Luciano Leggio
Encyclopedia
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
. Some sources incorrectly spell his surname Liggio, a result of a misspelling on court documents in the 1960s.
As well as setting the Corleonesi on track to become the dominant Mafia clan in Sicily, he became infamous for avoiding convictions for a multitude of crimes, including homicide
, before he was finally imprisoned for life in 1974.
. He turned to crime in his teens. His first conviction was when he was aged 18 for stealing corn; as soon as he completed a six-month sentence for this crime, he murdered the man who had reported him to the police. In 1945 he was recruited by the Mafia boss of Corleone, Michele Navarra
, to work as an enforcer and hitman. That same year Leggio shot dead a farm hand in order to take his job, then immediately took over the farm by demanding the owner to sign it over to him at gunpoint.
Many pentiti have described Leggio as being highly volatile and violent, as well as possessing a streak of vanity. According to Tommaso Buscetta
, during meetings with Mafia bosses from Palermo
, Leggio insisted on correcting grammatical errors made by Gaetano Badalamenti
when Badalamenti tried to speak Italian
rather than his native Sicilian
. Leggio apparently liked to be called "The Professor", as if he were an intellectual, even though, like many of his fellow Corleonesi, he was poorly educated. Leggio left school at the age of nine and was illiterate until well into adulthood. He also tended to wear expensively tailored suits at his repeated court appearances, often along with sunglasses, and grandly puffed on a cigar
.
On March 10, 1948, trade unionist Placido Rizzotto
was kidnapped by three men in broad daylight, with a number of witnesses claiming Leggio was one of them. The following year two men confessed to helping Leggio kidnap Rizzotto, who shot the victim and dumped him in a 50 feet (15.2 m) cavern. The police recovered Rizzotto's body and two others, Leggio was arrested on suspicion of murder, but after spending almost two-years behind bars he was released and the charges dropped when witnesses refused to testify. The two alleged accomplices were eventually killed. Leggio went into hiding - although reportedly did not have to try hard to hide because no-one in Corleone seemed brave enough to alert the police as to his whereabouts - after he was indicted once again for the Rizzotto slaying. He was tried twice in absentia
of the trade unionist's murder but acquitted due to insufficient evidence on both occasions.
While behind bars in the late 1940s he met Salvatore Riina
, who was then aged 19 and starting a six-year sentence for manslaughter
. The two eventually became accomplices in crime after Riina's release, as did another young local criminal, Bernardo Provenzano
.
A couple of months later, on August 2, Leggio, Riina, Provenzano and a number of other gunmen set up an ambush just outside Corleone. Michele Navarra soon drove round the corner and the gunmen opened fire, riddling the car with two-hundred bullets. Navarra died instantly along with a friend (unconnected with the Mafia) he was giving a lift to, Lercara Friddi. Leggio proclaimed himself boss of Corleone and over the next five years he and his men hunted down and killed around fifty more of Navarra's remaining supporters.
Leggio and his faction emerged victorious, and he eventually took his place on the Sicilian Mafia Commission
. However, the increase in violence in Corleone, coupled with the Ciaculli massacre
in Palermo relating to a separate Mafia War, had inspired a crackdown against the Mafia in 1963, meaning Leggio and his associates had to go into hiding.
He was captured in Corleone in May 1964 (curiously, he was lodging with the former fiancée of Placido Rizzotto, whom he had once been accused of murdering) and was hauled off into custody, complaining loudly about his ill-health, old age (he was only thirty-nine) and how he was being persecuted and knew nothing of any Mafia. First off he was tried for murdering Navarra and Navarra's companion back in 1958. The trial ended with him being acquitted due to insufficient evidence. He stood trial in late 1968 with 113 defendants relating to the Mafia War that resulted in the Ciaculli Massacre. However, what became known as Trial of the 114 ended with only ten convictions. The rest, including Leggio, were acquitted.
He was not yet released, however, as he had to stand trial in 1969 on charges of murdering nine of Navarra's men. This time he was tried alongside over sixty of his fellow Corleonesi, including Salvatore Riina
, who was one of almost two-thousand Mafiosi rounded up in the mid-1960s in the aftermath of the violence in the early years of that decade.
