1960s Sicilian Mafia trials
Encyclopedia
The 1960s Sicilian Mafia trials took place at the end of that decade
in response to a rise in organized crime
violence around the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were three major trials, each featuring multiple defendants, that saw hundreds of alleged Mafiosi
on trial for dozens of crimes. From the authority's point of view, they were a failure; very few defendants were convicted, although later trials as well as information from pentiti confirmed most of those acquitted were Mafiosi members, and were guilty of many crimes including some of those they were acquitted of.
Emanuele Notarbartolo was stabbed to death on a train
in 1893. A number of suspected Mafiosi were rounded up and tried in 1900 of the murder, and though convicted they were acquitted on appeal due to a minor technicality. In the 1920s, Cesare Mori
was sent to Sicily
by Benito Mussolini
to combat the Mafia, although Mori's crude method of imprisoning thousands of men - many of them innocent - without trial meant the Mafia were able to swiftly reestablish themselves as before once Mori had departed.
In the late 1950s, there was an increase in violence around the town of Corleone
as rival factions in the local Mafia clan, the group around Michele Navarra
and the Corleonesi
, battled it out. More significantly there were a wave of murders and car bomb
ings in and around Palermo in the First Mafia War that started in 1962.
The single event that triggered a major crackdown against the Mafia was the Ciaculli massacre
, when seven police officers were killed on June 30, 1963 whilst trying to defuse a car bomb left by one group of mobsters who had actually intended it to kill some rival mobsters. The death of the policemen caused an outcry. In Octopus (see References), author Claire Sterling
quotes the regional army commander for Sicily, General Aldo De Marco as ordering his men to: "Get everybody with a criminal record and throw them into jail, on my orders. Torture them and see what they let out, or shoot them on sight. I'll go to prison. But we can't go on like this."
A crackdown – albeit not quite as disregarding of civil liberties as General Aldo De Marco initially requested – did indeed follow, and during the mid-1960s, 1,995 suspected Mafiosi were arrested and charged with hundreds of crimes. It took many trials to process the accused, including three major ones.
The first trial opened in 1967 and concentrated on the growing involvement of the Sicilian Mafia in the international heroin trade. Specifically, the defendants were all those who had been at a series of meetings
in October 1957 between American
and Sicilian Mafiosi at the Grand Hotel Des Palmes in Palermo. The meeting was about heroin, with the Americans apparently not keen on getting too involved in drugs due to the lengthy sentences for trafficking, whilst the Sicilians were apparently all for it. At the time, authorities did not know of the decision the two organisations came to (which was for the Sicilians to import and distribute heroin into the US, with their American counterparts taking a slice of the profits), but they were aware it concerned trafficking heroin. (The meeting also concluded that, following the American model, the Sicilians should start up their own commission
.)
Amongst the defendants were Gaetano Badalamenti
, Tommaso Buscetta
and Giuseppe Genco Russo
. They were mostly charged with Organized Delinquency, an old law that was the nearest prosecutors had to a charge of being a Mafiosi (many in authority - whether out of niavety or otherwise - denied the existence of the Mafia in the 1960s, and in fact it was not until 1982 that being a member of the Mafia became a formal crime.)
All the Americans at the meeting, including Joseph Bonanno
and Carmine Galante
, were indicted, but none were extradited
because the US had no such criminal charge of Organized Delinquency. Charles "Lucky" Luciano
, who was the principal organizer of the meeting, would have stood trial but he had since died of natural causes.
The prosecutors did not have a great deal of evidence at the trial, principally relying on information from Joseph Valachi, an American Mafiosi who began co-operating with the government in 1962. As a low-level mobster, Valachi was not at the Grand Hotel Des Palmes meeting, but he was aware of the growing heroin trade and the Sicilian Mafia's involvement in it. The police had also put those at the meeting under surveillance at the time and for months afterwards in the hope of collecting evidence that they were dealing in narcotics.
The evidence was still thin on the ground and at the conclusion of the trial in August 1968 every single defendant was acquitted.
mainland, partly due to there being no facilities for such a large trial in Sicily
and also in the hope of minimizing intimidation
of witnesses. Anti-Mafia judge Cesare Terranova
signed the order to send the men to trial in 1965, ruling that the crimes and those accused of carrying them out were all linked and should be tried as an organized body.
The defendants were accused of crimes relating to the First Mafia War, the charges including multiple murder
, kidnapping
, tobacco
smuggling
, theft
, "public massacre" (the Ciaculli bombing) and Organized Delinquency.
