> And none epitomized this darkness more than Luciano Leggio.<br /> <br /> He was born on a misty, winter morning in January 1925, in a hovel at 2 Via Lanza, close to the police barracks, the fourth of seven children of Rosa Maria Palazzo and Francesco Paolo, an itinerant peasant, who scraped out a living in the countryside outside the town of 11000 people. <br /> <br /> His siblings were:<br /> <br /> Maria Antonina born in 1910<br /> Girolama, born in 1913<br /> Carmela born 1921<br /> Carmelo, who was mentally retarded, born 1927 <br /> Salvatore born 1930 and<br /> Bernarda born 1935<br /> <br /> When he was eighteen, perhaps inducted by the Mafia doctor, Michele Navarra, Luciano Leggio joined the Corleone cosca, or Mafia family, which although numbering less than a hundred members, was long established as the major political and social force in the region.<br /> <br /> Agostino Vignali, a sergeant in the squad that policed the town and surrounding area in 1945, drew up a list of suspected members which totals over forty. These were people he believed to be men of honour. He knew that for every Mafioso, there was one or more of the tough young men, cagnolazzi, waiting to fill up the numbers.<br /> <br /> Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, a young captain in the carabinieri, commanding the Corleone squadriglia or squadron of the military police, (Italy has a bewildering range of police departments. In addition to the military, there are: city, state, financial, forestry, border and penitentiary police,) posted to the town from northern Italy in the 1940s, recorded in his notes: <br /> <br /> ……<em>the Mafia-their unscrupulousness and reputation for violence...both are key elements in a vast network</em>. <br /> <br /> In October 1949, he produced the first post-war comprehensive dossier on the Sicilian Mafia, creating a breakdown of the Corleone cosca and indicting Dr. Navarra and Leggio in the murder the previous year, of trade union leader, Placido Rizzotto.<br /> <br /> Thirty years later, this network would destroy him and many other key figures in the judiciary, as it determined to impose its will on the government of Italy.<br /> <br /> Leggio’s talents as a killer without conscience, were quickly recognized by an organization that could never get enough men like him on their books. He had dropped out of school in the fourth grade, to avoid his parents’ plans to have him enter the priesthood, and did not learn to read or write until he was well into adulthood. By the age of 12 he was an excellent marksman, and could handle almost any firearm he was given. <br /> <br /> He soon became known locally, as cocciu di tacca, literary ‘bean on fire,’ or hot-head. He was also often referred to by his name in the Sicilian dialect: Lucianeddu.<br /> <br /> Shrewd, ruthless and cunning, but unable to read and write, there is a story handed down over the years that in his late teens, he laid the barrel of his pistol on her breast and ordered a young teacher to instruct him, and she did.<br /> <br /> All his life he was troubled by Pott’s disease, a tubercular spinal ailment-tuberculosis spondylitis-(probably caused by drinking un-pasteurized goat’s milk as a child,) that forced him into wearing a cumbersome wooden brace, which he later replaced with a solid silver one. He walked with a pronounced stoop, leading some people to refer to him as mulacciuni, in the Sicilian dialect, ‘hunchback,’ but never to his face. He was a sickly, frail, semi-cripple, pale as a sheet, Arrested in his youth, a police officer wrongly transcribed his name, and for the rest of his life, he was often referred to as ‘Liggio.’<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996481,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996481,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236996481?profile=original" width="355" /></a>In 1989, in a television interview with Enzo Biagi, he confirmed the correct pronunciation of his surname, saying he was happy to have people believe his name was Liggio (right). Disinformation is after all, the trade-mark of a good Mafioso.<br /> <br /> Leggio was at the beginning, simply a peasant-scassapagghiara-literally a thief stealing sheaves of wheat, and this is what brought about his first killing.<br /> <br /> Calogero Comaianni, worked as a guardia campestre-a rural watchman. He and two other guards-Pietro Splendido and Pietro Cortimiglia- caught Leggio and Vito Di Frisca stealing wheat, loading it onto the back of a mule, and as one source claims, <em>Comaianni kicked the little runt’s backside all the way to the carabinieri barracks in town.</em> <br /> <br /> Leggio served three months in prison for this and as he always did, never forgot. Six months later, on March 27th 1945, he tracked Comaianni across Corleone and shot him dead outside his home in Via Sferlazzo. Although the crime was witnessed by the victim’s wife, Maddalena Ribauda, and her son, Carmelo, and an accomplice of Leggio’s called Giovanni Pasqua, who later confessed and implicated him, the case against Leggio dragged on for eighteen years, and he was acquitted twice. Comaianni may have been his first mark, although it is possible he was killing before this. He was just nineteen years old when he pulled the trigger on his rifle that rainy, dark spring morning.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996082,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996082,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236996082?profile=original" width="224" /></a>A month after killing Comaianni (photo left), on April 29th, he murdered Stanislao Punzo who was the campiere, or estate guard of land owned by Doctor Corado Carruso. This guard had caught him stealing a bag of grain. He brazenly assumed the dead man’s position, and soon after forced the doctor to hand over the estate to him. He became the youngest gabelloto, or estate manager in Sicily. <br /> <br /> He was the prime suspect in a third killing that of Leolucca Piraino, killed on February 7th 1948, although Leggio was acquitted of this murder on June 21st 1950.<br /> <br /> A month later he became involved in a homicide that would have repercussions across Sicily for years to come.<br /> <br /> Leggio was the prototype of the new Mafia. He and his followers had nothing in common with the older generation of Mafioso who controlled the secret society across Sicily. For Leggio, it was all about money, making his name early as a phenomenally successful cattle thief. He was something quite new to the world of the Sicilian honoured society: a hybrid between the local home brewed mobster and a fusion of American-style gangsterism repatriated to Sicily from the United States.<br /> <br /> Italian jurist, Piero Calamandrei, believed that Sicily should be considered the ‘central incubator of American criminality.’ He could have been right. And if it was, Corleone was not just part of the incubator, but the insemination centre as well.<br /> <br /> Giuseppe Morello, born here in 1867, may well have been one of the earliest ‘mob’ bosses in America, forming a gang of criminal associates in New York around the end of the 19th century, which has since morphed into what is to-day known as The Genovese Crime Family. Gaetano Dragna, born twenty years later, moved to California, and as Tom Dragna, headed up the West Coast Mafia for many years. Gaetano Reina born the year after Dragna, came to lead the powerful Mafia clan in New York known to-day as the Luchese Family. Calogero Rao, and Giovanni Schillaci and Giacomo Amari and countless more, upped-stakes and left the town for fresh pastures in America, helping to transplant and nurture the criminal virus of the Mafia that would come to find such a welcome host in major cities across the United States.<br /> <br /> The Sicilian Mafia had no formal name, as members saw no need for one. Nonetheless, in many Italian publications the term Cosa Nostra was and is used to distinguish the Sicilian Mafia from other criminal networks that are also sometimes referred to as ‘Mafias’ (such as Camorra, the ‘Neapolitan Mafia.’)<br /> .<br /> When the American Mafioso Joseph Valachi testified before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations in 1962, he revealed that American Mafiosi referred to their organization by the term Cosa Nostra (‘our thing’ or ‘this thing of ours’.) <br /> <br /> At the time, it was understood as a proper name, fostered by the FBI and disseminated by the media. The designation gained wide popularity and almost replaced the term Mafia. The FBI even added the article to the term, calling it La Cosa Nostra (in Italy this article is not used when referring to the Sicilian Mafia).<br /> <br /> Italian criminal investigators did not take the term seriously, believing it was only used by the American Mafia. Then, in 1984, the Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta, revealed to the anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone that the term was used by the Sicilian Mafia as well. (Dibattimento. Volume 1, P. 104.) According to Buscetta the word ‘Mafia’ was a literary creation. Other defectors, such as Antonio Calderone and Salvatore Contorno, confirmed this. <br /> <br /> It was claimed the term Cosa Nostra was exported to America by expatriated Mafioso in the early 1920s, but it is also quite conceivable that the expression actually came back into Sicily from the United States as its place of origin, with people like Charles Luciano, Frank Coppola, Angelo Di Carlo, Frank Garofalo, Vincenzo Collura and others who had been banished from America for their criminal activities. <br /> <br /> Leonardo Messina, the pentiti stated in his testimony at the Anti Mafia 11th Legislature in December 1992:<br /> <br /> <em>It is not the first time that Cosa Nostra has changed its name or skin!</em><br /> <br /> Mafiosi introduced known members to each other as belonging to Cosa Nostra (‘our thing’) or La Stessa Cosa (‘the same thing,’) e.g. ‘he is the same thing, a Mafioso, as you.’<br /> <br /> The Sicilian Mafia and its predecessors, has used a bewildering collection of names to describe itself throughout its history, such as La Fratuzzi-‘Little Brothers’ or Stuppagghiari-‘Cork Stoppers’ or Fratellanza-‘Brotherhood,’ or Mano Fraterna, or Scalione or Zuggio, or Fontana Nuova. <br /> <br /> Mafiosi are generally known among themselves as ‘men of honour’ or ‘men of respect.’<br /> <br /> For Leggio’s Mafia family boss, things were different. For him, the life was a matter of power and prestige, and being a man of substance and honour. Money was important, but came somewhat low on the list of his desires. He may have been a man apart from his peers in this generation, as according to Salvatore Lupo, author of History of the Mafia, the ‘old Mafia’ of dei giardini, worshipped two gods: wealth and the vendetta.<br /> <br /> In post war Corleone, 30 miles south-east of Palermo, the capital of Sicily, Doctor Michele Navarra was the mayor, chief medical officer, director of the local hospital, inspector of health for the area, head of the local Social Democratic party, president of the Cultivator’s Association of Corleone, a decorated Knight of Merit of the Italian Republic, medical adviser to the State Railways; more eggs than an average basket could carry.<br /> <br /> Born in Corleone on February 5th, 1905, the eldest of eight children to Giovanni, a middle-class teacher and land surveyor, he had graduated as a medical doctor in 1929 after first studying as an engineer at Palermo University. He took up a position in 1931 as a doctor at the hospital in the town. He served during the war in Trieste as an officer in the medical corps, rising to the rank of captain.<br /> <br /> On his return to Corleone in 1942, he set up as a practice doctor, and dabbled in politics, first with the Liberal Party then switching sides to the Christian Democrats, which rose rapidly to power following the 1939-45 war. To many observers, the ascension of the C.D. party was based almost entirely on the Sicily vote block which was guaranteed them by the various Mafia capos across the island, in addition to the votes in Reggio Calabria and all of southern Italy. In return of course, there would always be favours that would be required.<br /> <br /> In two short years, he consolidated his power base and rose rapidly to become a major figure in the town. It seemed he had everything, but he lusted after something else and so Navarra mortgaged his soul to the Mafia in return for a position of absolute power, and was soon to be one of Sicily’s top ten bosses, according to an Italian anti-Mafia Commission hearing held in 1971, helping run the town, collecting taxes and ministering to the needs of the community, mainly for his benefit as well as that of the local, wealthy landowners. <br /> <br /> The top men under the previous Mafia rappresentanti, Calogero Lo Bue, agreed to work under the doctor. These were: Carmelo Lo Bue, the brother of the previous don, Pietro and Calogero Majuri, Angelo Ciro, Fancesco Vintaloro, Giovanni Tromadore, Angelo Di Carlo, Michele La Torre, Giovanni and Pasquale Lo Bue, Giovanni and Antonino Majuri and Carmelo Pennino. Their acceptance of Navarra as the new boss brought the rest of the cosca into line.<br /> <br /> It is unclear just when Navarra assumed the leadership of the Corleone family. Calogero Lo Bue did not die until 1954 when he finally succumbed to diabetes. It seems reasonable however, to assume that as age and illness took their toll on him, he handed over control to the doctor some years before his death.<br /> <br /> A tall, heavy and corpulent man, unkempt and with a florid expression, Doctor Navarra went through life with a sensitive and haunted expression, and always looked as though life had done him wrong. A truly lugubrious person, he had a habit of gently clapping his hands very softly together as if in time to music, when he wanted to accentuate a point he was making. He had a passion for cards and hunting, good food and wine and the pursuit of the dynamics of diadem. <br /> <br /> The people of Corleone believed he radiated sciusciare. In the local dialect it meant that a powerful man created such authority that the very air seemed to move in his presence. It was a quality almost unreservedly bequeathed to a man of the Mafia. They also referred to him as omo de panza, omo de stanza-man with a belly, a man of substance.<br /> <br /> His face was marked by the habit of command, born from greed and arrogance. Letizia Battaglia the famous Palermo based photographer of the Mafia, recognized this look twenty years later, as she travelled the city, taking black and white images of the dead as they fell onto the streets in their hundreds, their wives prostrated with grief, and the men who made it all happen.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236997074,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236997074,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236997074?profile=original" width="212" /></a>Navarra (right) would arrange the cure of sick people on the one hand, but on the other, organize to have some of them killed when it suited his agenda. The Corleone Mafia and indeed the people in the town, referred to him as U Patri Nostra, ‘Our Father,’ and when people said his name, they made the sign of the cross. <br /> <br /> Apart from running the Ospedale dei Bianchi, the Bianchi Hospital, the management of which he assumed after the sitting head, Dr. Carmelo Nicolosi, was murdered, allegedly on his command by Leggio on April 29th 1946, (shot dead with the lupara, the sawn-off shotgun favoured by shepherds when protecting their flocks. A rumour spread that the murdered doctor had been playing loose with married women in the town, hence his sudden and extreme demise) carrying the candle on all his extra-curriculum activities and heading up the local branch of the Sicilian Mafia, he had a major interest in an illegal slaughter house located in the huge, rambling Ficuzza Forest that girdles the north and eastern slopes of the Rocca Busambra, the highest peak in Western Sicily, just to the north-east of the town. <br /> <br /> Abigeato, clandestine slaughtering of livestock, was big business in rural areas of the island after World War Two. In 1952, a raid here in Ficuzza by the carabinieri, discovered a stash of illegal stock numbering 900 cows, sheep and pigs, an enormous number for such a poor and deprived area.<br /> <br /> The doctor also operated one of the largest transport companies in the region, AST (Azienda Siciliana Trasporti) which was run by one of his brothers, Giuseppe. His two other brothers held down good jobs in the ‘real’ world. One was a banker, and the other, Salvatore, was on the medical faculty at Messina University, respected as a renowned pathologist. <br /> <br /> Dr. Navarra lived with his wife in the Piazza Sant Orsola, a little square just down the street from the Chiesa Madre, the Mother Church of the town, which stands at the junction of Via Bentivegna and Via San Martino. This church is unique in one very particular way. Fitted to a pew, five rows back from the alter, is a brass plaque commemorating the good doctor for his dedication to the poor people of Corleone. He is almost certainly the only Mafioso in history who has been so honoured by the Catholic Church.<br /> <br /> During his first two years as mayor, there were 57 murders in the town, all attributed to the business of crime. One of the more celebrated, was the killing of Placido Rizzotto, the trade unionist, dispatched by Leggio and two associates on the night of March 10th 1948. The killing was witnessed by a twelve year old sheep herder, Giuseppe Letizia, who then rushed screaming into the town’s square, babbling to the crowds gathered there, about the horror he had witnessed: <br /> <br /> A group of men dragging another man into a disused farm house, beating him repeatedly then one of these men shooting him over and over again.<br /> <br /> Taken to the hospital the next day, he was attended to personally by the good doctor, who calmed him down and administered an injection to soothe his terror. The boy died within hours. Navarra declared it was the result of ‘toxicosis’ and the youth was cremated without an inquest being held. <br /> <br /> Navarra was assisted by another hospital doctor, Ignazio Dell’Aria, who wrote out the death certificate, but was so distressed by what had happened he left the town shortly afterwards, and immigrated to Australia. Rizzotto had been killed on Navarra’s orders, to prevent union problems developing among the workers who serviced the estates that surrounded Corleone. Young Giuseppe was simply collateral damage.<br /> <br /> Corleone had been the strategic centre of the peasant reform movement Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori, ‘The Sicilian Leagues,’ since the movement was created in the1890s, supported by between three and four hundred thousand workers across the island. The first union contract with the agricultural workers and employers was drawn up here in 1893. The poverty of farm workers and their families in Sicily is hard to comprehend to-day. Some, lived and died without ever eating meat. Families of six would exist for a week on the amount of food one person would consume in to-days civilized world in one twenty-four period. According to author John Follain, ‘families cooked spaghetti and soup made from wild herbs in the same bucket of water they also used to wash their feet. A goat was allowed to roam freely through the house as if it were a holy animal because its milk saved the children from dying of tuberculosis.’<br /> <br /> Journalist Adolfo Rossi, visited Corleone in 1893. He wrote for La Tribuna, a major Italian newspaper based in Rome. On his return to his office, he put out a number of reports about what he had seen on his visit to Sicily, and in one said:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>In this island, in the middle of areas that are heaven on earth, there are others that seem like Africa, where thousands of slaves labour on land belonging to a handful of great lords. Indeed, they are worse off than those ancient slaves, who had least had their bread guaranteed.</em>’<br /> <br /> A young, altruistic believer in the freedom of the working man, Placido Rizzotto had no room for the mythology of the Mafia and their so called code of honour, even though his father Carmelo, was associated with the Corleone cosca and had been for over thirty years. <br /> <br /> Placido had arranged to meet Dr. Navarra who he thought was returning this evening on the last bus in-bound from Palermo. They were to discuss details regarding farm labourer lists that covered the Ficuzza district. It was of course, a setup. The doctor never turned up.<br /> <br /> Instead, kidnapped from the heart of the town on a busy, unusually warm March evening, thirty-four year old Placido Rizzotto (photo below left) was bundled into a Fiat 1100 parked outside the church of San Leonardo and taken north to a deserted farm estate in the Malvello district where he was shot three times by Leggio, according to the testimony of one of the men involved in the kidnapping. He was the 35th union organizer to have been murdered by the Mafia in Sicily.<br /> <br /> There was only one eye-witness to the abduction, a young man called Luca. <br /> Now 85, he recalled that night when interviewed by La Sicilia newspaper in 2005. He remembered three men manhandling Rizzotto and the unionist shouting, ‘That’s enough, let me go.’ <br /> <br /> They didn’t of course, and the rest became part of Sicily’s history.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996895,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996895,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236996895?profile=original" width="177" /></a>Carmelo, his father, along with Giuseppe Di Palermo, Placido’s brother-in-law, went the next day to the carabinieri barracks. With heavy heart, Ccarmelo reported his son missing. He feared he had been kidnapped and murdered by the mafia. He knew only to well how the honoured society worked. After all, he was one of them.<br /> <br /> Placido’s remains were subsequently recovered six hundred and forty four days later, on December 14th 1949, from a chasm in the granite mass fronting the slopes of the Rocca, along with pieces of Michelagelo Randisio and Angelo Gullota, and traces of the son of Mateo Capra, the son of Angelo Gullotta and bits and pieces of many more. Victims of the Mafia, left to rot in their own special burial place.