The trial was regarded as farcical, with reports of blatant witness intimidation and evidence tampering. 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. The judges and prosecutors were sent anonymous letters threatening them with death.
In the end, all the defendants were acquitted.
named Cesare Terranova
appealed against Leggio's acquittal for the Navarra slaying. In December 1970 Leggio was finally convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment
for this murder, but it was in absentia because, once more, he had gone underground. In July 1969, after hearing of his indictment to stand trial once more, Leggio checked in to a private health clinic in Rome to have treatment for Pott's disease
, which he had suffered from most of his life and for which he had to wear a brace. When the police finally came to arrest him in January 1970 he had checked out and vanished. The fact that he had not been arrested during his seven-month stay in the clinic was a scandal in Italy, as were his repeated acquittals.
There were many suspicions that corrupt figures in authority had helped Leggio avoid justice, with plenty of suspicion falling on the General Attorney of Sicily, Pietro Scaglione
; he was shot dead in 1971. Pentiti Tommaso Buscetta and Salvatore Contorno
later said Leggio personally shot Scaglione dead because he either did not want him to help deliver an acquittal for one of the Corleonesi boss's rivals or he did not want to leave someone who knew a lot of his secrets alive. Leggio would later be tried twice for killing Scaglione but was acquitted for insufficient evidence.
He eventually hid out in Milan
where he ran a profitable kidnapping
ring. In early 1973 he ran into a mobster named Damiano Caruso whom he blamed for killing one of his friends years before. Caruso vanished, as did his girlfriend and her fifteen-year-old daughter not long afterwards. According to numerous informants, Leggio killed Caruso then, when his girlfriend and her daughter came round asking questions, he raped and strangled them both.
. Leggio was finally sent off to serve his life sentence for the Navarra slaying.
He is believed to have retained significant influence from behind bars, as have many other mobsters after imprisonment. However, by the end of the 1970s, his lieutenant Salvatore Riina was in control of the Corleonesi
clan.
Raised in poverty, Leggio was a multi-millionaire by the time of his arrest. At the time of his capture, Italian law did not yet allow authorities to confiscate criminal's illicit fortunes, although this has since changed.
He was tried with a number of others in 1977 for previous crimes on the testimony of Leonardo Vitale
; he was acquitted with all but one of the others (Vitale's uncle) when Leonardo Vitale's mental state was called into question.
In the Maxi Trial
of 1986/1987, Leggio faced charges of helping to run the Corleonesi from behind bars, including the accusation that he ordered the murder of prosecutor Cesare Terranova, who was shot dead in 1979. He acted as his own lawyer
and defended himself, cross examining Tommaso Buscetta and other pentiti. He claimed he had been framed for political reasons. He was eventually acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence, although he still had his life-sentence to serve and was returned to a maximum security prison in Sardinia
, where he indulged in his hobby of painting
, in particular landscapes
.
On November 16, 1993, he died in prison from a heart attack
, aged sixty-eight. He is buried in Corleone.
Italy
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...
criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian
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,...
Mafia
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...
. He was the head of 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...
, the Mafia faction that originated in 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....
. Some sources incorrectly spell his surname Liggio, a result of a misspelling on court documents in the 1960s.
As well as setting the Corleonesi on track to become the dominant Mafia clan in Sicily, he became infamous for avoiding convictions for a multitude of crimes, including homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
, before he was finally imprisoned for life in 1974.
Early life
Leggio was one of ten children raised in extreme poverty on a small farmFarm
A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
. He turned to crime in his teens. His first conviction was when he was aged 18 for stealing corn; as soon as he completed a six-month sentence for this crime, he murdered the man who had reported him to the police. In 1945 he was recruited by the Mafia boss of Corleone, 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...
, to work as an enforcer and hitman. That same year Leggio shot dead a farm hand in order to take his job, then immediately took over the farm by demanding the owner to sign it over to him at gunpoint.
Many pentiti have described Leggio as being highly volatile and violent, as well as possessing a streak of vanity. According to 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...