Amongst those on trial were the heads of the opposing factions in the Mafia War, Salvatore Greco
and Angelo La Barbera
, as well as the man who had actually triggered the war by framing La Barbera, Michele Cavataio
. Also there were Giuseppe Calo
and Luciano Leggio
.
The trial opened in December 1967 and lasted until December 22, 1968. It resulted in a mere ten convictions, with several of those being just for Organized Delinquency. This only carried a sentence of a few years, and most of those convicted of it were released instantly thanks to time already served.
The longest sentence was handed to Angelo La Barbera, who was given twenty-two-years for ordering the kidnap and murder of two rival mobsters who had vanished in 1963 after they were seen being bundled off the streets; someone who witnessed the kidnapping testified for the prosecution despite death threats, one of the few witnesses to do so. Tommaso Buscetta was given a thirteen-year sentence for kidnapping the men but his conviction was in absentia
because he was not present at the trial. He had fled Sicily after the Ciaculli Massacre to avoid the inevitable crackdown. Buscetta was captured in Brazil
in 1973 and sent back to Sicily to serve his sentence. Salvatore Greco was also convicted in absentia. No-one was found guilty of the Ciaculli Massacre.
Amongst the 104 defendants acquitted was Luciano Leggio. It is not known for certain what role - if any - he played in the First Mafia War, although he spent a lot of time in Palermo in the early 1960s and was apparently friends with Salvatore Greco.
, had sixty-four defendants, all from the town of Corleone.
The charges related to a Mafia War in Corleone that started in 1958 when the local Mafia boss Michele Navarra
was gunned down by Leggio and his men and lasted five-years, resulting in over fifty murders, as Leggio and his faction battled it out with Navarra's supporters. Leggio, who was victorious and now the new Corleonesi Boss, was the key defendant, charged with murdering nine people, including Navarra. Amongst his co-defenndants was his eventual successor, Salvatore Riina
, also accused of Navarra's slaying.
Bernardo Provenzano
should have stood trial too, having been indicted for triple murder in 1963, but he had somehow escaped the police dragnet, something he managed to do until 2006.
The prosecutor was once again Cesare Terranova, who had made it clear that he was intent on putting Leggio away for good.
As was the case in all three trials, the defendants pleaded innocent and insisted they were not members of any Mafia, and that they had never heard of such an organization. When Leggio took the stand he made the rather strange claim that he was being framed by a police officer who had "begged me repeatedly to pleasure his wife; and I, for moral reasons, refused...Please don't ask me for names, I am a gentleman." He and some other defendants did, however, admit to the minor crime of dealing on the black market during World War II
.
There was significant evidence tampering during the trial. For example, fragments of a broken car light found at the Navarra murder scene which had been identified as belonging to an Alfa Romeo
car owned by Leggio had, by the time of the trial, been replaced by bits of a broken light from a completely different make of car.
As the jury
retired in July, they and the judge received an anonymous note that read:
All sixty-four defendants were acquitted.
Cesare Terranova successfully appealed against the acquittal of the "gentlemen from Corleone" so many, including Leggio and Riina, had to go into hiding almost as soon as they were released. Leggio was retried in absentia for the Navarra murder in 1970, and this time found guilty, but it was four-years before he could be captured and sent off to serve his life sentence.
Salvatore Riina, also convicted in absentia at a second trial for murdering Navarra, remained a fugitive until 1993.
to prosecute the Mafia that followed the after the Ciaculli Massacre had evaporated by the end of the 1960s, leaving prosecutors on their own. Whilst there was undoubtedly witness intimidation and evidence tampering, a lot of the evidence was fairly thin. There were no pentiti at the time and few non-Mafiosi willing to risk death by testifying for the prosecution.
Cesare Terranova was gunned down in 1979. Leggio was accused of ordering the killing from his prison cell, but acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
On December 10, 1969, once all the trials were over, Michele Cavataio and three of his men were shot to death in a gun battle that left one of the attackers dead as well. Having drastically reduced its activities during the crackdown following the Ciaculli Massacre, the Mafia was back in business and its first job was to dispose of Cavataio, who they had finally realised had triggered the First Mafia War.
Many of those in the above trials were convicted at a later date. For example, Gaetano Badalamenti would end his days in a US prison after being convicted of doing in the 1970s and 1980s exactly what he had been accused of planning in the 1960s, namely trafficking heroin into America. Tommaso Buscetta would eventually become one of the first Mafia pentiti and revealed a great deal about the Mafia, although he was a little reluctant to implicate himself or his friends too much, his revelations concentrating on his enemies such as Leggio, Riina and Giuseppe Calo.