<br /> <br /> They sent Pio La Torre to replace Rizzotto. Another young, idealistic believer in defending the rights of the poor and oppressed. The Mafia waited thirty-four years to kill him, but in the end, in 1982, they did.<br /> <br /> Although Leggio’s accomplices, Pasquale Criscione and Vincenzo Collura junior, the son of a recently repatriated American hoodlum, who had been closely connected to mobsters in New York, subsequently confessed to the murder, implicating him in the crime, he was never convicted, his case being heard by three different judges over the next thirteen years, who all acquitted him.<br /> <br /> The tip-off on the abduction and killing came from an informant, Giovanni Pasqua, (the same man who had been with Leggio when he killed Calogero Comaianni,) interred in the Uciardone Prison in Palermo. He passed on to the prison governor that Criscione and Collura were linked into the kidnapping and in turn, they confessed when arrested and taken to a carabinieri barracks outside Corleone.<br /> <br /> In the court of appeals, held in 1959, Leggio’s lawyers, Dino Canzoneri, Girolano Bellavista, Tommaso Romano and Giovanni Ruvolo, successfully argued that the confessions of Criscione and Collura in the murder of Placido Rizzotto had been obtained by the use of police brutality at the Bisaquino carabinieri barracks, on December 4th 1949, and were therefore, inadmissible. Accordingly their client Leggio, could not be part of any disclosure made under duress. He was never convicted for his part in the murder of the union activist.<br /> <br /> Navarra was arrested on April 13th 1948, (following a front page disclosure in the newspaper L’Unita that the young boy had died in mysterious circumstances,) for his involvement in the death of the boy, Leitizia, but not convicted. <br /> <br /> On the recommendation of the carabinieri officer in charge of Corleone, Colonel Alfredo Angrisani, he was sent into compulsory internal exile in Gioiosa Ionica, (Reggio Calabria), for five years. However, thanks to his contacts with friendly politicians and men in power, in particular Angelo Vicari, soon to be head of the Palermo police, he returned to Corleone in 1949. In Calabria, forming one of the first partnerships between the Sicilian Mafia and mainland organized crime, he established close relationships with charismatic 'Ndrangheta boss Antonio Macrì who headed up his own ‘ndrine, or family mob clan, in Siderno.<br /> <br /> The killing of Rizzotto had been ordered by the doctor, who had a biological thread linking him into the first killing of a union activist in Corleone, that of Bernardino Verro, who was gunned down in the town in 1915. <br /> <br /> Verro’s place in the history of the Sicilian Mafia is guaranteed on two counts:<br /> <br /> He had actually joined the Corleone branch of the Fratuzzi, the precursor to the Mafia, and worked with them against the reforms being instigated by people such as himself, before experiencing his own personal epiphany and then breaking off his connection, and when he was killed, the authorities found in his home, notebooks and diaries that were filled with information about the illegal organization, including what may well be the first ever account of an initiation ceremony, very similar to what we understand happens in the Mafia of to-day.<br /> <br /> Twelve years after his killing, on August 13th 1927, the Civil and Criminal Court of Palermo in its proceedings against Santo Termini and Vito Todaro, well-known Mafiosi in western Sicily stated in its findings:<br /> <br /> <em>There is a vast criminal organization commonly known as ‘maffia’ seeking enrichment of its members by any means that are successful. To impose itself on the hard-working people, to exploit and keep them in a state of awe and terror.</em><br /> <br /> One of Verro’s killers was believed to be Angelo Gagliano, Navarra’s uncle, although he and ten other men suspected in the plot to murder the labour unionist, were never convicted of the murder, which came as no surprise to the long-suffering inhabitants of a town that featured violent death as the special on its menu of daily despair.<br /> <br /> Gagliano’s time came in 1930 when he himself was gunned down in the never-ending struggle for domination in the Corleone underworld.<br /> <br /> Vincenzo Collura senior, the father of the man involved in the killing of Placido Rizzotto, had fled Corleone following the fascist ‘cleansing’ of the Mafia on the island in the 1920s.<br /> <br /> Benito Mussolin became Italy’s 40th prime minister in 1922. He appointed Cesare Mori as Prefect of Palermo, charging him with the eradication of the Mafia in Sicily. Over 11000 people were arrested between November 1925 and June 1929, and a countless number died in mysterious circumstances or simply disappeared while in police custody. Like a witch hunt that belonged in the Middle Ages, or a return of the Holy Inquisition of Spain, that had terrorized Sicily from 1601 until 1782, anyone remotely connected into anyone who may have been involved with the Mafia was fair game. Mori was like a cyclone sweeping across the Mafia landscape of Sicily, sucking up everything in his path. <br /> <br /> He had been present at Mussolini’s visit in 1924 to Piana dei Greci, when the mayor and local Mafia boss, Ciccio Cuccia, dismissed the need for police protection as he would ‘personally guarantee Il Duce’s safety,’ implying he was more powerful than the head of government, called his attack on the Mafia, ‘Plan Attila,’ and proceeded with wild abandon to implement whatever he seemed to think was necessary to his strategy. As many Mafia killings took place by men shooting from behind walls, he ordered that all walls on the island be reduce to three feet or less within twenty-four hours. He decreed that all stabbing or cutting weapons be barred, but allowed herdsmen to keep on carrying their short-handled axe. What followed of course, was an epidemic of murders caused by this type of weapon!<br /> <br /> People would refer to Mori who became known as ‘The Iron Prefect,’ as ‘the man with hair on his heart.’ His name actually translated literally into English as ‘die.’ He went to Bisaquino, south of Corleone, the fiefdom of the famous Mafia don, Vito Cascioferro, and gathering the people into the square, declared, no doubt with tongue in cheek:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>My name is Mori and delinquency must disappear or I shall have people killed. If Sicilians are afraid of the Mafia, I'll show them I'm the meanest Mafioso of them all</em>.’ <br /> <br /> Working in partnership with Luigi Giampietro, the Prosecutor General of Palermo, who tried and convicted many notable Mafia figures, such as Vito Cascioferro and Calogero Vizzini, according to author Salvatore Lupo, amidst terrorist excesses, the conviction of innocent defendants and political persecutions, they met and soundly beat the Mafia. <br /> <br /> As Norman Lewis remarks, however, in his inestimable account of the Mafia, ‘The Honoured Society,’ the effect of the Mori repression could only be temporary, as at best is scythed the heads off a crop of weeds when what was needed was a change in the soil and climate that produced the crop.<br /> <br /> Mori harvested well though, in one particular town. <br /> <br /> At dawn on December 20th 1926, a massive combined force of state police and carabinieri swept into Corleone to round up the known Mafiosi and their associates in the town. A list of 150 names, turned up only half, the rest having been forewarned, escaping into the mountains of Western Sicily, or finding their way out of Sicily either to the mainland, or to America. In all, during the Mori purge of Sicily, as many as 800 Mafioso created their own Diaspora of despair into New York and other major cities in the United States.<br /> <br /> The huge law enforcement roundup collected the suspects, and in chains, the men were led through the streets of the town like shackled animals, and gathered at an open area called Piano de Borgo north of the Via Bentivegna where they were loaded onto trucks and dispatched to the huge Ucciardone prison in Palermo, which became known as ‘Villa Mori’ as it filled up with his prisoners. <br /> <br /> In the years ahead it would develop another appellation: ‘The Mafia University,’ as it filled with mobsters, old and young, novices and battle-scarred vets who passed on their knowledge and experience to the tyros, helping them mature their skills and develop the skin of deceit and treachery needed for a successful career in the biggest industry on the island. <br /> <br /> One of these shackled and humiliated men, chained and sent to prison for 4 years and seven days was Carmelo Rizzotto.<br /> <br /> The man in charge of the arrest exercise was Corleone police chief, Ansalone Liborio. <br /> <br /> Sicilians have long memories, and in a country where vendetta is almost part of the island’s DNA, Liborio must have surely realized he was living on borrowed time. It ended for him on September 13th 1945. Collecting a bag of groceries, he was crossing Piazza Nace on the way to his apartment in the Institute Canzoneri, when three rifle shots echoed across the square and he fell dead onto the cobbled street, next to the fountain.<br /> <br /> Although no arrests were made ion connection with his murder, there was no way anyone would kill a top police officer in the town without the approval of the local Mafia don-Michele Navarra. The god doctor often jokingly commented that these kinds of deaths were caused by a ‘kick from a mule.’<br /> <br /> Following a government decree created on November 5th 1932, which was in fact an amnesty, fifty-six of the Mafiosi who had fled the purge of Prefect Mori, returned to the Corleone area. These included dominant characters like Salvatore Pennino, Pietro Mairui and Salavtore Gennaro, who quickly re-established themselves back into the fabric of the Mafia tapestry of the town.<br /> <br /> There were still years of conflict and confusion ahead, but according to Francesco Spano, who had been a young commissario under Cesare Mori, in his memoir, ‘Faccia a faccia con la Mafia,’ a meeting was held in September 1945 at the Tasca estate of Lucio Tosca Bordanoro, the mayor of Palermo, near Villalba, the seat of Mafia don, Calogero Vizzini, at which, ‘the ancient society of the Mafia, in which all the cosche of Sicily were represented, was duly reorganized,’ following the upheaval caused by World War Two. <br /> <br /> Vincenzo Collura had settled in New York, where he became a close associate of Mafia boss Giuseppe Profaci (to the point that he became a godfather to one of his children,) and other New York Mafiosi, in one instance, officiating as best-man at the wedding of Frank Coppola. He was deported back to Sicily in 1936 setting his sights on taking over the leadership of the Corleone cosca, but it was not to be. <br /> <br /> Although he was apparently recommended and endorsed for this post by an Italian-American gangster who was perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of his time-Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, a man himself to be deported from America back to his birth country-Sicily- in February 1946, and he was the nephew of the incumbent boss Lo Bue, Navarra perhaps had a strong ally in the form of a man called Angelo Di Carlo. (For more on this, check out <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/luckys-luck-how-charlie">Lucky's Luck</a>)<br /> <br /> Born in Corleone in 1891 and a Mafioso, (as a young butcher, he had been a suspect in the killing of Bernardino Verro in 1915) he was one of the many who had fled Mori’s purge, sometime in 1925 or 1926 when he arrived in New York at the age of thirty-five. He had lived in America for almost twenty years. A tall man, with brown eyes and a heavy build, he ran a travel agency with his brother, Galogero, in New York. The FBN targeted him as a drug trafficker, among other things, using the business as a front. It’s interesting to speculate that Di Carlo may have been instrumental in helping Dr. Navarra’s campaign to take over the Corleone cosca.<br /> <br /> AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories) commander Charles Poletti, was encouraged to recommend the re-placing of mayors into towns and villages as an urgent measure following the allied force’s occupation of Sicily. Many of these were also Mafioso. In fact, 90% of the 352 newly appointed mayors were either Mafioso or people linked into the Separatist movement which was inextricably allied to the Mafia.<br /> <br /> While AMGOT was busy helping re-establish the Mafia, wittingly or otherwise, the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) had recognized the dangers inherent in this. Captain W.E. Scotton, early in 1944, produced a report on the Mafia presence in Sicily warning of ‘the signs of Mafia resurgence and its perils for social order and economic progress.’ <br /> <br /> The OSS had allied with the Mafia as part of the invasion strategy of the Allies in their assault on Sicily, and the agency kept close to them in order to check the growth of the Italian Communist Party on the island. There was also the very real danger that the Sicilian Separatist Movement, led by Finocchiaro Aprile, in alliance with the Mafia, would use the turbulent times to try to free itself from Italian hegemony.<br /> <br /> Di Carlo was allegedly a captain in the US Marines who was assisting in this re-establishment exercise, and would have obviously supported Dr. Navarra who was in fact his cousin. It would have been a short step from backing a mayor to backing a new boss of the other side of Corleone. There is, however, doubt that Di Carlo was even in Sicily, as he was deported back to Italy sometime after 1947.<br /> <br /> Until his death twenty years later, at the age of seventy-six, he seems to have kept a relatively low profile. At one time he was involved in the management of the Palermo Racecourse at Park Favorita, and had some connection into Leggio’s activities on his estate near Corleone. He was warned by the courts in 1964 for conspiracy and meeting with ‘delinquents’ including Leggio, but nothing seems to have come of this.<br /> <br /> Antonino Sorci, known as Ninnu u Riccu, ‘Nino the Wealthy,’ from all the profits he made as a drug dealer, may well have been, along with his brother Pietro, the instigator of the ‘Mafia war’ which ravaged the centre of the city of Palermo for two years in 1956-57 as the mob struggled to control the Mercati Generali, or general produce markets, resulting in dozens of deaths. He was the personal assistant and representative of Charles Luciano, in Palermo, and confirmed at a Mafia hearing that Angelo Di Carlo was definitely a ‘man of honour.’ <br /> <br /> Following his ascension to Mafia family boss of Corleone, as a concession, Navarra granted Collura control over what was known as ‘The Lower Area’ while maintaining one of his closest confidants, Antonio Governalli as head of ‘The Upper Area.’ <br /> <br /> These areas referred to ‘The Stacks of Corleone’ the two huge limestone crags that dominate the town-Castello Soprano and Castello Sottano-that were formerly guard castles linking the walls of the medieval city.<br /> <br /> Governalli was backed by Giovani Trombadore, and Collura by Angelo Vintaloro and Antonino and Giovani Majuri, all men loyal to the doctor. He recognized Collura for what he was-a threat and a danger to his position as the boss of the town. From the day he arrived, Collura was a stone in the shoe of Michele Navarra. <br /> <br /> Fourteen years later, he would sort it.<br /> <br /> Michelangelo Gennaro had been the capo of Corleone’s Mafia until his death in 1924. Born in 1864, he was, like so many of his peers across western Sicily, an estate manager. In 1920, he created the Corleone Agricultural Club, ostensibly where like-minded farm managers could meet and discuss business. It was in fact a social club for the local mob until Cesare Mori closed it down on December 17th 1926. <br /> <br /> When Gennaro died, his place was taken by Angelo Gagliano, (another suspect in the murder of Verro,) who in turn was followed by another doctor of medicine, Marcellino Benenti, who fled Corleone in 1930 to avoid arrest by the carabinieri, and he himself, was replaced by 41 year old Calogero Lo Bue, who had been capo of the Mafia cosca in Prizzi before taking over Corleone. <br /> <br /> Before Gennaro there were others of course. When Danilo Dolci the famous author and reformist visited the town in the late 1940s, he was told of some of these. There were Mariano Coletti, and Vincenzo Crisciune, and before him, Cici Figattlu, and before him Piddu Uccedduzzu and then before him Mariano Cuddella. <br /> <br /> Giuseppe Battaglia had been a boss as far back as the late 19th century and before, having been born in1846. There had been capos of criminal groups, and bandits and then the Mafia, or as it was called the Fratuzzi, ‘Little Brothers,’ as long as memory recalled.<br /> <br /> Gagliano’s sister was Navarra’s mother, so the doctor’s pedigree helped ensure that he stepped into the job when it became vacant. His promotion was endorsed by possibly the three most powerful Mafiosi on the island-Calogero Vizzini, Genco Russo and the fearsome Vanni Sacco, boss of Camporeale who had the mayor of his town, Pasquale Almerico, shot so full of holes that when they lifted up his body, the bullets fell out like coffee beans spilling out of a bag. One hundred and eleven in all.<br /> <br /> Antonino Calderone, the pentiti from Catania, claimed Biaggio Carnevali alias ‘Funcidda’ was really the head of the Corleone family and that Navarra was simply a rising star in conflict with this meteor called Leggio. It may well have been the truth. <br /> <br /> Lampedusa in his book, describes the instability of truth in Sicily: ‘Nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily: a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, annihilated by imagination and self-interest: shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves on the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.’<br /> <br /> That, and the other thing certain about Cosa Nostra, was and is, its uncertainty for its members.<br /> <br /> Luciano Leggio went quietly about building up his own crew within the family, and developing his Abigeato sideline. <br /> <br /> At some time in his late teens, he had joined up with the notorious cattle rustlers, the Barbacia family. They came from Godrano, a small village on the other side of the Rocca Busambra to the east of Corleone. They had been carrying on a vendetta with the Lorello family, also rustlers since 1918. Over sixty men would die before the feud died out itself with the shotgun murder in 1959 of ten year old Antonino Pecoraro, the last male on the Lorello side who would have been forced to carry on the grudge, had he survived. <br /> <br /> In 1944, shortly after Leggio became part of the gang, Francesco Barbacia, ‘lu zu Cicciu’ the head of the clan, disappeared and Leggio became the leader. He was only nineteen, and already known throughout the town and surrounding countryside as a sanguinoso, a bloodthirsty youth, already showing a glimpse of his violent and psychopathic nature.<br /> <br /> By his early twenties, he had amassed enough money to buy a farm of his own, a place on the vast hinterland of Corleone-Piana della Scalla-a sprawling estate lying in the shadow of the Roca Busambra mountain. His rise from peasant to power force and enforcer in the Mafia had been spectacular to say the least, most of it riding on the reputation he built up as a ruthless killer. In his early days, in the gang he was forming, his closest aides were Giovanni Ruffino, Giacomo Riina, and Calogero Bagarella.<br /> <br /> Giacomo Riina was the oldest member of the gang. Related by marriage to Leggio (through one of his sisters) and Toto Riina’s uncle, he was bon in 1908. Leggio and Giacomo Riina had been arrested in 1942 for cigarette smuggling. He had been one of the forty or so Mafiosi identified by the police sergeant in the Mafia Corleone list of 1945. Many Italian investigative reporters believed he was the brains behind the ‘new Mafia’ that emerged following the events of 1958. He was for many years, closely connected to Eminflex, the largest mattress manufacturers in Italy, and it was thought he used their billions of turnover as a conduit to launder mob cash. Law enforcement had investigated him in connection with drug smuggling, illegal arms dealing through Croatia, counterfeit currency trading, and a hijacking and a bank robbery ring involving Vincenzo Pozio, Salvatore D’Angelo, Antonio DeLuca and Angelo Pavone.<br /> <br /> It was thought by police agencies that Riina headed up the ‘Northern Branch’ i.e.<br /> the area of Milan and northern Italy, of the Corleonesi faction within the Sicilian Mafia.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236997669,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236997669,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236997669?profile=original" width="207" /></a>Italian journalist Christian Lovatelli Ravarino claimed Riina was unfathomable and among other things, perhaps the most evil Mafioso whoever lived, which is saying something! Ravarino was the only journalist to interview Giacomo Riina (right), and he recorded it on video in a restaurant in Budrio, near Bolgna in Northern Italy, where the old man was living out his time in exile.<br /> <br /> Driven by a desire to expand the parameters of his life outside the confines of a small, bucolic town like Corleone, Leggio moved into new rackets-slot machines, transport and trucking and cigarette smuggling-while maintaining a grip on the extortion and other traditional activities that were the backbone of the Mafia. He strong-armed his way into the grain and wheat markets, collecting up to 20% of every sale made in the province, and eventually cornered the market on pinball machines in the province of Palermo, running thousands of them, cranking out maybe as much as a billion lire a year from this venture alone, the equivalent of US $1.5 million, a huge amount for those days. Police Commissioner Angelo Mangano claimed Leggio simply ‘gushed money.’