, during meetings with Mafia bosses from Palermo
Palermo
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...
, Leggio insisted on correcting grammatical errors made by 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...
when Badalamenti tried to speak Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
rather than his native Sicilian
Sicilian language
Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
. Leggio apparently liked to be called "The Professor", as if he were an intellectual, even though, like many of his fellow Corleonesi, he was poorly educated. Leggio left school at the age of nine and was illiterate until well into adulthood. He also tended to wear expensively tailored suits at his repeated court appearances, often along with sunglasses, and grandly puffed on a cigar
Cigar
A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...
.
On March 10, 1948, trade unionist Placido Rizzotto
Placido Rizzotto
Placido Rizzotto was an Italian socialist peasant and trade union leader from Corleone, who was assassinated by Sicilian Mafia boss Luciano Leggio. Pieces of Rizzotto's mutilated body were discovered two years later at the bottom of a cliff with his limbs chained up, and a bullet hole in his head...
was kidnapped by three men in broad daylight, with a number of witnesses claiming Leggio was one of them. The following year two men confessed to helping Leggio kidnap Rizzotto, who shot the victim and dumped him in a 50 feet (15.2 m) cavern. The police recovered Rizzotto's body and two others, Leggio was arrested on suspicion of murder, but after spending almost two-years behind bars he was released and the charges dropped when witnesses refused to testify. The two alleged accomplices were eventually killed. Leggio went into hiding - although reportedly did not have to try hard to hide because no-one in Corleone seemed brave enough to alert the police as to his whereabouts - after he was indicted once again for the Rizzotto slaying. He was tried twice 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...
of the trade unionist's murder but acquitted due to insufficient evidence on both occasions.
While behind bars in the late 1940s he met 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...
, who was then aged 19 and starting a six-year sentence for manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
. The two eventually became accomplices in crime after Riina's release, as did another young local criminal, 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...
.
Ascent to power
Leggio soon began to build his own faction of mobsters loyal to him alone, including Riina and Provenzano, and in 1956 the Leggio faction went to war with Navarra and his followers. One evening in June 1958 Leggio was walking across a field when some of Navarra's men opened fire on him. He escaped with just a slight injury to his hand.A couple of months later, on August 2, Leggio, Riina, Provenzano and a number of other gunmen set up an ambush just outside Corleone. Michele Navarra soon drove round the corner and the gunmen opened fire, riddling the car with two-hundred bullets. Navarra died instantly along with a friend (unconnected with the Mafia) he was giving a lift to, Lercara Friddi. Leggio proclaimed himself boss of Corleone and over the next five years he and his men hunted down and killed around fifty more of Navarra's remaining supporters.
Leggio and his faction emerged victorious, and he eventually took his place on the Sicilian Mafia 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...
. However, the increase in violence in Corleone, coupled with 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...
in Palermo relating to a separate Mafia War, had inspired a crackdown against the Mafia in 1963, meaning Leggio and his associates had to go into hiding.
Repeated acquittals
Leggio spent the 1960s and early 1970s increasing the strength of the Corleonesi, murdering anyone who got in its way. In particular, he wanted control of the refining and trafficking of heroin that soon provided a huge source of income to the Sicilian Mafia.He was captured in Corleone in May 1964 (curiously, he was lodging with the former fiancée of Placido Rizzotto, whom he had once been accused of murdering) and was hauled off into custody, complaining loudly about his ill-health, old age (he was only thirty-nine) and how he was being persecuted and knew nothing of any Mafia. First off he was tried for murdering Navarra and Navarra's companion back in 1958. The trial ended with him being acquitted due to insufficient evidence. He stood trial in late 1968 with 113 defendants relating to the Mafia War that resulted in the Ciaculli Massacre. However, what became known as Trial of the 114 ended with only ten convictions. The rest, including Leggio, were acquitted.
He was not yet released, however, as he had to stand trial in 1969 on charges of murdering nine of Navarra's men. This time he was tried alongside over sixty of his fellow Corleonesi, including 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...
, who was one of almost two-thousand Mafiosi rounded up in the mid-1960s in the aftermath of the violence in the early years of that decade.