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
in response to a rise in organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
violence around the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were three major trials, each featuring multiple defendants, that saw hundreds of alleged Mafiosi
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
on trial for dozens of crimes. From the authority's point of view, they were a failure; very few defendants were convicted, although later trials as well as information from pentiti confirmed most of those acquitted were Mafiosi members, and were guilty of many crimes including some of those they were acquitted of.
Background
Since the Mafia's emergence sometime in the 19th century there have been various crackdowns and bursts of anti-Mafia feeling against the criminal organisation, invariably after shocking crimes - particularly against non-Mafiosi or police - cause a public outcry. One of the first such incidences took place after the former Mayor of PalermoPalermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
Emanuele Notarbartolo was stabbed to death on a train
Train
A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track to transport cargo or passengers from one place to another place. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway.Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate...
in 1893. A number of suspected Mafiosi were rounded up and tried in 1900 of the murder, and though convicted they were acquitted on appeal due to a minor technicality. In the 1920s, Cesare Mori
Cesare Mori
Cesare Mori was a prefect before and during the Fascist period in Italy. He is known in Italy as the Iron Prefect because of his iron-fisted campaigns against the Mafia on Sicily in the second half of the 1920s.- Early years :Mori was born in Pavia and grew up in an orphananage and was only...
was sent to Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
by Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
to combat the Mafia, although Mori's crude method of imprisoning thousands of men - many of them innocent - without trial meant the Mafia were able to swiftly reestablish themselves as before once Mori had departed.
In the late 1950s, there was an increase in violence around the town of Corleone
Corleone
Corleone is a small town and comune of approximately 12,000 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy....
as rival factions in the local Mafia clan, the group around Michele Navarra
Michele Navarra
Michele Navarra was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was a qualified physician and headed the Mafia Family from the town of Corleone...
and the Corleonesi
Corleonesi
The Corleonesi is the name given to a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was called the Corleonesi because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca...
, battled it out. More significantly there were a wave of murders and car bomb
Car bomb
A car bomb, or truck bomb also known as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device , is an improvised explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupants of the vehicle,...
ings in and around Palermo in the First Mafia War that started in 1962.
The single event that triggered a major crackdown against the Mafia was the Ciaculli massacre
Ciaculli massacre
The Ciaculli massacre on 30 June 1963 was caused by a car bomb that exploded in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The bomb was intended for Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia...
, when seven police officers were killed on June 30, 1963 whilst trying to defuse a car bomb left by one group of mobsters who had actually intended it to kill some rival mobsters. The death of the policemen caused an outcry. In Octopus (see References), author Claire Sterling
Claire Sterling
Claire Sterling was an American author and journalist whose work focused on crime, political assassination, and terrorism...
quotes the regional army commander for Sicily, General Aldo De Marco as ordering his men to: "Get everybody with a criminal record and throw them into jail, on my orders. Torture them and see what they let out, or shoot them on sight. I'll go to prison. But we can't go on like this."
A crackdown – albeit not quite as disregarding of civil liberties as General Aldo De Marco initially requested – did indeed follow, and during the mid-1960s, 1,995 suspected Mafiosi were arrested and charged with hundreds of crimes. It took many trials to process the accused, including three major ones.
The First Trial
Grand Hotel des Palmes Mafia meeting 1957
Over four days, between October 12–16, 1957, the American gangster Joseph Bonanno allegedly attended a series of meetings between some high-level Sicilian and American mafiosi in the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily – the most splendid in town at the time...
in October 1957 between American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Sicilian Mafiosi at the Grand Hotel Des Palmes in Palermo. The meeting was about heroin, with the Americans apparently not keen on getting too involved in drugs due to the lengthy sentences for trafficking, whilst the Sicilians were apparently all for it. At the time, authorities did not know of the decision the two organisations came to (which was for the Sicilians to import and distribute heroin into the US, with their American counterparts taking a slice of the profits), but they were aware it concerned trafficking heroin. (The meeting also concluded that, following the American model, the Sicilians should start up their own commission
Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra...
.)
Amongst the defendants were Gaetano Badalamenti
Gaetano Badalamenti
Gaetano Badalamenti was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s...
, Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta was a Sicilian mafioso. Although he was not the first pentito in the Italian witness protection program, he is widely recognized as the first important one breaking omertà...
and Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo
Giuseppe Genco Russo was an Italian mafioso, the boss of Mussomeli in the Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily....
