August 2, 1958.
Corleone mafia boss Michele Navarra is driving down a quiet Sicilian country road in his
Fiat 1100.
Next to him is Giovanni Russo, not a gangster, but a doctor.
Navarra, no ordinary boss, is also a doctor.
Two cars block their way in the road.
There’s not enough space to turn back.
Suddenly appearing at both sides of the road are men armed with submachine guns.
They open fire.
Hundreds of bullets tear the men to pieces.
The king is dead, and what will follow are decades of extreme violence.
The man behind this historical hit was Luciano Leggio.
He was once a young man who aspired to a life of crime.
He was taken under the wing of Navarra and did some of this dirty work for him.
It was almost a father and son story.
One time Leggio took out a trade union leader for Navarra, only there was a witness, an
11-year old shepherd.
Suffering from shock, his pop took him to a hospital which Navarra ran.
He made the mistake of talking about what he’d seen, after which Navarra gave him
a fatal injection.
Leggio was saved from the law.
But as time passed, Leggio had big ideas of his own.
He started running his own rackets behind the boss’s back.
Soon what was called the “cosca leggiana” was at war with the “Navarriani”.
Prior to his own death, Navarra tried to have Leggio shot down.
It didn’t work, and revenge came soon after.
Leggio was now the Corleone boss.
This sets the scene for much of the violence that was to come.
Leggio just taking a boss out like that of course resulted in him gaining a lot of enemies.
But he also had an ace on the hole, that was a man named Salvatore "Totò" Riina, who would
in time become arguably the most brutal mafia boss that’s ever lived.
He was one of the men who fired a machine gun into Navarra’s car that day.
He would be the man to take over the Corleone family and do it in a style that painted Sicily
and even streets of the USA a lurid shade of red.
Before any of this happened the Sicilian Mafia, in general, had been growing in size for many
years.
From its beginnings around the 1850s when peasants rose up and formed violent gangs
that extorted landowners, the families expanded and so did their power.
One of those families was the Corleone family, the Corleonesi.
The town of Corleone was tiny, just an outback, and that’s why mafia bosses from bigger
towns and the city of Palermo would often say they were the peasant Mafiosi.
Peasants maybe, but after Leggio took over, anyone against them was about to discover
that the peasants meant business.
It’s a complicated story, but let’s just say the Corleonesi had its allies and its
enemies.
Blood was spilled, so much so that in 1970 the Sicilian Mafia Commission was set up to
ensure disputes didn’t always end in bloodshed and business could run smoothly between the
various families.
Leggio was on that commission, but after he was imprisoned in 1974, the mafia’s most
indomitable monster, Riina, took his place.
This man wanted one thing and one thing only.
That was for the Corleonesi to be the most powerful family of all and for him to be the
boss of bosses.
To achieve that, he had to kill a lot of people, which as you’ll see, included untold numbers
of gangsters but also their family members.
Regular citizens would die, as would police, politicians, and some of the most renowned
anti-mafia people in Italy.
One man would have an entire country gripped in fear.
It’s said the Great Mafia War didn’t really start until 1981, but it’s also called the
Second Mafia War.
The first was a timid affair in comparison to what was to become, but let’s just say
that arguments over supplying Americans with heroin led to a massacre and some bullets
in the back.
The American heroin trade, like the cocaine trade today, meant bodies piling up far from
North America.
Those first skirmishes over heroin went back to the 1960s, but the narrative stayed the
same in that there was always division, there was always backstabbing, there was always
someone vying to take control.
So much for honor among men.
It was more like a zoo and the animals were armed.
One of the men involved in murders that happened around the time of the first war was Giuseppe
Di Cristina, another powerful boss nicknamed “The Tiger.”
He was also one of the first people to point out that the Corleonesi with Riina was planning
to take over.
It was kill or be killed, and he was killed.
In 1978, while standing at a bus stop, on the orders of Riina, Di Cristina was shot
down.
Men close to him were also taken out at different times.
The same year, also under the orders of Riina, the powerful boss Giuseppe Calderone was taken
out.
Riina wanted it to look like someone else had done it.
He even had Mafiosi in tears at Calderone’s funeral when he read a moving eulogy about
how the man had been such a stand-up guy and maker of peace.