The trial was regarded as farcical, with reports of blatant witness intimidation and evidence tampering. 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. The judges and prosecutors were sent anonymous letters threatening them with death.
In the end, all the defendants were acquitted.
Fugitive on the Italian mainland
Immediately after the trial, which ended in July 1969, a determined Italian magistrateMagistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
named 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...
appealed against Leggio's acquittal for the Navarra slaying. In December 1970 Leggio was finally convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
for this murder, but it was in absentia because, once more, he had gone underground. In July 1969, after hearing of his indictment to stand trial once more, Leggio checked in to a private health clinic in Rome to have treatment for Pott's disease
Pott's disease
Pott's disease is a presentation of extrapulmonary tuberculosis that affects the spine, a kind of tuberculous arthritis of the intervertebral joints...
, which he had suffered from most of his life and for which he had to wear a brace. When the police finally came to arrest him in January 1970 he had checked out and vanished. The fact that he had not been arrested during his seven-month stay in the clinic was a scandal in Italy, as were his repeated acquittals.
There were many suspicions that corrupt figures in authority had helped Leggio avoid justice, with plenty of suspicion falling on the General Attorney of Sicily, Pietro Scaglione
Pietro Scaglione
Pietro Scaglione was an Italian magistrate and Chief Prosecutor of Palermo . He was killed by the Mafia in 1971.-Fighting the Mafia:...
; he was shot dead in 1971. Pentiti Tommaso Buscetta and Salvatore Contorno
Salvatore Contorno
Salvatore "Totuccio" Contorno is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who turned into a state witness against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of Tommaso Buscetta. He gave detailed accounts of the inner-workings of the Sicilian Mafia...
later said Leggio personally shot Scaglione dead because he either did not want him to help deliver an acquittal for one of the Corleonesi boss's rivals or he did not want to leave someone who knew a lot of his secrets alive. Leggio would later be tried twice for killing Scaglione but was acquitted for insufficient evidence.
He eventually hid out in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
where he ran a profitable 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...
ring. In early 1973 he ran into a mobster named Damiano Caruso whom he blamed for killing one of his friends years before. Caruso vanished, as did his girlfriend and her fifteen-year-old daughter not long afterwards. According to numerous informants, Leggio killed Caruso then, when his girlfriend and her daughter came round asking questions, he raped and strangled them both.
Life imprisonment
He was finally captured in Milan on May 16, 1974, local police having tracked him down by tapping his telephoneTelephone tapping
Telephone tapping is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on the telephone line...
. Leggio was finally sent off to serve his life sentence for the Navarra slaying.
He is believed to have retained significant influence from behind bars, as have many other mobsters after imprisonment. However, by the end of the 1970s, his lieutenant Salvatore Riina was in control of 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...
clan.
Raised in poverty, Leggio was a multi-millionaire by the time of his arrest. At the time of his capture, Italian law did not yet allow authorities to confiscate criminal's illicit fortunes, although this has since changed.
He was tried with a number of others in 1977 for previous crimes on the testimony of Leonardo Vitale
Leonardo Vitale
Leonardo Vitale was a member of the Sicilian Mafia who was one of the first to become an informant, or pentito, although originally his confessions were not taken seriously. Vitale was a man of honour or member of the Altarello di Baida cosca or family, Altarello being a small village just outside...
; he was acquitted with all but one of the others (Vitale's uncle) when Leonardo Vitale's mental state was called into question.
In the Maxi Trial
Maxi Trial
The 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...
of 1986/1987, Leggio faced charges of helping to run the Corleonesi from behind bars, including the accusation that he ordered the murder of prosecutor Cesare Terranova, who was shot dead in 1979. He acted as his own lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
and defended himself, cross examining Tommaso Buscetta and other pentiti. He claimed he had been framed for political reasons. He was eventually acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence, although he still had his life-sentence to serve and was returned to a maximum security prison in Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
, where he indulged in his hobby of painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, in particular landscapes
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
.
On November 16, 1993, he died in prison from a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
, aged sixty-eight. He is buried in Corleone.