. They were mostly charged with Organized Delinquency, an old law that was the nearest prosecutors had to a charge of being a Mafiosi (many in authority - whether out of niavety or otherwise - denied the existence of the Mafia in the 1960s, and in fact it was not until 1982 that being a member of the Mafia became a formal crime.)
All the Americans at the meeting, including Joseph Bonanno
Joseph Bonanno
Joseph Charles Bonanno, Sr. was a Sicilian-born American mafioso who became the boss of the Bonanno crime family. He was nicknamed "Joe Bananas," a name he despised.-Early life:...
and Carmine Galante
Carmine Galante
Carmine Galante, also known as "Lilo" and "Cigar" was a mobster and acting boss of the Bonanno crime family...
, were indicted, but none were extradited
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
because the US had no such criminal charge of Organized Delinquency. Charles "Lucky" Luciano
Lucky Luciano
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian mobster born in Sicily. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first commission...
, who was the principal organizer of the meeting, would have stood trial but he had since died of natural causes.
The prosecutors did not have a great deal of evidence at the trial, principally relying on information from Joseph Valachi, an American Mafiosi who began co-operating with the government in 1962. As a low-level mobster, Valachi was not at the Grand Hotel Des Palmes meeting, but he was aware of the growing heroin trade and the Sicilian Mafia's involvement in it. The police had also put those at the meeting under surveillance at the time and for months afterwards in the hope of collecting evidence that they were dealing in narcotics.
The evidence was still thin on the ground and at the conclusion of the trial in August 1968 every single defendant was acquitted.
The Trial of the 114
Overlapping the above trial was the Trial of the 114, so-called becaused it featured 114 defendants. This trial took place in Catanzaro on the ItalianItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
mainland, partly due to there being no facilities for such a large trial in Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
and also in the hope of minimizing intimidation
Intimidation
Intimidation is intentional behavior "which would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities" fear of injury or harm. It's not necessary to prove that the behavior was so violent as to cause terror or that the victim was actually frightened.Criminal threatening is the crime of intentionally or...
of witnesses. Anti-Mafia judge Cesare Terranova
Cesare Terranova
Cesare Terranova was a magistrate and politician from Sicily notable for his anti-Mafia stance. From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office. He was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra. He...
signed the order to send the men to trial in 1965, ruling that the crimes and those accused of carrying them out were all linked and should be tried as an organized body.
The defendants were accused of crimes relating to the First Mafia War, the charges including multiple murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
, tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
smuggling
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...
, theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
, "public massacre" (the Ciaculli bombing) and Organized Delinquency.
Amongst those on trial were the heads of the opposing factions in the Mafia War, Salvatore Greco
Salvatore Greco
Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco was a powerful mafioso and boss of the Mafia Family in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo famous for its citrus fruit groves, where he was born...
and Angelo La Barbera
Angelo La Barbera
Angelo La Barbera was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Together with his brother Salvatore La Barbera he ruled the Mafia family of Palermo Centro...
, as well as the man who had actually triggered the war by framing La Barbera, Michele Cavataio
Michele Cavataio
Michele Cavataio , also known as The Cobra was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Acquasanta mandamento in Palermo and was a member of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission. Some sources spell his surname as Cavatajo.Cavataio was one of the most feared mafioso gangsters...
. Also there were Giuseppe Calo
Giuseppe Calò
Giuseppe 'Pippo' Calò is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was referred to as the "Mafia's Cashier" because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering....
and Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone...
.
The trial opened in December 1967 and lasted until December 22, 1968. It resulted in a mere ten convictions, with several of those being just for Organized Delinquency. This only carried a sentence of a few years, and most of those convicted of it were released instantly thanks to time already served.
The longest sentence was handed to Angelo La Barbera, who was given twenty-two-years for ordering the kidnap and murder of two rival mobsters who had vanished in 1963 after they were seen being bundled off the streets; someone who witnessed the kidnapping testified for the prosecution despite death threats, one of the few witnesses to do so. Tommaso Buscetta was given a thirteen-year sentence for kidnapping the men but his conviction was in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
because he was not present at the trial. He had fled Sicily after the Ciaculli Massacre to avoid the inevitable crackdown. Buscetta was captured in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in 1973 and sent back to Sicily to serve his sentence. Salvatore Greco was also convicted in absentia. No-one was found guilty of the Ciaculli Massacre.
Amongst the 104 defendants acquitted was Luciano Leggio. It is not known for certain what role - if any - he played in the First Mafia War, although he spent a lot of time in Palermo in the early 1960s and was apparently friends with Salvatore Greco.