<br /> <br /> His standing in the claustrophobic town of Corleone was so fearsome that on one occasion when he visited a barbershop for a shave, removing his dark sunglasses, the barber took one look at his almond-shaped eyes and fainted in fear. A story perhaps apocryphal, and recalled by journalist Marco Nese in his book Nel Segno della Mafia.<br /> <br /> Years later, called to give evidence against Leggio, the hairdresser, sclerotic, trembling uncontrollably, shrieked in fear:<br /> <br /> Nienti sacciu, ‘I don’t know a thing.’ <br /> <br /> Leggio would stroll around the main square, the sun reflecting off his moon-shaped face with its thick, sensuous smirking lips, strutting his arrogant disdain for the carabinieri troops patrolling the town (below), who would watch him cautiously, as they nervously fingered their automatic rifles. Everyone knew that among the so-called men of honour, violence is the tool of power.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236997857,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236997857,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236997857?profile=original" width="443" /></a><br /> <br /> As far back as 1886, Giuseppe Algoni, in the first ever essay on the Mafia, his study:<br /> La Mafia nei suoi fattori e nelle sue manifestazioni, wrote:<br /> <br /> <em> The Mafioso dresses shabbily, adopts a demeanour of naïve, foolishly attentive geniality, patiently suffering insults and injuries, but at night, he shoots you.</em><br /> <br /> Following the disappearance of Rizzotto, and the furore it created, Leggio made himself invisible, a phenomenon that he would create many times in the years to come. His ability to disappear almost at will, resulted in the media creating a special myth about a man they began to call La Primula Rossa, the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ of Corleone. While he was absent from the town, his cousins, Francesco and Leoluca Leggio, managed his affairs.<br /> <br /> He moved to Palermo and took up residence- under the personal care of Doctor Gaetano LaMantia, who surprisingly was a gynaecologist - as ‘Senore Gaspare Centineo’-at the Ospizio Marino, a private nursing home near the waterfront at Aquasanta, Here, he was waited on hand and foot by Dr. Marino an orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Pizillo a radiologist and nurses Millj Plaja and Maria Aiello . This was a place he routinely used in the years to come to have medical treatment for his various ailments, and lie low from the bothersome police. <br /> <br /> He travelled between Palermo and Corleone organizing his business interests, and early in 1955 he was the driving force behind another murder in the small town up in the hills.<br /> <br /> Late in the evening of February 5th 1955, Guido Lambertina found a body, about 50 metres from the mouth of the newly built road tunnel on State Highway 118 south of Corleone. The face of the corpse had been smashed in with a heavy object and then shot numerous times, a classic sign of Mafia revenge.<br /> <br /> By the time the police arrived there was no traces of evidence that would lead to the killers. The man was identified as Claudio Splendido, and he had been killed sometime between 4:30 pm and 8:30 pm when the body was discovered.<br /> <br /> He was employed by the contractors developing the highway, as a night-watchman and guard.<br /> <br /> His wife, Lucia Mannina and his five sons could offer no reason as to why he had been murdered.<br /> <br /> Two men, Antonino Addamo and Michelangelo Lo Bue were arrested and questioned by the police. They had been involved in thefts from the construction site in October 1954 and Splendido had reported them to the police as potential suspects. The investigation dragged on, and the men were eventually released.<br /> <br /> At the end of August 1955, magistrates investigating the killing of Splendido concluded death by assailants unknown, and the case, like so many before it, was shelved.<br /> <br /> On November 1st 1966, Angelo Mangano, director of the Regional Police, based in Palermo, received a tip-off from the wife of Luciano Raia, who was in prison for criminal association and extortion, that her husband had information for him on the killing of Splendido. <br /> <br /> Raia claimed that when he was in prison in Palermo in September 1963, he had heard a conversation between Vincenzo Riina and another prisoner. They were talking about the killing of Splendido. <br /> <br /> Leggio and his gradigghia, or gang of at least twenty men, would meet on land near the construction site Splendido guarded, and Leggio, concerned that the night-watchman had overheard incriminating conversations, and based on his previous co-operation with the local police over the thefts in 1954, ordered that he be killed.<br /> <br /> Rassettarsi la testa-Mafia slang for keeping quiet-was all important if the brotherhood were to manage its business without interruption. Men like Claudio Splendido were a constant threat and had to be removed. To Leggio, killing someone made no more impression than killing a goat.<br /> <br /> Although he was indicted for this murder fourteen years later, Leggio would wriggle free as he did on almost every homicide indictment he faced, except one. <br /> <br /> His success in avoiding prison lay in the prerogative of Italian courts to find a defendant neither guilty or innocent, rather acquit him for insufficient evidence. Based on the Scottish law of ‘Not Proven’ which dates back to 1728, in Italy it was finally abolished under a new judicial code in 1988. It was not too difficult for people like Leggio to render the evidence as insufficient by simply having witnesses removed. He was also helped by the lack of law enforcement interest or urgency in dealing with the phenomena of the Mafia. <br /> <br /> The courts of Palermo were staffed by judiciary who were in turn, fearful, cautious, anxious and lazy. There was also so many of them that investigations and trials turned into legal swamps. There were more judges and court bureaucrats in Italy than full-time firemen!<br /> <br /> The level of corruption that existed within the system was also legendary. Gaspare Pisciotta, Salvatore Giuliano’s chief aid, at his trial at the Court of Assizes at Viterbo had shouted from the dock:<br /> <br /> ‘<em>We are all one thing: bandits, Mafia and police, as the father, the son and the holy spirit.</em>’ <br /> <br /> The anti-Mafia Commission, appointed for the first time in 1963, often blamed the ‘repressive apparatus’ by accusing its members of negligence, superficiality, incompetence and lack of training. In a report of 1976, which analysed the failure of the Palermo chief of police to gather information about a Mafia summit, the anti-Mafia Commission wrote that: <br /> <br /> <em>'the complete lack of useful information is the consequence of the police forces' tendency to minimise the phenomenon of the Mafia. However’</em> - the Commission carried on - <em>‘the fact that nobody had any interest in thoroughly investigating an issue which, at first sight, ought to have stirred into action the dullest policemen of Palermo, is incredible and cannot be justified even by the most indulgent and understanding observer.’</em><br /> <br /> Luciano Raia was a soldier in the Corleone cosca, and the first acknowledged post-war informant in the history of the Sicilian Mafia. I Primo Pentito, the first penitent. He was subsequently judged insane, and sequestered in hospitals and asylums, before being released. Giving evidence at the trial of the 114, in Catanzaro in 1969, defence lawyers claimed his evidence was unreliable on the grounds that he was a homosexual. Following the trial, he fled Sicily and moved to Piedmont.<br /> <br /> The only publicised informants in the Sicilian Mafia that preceded Raia in the 20th century, were Vincenzo Di Carlo, the boss of Raffadali in Agrigento, identified by the carabinieri in 1963 as a collaboratore di giustizia, Dr. Melchiore Allegra, who had made a long and detailed confession to the carabinieri in 1937, although it did not come to light until it was published by the Sicilian newspaper, L’Ora, in 1962, and Giuseppe Gassisi who had testified against Don Vito Cascioferro in 1929. <br /> <br /> Pentimento had of course existed as long as the Mafia itself. Men of honour had always talked to the law, when it suited their purpose. They regularly accused each other of being spies, or tragediatori-truth-tellers. Leonard Vitale, another informant who testified in the 1970s, killed a member of his cosca who was spreading rumours that Vitale’s uncle (whom he revered) was a police informer. <br /> <br /> In the sense that it came to be known in the late 20th century, it was about repentance or conversion, which encompassed regret, remorse and a recognition of guilt. These standards were supposed to be met by informants against the Mafia. In practice however, the prosecutors just wanted enough solid facts to help them get the bad guys and put them away.<br /> <br /> The Mafia doctor of Corleone watched Leggio grown in stature, making alliances with powerful men outside the town, and keeping close to one in the town who had been a thorn in Navarra’s side for fourteen years. One day the doctor would fix that particular problem.<br /> <br /> On the dark, cold evening of February 24th 1957, a police officer, Nicolo Maggio, returning home from his shift, heard gun shots, and found Vincenzo Collura senior lying on the road outside number 8 Via Sant Agostino, a narrow, cobbled lane, not far from the main town square. Although still breathing, he died soon after. The autopsy indicated he had been shot three times, by three different weapons. His brother claimed he had been killed by the brothers Giovanni and Innocenzo Ferrara, who had followed Collura down the street from the square. He made his statement to the police in Campofiorito, a small, rural town, ten miles south of Corleone, as he claimed Mafiosi were always watching the police station in Corleone to see who was dealing with the law. However, like so many people had done in the past when called to give evidence, he retracted his statement and no one was indicted or charged with Collura’s murder.<br /> <br /> He was the last of three men Doctor Navarra wanted removed permanently from the landscape. Men who were close to and important to Leggio. The others were Nicola D’Allesandro, boss of Aquasanta, in Palermo, and Nino Cottone who ruled Villabate like a feudal lord. They had backed and supported Leggio in his disputes with the doctor, and traded with him on deals involving stolen cattle and hijacked commoditise. D’Allesandro went down in 1955 during a dispute involving the relocation of the citrus fruit produce market from Ziza to Aquasanta, and Cottone was bowled over by two men wielding machine guns as he arrived at his summer villa in 1956. Collura made it a trifecta and Dr. Navarra must have been feeling very comfortable as the year came to a close.<br /> </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Thom L. Jones' Mob Corner</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Thom L. Jones & Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p><strong><br /> </strong></p></div>
Cosa Nostra Families and Reputed Current Bosses of the Palermo Province
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-families-and
2010-12-29T15:30:00.000Z
2010-12-29T15:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-families-and"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005496,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005496?profile=original" width="420" /></a></p>
<p>By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> Posted on December 29, 2011<br /> <br /> <strong>The Mandamento within the Sicilian Cosa Nostra</strong><br /> <br /> Sicilian <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Cosa Nostra</a> is organized crime at its most organized. The mafia families on the island all work together through so-called 'mandamento'. A 'mandamento' is formed by three or more neighboring crime families and it's led by a 'capomandamento', who is a member of the Provincial Commission. The 'capomandamento' is the boss of a crime family and he is usually elected by the other bosses of the area who are represented by him on the Provincial Commission. But in time the rules changed. According to turncoat Tommaso Buscetta, in the past even a simple soldier could be elected as 'capomandamento', in order to not create rivalry between the family bosses. When Totò Riina became the boss of bosses, the 'capimandamento' were chosen directly by him. Some 'mandamenti' were deleted or put under the supervision of others. <br /> <br /> After the 'capomandamento' gets a seat on the Commission, he designates a 'sottocapo mandamento', who is the underboss of the 'mandamento' and one or more 'consigliere mandamentale', who is the consigliere of the 'mandamento'. In the fact the 'mandamento' acts as one crime family.<br /> <br /> The members of the Provincial Commission elect the 'capoprovincia' or provincial boss, who is a member of the Regional Commission, the supreme leadership body of Cosa Nostra. The Regional Commission is formed by the provincial bosses of Palermo, Trapani, Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Enna and Catania/Eastern Sicily. <br /> <br /> The provincial boss of Palermo is always the 'capo dei capi' or boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra, since almost half of the members are located in the Palermo province, which is historically the most powerful. <br /> <br /> In Sicily there are about 35 'mandamenti', 15 of them located in the Palermo province. Every 'mandamento' has about 150-200 'made members' and several thousands of 'associates'.<br /> <br /> According to Tommaso Buscetta, the 'mandamento' and the first Provincial Commission of Palermo were formed in 1957 when the bosses of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in">American Cosa Nostra</a> advised the Sicilians to form a Commission in order to decide the strategies of the organization as a whole. The Sicilian bosses would form the 'capomandamento' because there were too many crime families in Sicily.<br /> <br /> But according to some police reports of the late 1800s, the structure of the Commission was present even at that time. However, in certain periods the Provincial Commission was dismantled, like in 1963 after the first mafia war and reformed at the beginning of the 1970s. The same could have happened in the past periods. <br /> <br /> <em><strong> The following is a detailed description of these ‘mandamento’, past and present.</strong></em><br /> <br /> <strong>Mandamento San Lorenzo</strong><br /> <br /> The San Lorenzo mandamento, located in the western part of Palermo city, is formed by the San Lorenzo, Tommaso <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006091,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006091,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237006091?profile=original" width="174" /></a>Natale, Partanna Mondello, Capaci and Carini crime families. It has been always an important and strategic stronghold for Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Within the area there are ghettos like the Zen neighborhood where the mafia recruits much of its manpower and it is the place where the Falcone massacre was planned. It was led in the 1950s and 1960s by Mariano Troia, boss of San Lorenzo family and after him by Rosario Riccobono, former boss of the Partanna Mondello family, killed in 1982 during the mafia war. The same year the boss of bosses Totò Riina put Giacomo Giuseppe 'Baldy' Gambino in as the official boss and member of the Provincial Commission. When Gambino was arrested and later deceased he was replaced by Salvatore Biondino (right) as boss of San Lorenzo family; he was among the most loyal ally of the 'Corleonese' faction. However Biondino was caught in 1993 together with Totò Riina while he was driving his car and he was sentenced to life. After the arrest of Biondino, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/another-boss-of-bosses-falls">Salvatore 'The Baron' Lo Piccolo</a>, boss of the Tommaso Natale family, took over as head of the mandamento. But he was arrested in 2007 after 25 years on the run together with his son Sandro, the reputed underboss. Before being caught Lo Piccolo was going to become the head of the Provincial Commission and the new boss of bosses because of the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano in 2006. After the arrest of Lo Piccolo, according to the latest police wiretaps, the sons of Salvatore Biondino are the new members of the Provincial Commission as head of the San Lorenzo mandamento.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> San Lorenzo<br /> Former Boss and Capomandamento: Salvatore Biondino<br /> Acting boss: Girolamo Biondino<br /> <br /> Tommaso Natale<br /> Former Boss: Salvatore Lo Piccolo<br /> Acting boss: Calogero Lo Piccolo<br /> <br /> Partanna Mondello <br /> Boss: Salvatore Davì<br /> <br /> Capaci<br /> Boss: Giovanni Battaglia<br /> <br /> Carini<br /> Boss: Salvatore Gallina<br /> <br /> <strong>Mandamento Resuttana</strong> <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006853,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006853,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237006853?profile=original" width="206" /></a>The Resuttana mandamento, located in the south-western part of Palermo city, is formed by the Resuttana, Acquasanta and Arenella crime families. Once led by the historical boss Nino Matranga, head of the Resuttana family and member of the Provincial Commission from the 1950s to 1962, the year of the Ciaculli massacre when seven policemen were bombed and Cosa Nostra was dismantled because of the huge crackdown by the government. When a new Commission was going to be formed, the Acquasanta boss Michele Cavataio, who had waged war on the Galatolos in order to take over as head of the mandamento and take over the business of the new-born fruit and vegetables market, was killed in 1969 during the so-called Viale Lazio slaughter because he was held responsible by the other bosses for being the main instigator of the mafia war in the 1962-63 period.<br /> His escalation started in 1955 when he killed Gaetano 'Tanu Alatu' Galatolo, an important member of the Acquasanta family. In 1970 Nino Matranga was also murdered. Since then the Madonia Family runs the area, before through Francesco 'Don Ciccio' Madonia (right), recently deceased, and after him through his sons Antonino, Giuseppe and Salvatore. With all the Madonias currently imprisoned, the acting boss of the mandamento is, according to the latest inquiries, Salvatore Lo Cicero.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007075,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007075,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007075?profile=original" width="81" /></a>Resuttana<br /> Former Boss and Capomandamento: Antonino Madonia<br /> Acting boss: Salvatore Lo Cicero (left)<br /> <br /> Acquasanta<br /> Former Boss: Vincenzo Galatolo<br /> Acting boss: Angelo Galatolo<br /> <br /> Arenella<br /> Former Boss: Gaetano Fidanzati<br /> Acting boss: Gaetano Vegna<br /> <br /> <strong> Mandamento Passo di Rigano</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007269,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007269,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007269?profile=original" width="187" /></a>The Passo di Rigano mandamento, located in the south part of Palermo city, is formed by the Passo di Rigano, Uditore and Torretta families. This historical stronghold of Cosa Nostra was noted in the police reports as early as the late 1800s because of several important bosses of that period came from this region, including Antonio Giammona, the boss of Uditore family. Several other important members of Cosa Nostra like the Gambino brothers, member of the Gambino crime family of New York, one of them John Gambino is the reputed member of the current ruling panel and the Inzerillo-Mannino-Manno's, all involved in the 'Pizza Connection', came from this area. In the Provincial Commission formed in 1957, the boss of the mandamento was Salvatore Manno, head of the Passo di Rigano family. In 1965, according to the judge Terranova's report, the head was Rosario Di Maggio, former boss of the Torretta family. When the Provincial Commission was reformed at the beginning of the 1970s, Salvatore Inzerillo became the boss until he was murdered in 1982 by the “Corleonesi” faction headed by Totò Riina, who changed the hierarchy and he put two of his best allies at the head of this strategic area: Salvatore Buscemi (right) was named boss of Passo di Rigano family and mandamento, Francesco Bonura was named boss of the Uditore family. In the past few years several members of the Inzerillo's came back to Italy from the United States where they had fled to in the 1980s after the 'Corleonesi' waged war on them. The fact caused quite a stir within Cosa Nostra since some bosses wanted to let them return and others disagreed for fear of a new war. An anti-mafia operation in conjunction of both Italian and American police in 2008 showed like Cosa Nostra wanted to rebuild the criminal connections of the 1980s between Italy and the United States.<br /> <br /> Families: <br /> <br /> Passo di Rigano<br /> Former Boss and Capomandamento: Salvatore Buscemi<br /> Acting boss: Giovanni Marcianò<br /> <br /> Uditore<br /> Former Boss: Francesco Bonura<br /> Acting boss: Rosario Inzerillo<br /> <br /> Torretta<br /> Boss: Vincenzo Brusca<br /> <br /> <strong>Mandamento Noce</strong><br /> <br /> The Noce mandamento, located in the center of Palermo city, is formed by the Noce, Malaspina and Altarello di Baida families. According to the Sangiorgi's report which was written in 1898, the head of Malaspina family Francesco Siino <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007465,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007465,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007465?profile=original" width="164" /></a>was the reputed boss of bosses at that time. In this area is present the Zisa neighborhood, the stage of the feud of boss Tommaso Spadaro and his sons. In 1962, Calcedonio 'Doruccio' Di Pisa, boss of the Noce family and member of the Commission, was murdered in that bloody mafia war among most of Palermo's crime families. The attack came from the La Barbera brothers, bosses of the Palermo centro family and rising stars of Cosa Nostra. Salvatore 'The Boxer' Scaglione had been the boss of the mandamento since the beginning of the 1970s to 1982 when he was murdered and replaced by Raffaele Ganci (right), who was eventually demoted in the 1990s. According to the recent wiretaps, Luigi Caravello, present at the more recent meetings of the new-born Provincial Commission, is the reputed current boss of the Noce mandamento.