Loose Dogs

by Bluto Ray

A soothing silence blankets the agricultural heartland in the northern reaches of Caltanissetta Province. Country roads, deserted but for the occasional slow-moving truck, amble past endless fields of wheat and grapevines. The towns along the way are modest and unremarkable, belying the richest commercial region of Sicily. These small concentrations of block houses look alike and, in the case of Valledolmo and the neighboring Vallelunga Pratameno, even sound alike.

Gandolfo PanepintoBut where there is money on the island there is Mafia--with its attending violence. On February 23, 1988, 41-year-old Gandolfo Panepinto was standing in front of the garage, near his home, where he worked on his neighbors’ automobiles. Two armed men appeared suddenly and opened fire. Panepinto died on the spot, filled with bullets from a pistol and a rifle. The killers and their motive remained a mystery for years. How had a small-town mechanic become a Mafia target?

In Sicily, appearances frequently deceive. A laborer might take an entrepreneurial interest in the local underworld, as Panepinto did. He had a criminal history and had just returned to Valledolmo after a court-imposed exile in the mainland city of Lecce. He wasted no time in setting up an extortion racket. His gang used the traditional method of property vandalism to intimidate local businesses who would not pay.

Click to read more ...

The Pope's Country Club

by Bluto Ray

Giuseppe Greco’s death from a tumor last week garnered more press than his movies ever did. The obituaries read like a string of bad reviews, casting the filmmaker’s career in the shadow of the Mafia. The plot points are damning: he served a four-year sentence for laundering illicit money through his productions; he borrowed a deluxe Mercedes 500 from Palermo’s crooked mayor, Salvo Lima, for a film shoot; and, after jail, he wrote and directed a family saga that romanticizes the Mafia of old Sicily.

Michele GrecoBut the piece of publicity that stuck to him most was the kind you can’t buy and wouldn’t want to: Giuseppe was the son of Michele Greco, the infamous “Pope” of the Mafia.

Don Michele Greco, the debonair silver fox whose ever-present Bible and prayer cards lent him a pious air, was the toast of Palermitan society in the 1970s. His estate, “Favarella,” in the eastern suburb of Ciaculli, was a lush expanse of tangerine orchards with plenty of wild game to excite the sportsmen among the local elites. Many of the rooms in Greco’s lodge had giant ovens and barbecue grills enjoyed by the business leaders, politicians and policemen who were frequent guests. Favorites were given a key to the gate.

Click to read more ...

Big and Little Wars

by Bluto Ray

A tiny dot on the map of Sicily called Villalba was a locus of Mafia activity thanks, in no small part, to the American Allied occupation of the island during World War II. With the Fascists in retreat, local Mafia bosses--effectively stifled under Mussolini--were being tapped by US commanders to fill the power vacuum and restore order. In rural Villalba the mayoral post was given to Calogero Vizzini, known to the peasants who kissed his hands as Don Calò.

Don Calogero VizziniThis barely-literate, cartoon-like mafioso with rubber features, fedora, and balloon pants hiked over his enormous belly had nevertheless been the territory’s most skilled powerbroker since the early twentieth century. The archetypal estate boss, who deftly manipulated the black markets in both world wars, was legitimized by a family of Catholic priests entrenched in local politics.

Though accused of dozens of murders and lesser crimes, Don Calò was reliably cleared with clergy support. (Part of his sizable fortune came from a land sale he brokered for a Parisian nobleman and a local bank run by his uncle, a priest. Don Calò kept five hundred acres as commission.) He was equally at ease cutting deals with industrialists in London or providing marital counsel to neighbors in Villalba, where he was respected, loved and feared

Click to read more ...

The Ties that Bind

by Bluto Ray

A minor Sicilian mystery was solved last week with the death of Salvatore Cancemi, a former Mafia boss who succumbed to cancer at the age of 69. He had disappeared with the help of the Italian state after making explosive accusations in 1993. His words still resonate in the ongoing investigation of criminal infiltration in politics that reaches as high as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Surprisingly, Cancemi had been living protected in his home town all these years.

Salvatore CancemiHe was part of a Palermo crime family that ran the Porta Nuova neighborhood in the shadow of Sicily’s Parliament building. At the time of his arrest the racketeer and heroin trafficker was believed to be worth $50 million and held a privileged seat on the Mafia Commission headed by godfather Totò Riina.

Cancemi later testified about Riina’s directive to hunt down the families of Mafia turncoats after his campaign of political assassinations: “My hair stood on end when Riina said that he had to kill women and children. He’s a mad dog that caused the Cosa Nostra to abandon all its values.” Cancemi later said, “Children have always been my life.

Click to read more ...

Public Executions

by Bluto Ray

Mario FranceseTailing the Corleonese Mafia during its bloody rise to power was a hard-nosed newspaper columnist who reported every move. The screaming headlines were sacrilege in a land ruled by complicit silence:

<strong>THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF CONTRACTS AND CRIMES AT THE GARCIA DAM: THE MAFIA STRIKES GOLD IN THE MOST BARREN RANCH</strong>

The writer launched attack after public attack:

PRIEST: ADVENTURER OR MAFIOSO? This is the question asked at every level of public opinion about the peculiar character of father Agostino Coppola.

The priest in question was the collared mafioso who presided over the secret wedding of Ninetta Bagarella and Totò “The Beast” Riina, emerging leader of the Corleonesi.

Mario Francese poked his nose into Mafia affairs like no other journalist before him. He scooped the wedding and later secured an exclusive interview with the “maestrina” Bagarella:

Click to read more ...

Chamber of Horrors

by Bluto Ray

Running along Palermo’s southern waterfront is the Corso dei Mille, a boulevard named for the advance that Garibaldi and his thousand soldiers made on the route in 1860. That era’s splendor of palaces and citrus groves was replaced with reckless development and gridlocked traffic, the very air tinted orange with smog. In the 1970s, the decaying neighborhood was ruled by one of the Mafia’s most degenerate bosses, Filippo Marchese.

Filippo MarcheseMarchese operated his own rackets--he was implicated as a drug trafficker who laundered earnings through the banks--but he played a significant role as an executioner for the Corleonese Mafia led by Totò Riina. He set up a grisly death factory in a filthy, abandoned apartment by the shore which came to be called the Room of Death.

The victims were generally losers of the Mafia war of the early 1980s: those hoodlums who ran afoul of the Corleonesi. Interrogations in the Room of Death were conducted at a table set with a few chairs. While a crew of four or five men restrained a victim with ropes or chains, Marchese took personal pleasure in doing the strangling himself. Sometimes he snorted cocaine and masturbated to the spectacle.

Click to read more ...