Corleonesi Trial
Leggio would play a significant role in the third trial which began in February 1969, just two-months after the end of the Trial of the 114. This trial, which took place once again on the Italian mainland, in the town of BariBari
Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas...
, had sixty-four defendants, all from the town of Corleone.
The charges related to a Mafia War in Corleone that started in 1958 when the local Mafia boss Michele Navarra
Michele Navarra
Michele Navarra was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was a qualified physician and headed the Mafia Family from the town of Corleone...
was gunned down by Leggio and his men and lasted five-years, resulting in over fifty murders, as Leggio and his faction battled it out with Navarra's supporters. Leggio, who was victorious and now the new Corleonesi Boss, was the key defendant, charged with murdering nine people, including Navarra. Amongst his co-defenndants was his eventual successor, Salvatore Riina
Salvatore Riina
Salvatore "Totò" Riina is a member of the Sicilian Mafia who became the most powerful member of the criminal organization in the early 1980s. Fellow mobsters nicknamed him The Beast due to his violent nature, or sometimes The Short One due to his diminutive stature...
, also accused of Navarra's slaying.
Bernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of having been the head of the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the village of Corleone, and de facto capo di tutti capi of the entire Sicilian Mafia until his arrest in 2006.His nickname is Binnu u tratturi...
should have stood trial too, having been indicted for triple murder in 1963, but he had somehow escaped the police dragnet, something he managed to do until 2006.
The prosecutor was once again Cesare Terranova, who had made it clear that he was intent on putting Leggio away for good.
As was the case in all three trials, the defendants pleaded innocent and insisted they were not members of any Mafia, and that they had never heard of such an organization. When Leggio took the stand he made the rather strange claim that he was being framed by a police officer who had "begged me repeatedly to pleasure his wife; and I, for moral reasons, refused...Please don't ask me for names, I am a gentleman." He and some other defendants did, however, admit to the minor crime of dealing on the black market during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
There was significant evidence tampering during the trial. For example, fragments of a broken car light found at the Navarra murder scene which had been identified as belonging to an Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of cars. Founded as A.L.F.A. on June 24, 1910, in Milan, the company has been involved in car racing since 1911, and has a reputation for building expensive sports cars...
car owned by Leggio had, by the time of the trial, been replaced by bits of a broken light from a completely different make of car.
As the jury
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
retired in July, they and the judge received an anonymous note that read:
All sixty-four defendants were acquitted.
Cesare Terranova successfully appealed against the acquittal of the "gentlemen from Corleone" so many, including Leggio and Riina, had to go into hiding almost as soon as they were released. Leggio was retried in absentia for the Navarra murder in 1970, and this time found guilty, but it was four-years before he could be captured and sent off to serve his life sentence.
Salvatore Riina, also convicted in absentia at a second trial for murdering Navarra, remained a fugitive until 1993.
Aftermath
Many of the prosecutors and judges involved in the trials, including Terranova, complained that the political will from RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
to prosecute the Mafia that followed the after the Ciaculli Massacre had evaporated by the end of the 1960s, leaving prosecutors on their own. Whilst there was undoubtedly witness intimidation and evidence tampering, a lot of the evidence was fairly thin. There were no pentiti at the time and few non-Mafiosi willing to risk death by testifying for the prosecution.
Cesare Terranova was gunned down in 1979. Leggio was accused of ordering the killing from his prison cell, but acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
On December 10, 1969, once all the trials were over, Michele Cavataio and three of his men were shot to death in a gun battle that left one of the attackers dead as well. Having drastically reduced its activities during the crackdown following the Ciaculli Massacre, the Mafia was back in business and its first job was to dispose of Cavataio, who they had finally realised had triggered the First Mafia War.
Many of those in the above trials were convicted at a later date. For example, Gaetano Badalamenti would end his days in a US prison after being convicted of doing in the 1970s and 1980s exactly what he had been accused of planning in the 1960s, namely trafficking heroin into America. Tommaso Buscetta would eventually become one of the first Mafia pentiti and revealed a great deal about the Mafia, although he was a little reluctant to implicate himself or his friends too much, his revelations concentrating on his enemies such as Leggio, Riina and Giuseppe Calo.
See also
- The Maxi TrialMaxi TrialThe Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant...
, which ended in over three-hundred convictions, took place in 1986/87 in the aftermath of the Second Mafia War. Several defendants in the 1960s trial were present, including Luciano Leggio, Giuseppe Calo and (in absentia) Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Riina. Tommaso Buscetta was also present, both as a defendant and also a prosecution witness.