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007472,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007472,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007472?profile=original" width="80" /></a>Noce<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Luigi Caravello (left)<br /> <br /> Malaspina<br /> Boss: Pierino Di Napoli<br /> <br /> Altarello di Baida<br /> Boss: Vincenzo Tumminia<br /> <br /> <strong>Porta Nuova mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> The Porta Nuova mandamento, located in the center of Palermo city, is formed by Porta Nuova, Palermo Centro and Borgo Vecchio families, as famous turncoat Tommaso 'Masino' Buscetta testified. Salvatore La Barbera, boss of the Palermo Centro family, was a member of the Provincial Commission which was formed in 1957. He disappeared in 1963 during the mafia war after he had a conflict with the Grecos from Ciaculli. He was probably killed during a meeting of bosses, his body was never found. Angelo La Barbera, brother of Salvatore and among the most active subject in the mafia war of that time, took over the crime family until he was killed in 1975. Since then Pippo 'The Cashier' Calò, boss of the Porta Nuova family, became member of the Provincial Commission and boss of the mandamento. He was arrested in Rome in 1985 and replaced by a plethora of acting bosses, included Salvatore Cangemi, arrested in 1993, Vittorio Mangano (famous for being a friend of senator Marcello Dell'Utri and the 'stableman' of Silvio Berlusconi in the 1970s) died in 2000, Nicola Ingarao, murdered in 2007, Gaetano Lo Presti, died in 2008 and Giovanni Lipari. Behind the old bosses there are young up-and-comers like the fugitives Francesco Bonomolo, reputed acting boss of the Palermo Centro family and Antonino 'The Sparkling' Lauricella, reputed underboss of the Porta Nuova family.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Porta Nuova<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Giovanni Lipari<br /> <br /> Palermo Centro<br /> Former Boss: Salvatore Pispicia<br /> Acting Boss: Francesco Bonomolo<br /> <br /> Borgo Vecchio<br /> Boss: Angelo Monti<br /> <br /> <strong>Pagliarelli mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> The Pagliarelli mandamento, located in the south-east part of Palermo city, is formed by the Pagliarelli, Mezzomonreale and Corso Calatafimi families. The Motisis had been the historical bosses of the area. The Motisis were mentioned in police reports since 1800s and labeled as members of the mafia. Lorenzo Motisi was the boss and member of the <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008255,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008255,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008255?profile=original" width="165" /></a>Provincial Commission in 1957, replaced later by his son Matteo Motisi, who had been the former boss of the mandamento until he died in 1998. For a couple of years Antonino Rotolo and his young right hand <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-gianni-nicchi">Gianni 'Little Boy' Nicchi</a> run the family; Rotolo was arrested again in 2007 and he faced 20 years, Nicchi was nabbed in 2009 and he faced 12 years. But recently Giovanni Motisi, nephew of Matteo Motisi, described as the boss of the Pagliarelli family and mandamento since the 1990s but believed dead by the police, seems to be still in control of the family since a turncoat declared he's alive and hiding around Agrigento province. Giovanni Motisi (right), on the run since 1993, is among the list of 30 most wanted in Italy.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Pagliarelli<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Giovanni Motisi<br /> <br /> Mezzomonreale<br /> Boss: Pietro Badagliacca<br /> <br /> Corso Calatafimi<br /> Boss: Filippo Annatelli<br /> <br /> <strong>Santa Maria di Gesu' mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008460,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008460,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008460?profile=original" width="145" /></a>The Santa Maria di Gesu' mandamento, located in the east part of Palermo city, is formed by the Santa Maria di Gesu' and Villagrazia families. Boss Andrea Messina was a member of the Provincial Commission in the 1950s and 1960s, replaced later by Paolo 'Don Paolino' Bontade and after that by his son <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-stefano">Stefano 'The Prince' Bontade</a>, who was part of a triumvirate that controlled Cosa Nostra together with Tano Badalamenti and Luciano Leggio, before the Commission was formed again at the beginning of 1970s. He was murdered in 1982 by the 'Corleonesi'. After the death of Stefano Bontade, considered the most important boss in Palermo, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Totò Riina</a> put Pietro Aglieri (right) at the head of Santa Maria di Gesu' family and mandamento, he was arrested in 1997. The current boss is Benedetto Capizzi, head of Villagrazia family. He was going to be promoted boss of bosses before the 'Perseo' anti-mafia operation in 2009, which showed that a new Provincial Commission was going to be formed. His son Sandro Capizzi was present at the latest meetings of the Commission while he was under house arrest. <br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Villagrazia<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Benedetto Capizzi<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008667,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008667,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008667?profile=original" width="76" /></a><br /> Santa Maria di Gesu'<br /> Boss: Giovanni Adelfio (photo right)<br /> <br /> <strong>Brancaccio mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> The Brancaccio mandamento, located in the east part of Palermo city, is formed by the Brancaccio, Roccella, Ciaculli and Corso dei Mille families. In 1939 a violent mafia war started between the Greco's from Ciaculli and the Greco's from Croceverde Giardini, both mafia's dynasties since the 1800s. Croceverde Giardini was a crime family apart before being usurped later within the Ciaculli family. The war of the two homonymous groups ended in 1946 after a meeting of bosses included Nino Cottone from Villabate and Joseph Profaci, who was the boss of a crime family in New York. Salvatore 'Little Bird' Greco, was the boss of Ciaculli family <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008692,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008692,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008692?profile=original" width="198" /></a>and member of Provincial Commission since the late 1950s to 1963 when he went to Venezuela in order to escape Italian police being accused of the Ciaculli's massacre and where he died in 1978. Michele 'The Pope' Greco replaced him as boss of the Ciaculli family and mandamento. He was one of the most important ally of Totò Riina and the 'Corleonesi' faction. He was finally arrested in 1984 and sentenced for murders and other crimes in the maxi-trial; he recently died. Giuseppe Greco, famous member of the command of shooters known as the 'Death Team', was going to take over the Ciaculli family but he disappeared in 1985; his body was never found. Totò Riina put at the head of the mandamento the Graviano brothers, Filippo and Giuseppe (left), bosses of the Brancaccio family. Since then the head of the mandamento passed to the Brancaccio family. The Graviano brothers were caught in 1994 and sentenced to life. Despite one of the brothers, Benedetto Graviano, is living in freedom and he is considered an important member of the family, the current boss is according to the recent wiretaps Ludovico 'Uncle Ludovico' Sansone.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Brancaccio<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Ludovico Sansone<br /> <br /> Roccella<br /> Former Boss: Giuseppe Guttadauro<br /> Acting Boss: Lorenzo Di Fede<br /> <br /> Ciaculli<br /> Former Boss: Filippo La Rosa<br /> Acting Boss: Angelo La Rosa<br /> <br /> Corso dei Mille<br /> Boss: Lorenzo Tinnirello<br /> <br /> <strong>Corleone mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> The Corleone mandamento, located in the south of Palermo province, is formed by the Corleone, Prizzi, Roccamena, Bisacquino and Campofiorito families. This area is famous for the bloody escalation of the so-called 'Corleonesi' at the beginning of 1980s. However the 'Corleonesi' faction within Cosa Nostra was not formed solely by members of the Corleone crime family, it was an alliance between several bosses from both Palermo city and province and among them the most powerful were the bosses of Corleone. According to the turncoat Buscetta, before the 1980s the Corleone family was an ordinary crime group of Cosa Nostra among several others present in the Palermo province. In 1958 when Michele 'Our Father' Navarra, the old boss of the Corleone family, was gunned down, Luciano Leggio, who planned the murder, took over the family and became the new boss after a mafia war which left about 150 dead and finished in 1963.</p>
<p>Among the most loyal allies and the best shooters of Leggio's faction there were Totò 'Shorty' Riina and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-bernardo">Bernardo 'The Tractor' Provenzano</a>. Luciano Leggio was a member of the triumvirate that ran Cosa Nostra before the Commission was formed again at the beginning of the 1970s. After the arrest of Leggio in 1974, the command passed to Totò Riina, who started the most violent war ever seen inside Cosa Nostra. From 1978 to 1993 he planned the murders of thousands mobsters and dozens members of the Institutions, including judges, policemen, politicians, journalists, businessmen and bankers. He was formally the boss of bosses from 1982 to 1993 when he was finally arrested. In 1992 He planned the murders of the judges Falcone and Borsellino, both bombed together with the policemen who protected them. These murders shocked Italy and the Italian government sent the national army in Sicily in order to stop this bloody strategy. After the arrest of Riina, Bernardo Provenzano became the boss until he was arrested in 2006 after 43 years on the run. The strategy of Provenzano was much less violent and he always kept a low profile. The other bosses and <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237009288,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237009288,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237009288?profile=original" width="86" /></a>members of the Commission kept a low profile too, in order to avoid a strong reaction from the government. Nowadays the Corleone mandamento is run by Rosario Lo Bue (right). According to police wiretaps, Lo Bue told Riina's sons to stay away because he was named the boss of the family and member of the Provincial Commission.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Corleone<br /> Former Boss: Bernardo Provenzano<br /> Acting Boss: Rosario Lo Bue<br /> <br /> Prizzi<br /> Boss: Tommaso Cannella<br /> <br /> Roccamena<br /> Boss: Bartolomeo Cascio<br /> <br /> <strong>San Giuseppe Jato mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> The San Giuseppe Jato mandamento, located in the south-western part of Palermo province, is formed by the San Giuseppe Jato, Altofonte, San Cipirello, Monreale and Camporeale families. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237009483,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237009483,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237009483?profile=original" width="174" /></a>The old godfather Antonino Salomone, patriarch of the San Giuseppe Jato family, was the most important boss of this area in the 1950s and 1960s, and member of the Provincial Commission. Being wanted by the police he left Italy after the first mafia war and he escaped to Brazil where he would die. He was replaced by Bernardo Brusca, who later would become part of the 'Corleonese' faction. When the former boss of the San Giuseppe Jato family, Bernardo Brusca (right), was arrested in the 1980s, Totò Riina put his son Giovanni Brusca as acting boss. The years in which the younger Brusca was also imprisoned, the family was run by Baldassare 'Balduccio' Di Maggio, who turned at the beginning of the 1990s and he cooperated with the police in order to catch boss of bosses Riina. When in 1996 Giovanni Brusca was arrested and sentenced to life, the boss became Domenico 'The Veterinarian' Raccuglia, who was the head of the Altofonte family while he was on the run. However after Raccuglia was recently caught, Gregorio Agrigento, the old boss of the San Cipirello family, was promoted capomandamento and member of the new-born Commission. <br /> <br /> Families: <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010070,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010070,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237010070?profile=original" width="84" /></a>San Cipirello<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Gregorio Agrigento (left)<br /> <br /> Altofonte<br /> Former Boss: Domenico Raccuglia<br /> Acting Boss: unknown<br /> <br /> San Giuseppe Jato<br /> Former Boss: Salvatore Genovese<br /> Acting Boss: Giovanni Genovese<br /> <br /> Monreale<br /> Boss: Antonino Badagliacca<br /> <br /> Camporeale<br /> Boss: Antonino Sciortino <br /> <br /> <strong>Belmonte Mezzagno Mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010096,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010096,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237010096?profile=original" width="167" /></a>The Belmonte Mezzagno mandamento, located in the center of the Palermo province, is formed by the Belmonte Mezzagno, Misilmeri, Bolognetta, Baucina, Ciminna and Villafrati families. In the 1980s members of this territory, like the brothers Alfredo and Giuseppe Bono from Bolognetta village, were very active in international drug trafficking and involved in several operations including the famous 'Pizza Connection'. After the murder of Pietro Ocello, boss of Misilmeri family and an old member of the Commission, gunned down in 1991, Benedetto Spera (left) was promoted to boss of the mandamento. He was on the run since the 1970s and close to Bernardo Provenzano, who had a sort of supervision on that territory, but before he could consolidate his supremacy he had to fight a war against Pietro Lo Bianco, leader of a faction supported by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-leoluca">Leoluca Bagarella</a>, who had a conflict with Provenzano at that time. <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010274,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010274,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237010274?profile=original" width="85" /></a>When in 1995 Pietro Lo Bianco and his right hand Salvatore Vitrano were murdered he became the undisputed boss until he was finally arrested in 2001. His nephew Antonino Spera (right) is the current boss of the mandamento, as latest police wiretaps showed.<br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Belmonte Mezzagno<br /> Former Boss and Capomandamento: Benedetto Spera<br /> Acting Boss: Antonino Spera<br /> <br /> Misilmeri<br /> Boss: Pietro Calvo<br /> <br /> Bolognetta<br /> Boss: Giuseppe Bono<br /> <br /> Baucina<br /> Boss: Giuseppe Pinello<br /> <br /> Ciminna<br /> Boss: Antonino Episcopo<br /> <br /> Villafrati<br /> Boss: Pasquale Bedami<br /> <br /> <strong> Partinico mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> The Partinico mandamento, located in the western part of Palermo province, is formed by the Partinico, Borgetto and <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010295,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237010295,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237010295?profile=original" width="146" /></a>Montelepre families. Salvatore 'Turiddu' Giuliano, the famous bandit and according to Buscetta also a member of Cosa Nostra, was born in Montelepre and he was involved in an obscure plot between the mafia, the government, the secret services and the separatist party. He was involved in the Portella della Ginestra slaughter and he personally killed the boss of Partinico family Santo Fleres in 1949. He was finally killed in 1950 when he was abandoned by both the mafia and the politicians and his secrets passed away with him. Antonino 'Nenè' Geraci was the boss of Partinico family and member of the Provincial Commission from 1957 to 1992 when he was arrested. The old boss was released from prison some years ago due to health problems but he's considered retired. Since then the boss is Vito Vitale (right), although Partinico was expelled by the Commission because of the internal wars of the last few years and the territory is currently under the supervision of San Giuseppe Jato mandamento. The latest inquiries showed that Giovanni and Leonardo Vitale, young sons of the imprisoned boss Vito, are running the local family. <br /> <br /> Families: <br /> <br /> Partinico<br /> Former Boss: Vito Vitale<br /> Acting Boss: Giovanni Vitale<br /> <br /> Borgetto <br /> Boss: Nicolò Salto<br /> <br /> Montelepre <br /> Boss: Salvatore Lombardo <br /> <br /> <strong> Bagheria mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011057,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011057,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237011057?profile=original" width="227" /></a>The Bagheria mandamento, located in the north-eastern part of Palermo province, is formed by the Bagheria, Villabate, Ficarazzi. Altavilla and Casteldaccia families. In the past Villabate was a divided mandamento but the two areas joined to become one. Giuseppe Fontana, boss of Villabate family and friend of the senator Raffaele Palizzolo, was involved in the famous murder of the banker Emanuele Notarbartolo in 1893. In the 1950s the bosses were Antonino Mineo from Bagheria and Giuseppe Panno from Casteldaccia, both members of the Commission. In the 1980s the 'Corleonesi' changed the hierarchy supporting Salvatore Montalto in the war against the Di Peri's, in order to take over Villabate family. On Christmas day of 1981 a brigade of shooters killed Giovanni Di Peri, the boss of the family, Antonio Pitarresi, the underboss, and his son Biagio Pitarresi. The same year the Casteldaccia boss Giuseppe Panno was also gunned down. In 1989 the old boss of Bagheria family Antonino Mineo was killed and replaced by Leonardo Greco, who is also very involved in international drug trafficking and in the 'Pizza Connection'. Leonardo Greco (right) and his brother Nicolò Greco, the reputed underboss of the family, are currently living out of Palermo province because of a police restriction. According to the latest wiretaps of the operation 'Perseo' in 2009, the acting boss of Bagheria family and mandamento is Giuseppe Scaduto. <br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Bagheria<br /> Former Boss: Leonardo Greco<br /> Acting Boss: Giuseppe Scaduto<br /> <br /> Villabate<br /> Boss: Antonino Mandalà<br /> <br /> Ficarazzi<br /> Boss: Giovanni Trapani<br /> <br /> <strong>Cinisi mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011095,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011095,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237011095?profile=original" width="238" /></a>The Cinisi mandamento, located in the north-western part of Palermo province, is formed by the Cinisi, Terrasini and Villagrazia di Carini families. Cesare Manzella was the boss of Cinisi family and member of the Commission until he was assassinated in a car-bomb attack in 1963. He was replaced by Gaetano 'Don Tano' Badalamenti, who was also a member of the triumvirate that ran Cosa Nostra at the beginning of the 1970s. At the beginning of the 1980s he left Italy after the 'Corleonesi' waged war on him. He fled to Brazil first and after that to Spain where he was nabbed in 1984; he was wanted by the American authorities because of his involvement in the '<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-the-sicilian-mafia-flooded">Pizza Connection</a>' and he faced 40 years for international drug trafficking. He died inside an American prison in 2002. Since the 1980s Cinisi is not a mandamento anymore because Totò Riina expelled it by the Commission in order to punish Badalamenti. Today the area is under the supervision of San Lorenzo mandamento but after years behind the scenes, the Badalamentis have made a powerful come back. Vito Badalamenti (right), son of Gaetano, on the run since 1995 and in the list of the 30 most wanted in Italy, is an important member and probably head of the Cinisi family. <br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Cinisi<br /> Boss: Vito Badalamenti<br /> <br /> Terrasini<br /> Boss: Salvatore D'Anna<br /> <br /> Villagrazia di Carini<br /> Boss: Gianbattista Pipitone<br /> <br /> <strong>Caccamo mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011692,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011692,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237011692?profile=original" width="200" /></a>The Caccamo mandamento, located in the north-eastern part of Palermo province, is formed by the Caccamo, Trabia, Termini Imerese, Cerda, Vicari, Lercara Friddi and Castronuovo di Sicilia families, as turncoat Giuffrè testified. He also told authorities that in the past Vicari, Lercara Friddi and Castronuovo di Sicilia each were a separate mandamento but the 'Corleonesi' merged them in the 1980s. In the 1950s Giuseppe 'Don Peppino' Panzeca, historical boss of Caccamo family and Mariano Marsala, boss of Vicari family, were both members of the Provincial Commission. When Panzeca, friend of several local politicians, passed away, he was replaced by Lorenzo Di Gesu' and after him by Nino 'Little Hand' Giuffrè (right), who became a turncoat after he was arrested in 2002. He was the first former capomandamento who cooperated. Since then the boss of the mandamento is Salvatore 'Totuccio' Rinella, head of the Trabia family. <br /> <br /> Families:<br /> <br /> Trabia<br /> Former Boss: Salvatore Rinella<br /> Acting Boss: Domenico Rancadore<br /> <br /> Caccamo<br /> Boss: Giorgio Liberto <br /> <br /> Termini Imerese<br /> Boss: Santo Balsamo<br /> <br /> Cerda<br /> Boss: Rosolino Rizzo<br /> <br /> Vicari<br /> Boss: Salvatore Umina<br /> <br /> Castronuovo di Sicilia<br /> Boss: Salvatore Gentile<br /> <br /> <strong> San Mauro Castelverde mandamento</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011492,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011492,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237011492?profile=original" width="194" /></a>The San Mauro Castelverde mandamento, known also as the Madonie's mountains mandamento, located in the eastern part of Palermo province next to the border of Messina province, is formed by the San Mauro Castelverde, Gangi, Polizzi Generosa, Petralia Sottana, Lascari and Mistretta families. Although Mistretta village is located in Messina province and is historically part of this territory. The Farinella's have been the leaders of this area since the 1800s. During the Fascism period and the crackdown against the mafia ordered by Mussolini, the village of Gangi was surrounded by the fascist army in order to catch a dangerous fugitive and mafia member of that time named Luigi Ferrarello. Mario Farinella, boss of San Mauro Castelverde family, was a member of the Commission in 1957. When he later died he was replaced by his son Giuseppe 'The Big Father' Farinella, who recently died. Giuseppe Farinella (right) was an ally of the 'Corleonesi' and he was close to Totò Riina and Leoluca Bagarella, who stayed in this territory for a couple of years while he was on the run and he was planning a war against Provenzano's faction before being caught in 1995. The current boss of the mandamento is Francesco Bonomo, son-in-law of Giuseppe Farinella. The underboss is Domenico 'Mico' Farinella, son of Giuseppe, currently imprisoned he will be released in 2012. <br /> <br /> Families: <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012268,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012268,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012268?profile=original" width="78" /></a><br /> San Mauro Castelverde<br /> Boss and Capomandamento: Francesco Bonomo (left)<br /> <br /> Gangi <br /> Boss: Domenico Virga<br /> <br /> Polizzi Generosa<br /> Boss: Antonio Maranto<br /> <br /> Petralia Sottana<br /> Boss: Carmelo Fazio<br /> <br /> Lascari<br /> Boss: Samuele Schittino<br /> <br /> Mistretta<br /> Boss: Sebastiano Rampulla<br /> </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p><br /> </p></div>