And this was before the war actually started.
What really kicked it off was the murder of Stefano Bontade.
He was one of the most powerful bosses of all and had equally powerful allies, so he
was also a threat to Riina’s rise to the top.
Killing Bontade was no small deal.
He had ties to politicians and those ties of course helped his friends.
He once said this to another boss, “We are in charge in Sicily, and unless you want the
whole DC canceled out, you do as we say.”
DC stood for the political party, Democrazia Cristiana, Christian Democrat.
It was the statement of all statements to kill this man.
On 23 April 1981, while driving home in his Giulietta 2000 after celebrating his 42nd
birthday, he was machine-gunned down just outside the city of Palermo.
Just three weeks later, another powerful Palermo boss, Salvatore Inzerillo, was killed.
He’d just finished a date with his mistress when he was walking to the bullet-proof car
he’d just bought.
A man appeared in the street and fired an AK-47 into him.
He was hit so many times in the aftermath he barely looked human.
This caused outrage.
At his funeral, his 15-year old son told everyone there that he would get his revenge.
Not long after, he was kidnapped by Riina’s hitman, Pino Greco.
Prior to shooting him in the head, Greco cut off the young man’s arm.
Why?
Because that was the arm he vowed to use to shoot Riina.
Inzerillo’s brother then had the audacity to ask the commission what was happening.
He was strangled to death not long after.
His other brother, another heroin trafficker, was soon found murdered far off in New Jersey.
Riina was taking no risks.
Everyone that might seek revenge had to go.
The bloodshed wasn’t exactly a secret.
This is what the New York Times wrote about the conflicts and schisms:
“The underworld structure is a shifting one, with feuds over status and turf the rule
and equilibrium among rival gangs the exception.
There has not been a '’chief of all chiefs'’ in Sicily for many years.”
One was coming, but to get there Riina had to murder a lot more people, more than anyone
ever thought was possible.
“How long will it take to crush the Mafia?” the Times asked, unaware of how much crushing
of its own the mafia had in store.
You might be wondering, how come the commission didn’t stop all of this bloodshed.
Well, it’s a complicated story again, just as all these stories are.
Basically, Giuseppe Di Cristina and Salvatore Inzerillo were part of the commission and
you know what happened to them.
Another guy on the commission was Gaetano Badalamenti, a person of note.
This guy was one of the main people behind the “Pizza Connection” a billion and a
half dollar enterprise in which heroin was trafficked to the U.S. and sold out of pizza
parlors.
Long before the Mexican cartels and Big Pharma supplied strong opioids to desperate Americans,
the mafia did the job.
Many became millionaires as a result, but the windfall meant fear and jealousy.
Badalamenti wanted to go after the Corleonesi, but the aging Salvatore “Ciaschiteddu”
Greco, once the secretary of the commission, persuaded him and his allies to do otherwise.
This was a man that you could say got a lot of respect since his criminal prowess went
way back to the days of the old-school mafia.
He might have moved to Venezuela in the 1970s, but all the time he was forming alliances
with the Italian-American mafia.
In 1978, he passed away from liver cirrhosis, just before the guys he tried to convince
not to feud did feud.
Of Riina and Leggio’s main enemies, there was still Badalamenti alive and kicking.
He was kind of alone now, so after being kicked out of the commission and realizing his days
were likely numbered, he fled to Brazil, although he was still supplying heroin to the US from
there.
He was eventually extradited from Spain to the US and given a hefty prison sentence,
although even in prison he had some control over criminal activities.
A New York Times reporter said this about him.
He is “a manipulator who would do anything to regain leadership of the Sicilian mob.”
In 2002, he was convicted in Italy in absentia of killing Giuseppe Impastato.
Impastato was a political activist who wasted no time in mocking and criticizing the mafia,
and he often targeted Badalamenti in spite of knowing the dangers.
Part of this was driven by the fact the mafia had killed his uncle.
On the orders of Badalamenti, Impastato was murdered in 1978.
His body was tied over a railway line and TNT was detonated below it, blowing him to
pieces.
Badalamenti died of natural causes in 2004 while still incarcerated in America.
Critics of the mafia, like Impastato, were slaughtered even if what they said didn’t
pose an immediate threat to operations.