Santa Claus Joins Fight Against Cosa Nostra
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/santa-claus-joins-fight
2010-12-24T11:30:00.000Z
2010-12-24T11:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/santa-claus-joins-fight"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005055,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005055?profile=original" width="410" /></a></p>
<p>By David Amoruso<br /> Posted on December 24, 2010<br /> <br /> Merry Christmas everybody! And may Santa bring you all the gifts you wished for. <br /> <br /> It seems Santa is already hard at work. Yesterday, an Italian police officer dressed up as Santa arrested a member of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia</a>. The arrest took place outside a shopping mall in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-cosa-nostra-in">Catania</a>, Sicily and the whole sting operation was caught on videotape. <br /> <br /> The arrested man is Salvatore Politini (37), who is an alleged member of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-benedetto">Santapaola</a> Mafia Clan. He was collecting “pizzo”, or extortion payments from one of the shopkeepers. It is also called “protection money”, though the only people the money offers protection from is the mobsters. According to authorities, the Clan had been extorting the owner for the past ten years. Every month a Mafioso would stop by the shop and pick up 260 euro. <br /> <br /> Police had the shop under surveillance for several days. One officer was dressed as Santa Claus so as not to draw any suspicion from the paranoid gangsters. While Politini went inside to collect the pizzo, cameras recorded his every move. As he got ready to get back in his car, Santa and his fellow policemen flocked to the surprised mobster and put him under arrest. Surely this was not the kind of present he expected to receive underneath the Christmas tree.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="340" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never" /><param name="allowNetworking" value="internal" /><embed wmode="opaque" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wRruow8JSJo?fs=1&hl=nl_NL" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="340" allowscriptaccess="never" allownetworking="internal"> </object></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Sicilian Cosa Nostra introduction
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra
2010-11-19T13:46:28.000Z
2010-11-19T13:46:28.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> <br /> Mafia, a word evoking terror and mystery, an uncertain etymology but a grave reality. The origin of the Sicilian Mafia is unknown; it probably has been present for a long time and emerged in 1861 when Sicily joined up with Italy and general Garibaldi used it in order to drive the Bourbons out.<br /> <br /> Previous kingdoms never fought it seriously, but they also never dealt with it in order to obtain favours and restrain farmer rebellions, its worrying presence was proved by several blood feuds since the 1500s and frequent arsons burning down Palermo archives and historical documents that could have provided evidence of the existence of a powerful and mysterious brotherhood.<br /> <br /> The sicilian Honoured Society has had lots of names during its life, from "Beati Paoli", the seventeenth century sect which some expert refer to as the mafia ancestor, to Cosa Nostra, the modern organization of this century.<br /> <br /> When at the ending of the 1800s a lot of Sicilians began to emigrate to the United States, "men of honour" created branches of the mafia there; but while in Sicily the mafia was still a rural and archaic organization, in the new country it perfectly adapted itself to the local background and grew up into a real criminal enterprise.<br /> <br /> During the Fascism period (1922-1943) Mussolini repressed the mafia heavily, but when the dictatorship finished it emerged again enjoying help from the allied army in the Second World War.<br /> <br /> In Sicily, because of its social and economic situation, the mafia modernized itself later, about at the end of 1950s when in Palermo mayor Salvo Lima, son of a "man of honour", and public contracts alderman Vito Ciancimino, from Corleone, gave works only to building contractors linked to the mafia; in 1957, advised by Italian-American bosses, the Sicilian Commission was created in order to reduce murders and run business better.<br /> <br /> But in the years 1962-63 the mafia war left hundreds of died and Italian government fought it seriously for a decade; however at the beginning of 1970s the mafia reorganized itself and got stronger and stronger thanks to cigarettes smuggling and drug trafficking, expanding its tentacles also in north eastern Italy, Canada, South America, Australia and western Europe.<br /> <br /> At the beginning of 1980s happened the second big war, which opposed Corleonesi led by Salvatore Riina to the "Old Mafia" led by Stefano Bontade; Riina won and the mafia got very violent, killing too many authorities, included judges Falcone and Borsellino in 1992 slaughters.<br /> <br /> The government reacted very strongly and reduced it again, but now we are in 2004 and mafia is ready emerging again?<br /> <br /> The Sicilian Mafia today<br /> The history of the Sicilian Mafia is a terrible sequence of murders, revenge, betrayals, mysteries, and an alliance with the main power.<br /> <br /> Since its origins, the Mafia formed a strong alliance with the main power: nobles and viceroys before; politicians, entrepreneurs, freemasons and secret services after. It usually was the "armed hand" of the power, but it often was the power itself. It's impossible to analyse the condition of the mafia today, especially for people which don't know the particular Italian situation, without going back to the 1970s. Only going back to that violent and turbulent period we can begin to understand something about the current situation.<br /> <br /> From the 1970s to the late 1980s Cosa Nostra accumulated an huge wealth thanks to the vertical control of international drug trafficking and public contracts. This period coincided with the escalation of "Corleonesi", formed by the most secretive and violent factions of the mafia, which transformed the Sicilian Commission in a sort of dictatorship and ran the immense earnings of those years.<br /> <br /> During the 1980s, the Corleonesi murdered thousands of men of honour, including the most important bosses, but also several journalists, judges, politicians, bankers, policemen, entrepreneurs; a real massacre.<br /> <br /> In those years Cosa Nostra, thanks to its wealth, influenced the Italian economy and politics heavily; on the other hand because of the strong control of territories which guaranteed a great number of votes, and the use of the violence, it became, more than in the past, an obscure and subversive strength linked with the corrupted politicians.<br /> <br /> In the beginning of the 1990s, after the scandal of Tangentopoli, which discovered the diffused system of corruption around national politics, the old parties broke down, and Cosa Nostra, which usually supported DC, the Andreotti party, needed to find new referents for the future, but before it had to 'delete' the old ones who couldn't guarantee the needs of the organization. Cosa Nostra succeeded, just in time, in leaving the old system of corruption, and supporting the new one.<br /> <br /> In 1992 the revenge of Cosa Nostra was terrible; in a few months it killed Salvo Lima, the leader of DC party in Sicily; Ignazio Salvo, the most powerful tax collector of the island; the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, historical enemies of the organization, together with their escorts. In 1993 Cosa Nostra did the attacks in Milan, Rome and Florence which left 10 dead, and it attacked even the Catholic Church bombing the churches and killing the priests. But since 1994 it suddenly stopped this bloody strategy and kept a low profile. This obscure period, seems to hide a lot of mysteries. Probably the mafia found the new politics allied inside some of the new parties, like Forza Italia and UDC, which were born at the beginning of 1990s; there are strong evidences regarding the links between Cosa Nostra and the current Prime Minister Berlusconi; according to some inquiries at the ending of 1970s he was supported by Cosa Nostra, through senator Marcello Dell'Utri, in order to create his media empire.<br /> <br /> During the last ten years Cosa Nostra reorganized itself under the direction of Bernardo Provenzano, fugitive since 1963; a man with a lot of secrets, a man who could have blackmailed the State in order to hide the greatest Italian mysteries and doing a new agreement.<br /> <br /> Despite in the past he was very violent, he replaced violent bosses with reputed diplomatic ones, because he understood that Riina's strategy was going to fail, and the mafia needed a new image.<br /> <br /> During the 1990s years most people thought ingenuously that the mafia could be defeated thanks to repression and turncoats; however they underestimated the real power of the organization, the immense economic, military and social strength, and the links with the mighty people.<br /> <br /> Some people thought ingenuously that the globalisation would have defeated the mafia; in the reality Cosa Nostra adapted itself to the new contest better than any 'mafia' in the world, and it's ready to come into the new millennium thanks to her secular experience, secrets, connections.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
The Structure of Sicilian Cosa Nostra
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-structure-of-sicilian-cosa
2010-11-19T13:00:00.000Z
2010-11-19T13:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> <br /> Cosa Nostra usually has a hierarchical and pyramidal structure. It is formed by groups, known as “families” or “cosche”, named after the village or neighbourhood where they are located. Every single “family” is formed by the associates or “avvicinati”, the soldiers or “picciotti” and by an administration composed by consigliere, underboss, and the boss, who runs the “family”. The size of a “family” changes and the larger ones are divided into crews of soldiers, known as “decine” and run by captains or “capidecina”, who are the link between the soldiers and the bosses.<br /> <br /> Three or more neighbouring “families” form the “mandamento”, run by the “capomandamento”, who is a member of the “Provincial Commission”. The “capimandamento” of a province vote for a “capoprovincia” who is a member of the “Regional Commission”, the supreme head of Cosa Nostra. The “Regional Commission” is formed by the provincial bosses of Palermo, Trapani, Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Enna and Catania/Eastern Sicily; it decides the most important strategies of the organization as a whole. The boss of bosses or “capo dei capi” is always the boss of Palermo province, which is historically the most powerful.<br /> <br /> In Sicily there are about 160 “families” with approximately 6.000 made members and 60.000 associates, almost half of them are located in the province of Palermo. Before being accepted as made members, or “uomini d’onore”, the associates are observed for years and introduced into a “family” only when considered valid; to become a made member the neophyte has to do a particular ritual. The rituals and the ceremony of initiation of Cosa Nostra are described in the police reports of middle and ending of 1800s after the unification of Italy, proofing the continuity and longevity of the organization.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Profile of Cosa Nostra hitman Giuseppe “Scarpuzzedda” Greco
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-hitman-giuseppe
2010-11-19T12:57:35.000Z
2010-11-19T12:57:35.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236983056,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> Posted in 2003<br /> <br /> Giuseppe “Scarpuzzedda” Greco was born in Palermo in 1950. He joined the Ciaculli “family”, ran by the boss Michele “The Pope” Greco, not related to him. His father, nicknamed “Scarpa”, was a member of the Greco’s from Ciaculli, who fought against the Greco’s from Croceverde Giardini in 1940s before joining themselves in an unique “family”. At the end of the 1970s he started his escalation inside Cosa Nostra; he would become the most violent and feared killer in the mafia history, but especially the most loyal killer of “Corleonesi”.<br /> <br /> He was the leader of the so called “death team”, including Mario Prestifilippo, Filippo Marchese, Gianbattista Pullarà, Giuseppe Lucchese, Giacomo Gambino and Nino Madonia. He was also promoted underboss of Ciaculli “family”. From 1977 to 1985, he probably killed more than 300 people. He was involved in hundreds of murders during the 1981-83 period, included several excellent murders against the institutions. He killed the bosses Bontade and Inzerillo, the most powerful of Palermo. He killed the 15 years old Giuseppe Inzerillo, son of Salvatore, and before doing it he cut his arms, saying: “So you won’t avenge your father”.<br /> <br /> On November 30th 1982 he committed the greatest massacre in the mafia history; after a dinner in the Brusca’s lair in San Giuseppe Jato village, the “death team” murdered Rosario Riccobono, boss of Partanna Mondello “family”, together with 20 “men of honour”; their bodies were loosed in the acid and never would be found. The same day other 50 people were murdered, between shooting and disappearances, around Palermo province; the Partanna Mondello and Noce “families” were totally decimated just in a day. That was Giuseppe “Scarpuzzedda” Greco and his team. His friends said he was born with the gun in the hands. When he became too dangerous even for Riina and the other bosses, the Commission decided to kill him; it was very hard to find the shooters because everybody feared his possible reactions, and according to inquiries, in the end, his best friend Giuseppe “Lucchiseddu” Lucchese murdered him. He disappeared in 1985, while he was on the run, and his body never would be found.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Cosa Nostra Boss: Matteo Messina Denaro
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-matteo
2010-11-19T12:54:59.000Z
2010-11-19T12:54:59.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The New Star In Cosa Nostra: Matteo Messina Denaro</span></div>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975875,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> <br /> By Joris van der Aa (article was first published in Belgian monthly magazine "Ché")<br /> <br /> Ever since the arrest of Salvatore "Toto" Riina the power within the leadership of Cosa Nostra (still the most powerful crime organization in the world) has been shifting. One ambitious and ruthless young man can’t wait to grab the top position within the Sicilian Mafia. let me introduce to you Matteo Messina Denaro, the Capo Di Tutti Capi of the 21st century.<br /> <br /> "I have to go, but I can’t explain the reasons of my choice to you. At this moment things are testifying against me. I fight for a cause that can’t be understood at this time, but one day people will see that I stood on the side of what was right."<br /> <br /> In 1993 the Italian police agencies searched a house in Mazara Del Vallo there they found a letter belonging to Matteo Messina Denaro (40), the rising star of the Sicilian Mafia. Since that letter we have heard nothing of Denaro he’s been in hiding, running from the hunters of the anti mafia. He is public enemy numero uno, seemingly unable to track down. Is he sitting peacefully in a farmhouse on some Sicilian mountain? Or is he controlling his business with an iron fist from abroad? No one knows the answer.<br /> <br /> His presence is felt more than ever within Cosa Nostra, the crime group that controls all other Italian crime groups (such as the Neapolitan Camorra, the Calabrian Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita from Pulii). Even more so, Diabolik is trying hard to push the current Capo Di Tutti Capi (boss of all bosses), Bernardo Provenzano, off the throne. Some mafia investigators are assuming that he already took over from Provenzano.<br /> <br /> "If you compare Cosa Nostra with a normal business, then you could say that Provenzano has been demoted. And Denaro has been promoted." says Guiseppa Luma, head of the parliamentary anti mafia commission in the British newspaper The Times.<br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A Man Of Honour At birth</span><br /> <br /> Any Mafioso`s life is one big cliche, Messina Denaro`s is no different. Denaro was born to be a Mafioso. He was born on April 26, 1962 in Castelvetrano, near Trapani. It was in this period that the Mafia clans were gaining power and influence, prime example: the Corleone Clan.<br /> <br /> It was also in this time that the American Mafia went into a working relationship with the Sicilians in the extremely profitable heroin trade. The Sicilian Island was controlled by the so called "Men of Honour", which is how Mafiosi see themselves. The local population didn’t object with that term most use the term to refer to members of the Mafia. the Mafia saw to it that there was economic activity on the poor island and on top of that Mafiosi acted like they were fighting for a higher cause: the fight against the Italian State. The Italian State was seen by many Sicilians as an occupier. It was in these times and this atmosphere that little Matteo Messina Denaro grew up. his father Francesco was also a man of honour and would eventually become Capo of the Trapani region. He was also one of the trusted men of Toto Riina.<br /> <br /> It wasn’t long before he saw that Messina Denaro junior had talent. According to the Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso he learned how to use a gun when he was only 14. 4 years later he committed his first murder. And it didn't` stop at that one murder. At the time of writing this article Denaro has reputedly killed around 50 people and he is proud of it.<br /> <br /> "I filled a cemetery all by myself" he bragged once.<br /> <br /> Friend of the Colombians Matteo Messina Denaro was a replica of his teacher Toto Riina. Extremely violent, cruel, not afraid of anyone but above all intelligent enough to stay out of the hands of justice. Diabolik also has a nose for profitable business. He made his fortune dealing in drugs and collecting pizzo, protection money extorted from businesses. In the drug trade his career advanced at breathtaking speed. Within several years he grew from being a small distributor to becoming an international player with whom people need to be careful. Even the American security services took notice of him.<br /> <br /> The FBI sees Denaro as one of the biggest drug traders in the world. With this in mind it is no surprise that he has close contacts with more than one Colombian drug-lord. With his growing drugs business he leaves his mark on Cosa Nostra. The Italians don’t call the Sicilian Mafia the Narco Mafia for nothing. Denaro’s climb to the top has begun, especially after taking over the position of capo of the Trapani region from his father. This is only the beginning.<br /> <br /> A Member of the Supercosa 1993. A bloody year in Italian history. A historical year in the history of the Mafia. It was in this year that there was a top meeting between heads of the Russian Mafia and Cosa Nostra. Italian justice hit them hard by arresting dozens of Mafiosi. The Italian office of homeland affairs pulled apart 70 governing panels because they were infiltrated by the Mafia. The Pentiti, better known as informants, government witnesses or rats, caused much damage to Cosa Nostra. The highlight of the war against the Mafia was the arrest of Salvatore "Toto" Riina, the boss of bosses. 1993 was also an important year for Matteo Messina Denaro. in that year, he just turned 31, he enters the supercosa. The supercosa is a select group of capi who know all the dark secrets of Cosa Nostra. As he entered this position of power he decided to, as he called it, "fight a just war against the Italian State." In June 1993 bombs went off in Rome, Firenze and Milan. 10 people die as a result of the bombings. One of the targets was the Catholic church. The coordinator of these attacks: Matteo Messina Denaro. Diabolik not only sends his troops out to attack the church, the justice department and the police agencies he also sends a clear message to the media. Denaro executes several journalists who dug too deep into the world of Cosa Nostra. Slowly the Italian justice department starts to realize that the arrest of Toto Riina and several hundred other big fish along with lower ranking Mafiosi hasn’t destabilized Cosa Nostra. They also realize that with Denaro a new devil has stepped up to the forefront. the hunt for Diabolik begins.<br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Target: Bernardo Provenzano</span><br /> <br /> The rising star of Cosa Nostra goes into hiding in 1993 after Giovanni Brusca, an important pentiti, breaks omerta and tells the government all he knows about the young man. In absence Denaro is sentenced to life in prison. But it doesn’t stop Denaro from continuing his criminal career. Denaro also uses the feelings most Mafiosi have about Provenzano to his own use. The average Mafioso is unhappy with the low profile way of doing business advocated by Bernardo Provenzano, the man who took over from Toto Riina. Provenzano chose a quiet rise back to power for the Mafia he shuns spectacular and high profile murders and attacks. "Why risk losing all our contacts and power within politics with high profile ways when you can commit fraudulent acts in the shadows" was his motto. And that approach has done Cosa Nostra good.<br /> <br /> Money made through illegal activities went through the roof just like in the old days and the political contacts were once again corrupted (prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is the prime example of that.) But this way of doing business has given Provenzano the reputation of being weak, reluctant to use violence. the much younger and more violent group of Mafiosi led by Denaro doesn’t want him as a leader anymore and regard him as being weak. Provenzano and Denaro never got along. When the young protégé of Riina was to be inducted in the Supercosa in 1993 Provenzano did everything in his power to stop it, but failed. Provenzano would rather have had Mafiosi such as Pietro Aglieri, Benedetto Spera or Antonino Giuffre who had been arrested in late April inducted in the inner circle but to no avail. "Denaro has put a chainsaw to the chair of Provenzano" an anonymous researcher once said. "He knows it himself cause he doesn’t want to meet with Denaro in person anymore, he’s afraid he’ll get killed".<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">New mafia</span><br /> <br /> Sole leadership of Cosa Nostra is within reach of the ambitious Matteo Messina Denaro. That will mean yet another re-styling for the most powerful criminal organization in the world. The cliché of the old Mafia boss who controls his empire from a farm on a mountain makes way for a new cliché: The Sopranos style. "the old mob boss still had mud on his hands" said a police agent in the The Times newspaper. "Denaro drives around in a Porche and loves computer games and reading comic books. He’s extremely wealthy, lives fast and is an almost compulsive womaniser. A real playboy, dressed in an Armani suit, and the almost compulsory eye wear for the modern day Mafiosi the Ray Ban sunglasses. " Another sign that things are changing within the Mafia is this, Denaro is married to a woman named Maria Mesi but he already had a daughter with one Francesca Alagna. This would’ve been impossible at the time of the old Mafia, with it’s conservative ways of thinking. Still, it would be wrong to call the new Denaro generation a bunch of brainless, shallow psychopaths. Because the youthful Denaro turned out to be a brilliant strategist, who is extremely focused on expanding his power.<br /> <br /> Denaro understands that infiltration of the political world and the justice world is of extreme importance to a criminal organization. So he too sends his men out into the political world. In the past the Christian Democrats under the leadership of ex prime minister Andreotti were the partners of Cosa Nostra. Nowadays more and more ties between Forza Italia (the party of Silvio Berlusconi) and the Mafia are uncovered. Senator Antonio D’Ali, elected in Trapani and a member of Forza Italia, is said to have good ties via his family with Denaro. Denaro reputedly donated millions to D’Ali`s political fund. A brother-in-law of Denaro, Vito Panicola, was convicted for unwillingly killing his son in an attempt to kill another man. Vito Panicola was a member of the governing council of Trapani. At this moment there are dozens of similar cases all across Italy. Maybe things haven’t changed with Matteo Messina Denaro as new capo di tutti capi.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><strong>UPDATE</strong> </span>- January 16, 2023: <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/too-old-for-this-sh-t-italian-police-arrest-sicilian-mafia-s-boss">Too old for this sh*t? Italian police arrest Sicilian Mafia’s boss of bosses Matteo Messina Denaro</a></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Profile of Cosa Nostra boss Leoluca Bagarella
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-leoluca
2010-11-19T12:50:44.000Z
2010-11-19T12:50:44.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> Posted in 2003<br /> <br /> Leoluca Bagarella was born in Corleone in 1941. He is the brother-in-law of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Salvatore Riina</a>, the boss of bosses, who married his sister Antonina. He supported Luciano Leggio during the war against Navarra’s men in 1960s. His brother Calogero was murdered in 1969 during the Viale Lazio slaughter in Palermo; he organized the attack together with Bernardo Provenzano, but the Acquasanta boss Michele Cavataio, before his death, shot him in the head; another brother, Giuseppe, was poisoned in 1972. <br /> <br /> He’s considered one of the most violent and feared boss in the mafia history; when Tommaso Buscetta was asked about him, he answered: “I prefer not to speak about him; I think he doesn’t belong to human species; he probably had also mental and physical problems because when we played soccer in the prison’s courtyard he kicked the ball with two foots at the same time; have you ever seen a similar thing? In prison everybody feared him; I remember we stayed three months together in the prison’s infirmary and the only words he told me were good morning and good evening, nothing else”. That’s Leoluca Bagarella. <br /> <br /> On May 6th 1995 in Palermo, he killed Domenico Buscetta, nephew of Tommaso, because that morning a friend introduced each other in a bar and he shook hands with him; when the friend told him he was a Buscetta’s nephew, he answered “why the hell do you introduce me to infamous?”, and in the evening he shot him to death. He’s suspected to be involved in his wife’s hanging, Vincenza Marchese, because her brother Giuseppe Marchese, member of Corso dei Mille “family”, was an informer; he would hang his wife in order to eliminate any connection to him.<br /> <br /> Inside Cosa Nostra everybody called him simply “The Brother-in-law”, because of his relationship with Riina, but also because nobody wanted to nickname him, in order to avoid problems. He was involved in hundreds of murders, included journalist Mario Francese, policemen Boris Giuliano and Giuseppe Montana, judges Falcone and Borsellino, and the mysterious Milan, Florence and Rome slaughters.<br /> <br /> After the arrest of Totò Riina in 1993, Cosa Nostra was divided in two factions; the “stragisti”, very violent, led by him, and the “moderati”, less violent and more diplomatic, led by Provenzano; In 1994 he formed, trough his men, the political party “Sicilia Libera” in order to divide the island of Sicily from the rest of Italy. He probably was one of the ultimate men regarding the obscure agreement between Cosa Nostra and the Italian government at the beginning of 1990s.<br /> <br /> Bagarella was arrested on June 24th 1995, after a lot of years of fugitiveness, and sentenced to life for several murders. But after 7 years of silence, on June 2002 during a trial, he protested heavily against politicians, and probably also against free bosses, like Provenzano; it seemed a real threat; they were Bagarella’s words and despite he’s behind bars, his words can’t be underestimated. Maybe the Italian government didn’t respect the agreement with “stragisti” and he’s tired to wait…</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Profile of Cosa Nostra boss Giuseppe Calò
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-giuseppe-calo
2010-11-19T12:46:46.000Z
2010-11-19T12:46:46.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> Posted in 2003<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981070,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Giuseppe Calò was born in Palermo in 1931. In 1954 he killed Pietro Scaletta in order to revenge his father and the same year he became a “man of honour” of Porta Nuova family; in 1962, when the old boss Carlo Brandaleone died, he replaced him as the family boss. At the beginning of 1970s he took part in the Provincial Commission as “capomandamento”. He supported Totò Riina during the mafia war at the beginning of 1980s and became one of the most loyal allied of “Corleonesi” faction. At the ending of 1970s he went to Rome under the fake name of Mario Agliarolo; in the Italian capital he was supported by local Cosa Nostra “decinas”, terrorists, and members of Banda della Magliana but he also had strong links with several politicians, freemasons, secret services agents, bishops and bankers. <br /> <br /> He was nicknamed “The Cashier” because he managed the most important financial business of the mafia. He was accused to be involved in some of the most obscure and mysterious mafia misdeeds, included the murders of journalist Pecorelli, the bankers Sindona and Calvi, the lawyer Ambrosoli, the judges Chinnici, Falcone and Borsellino, and the so called “904 train’s slaughter”; Carmine Pecorelli was murdered in Rome on Mars 20th 1979; according to the inquiries the reputed shooters were the “man of honour” Michelangelo La Barbera and the terrorist Massimo Carminati; Pecorelli would be killed because Andreotti didn’t like his articles about politics. <br /> <br /> Giorgio Ambrosoli was murdered in Milan on June 12th 1979; Roberto Calvi was hanged in London on June 18th 1982. Michele Sindona was poisoned inside Voghera prison on Mars 22nd 1985. On December 23rd 1984 a bomb attack against a train in San Benedetto, between Florence and Bologna, caused 16 dead and 100 wounded. <br /> <br /> In 1978 the Commission of Cosa Nostra asked him to contact the Red Brigade terrorist group in order to free the politician of DC party Aldo Moro, but he answered that Andreotti didn’t want it; a clear signal of his huge connections and knowledge inside national politics. Giuseppe Calò was arrested in Rome on May 31st 1985; he was surprised inside an elegant apartment together with “men of honour” Antonino Rotolo and Lorenzo Di Gesù. Sentenced to life for several murders, his position inside Cosa Nostra is uncertain; some people say he’s still the boss of Porta Nuova family, others say he retired in 1990s.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Profile of Cosa Nostra boss Calogero Vizzini
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-calogero
2010-11-19T12:35:49.000Z
2010-11-19T12:35:49.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978283,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> Posted in 2003<br /> <br /> Calogero Vizzini was born on July 24, 1877 in Villalba, in the Sicilian province of Caltanissetta. This edge of middle Sicily, known as “Vallone”, was a sour and poor area, where people lived off subsistence agriculture. The father of Calogero was a farmer, and his brothers Giovanni and Giuseppe were both priests, Giuseppe became the bishop of Muro Lucano. <br /> <br /> Calogero, however, was semi-illiterate and didn’t finish the elementary studies. He was under protection of Francesco Paolo Varsallona, a fugitive criminal, reputed “man of honour”, who made a living by extorting large landowners and bandits, around the lands of the village; he supplied manpower to nobles in order to repress farmers’ revolts. When Varsallona was arrested in 1903, the young Vizzini was already a real “gabellotto”, in friendship with barons and marquises, and he was going to climb Honoured Society’s ranks. <br /> <br /> In 1917, he was sentenced to 20 years in first level for fraud, corruption and murder, but he was absolved thanks to some friends who exculpated him. He was becoming richer and richer, and in 1919 he already owned a lot of fields, shops and sulphur mines. In 1931, during the Fascist dictatorship of Mussolini, he was banned from Sicily for a few years because he was a suspected member of the mafia; according to police he was involved in several crimes and he had connections with other Sicilian bosses and also around United States. He returned to Villalba in 1937, received and respected by the entire village. In 1943, Calogero Vizzini drove the American army, ran by Charles Poletti, from Gela to Caltanissetta; most of the soldiers had Sicilian origins and they knew the local dialect. Vizzini was designated mayor of Villalba because of his help, and a lot of bosses were released from prison; that was the end of the Fascism and the new rise of the mafia.<br /> <br /> In 1949 Vizzini and Italian-American boss Vito Genovese opened a factory in Palermo, which police suspected was a cover for heroin trafficking. Later he was photographed with Salvatore “Lucky Luciano” Lucania in front of a Palermo hotel. His tentacles reached all around the United Stated. In Philadelphia, where he was in friendship with the future family boss Angelo Annaloro, known as “Angelo Bruno”, born in Villalba. He died on July 10, 1954, hundreds of people took part in his funeral, included Mussomeli boss Giuseppe Genco Russo.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Profile of Cosa Nostra boss Stefano Bontade
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-stefano
2010-11-18T21:51:19.000Z
2010-11-18T21:51:19.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977480,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto<br /> Posted in 2003<br /> <br /> Stefano Bontade was born on April 23, 1939 in Palermo. His father was Francesco Paolo “Don Paolino” Bontade, the boss of Santa Maria di Gesù family, one of the most powerful families of the city of Palermo. Born in 1914, he was a farmer and he ran the fields and the wells around Villagrazia, Santa Maria di Gesù, and Guadagna neighbourhoods, which before the 1960s were rural areas. He was introduced into organized crime by his father, Stefano’s grandfather, and quickly became one of the most powerful bosses of Palermo area. His word was the “law” for the people. He was designated boss after the death of Andrea Messina, the old boss of Santa Maria family.<br /> <br /> Stefano was introduced into Cosa Nostra very early and in 1964, when he was 25, he became the official boss of the family because of his father’s disease. At the beginning of 1970s he took part in the triumvirate, with Gaetano Badalamenti and Luciano Leggio, which ran Cosa Nostra for a few years, before the Commission was reorganized after the repression of the State.<br /> <br /> Thanks to his politics and freemasons connections, Stefano was a real authority inside Cosa Nostra; he was in friendship with Salvo Lima, once Palermo’s mayor, Giovanni Gioia, senator of DC party, and several others, including Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. But when his power seemed to be untouchable, an obscure enemy was on the rise: the “Corleonesi” led by Totò Riina. They wanted to replace him, his political connections and his business, including drug trafficking and cigarettes smuggling. The Bontades had a lot of refineries around Palermo province, one of these was directly ran by Giovanni Bontade, brother of Stefano, murdered in 1988. The first signals Riina sent to Bontade were the kidnappings of Pino Vassallo, son of an important entrepreneur, Luciano Cassina, son of the Count Arturo, and Luigi Corleo, one of the richest of Sicily, father-in-law of Salvo’s from Salemi. The mafia war reached the top on April 23, 1981, when Stefano was shot to death while he was driving his armoured car. After him about 900 “men of honour” were killed in Palermo from 1981 to 1983; that was the end of the last member of the “Old Mafia”.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Special Report: Mob-murders Cools Off in Italy
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/special-report-mobmurders
2010-11-10T19:11:15.000Z
2010-11-10T19:11:15.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Special Report: Mob-murders Cools Off in Italy</span><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">And other Historical Stories about the Sicilian Mafia.</span></div>
<p><br /> By Clarence Walker, Investigative Journalist, Houston Texas.<br /> Posted on October 8, 2007<br /> <br /> Is it a myth or reality that mob-related murders are at its lowest decline in Italy's history of organized crime? Italian authorities and prominent research teams has found that mob-related murders throughout Italy declined in recent years due to less internal disputes and rival conflicts between Costa Nostra families and other organized crime groups. Recent statistics showed that Italy’s homicide rate involving organized crime decreased to 121 murders in 2006. Experts point out the fact since the 1990s mob-related murders has steadily cooled off. Example: Authorities say when a comparison is made between the 121 murders in 2006; 143 in 2005, 212 in 2004---with the 340 mob connected murders in 1992, the year Sicily’s Costa Nostra executed a reign of terror by killing political officials and if the numbers are correct the murder rate shows a considerable decline. Italy’s Interior Minister Guliano Amato attributed the lower numbers of body counts to a “Pax Mafioso” whereby the players in the mob game try to score tons of money without getting their hands bloody. “Without a doubt (there is) a “Pax Mafioso,” a change in direction of the Mafia”, Amato says. “The decline of homicides by Costa Nostra was part of a precise strategy”, says anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso who is based in Rome. “Fewer homicides don’t mean the mob is weaker. It means there are fewer internal disputes.” But a vicious and long-running mob war between two interrelated crime families may well jinx the numbers.<br /> <br /> On August 15th, six members of the Strangio-Nirta family were executed outside a popular restaurant in Duisberg Germany by suspected members of the Pelle-Romeo family. Both clans are members of the notorious “Ndrangheta Calabria Mafia. based in San Luca. The murders marked the first time that a mafia syndicate carried out a revenge attack on foreign soil. Police say the men were gunned down outside a popular restaurant called Da Bruno. They were celebrating the 18th birthday of Tommaso Venturi who died enroute to the hospital. Among those shot to death were: (1) restaurant owner Sebastino Strangio, 39, (2) Francesco Giorgi who is the nephew of Strangio. Two brothers: (3)Francesco, 22, and Marco Pergola, 20. (4) Marco Marmo, 25. Police investigation indicated the assassins fired more than 70 shots at the scene---striking the victims also armed with weapons multiple times. Last week investigators arrested several suspects but none has been charged in the slayings.<br /> <br /> The murders shocked this west German city but there is another sinister picture. Authorities say the homicides shows the strong presence of the 'Ndrangheta Mafia in Germany. "It is disturbing---first because of the sheer number of the dead", the acting director of Italy's National Anti-Mafia bureau, Carmelo Petralia, told the BBC news media. "We knew that the 'Ndrangheta had deep links to Germany to launder the proceeds of its criminal activities from the prying eyes of Italy's Mafia investigators,” Petralia said. Italian and German newspaper stories has reported that hundreds of the ‘Ndrangheta syndicate from San Luca has emigrated over the years to Germany and Europe where they operate drug trafficking and other lucrative organized crime activities. Luigi de Sena, deputy director of the police in the Calabria region told the Italian news agency ANSA the murders were “an unprecendented settling of scores, particularly because the murders took place in a foreign country for the first time”. Sena added the fact that “the presence of the Calabrian mafia in Germany is very strong, but until now they always kept a low profile, trying not to attract attention”. Police has refused to comment publicly if the restaurant where the victims were murdered has been identified as a secret location for meetings between mob players and a money laundering operation.<br /> <br /> San Luca village located in southern Italy was described in 2005 by Italy’s domestic intelligence agency as “the cradle of the ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate. Above the town is the shrine of “Our Lady of Polsi” which is a symbolism of religion. Anti-mafia authorities has secretly documented the presence of ‘Ndrangheta crime bosses who travel from all over the world every September to pay respect to the shrine. Enzo Ciconte, the author of several books on the ‘Ndrangheta mob and a consultant to Italy’s anti-mafia commission is considered an expert on Italy’s organized crime. Referring to the Strangio-Nirta and the Pelle-Romeo family, Ciconte told reporters: “It is the families of San Luca who decides if other families are a part of the ‘Ndrangheta.” Ciconte explains this point: “Let’s say, you wanted to set up a new locale in Britain, Holland or Germany and you don’t get the approval of the ‘Ndrangheta in San Luca, then your gang is not part of the ‘Ndrangheta”.