Giuseppe Fava was a journalist who wrote a critical piece for a magazine called, “The
four horsemen of the Mafia apocalypse.”
He was gunned down for that, by a young man named Maurizio Avola.
His uncle had given the order, but that was just one hit he did out of 70.
Years later, Avola explained to Time magazine how things went.
He said: “I was one of its most trusted killers and
I was paid very well…
I never queued at bars, clubs or shops, and at restaurants, I’d never have to pay…
My general sent me to kill people.
I had to do it, refusal was out of the question.
Mafioso execute orders given from above, just like soldiers at war…I’ve killed people
with whom I shared meals with and men who trusted me.”
If these stories sound somewhat labyrinthine that’s because they are, but all you need
to know is that many people who stepped into this maze or were dragged into it, were murdered.
To give you another example, one of Badalamenti's nephews was found in Germany.
His body had been dismembered.
One of the main hitmen for Riina was Giuseppe Greco, an astonishingly violent man that once
admitted to executing around 80 people for Riina.
It’s thought he may have murdered as many as 300.
He didn’t work alone of course.
It’s now known that he and others formed what was later called a Death Squad.
These people would frequently use a “Room of Death” where people would be tortured
before they were usually garroted.
Their bodies would often be dissolved in acid but at times they were fed to the pigs.
On occasion, a person still breathing and half-conscious would be finished off by purposefully
starved pigs.
Greco was eventually assassinated himself, shot by people he trusted.
Rinna didn’t much like how big Greco thought he had become.
Filippo Marchese was another member of the death squad who played a big part in Riina’s
rise to power.
On the orders of Riina, he was garroted by Greco not long before Riina had Greco whacked.
We’re not going to go into all members of the death squad, but let’s just say that
often out of sheer paranoia their boss would have them murdered just as he’d ordered
them to murder others.
Those guys just never knew if they’d be next.
Some survived, although most ended up serving long prison sentences for scores of murders
they’d been convicted of.
One such man was Raffaele Ganci, said to be the right-hand man of Riina.
He was sentenced to life in prison after being captured while on the run in 1993.
Ganci was said to be behind many hits of other Mafiosi, but also of the military general,
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa.
He’d been tasked with cracking down on mafia activities in Palermo.
Ganci was also said to be behind car bombings that killed leading anti-mafia figures in
Italy.
Believe it or not, he’s still alive today and doing time in Italy’s dungeon-type solitary
confinement cells.
His son later turned and became a witness for the prosecution, admitting himself to
murdering around 100 people.
This guy later said, “My father told me that Cosa Nostra was ruined by the massacres
decided by Riina.”
Riina was behind so much of this bloodshed his own body count would be in the thousands.
Someone once said his violence was similar to ethnic cleansing.
It was Riina who masterminded the execution of anti-mafia Giovanni Falcone, a man seen
as a saint by many Italian people.
You can also blame Riina for the execution of another great anti-mafia figure, Paolo
Borsellino.
Nonetheless, it’s thought his assassination wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for
the help of people working for the Italian authorities.
So many people in suits and uniforms were on the payroll, which made no place safe.
For instance, Borsellino always kept a book on him that detailed what he knew.
A lot of names were in that book, official ones, too.
That book mysteriously disappeared, something that has remained a mystery today.
Around the same time, anti-mafia magistrate Rocco Chinnici died in a car bomb attack.
The same bomb killed five others, including two bodyguards and the concierge of Chinnici’s
apartment.
These high-ranking officials may have died after the great war, but they died as a result
of crackdowns that followed the war.
They didn’t stop at officials either, innocent people were killed.
Again, on the orders of Riina, a 904 express train from Naples to Milan was partly blown
up by a bomb in 1984.
16 people died and over 250 people were injured.
At this point, Riina had already become the boss of bosses.
The bombing wasn’t technically part of the Mafia War.
It was, however, connected to it since it was devised as a way to take the heat off
the mafia by making it look like a terrorist attack.
As the war was raging from 1981 to 1983 there were at least 400 mafia slayings just in the
city of Palermo.
200 more people or thereabouts disappeared and were believed to have been taken out by
the mafia.
There was a name for this in Italian, “lupara bianca” “White Shotgun”, which meant
completely getting rid of the body.