<br /> <br /> Blood War<br /> <br /> When the six men of the Strangio-Nirta crime family were murdered on August 15th by suspected members of the Pello-Romeo clan---both from the ‘Ndranghetha mob---authorities knew immediately the motive was a spillover feud between the families. According to Mafia investigators the deadly fireworks started in 1991 when the Strangio-Nirta and Pelle-Romeo families had a fight at a carnival in San Luca after both sides hurled eggs and insults at each other. The brutal fight left two men dead and others injured which triggered retaliation acts known throughout Italy as the “vendetta of San Luca”. This vendetta brought on many murders between the warring factions. Over the years since the carnival affair authorities contributed 15 or more murders among the families. After the carnival brawl a string of ‘hit-versus-hit’ murders went down until 2000 when investigators believed the dispute had been resolved. But the tranquility was shattered last year on Christmas eve when Maria Strangio, 33, the wife of boss Giovanni Nirta, was shot to death at her mother’s home in San Luca. Strangio’s father, Antonio, is also among the victims murdered in this bloody drama of vendetta killings. Renato Cortese, chief of Calabria’s flying squad investigated the feuds and said the attacks had been carefully timed. “They like to pick dates with meaning and this happened on the eve of Ascension day, as a follow-up to the Christmas killing of Maria Strangio,” Cortese said.<br /> <br /> ‘Ndrangheta Rap Sheet<br /> <br /> Unlike other powerful Mafia syndicates in Italy---the Costa Nostra of Sicily, the Camorra of Naples, and the United Holy Crown of Puglia---the Ndrangheta operate a loose clan system with unified command. This organization differs from other Italian Mafia syndicates that are organized into families, the ‘Ndrangheta arrange marriages among relatives to bring members into their circle. The name ‘Ndrangheta is steeped in legend. Historians say the tracing of the name derives from the greek word ‘andragathos’ meaning ‘brave man’. Calabrian was an area of Byzantine greek settlement which suggests the organization or its social culture is older than the original Costa Nostra. Depending which numbers are accurate authorities say the circle has up to 100 families who specialize in cocaine and heroin trafficking, money laundering and contract killing. Foreign authorities describe the ‘Ndrangheta mob as the most wealthiest and deadly crime syndicate in organized crime and more powerful than Sicilian Mafia. Recent investigation reports pointed out the fact more than 70 per cent of Calabrian businessmen pay the ‘Ndrangheta mob protection money. The remaining 30 per cent of all businesses and shops are controlled by the mob.<br /> <br /> Drug Business<br /> <br /> Pietro Grasso, Italy’s anti-Mafia commission said the killings in Duisberg is evidence that the ‘Ndrangheta mob is operating globally. Grasso said it is clear the group has “taken control of the economic power from other crime syndicates involving international drug dealing”. Drug investigators have uncovered evidence to show the ‘Ndrangheta clan controls most of Colombia’s cocaine exports to Europe which flows through the port town of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, southern Italy. “This organization is all over Europe and even has a hand in politics,” Grasso said. He added that “no country in the world” can stop them, until the international banking system becomes less opaque.”. “We can find the drugs and the people, but we cannot track the money. There is no doubt that money is moving to Colombia, so why we can’t see it?” Grasso added: “We have increased the number of our raids and checks enormously, but the strategy is useless. The people who traffic drugs make sure they do not violate the banking laws over the transfer of capital, and they act openly with the help of major financial experts.” Anthony Nicaso, the author of ‘Blood Brothers’, a book about the ‘Ndrangheta, said the group is the only true global Italian crime syndicate. “The ‘Ndrangheta has been very adept at modernizing itself. They use the internet to recycle money from its activities and keeps a monopoly on Colombian cocaine into Europe”. “They have direct links with the Colombians and terrorist organizations. They are also in the UK as well, Nicaso said. A 2004 Italian government report estimated the group earned over $22 billion dollars from the drug trade. “Pressure by law enforcers on Costa Nostra has helped the ‘Ndrangheta expand drug operation and thanks to their tight family structure, there are few turncoats to help police,” said Franceso Forgione, head of Italy’s parliamentary anti-mafia commission. Mafia bosses, including those from San Luca clans, have reinvested drug earnings in hotels, restaurants and construction in Germany. Investigator Cortese also told reporters that both the Strangio-Nirta and the Pelle-Romeo families were powerful forces in the ‘Ndrangheta’s drug business which elevated the Calabria mafia to become Europe’s top-level narcotics supplier with the aid of the Colombian drug cartel.<br /> <br /> Authorities suspect the ‘Ndrangheta group murdered Francesco Fortugno, vice president of Calabria’s regional government. Fortugno was murdered last year by two masked gunmen in the small town of Locri shortly after he voted in a national primary ballot to choose a leader for the center-left opposition. No arrest has been made.<br /> <br /> Sicilian Mafia History<br /> <br /> According to historical accounts the so-called mob, "Man Of Honor" or Sicilian Mafia developed either from the 1700s or 1800s eras'. Controversy stems from the creation of Italy's criminal underworld because research by experts have pointed out truth and half-truths mixed with inaccurate and confusing details about the beginning of the Sicilian mob. Overall, one fact stands out. A Rome research group reported years ago that from (1860-1876) the beginning of the real Sicilian mob began after Sicily became part of the nation of Italy after decades of unfettered rule by the country of Naples. Naples was part of the Bourbon Kingdom. Bourbon ruled most of Southern Italy that Sicily was a part of. During turbulent periods between the (two) the Sicilians who lived on islands formed a small group of men who resisted and set out to exact vigilante justice against the oppression imposed by the Kingdom. Sicily's history further show that it wasn't until the Red shirt army led by Giuseppe Garibaldi fought a 'bloody' war with Neapolitano warriors that Sicily won its liberation from Naples and subsequently integrated the country of Italy that gave birth to the Sicilian mob. Despite other questionable versions of the creation of the Italian mob many historians discovered evidence the group did not become a well-structured organization until the late 1800s. The phrase Costa Nostra---"our way"---was used to describe the lifestyle of a Mafioso in Sicily. Secrecy that surrounded Mafia activities in Sicily became known as the "Omerta"---the silence code. The practice of recruiting men into the Mafia by administering the oath and a test of one's ability to carry out mob-related duties also originated from the Sicilian mafia.<br /> <br /> Following Garibaldi's legendary defeat over the Bourbon Kingdom group that once ruled the Sicilian island---over 2.4 million Sicilians migrated into Italy's mainland. To win liberation from their conquerors, the Sicilians' epic victory over the Kingdom duplicate stories we often hear today about poverty-stricken people who challenged insurmountable odds to achieve the "American Dream". Unfortunately, what seemed as a dream come true for the Sicilians, the victory over the Bourbon Kingdom soon turned into a nightmare. Relationships between the Sicilians and the Italian government soured. Sicilians who invested profits into the revolutionary battle to claim independence from the Kingdom accused the government of denying access into the political mainstream to have government assist the Sicilians to earn sufficient capital to redevelop the deplorable conditions of the islands where they once lived. Members and close associates of the Italian government fired back. They accused the Sicilian islanders of thievery, dishonesty, including their associations with predatory criminals that threaten to undermine and possibly overthrow the government. Fed up with unfairness and discrimination a group of Sicilians formed their own government called "our way". From the beginning, during the 1800s, the Italian Mafia infiltrated and exploited every business, political groups, and the social and the economic fabric inside of Italy's infrastructure that spreaded across the globe and its power impacted the world. It’s no secret. They are known as the most notorious and widespread of all underworld criminal enterprise. The Italian Mafia, like other organized crime groups, are into traditional crimes such as extortion, running protection rackets, gambling enterprises and takeover of territories where money flow from various activities. In recent years, Italy's Mafia groups has become more sophisticated by diversifying their activities into other areas such as drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, and the bribery of political leaders and judges. Investigators and prominent members of trade associations reported that between 2000-2005--- the Italian Mafia controls one in five businesses in Italy. Members of the association in Milan said the Mafia owned 20% of all businesses with an annual turnover of $133 billions, the equivalent of 15% of GNP. Reports further showed the money made by the Mafia was "enough to pay off public debt with the ball and chain around Europe's ankle". Sergio Billie, the president of Italy's business association, indicated not enough was being done internationally to combat organized crime. A police official said that countries allowing offshore banking is responsible for the growth in OC criminal activities. Milan chief prosecutor Gerardo d'Ambrosion weighed in on the issues. "In order to beat the Mafia, we need the cooperation of businessmen, and they don't always give us concrete facts to act upon".<br /> <br /> History of La Costa Nostra (LCN)<br /> <br /> As stated earlier, the Sicilian Mafia is the original mafia of all mafia' throughout the world. But it is commonly known as the roots of La Costa Nostra based in Italy is pivotal to Italian organized crime---though LCN has been separate organization for many years. Documented history by journalists and government archives reveals that Giuseppe Esposito was the first known Sicilian Mafia member to immigrate to America. Esposito and six other Sicilians fled to New York after they murdered the chancellor and a vice chancellor of a Sicilian province and 11 wealthy landowners. Esposito was arrested in New Orleans Louisiana in 1881, extradited to Italy and convicted. New Orleans was also the first city in America involving the murder of a police officer allegedly at the hands of the Mafia. The murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessey sparked a riot when Sicilian Joseph P. Macheca and other Italian defendants were acquitted of Hennessey murder by a jury. A vigilante group broke into the jail where the Sicilians were being held and killed nine of the men. None of the killers who either hung or shot the Italians were prosecuted. To get the full story read the book Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia written by Thomas Hunt and Martha Macheca.<br /> <br /> The Sicilian Mafia is notorious for brutal assaults on Italian law enforcement officials. In Sicily the word “Excellent Cadaver” is used to distinguish the assassination of prominent government officials from other criminals and ordinary citizens killed by the Mafia. High-ranking victims include police commissioners, mayors, judges, police colonels, generals, and parliament members. On May 23rd 1992, the Sicilian Mafia struck Italian law enforcement with vengeance. Approximately 6:p.m, Italian Magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife, and three police bodyguards were killed by a massive bomb. Falcone was the director of criminal affairs in Rome. The bomb made a crater 30 feet in diameter in the road. Falcone’s murder became known as the Capaci Massacre. Two months later on July 19th the Sicilian mob killed Falcone’s replacement, Judge Paolo Borsellino in Palermo, Sicily. Borsellino and five bodyguards were killed outside the apartment of Borsellino’s mother when a car packed with explosives was detonated by remote control. Both murders of the officials ignited an all-out war between authorities and the Sicilian gangsters. Several mobsters and their associates were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in Italy.<br /> <br /> Italian Mafia Groups<br /> <br /> (1) 'Ndrangheta: Calabrian Mafia Location: Southern Italy. Known as "The Honored Society", Fibbia or Calabrian Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, for many years, toiled in the shadow of the more popular Sicilian Costa Nostra. But not now. The 'Ndrangheta, the word pronounced "en-drang- ay-ta", according to Italian government authorities, is the most richest and powerful organized crime syndicate in Italy and throughout the European country. Informant Calogero Marceno told authorities the 'Ndrangheta Mafia splits into two levels: (1) the "maggiore" which is the senior level and the "minore" is the junior level. These separate positions creates a barrier between low-level common-type crimes and higher-level political and white-collar crimes. Unlike the Sicilian Mafia, which is organized into families with a pyramid structure, the 'Ndrangheta clan is based on blood relationship, inter-marriages, or being a godfather. Each group is named after the village where they reside, or after the family leader. With an estimated 10,000 'made' members compared to three-to-four thousands in Costa Nostra, Italian police secret intelligence division concluded years ago there are at least 100 or more clans within the 'Ndrangheta mafia. Recent investigation reports has estimated that the annual income by the ‘Ndrangheta mob has an annual turnover of $35 billion Euro. "We are faced with the most powerful Italian criminal organization that extends its influence from Calabria to the rest of Italy, and into various European countries and across the oceans", says Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.<br /> <br /> (2) Camorra: Neapolitan Mafia: LOCATION: NAPLES, ITALY. The Camorra mafia started as a prison gang in Naples during the mid-1800s. Once the group was released they started their own clan family and continued to grow in power. This group made a fortune in reconstruction after a devastating earthquake ravaged the Campania region in the 1980s. Considered the second largest International organized crime group with over 200 clans and estimated 7000 'made' members. They specialize in cigarette smuggling and take payoffs from other criminal syndicates for any cigarette trafficking through Italy. During the 1970s, the Sicilian mafia intervened with the Camorras' operation. The Sicilians had a plan with the dope game. They wanted the Camorra to convert the cigarette smuggling routes into drug smuggling routes with the assistance of the Sicilians but many of the Camorra leaders refused. This disagreement caused the two families to war against each other. The violence claimed the lives of 400 or more members from both sides. Many of the deaths were the Camorra group. But they rebounded from the losses and continued to control the cigarette trafficking. International organized crime investigators and the FBI in the united states has documented at least 200 Camorra affiliates in the united states. Many immigrated to the USA during the Camorra wars.<br /> <br /> (3) Sacra Corona Unita: Location: Apulia, Italy Like the Camorra, the Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) started as a prison gang and once the members were released they settled in the Puglia region and eventually linked their operations into other Mafia networks. According to intelligence units the Corona has approximately 50 clans with approximately 2000 members. SCU leader Giuseppe Rogoli instituted a pyramid structure for the organization: Soldiers were known as a "camorristi" which was at the bottom; and an "sgarristi" was known as an enforcer. Other levels of membership are: (1) Santisti (2) Evangelisti (3) Trequartino. Informant Cosimo Capodeci said the SCU used "the Crown (Corona) because it resembled a crown, which reflects the rosary typically used in church to carry out the work of Jesus Christ and the cross. Capodeci further indicated the word United (Unita), was used because of its necessity to be "connected to one another". (As quoted in The Global Mafia Report). Investigations by foreign government agencies reported the SCU had links to the Colombian drug cartels, other Italian crime syndicates, including the Russians and Asian organized crime organizations. Based on intelligence reports published in American and Foreign media outlets the SCU were the key players in the mass smuggling of thousands of Albanian women and young girls into Italy for prostitution. They are even referred to as "modern-day slave traders" due to their role in illegal human trafficking. Their activity involves cigarette smuggling, drugs, firearms, and human trafficking. Mixed into their operation is the payoffs from other criminal groups for landing rights on the southeast coast of Italy. This territory is a designated route for smuggling to and from post-Communist countries like Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Although the FBI haven't identified too many Sacro Corona mafiosos in USA but there are some links in Illinois, Florida and New York.<br /> <br /> (4) Stidda: The Star: Location: Sicily Italy Mafiosos Giuseppe Benvento and Salvatore Calafato, both from the province of Palmi di Montechiaro, gave the organization its name La Stidda (Sicilian star). Over the years, the Stidda has extended its influence into Italy's mainland provinces such as Milano, Genova and Torino. Members are called stiddari in the Caltanissetta province and stiddaroli in Agrigento province. sStidda members identify each other by a tattoo of five greenish marks arranged in a circle, forming a star called "I punti della malavita" or "the points of the criminal life". When the Costa Nostra waged war against other factions in the 1970s for control of the southern and eastern parts of Italy the feud brought the Corleonesi clan and it's ruthless leaders Luciano Leggio, Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano into power---which caused a severe disruption inside the traditional power base of Costa Nostra. The continuing chaos within the families left the Stidda clan to try to balance the main power base of Costa Nostra such as those loyal to slain Capo Giuseppe DiCristina who defected from the ranks due to the bloodthirsty reign of the Corleonesi clan. From 1978 to 1980, former Corleonesi leader Capo Toto Riina fought against the Stidda and other Cosa Nostra members that left over 500 men in Costa Nostra and at least 1000 La Stidda members dead, including Stidda Capos Calogero Lauria and and Vincenzo Spina. When authorities captured Toto Riina in 1993 and a few other gangsters loyal to Riina the Stidda has gained superior status, influence and credibility among other criminal organizations in Italy. The Stidda is sometimes called the "Fifth Mafia".<br /> <br /> New Generation<br /> <br /> Sicilian Mafioso Bernardo Provenzano was captured last year after 43 years on the run and lingering questions persisted: Who would replace him? And whether or not if more bloodshed from different mobs factions in Italy would take place to choose a suitable leader to control the Sicilian Mafia. "There are a generation of 50-somethings ready to carry on", says Antoino Ingroia, a leading anti-Mafia magistrate in Sicily, told reporters at a press conference where news of Provenzano arrest was announced. Investigators say there are two people qualified to replace Provenzano-----Salvatore Lo Piccolo and Matteo Messina Denaro. They, too, like their master Provenzano, have been fugitives for decades----Lo Piccolo since 1983, Messino Denaro since 1993. Lo Piccolo, a boss from the Mafia's Resuttana district in Palermo, is 64, and considered "old school". Authorities reported he'd been closest to Provenzano as an ally. Messina Denaro, from the grim western Sicilian province city of Castelvetrano, is now 47. He is known as the 'playboy boss' because he loves fast cars, pretty women, and gold watches. Whether a war breaks out or not depends on what investigators call "the internal equilibrium" of the Mafia. Asked if he feared a clan war, Piero Grasso, the national anti-Mafia prosecutor, told reporters: "I am Sicilian. I will do everything in my power to avoid it. But soon, the vacuum left by Provenzano arrest will be filled". Over the past 13 years that Provenzano controled the Mafia, investigators said he forged a "kinder, gentler style", to give the Mafia a lower profile to take the police spotlight off organized crime. Ingroid added, "In an organization like the Mafia, a boss has to be one step above the others---otherwise it all falls apart". As stated earlier, the last Mafia wars in Sicily took place in the 1980s when Toto "the beast" Riina, Provenzano, Leoluca Bagarella and Luciano Liggio destroyed hundreds of mob enemies. At the cemetery in San Luca, the grave of Maria Strangio, the victim killed by mafia ambush in December 2006, her tombstone shows the photograph of a beautiful woman with lush, dark hair wearing pendant earrings. The inscription reads: “Your beautiful youth was shattered when everyone was smiling at you. Death carried you far away. It separated you from loved ones who repeat your name silently every hour.” “God help us,” an unidentified man said during interview with a reporter. He makes his living watching over the cemetery where the dead sleep. “We hope for peace. But this is a land forgotten by God and man alike”. Only time will tell if the mob-related murders in Italy cools off or heats up again. Lets wait and see.<br /> <br /> Any comments: Contact Journalist Clarence Walker at Cwalker261@excite.com or Mafia101@myway.com<br /> <br /> References and sources used for this story: (1) Italy crime news (2) Mafia-news.com (3) FBI government records (4) Reuters wire service (5) Guardian newspaper (6) Global Mafia Reports. (Germany News media services)</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Italian Police Are Closing in on Cosa Nostra Boss