Usually, they left a body as a statement, but not always.
What’s strange is that the Corleonesi didn’t suffer that many casualties themselves, with
experts now saying it was because they kept well-hidden while their enemies were known
to go out in public.
They were sneaky as hell, too, and had little honor.
Some people now say all honor went out of the window when Riina went on his rampage.
For example, one time men who had allied with the murdered Bontade and Inzerillo were invited
to a formal meal.
They thought the invitation came from an ally, when in fact the friend had turned and had
set up the guys for Riina.
Four men were slaughtered before they got a chance to taste the caponata.
The man who had changed sides and lured them was boss and commission member, Rosario Riccobono.
After the favor, Riina’s rationale was thus: If he can turn on his old friends, he can
turn on me.
He also knew if he took out Riccobono and all his men, he could hand over some territory
to other families.
It’s ironic that so-called men of honor proved themselves to be the most dishonorable
men in the world.
In November 1982, Riccobono and eight of his men were invited to that banquet at the palatial
house of one of Riina’s allies.
While Riccobono was catching some Z’s after a big meal, his men were led away one by one
for a private chat.
They were each strangled to death.
Riccobono died after his nap, although his body has never been found.
A few days later, Riccobono’s bother was found headless inside his car.
Then they got the rest of Riccobono’s crew and some of his family until anyone who’d
been allied to him was dead.
The only survivor was his driver, Salvatore Lo Piccolo.
Piccolo later became one of the most powerful Mafiosi that’s ever lived, and he made his
fair share of enemies.
A wiretap conversation revealed that one of those enemies said he was, “One who should
have died.
He was the ‘godson’ of Riccobono and should have gone.”
He ended up making tens of millions from trafficking cocaine to the US and around Europe, only
to be arrested in 2007 in front of a daughter who cried out, “I love you, dad.”
Yep, murderers and thieves also read their kids bedtime stories.
Piccolo survived Riina’s wrath, but in reality, no one was safe in the early 80s, not even
those aligned with Riina if he started seeing them as a threat.
Still, he became the boss and once his natural mafia enemies had been taken care of, he concentrated
on what the mafia called “excellent cadavers”.
The first of these in mafia history had been Emanuele Notarbartolo, arguably the first
anti-mafia proponent.
He was viciously stabbed to death while traveling through a train tunnel in 1893.
Just as the mafia war was getting started, Piersanti Mattarella, the President of the
Regional Government of Sicily, was assassinated.
Pretty much all the big names in the mafia were said to be behind the murder.
In 1982, Pio La Torre and his driver were shot to pieces while in their car.
La Torre was the Communist leader and a person whose whole life had been dedicated to fighting
for the poor.
Prior to his death, he’d brought in a new law.
That was “mafia conspiracy” and it meant assets could be taken from the mafia if those
assets were ill-gotten.
That didn’t go down too well with the bosses.
They blew up and gunned down top police and any street cops that got in their way.
Judges got it, as did political figures.
We won’t go into all their stories, but understandably people started saying enough
is enough.
After the war, as you know, Riina had assassinated some of the people who’d helped him rise
to power.
He also still kept killing anyone he thought was against him.
One of the survivors later said that if you didn’t do as Riina said you were as good
as dead, but this kind of destroyed the demi-democracy the mafia once had.
Some mafioso watched too many people die.
They had had enough and talked to the cops, such as Leonardo Messina.
He said, “Riina used us to get rid of the old bosses, then they got rid of all those
who raised their heads…all that's left are men without character, who are their puppets.”
State witness (“pentito”) Salvatore Contorno, described it like this:
“The winning and losing clans don't exist, because the losers don't exist.
They, the Corleonesi, killed them all.”
That’s why the mafia war was called “Mattanza” in Italian, meaning, “The Slaughter.”
How many people died in all?
It’s hard to say.
One of Riina’s guys named Giovanni Brusca, the man who pushed the button that blew up
Falcone, said he personally took out up to 200 men.
He was just one of many prolific killers.
Riina himself was captured in 1993 and he died in prison in 2017 of natural causes.
He was 87, and still said to be the boss.
Now you need to watch, “What Does the Mafia Even Do Anymore?”
Or, have a look at, “Crazy Italian Mafia Crimes.”