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/italian-police-are-closing-in
2010-11-10T18:17:38.000Z
2010-11-10T18:17:38.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By David Amoruso<br /> Posted on June 28, 2009<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975875,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Italian authorities are closing in on Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro (47). In one week, police in Italy and Venezuela arrested over a dozen men who are all being accused of helping Denaro run his criminal operations. By the end of the week even Denaro’s (photo on the right) most valuable drug contact had been put in handcuffs.<br /> <br /> On Saturday June 20th a joint operation by Venezuelan and Italian police netted authorities Salvatore Miceli (63). Miceli was arrested late in the evening when he came out of a hotel in Caracas. He was listed as one of Italy’s most wanted fugitives, and, according to Italian police, is one of Europe’s top five drug traffickers. Miceli operated as a middle-man between South American drug cartels and the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, and Sicilian Cosa Nostra. As such, he was of utmost value to the Italian Mafia groups. Especially to Matteo Messina Denaro, who is a big drug trafficker and rumored to be the new Sicilian “boss of bosses” since the arrests of Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Lo Piccolo.<br /> <br /> On June 16, Italian police had already arrested thirteen men who are accused of carrying out Denaro’s orders and providing him with false passports and other documents. Most of the men were arrested in the Sicilian province Trapani, which is Denaro’s base of operations. "He's the last of the great fugitives," said Giuseppe Linares, the top police official in Trapani. "This operation strikes at his breeding ground and allows us to understand the essential structure" that is protecting him.<br /> <br /> Denaro has been a fugitive for sixteen years. During those sixteen years, his reputation has grown to epic proportions. He once said that he had filled a cemetery all by himself. According to Italian magazine L’Espresso he committed his first murder at the age of eighteen and is currently a suspect in over fifty murders. It all came natural as he simply followed in his father’s footsteps.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236976284,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The young boss is idolized by the new generation of Mafiosi, who respect his ruthlessness and charisma. It is widely believed that Denaro is not hiding out in a shanty barn like his predecessor Bernardo Provenzano (photo on the left) had done. Instead, Italian police found evidence that he had visited Austria, Greece, Spain, and Venezuela. These visits are alleged to have been part of his drug smuggling and money laundering operations. Though he is not all business. He is also a playboy, who enjoys beautiful women, fine wine, and fast cars. A big contrast with Provenzano who lived like a monk.<br /> <br /> With these recent arrests Italian police are trying to break down Denaro’s support system, like they had done to Provenzano a few years ago. When the boss his soldiers are taken away, it forces the boss to come out of hiding to take care of business. Business he normally would have left in the hands of his underlings. As soon as Denaro steps out of the shadows, police will be waiting with a shiny pair of handcuffs. <br /> </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Cosa Nostra Bosses Pledge Loyalty to the End
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-bosses-pledge
2010-11-10T16:25:52.000Z
2010-11-10T16:25:52.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By Puparo and David Amoruso<br /> Posted on November 5, 2007<br /> <br /> At the end of August some very interesting news reached the world press. Two of the most violent and powerful Cosa Nostra leaders exchanged their wedding rings when one moved to the other's prison cell. To most in the media this ring exchange could only mean one thing: An end to the peace between Cosa Nostra and the Italian state. The Sicilian Mafia has spent decades fighting the state by killing politicians, judges, cops, and journalists. The war against the state eventually started working against Cosa Nostra when the public started to condemn them. Bernardo Provenzano, the boss of bosses at the time, declared a stop in the war on the state. He saw that the state started to increase the pressure, and more and more Mafiosi were being arrested, several becoming pentiti (informers/witnesses). As the famous saying goes: "The war was bad for business." Cosa Nostra went back to making money and regrouping after the heavy assault by the state.<br /> <br /> On April 11, 2006 Bernardo Provenzano was arrested, after having spent over four decades on the run. All that time he was hiding in Sicily. Provenzano has been convicted in absentie of several murders, including those of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and was sentenced to life in prison. His arrest fueled rumors about an internal mafia war for the top position. There was also some speculation about what direction the new bosses would take. Would the peace continue?<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236991860,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The top mafiosi were all serving hard time in prison under the 41bis regime. Section 41bis of the Prisons Act is intended for the most dangerous inmates. It is intended to cut them off from all contact with their associates on the outside, and even inside the prison. In 2002 Leoluca Bagarella (photo on the left), the brother in law, and successor of boss of bosses Toto Riina, made his feelings about 41bis clear during a court appearance. He told the court that the mafiosi serving time under 41bis were "tired of being used, humiliated, oppressed and treated like merchandise by different political parties." When a man like Leoluca Bagarella utters these words it sends shivers down the back of many politicians. Many in the media took his words as a threat to the state. Bagarella is thought to have been involved in hundreds of murders, including those of cops and politicians. His words are not to be taken lightly.<br /> <br /> So when Bagarella exchanged wedding rings with Nitto Santapaola, the boss of the Catania mafia family, in prison it could only mean one thing, an end to the days of peace between the mafia and the state. But what if the wedding ring exchange signals the beginning of a different war. A war against the returning "losers" of the great mafia war of the 1980s.<br /> <br /> The war was started by the Cosa Nostra family from Corleone, led by the vicious Luciano Liggio. Pentito Antonino Calderone said the following about Liggio: "He was blood thirsty. He enjoyed killing. He had a way of looking at you that frightened everyone. Even us Mafiosi. When he became angry a strange light appeared in his eyes, which made everyone around him become silent. During those silent moments you could sense that death was in the air." Liggio had two men who helped him run the family. Those men were Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. These two were also known for their ruthless behaviour. The Corleonesi were a very secretive mafia family, who used the rules of Cosa Nostra when it suited them, and broke those rules even more. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s they went on a secret rampage to seize control of the Sicilian Mafia. They made new members, keeping their names secret from the other families. And also had informants within other Mafia families. Slowly they became stronger and stronger, until no other mafia family could stop them. Several families would join the Corleonesi. The families that didn't, were hit with heavy losses. Sensing they were on the losing side many mafiosi fled abroad to the US, Canada, Spain, and South America. Several continued their business there, awaiting the day when they could return to Sicily.<br /> <br /> The losers who are said to be returning to Sicily are members of the Inzerillo family from Palermo who fled to the US. Boss Salvatore Inzerillo was a major drug trafficker and was killed by the Corleonesi in 1981. At his funeral his 15 year old son vowed to avenge his father. As a result he was taken off the street by Corleonesi killer Pino Greco, who cut off the kid's arm, and shot him in the head. The Inzerillo family is closely linked to the Spatola, Di Maggio, and Gambino families, who are major players on the narcotics market. With the Corleonesi clan weakened by the capture of Bernardo Provenzano, the "losing" families might sense that this is the time to return. They lost many family members and friends during the war with the Corleonesi, so they surely will want revenge.<img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979466,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> <br /> This is what could worry men like Leoluca Bagarella and Nitto Santapaola (photo on the right). Both men are responsible for hundreds of murders. Santapaola is the boss of the small Catania family. In his fight for control of the city Catania he murdered scores of young gangsters who belonged to one of the many gangs in Catania. Santapaola also had no problem ordering the killing of children no older than twelve. In the mid 1970s Santapaola's mother was robbed by four streetkids. Nitto Santapaola wanted this disrespect avenged and thus ordered the four children to be killed. Like former Catania Mafioso Antonino Calderone says in his book, as a Mafioso you are always worried if the son of one of your victims will avenge his father's death by killing one of your family members. With the return of the "losing" families new agreements and bonds have to be made in order to face the attack. That is what the ring exchange could be about. Confirming the bond between two vicious clans to protect their family and territory. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Sicilian Mafia section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Profile: Gambino crime family capo George DeCicco
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-george-decicco
2010-11-06T16:30:00.000Z
2010-11-06T16:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236976683,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted: February 1, 2007 - Updated on October 12, 2014<br /><br /> On January 30, 2007 the FBI arrested several mobsters and charged them with racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering, loan sharking and bank fraud. Among the arrested were mobsters of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino</a> and Lucchese Crime Families, as well as two mafiosi from Sicily. The Feds’ biggest catch is Gambino capo George DeCicco, 77, pictured above.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977672,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />George DeCicco is the older brother of murdered Gambino underboss Frank DeCicco. Frank DeCicco was a capo under <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-paul-castellano">Paul Castellano</a> when he was approached by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-underboss-salvatore">Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano</a> (picture on the right, with John Gotti) to help to set up the murder of their powerful boss. Gravano got the request to talk to DeCicco from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti</a>, who was assembling a power base to make a move for the throne. DeCicco joined Gotti and his men and gave them their most useful tip. He told them he and two other capos were having a meeting with Castellano on December 16th at Sparks Steak House. Gotti put his hit team in place and together with Gravano waited in a car nearby, Frank DeCicco sat inside Sparks with capo James Failla. When Castellano and underboss Tommy Bilotti arrived they were shot dead. John Gotti became boss of the Gambino Family and for his cooperation Frank DeCicco was awarded the position of underboss.<br /> <br /> On April 13, 1986 Frank DeCicco came to his end. He and Gotti were to visit Failla’s social club that day to see their troops. Gotti canceled his appearance, so DeCicco went alone. DeCicco arrived without problems but went back to his car together with Frank Bellino to get something. When they got to the car, a bomb was detonated, killing DeCicco and wounding Bellino. The whole plot was uncovered later. Genovese boss Vincent Gigante was angry with Gotti for murdering his ally Castellano. He wanted revenge, and together with the Lucchese Family set in motion the plan that was supposed to wipe out both Gotti and DeCicco. James Failla had tipped Gigante Gotti and DeCicco would make an appearance at his club. In a ackward way you could say Failla had killed DeCicco with his own ammo.<br /> <br /> George DeCicco was one of the last of John Gotti’s inner circle who had never been busted. Things are looking bleak now though. A Gambino associate has flipped on DeCicco and his crew and taped his conversations with other mobsters, including DeCicco. In one conversation DeCicco is recorded saying: “I’ll burn your eyes, did you ever screw me? Do you want me to burn your eyes out?” to the associate because he hadn’t repaid his loansharking debt to the capo.<br /> <br /> The Gambino associate decided to cooperate with the government when he made the mistake of making a promise he couldn’t keep. Gambino soldier Joseph Orlando had a girlfriend who didn’t have legal residence status. The associate told Orlando he had connections to corrupt immigration and other government officials. Orlando gave the associate $9,000 to take care of it. The associate however had no such contacts. When he failed to deliver Orlando went nuts and threatened to kill him. The associate took the threat serious and went straight to the FBI. The FBI sent in an undercover agent posing as a corrupt immigration official. All meetings Orlando and other mobsters had with this agent were recorded by the feds.<br /> <br /> The corrupt contacts didn’t just interest the Gambino Family. A Lucchese associate also saw opportunities. Together with Gambino mobsters he wanted to smuggle gold bars worth millions of dollars from the Philippines into the US.<br /> <br /> The Sicilian Mafia was another interested party. They paid $70,000 for the release of Sicilian mobster Francesco Nania. Nania was convicted in Italy for mafia-related aggravated attempted extortion, and Italian law enforcement authorities are seeking his extradition to Italy. If he is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. George DeCicco and Joseph Orlando face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.</p>
<p><strong>Update</strong>: In October of 2014, George DeCicco died of natural causes. He was 85. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Organized Crime Gangs Invade Spain
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-gangs-invade
2010-11-05T15:00:00.000Z
2010-11-05T15:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p>By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> Spain is a favorite among European tourists. The weather is sunny and warm, and the cities and nature are beautiful. Teens go to the coastal cities to party long and hard. While the more mature tourists visit the cultural spots of Madrid. Spain has something for everybody. And these past forty years it has attracted one particular group with ever increasing success.<br /> <br /> Spain has become a hot spot for the criminal elite. Rich criminals from Italy, Britain, The Netherlands, South America, and Russia have all flown in throughout the years to either enjoy their retirement, or expand their criminal empire. Spain has become the most important entry point for South American cocaine. And due to corrupt officials criminal groups are very successful in laundering their ill gotten money through banks, real estate, and construction projects.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">The Losers Arrive In Spain</span><br /> <br /> One of the more interersting new settlers was the Sicilian Grado Clan. The Grado Clan consisted of the five brothers: Vincenzo, Salvatore, Gaetano, Giacomo, and Antonio. They were all members of the Santa Maria di Gesu mafia family, and among the biggest heroin traffickers within the Sicilian Mafia.<br /> <br /> The Grado brothers bought their morfine from Syrian national Wakkas Salah Al Din, who in turn worked for the Turkish mafia family Cil, one of the biggest crime families in Istanbul. Every two or three weeks a shipment of at least fifty kilos of raw morfine arrived in Italy. The morfine was refined in Sicily, and then shipped to the US. Heroin trafficking made the Grado Clan very wealthy. They owned mansions all over Italy, companies in Turkey, and had richly filled bank accounts in Switzerland.<br /> <br /> But their success made certain people very jealous. Chief among them the bosses of the Corleonesi, led by Luciano Liggio and Toto Riina. In 1981 a war erupted between the Corleonesi and its supporters and the other Palermo Families. The Grado brothers belonged to the Santa Maria di Gesu family, which was led by Stefano Bontate. Bontate was killed by the Corleonesi and the Grado Clan had vowed its loyalty to his successor. This angered the Corleonesi who put the Grado Clan on their death list. Antonio Grado always had another mafioso with him for protection, but the killers of the Corleonesi managed to kill him nonetheless. The rest of the Grado Clan saw they were losing the war and made arrangements to flee Sicily.<br /> <br /> Rodolfo Azzoli was a successful businessman who worked for the Grado Clan as their front man. He invested their money in real estate. In 1979 he had moved to Benidorm, a popular Spanish coastal city, where he bought the Sierra Dorado Hotel. After the murder of Antonio Grado the entire clan got together and meticiously planned their move to Spain. They too would settle in Benidorm. On a cold December day a procession of limousines arrived at the Sierra Dorado Hotel. The four remaining Grado brothers were the first to enter the hotel, followed by forty people, thev wives and children, and soldiers and associates of the clan. After several days the entire clan moved to luxurious apartments from where they continued their criminal business.<br /> <br /> In the spring of 1982 they started a construction company which would build villas along the coast between Benidorm and Allicante. On the board of directors were Rodolfo Azzoli, a businessman from Milan, a member of the Italian Social Democratic party, and the Italian minister of Public Works Franco Nicolazzi. Quite a bunch!<br /> <br /> After a while the Grado Clan moved to the smaller town of Altea. The oldest brother Gaetano went back to Sicily to fight the Corleonesi. After having bragged about a hit on a wiretap he was arrested in a villa filled with fire arms and sent to prison.<br /> <br /> The Grado Clan showed how easy it was for a criminal gang to establish a base in Spain and launder their drug money. In the decades that followed it seemed the sky was the limit. The construction business was booming. The coastal area named Costa Del Sol pretty soon received the nickname Costa Del Crime because of all the criminals living or operating there.<br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Russians Also Like To Spend Some Money In The Sun</span><br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980071,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />In the past twenty years Eastern European crime groups have become wealthier and more powerful. Back home some men are so powerful that they have risen to be labeled legit businessman, be it with a shady past. Several Russian criminal groups have established bases in Spain where they launder their criminal money made back home.<br /> <br /> The Spanish climate used to be very nice for these groups, but Spanish authorities are starting to see that having the biggest crime bosses from around the world invest billions of euros in your economy isn't a good thing.<br /> <br /> On Friday the 13th of June 2008 more than three hundred police officers raided several locations throughout Spain. Twenty men were arrested. $307,000 in cash and twenty three luxury cars (Ferraris and Bentleys) were seized. Bank accounts totalling €12 million euro were frozen. The group was led by Gennadios Petrov (photo on the right), who is the reputed boss of the Tambovskaya-Malyshevkaya organization, said to be one of Russia's most brutal crime groups. Petrov came to Spain in the early 1990s and allegedly used cash from the former KGB and communist party to buy a luxury hotel in Mallorca. Very similar to how the Grado Clan got their start.<br /> <br /> Petrov lived in enormous luxury. He owned a mansion worth €20 million, and was known to hand out tips of €500. His neighbor was the sister of King Juan Carlos of Spain. But it is unsure if he will ever get to enjoy his fabulous life in the sun again. He is charged with a variety of offences including money laundering, murder, extortion, drug dealing, illicit association, falsification of documents and tax fraud.<br /> <br /> With Spanish authorities finally cleaning up their cities the only question is: are they on time? Criminal gangs have already invested billions. And there are so many gangs, from so many different countries. Whatever the outcome Spanish police are showing they mean business. Petrov is a big boss, and someone who usually manages to stay out of the arms of police. But now he and his gang are sitting in a Spanish prison. A place that is even hotter than the Spanish beaches.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/europe-overview">European organized crime section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out our <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/gangsters-inc-on-social-media">social media channels</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>