Michele Cavataio
Encyclopedia
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 of his time. His nickname The Cobra allegedly came from his favorite firearm, the Colt Cobra, a six-shot revolver. He was described as a cunning killer with a face like a gorilla.
. The Acquasanta Mafia family controlled the docks of Palermo that were situated in their area. They acted as strike breakers against the dockworkers, and did not hesitate to shoot at the strikers if necessary.
In 1955, the bosses of the Acquasanta Mafia clan, Gaetano Galatolo and Nicola D’Alessandro were killed in a dispute over the protection rackets when the fruit and vegetable wholesale market moved from the Zisa area to Acquasanta, disturbing the delicate power balances within Cosa Nostra. The killer of Galatolo was never identified, but Cavataio was suspected. Cavataio became the new boss of the clan and had to agree to split the profits of the wholesale market racket with the Greco Mafia clan of Ciaculli
, who traditionally controlled fruit and vegetable supply to Palermo wholesale market.
Cavataio actively participated in what is called the 'Sack of Palermo
' during the reign of Salvo Lima as mayor of Palermo
. Mafia bosses were granted building licenses through contacts with politicians. The construction boom destroyed the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks.
Tommaso Buscetta
it was Michele Cavataio who deliberately escalated a dispute between different factions. The conflict erupted over an underweight shipment of heroin. The shipment was financed by Cesare Manzella
, the Greco cousins from Ciaculli and the La Barbera brothers
. Suspicion fell on Calcedonio Di Pisa
, who had collected the heroin and had organised the transport to New York.
The case was brought before the Mafia Commission
, but disagreement on how to handle it led to a bloody conflict between clans allied with the Grecos, headed by Salvatore Ciaschiteddu Greco, and clans allied with the La Barberas – in particular when Di Pisa was killed on December 26, 1962. The Grecos suspected the La Barberas of the attack.
However, it had been Cavataio who had killed Di Pisa in the knowledge that the Grecos would blame the La Barberas and a war would be the result. Cavataio – having his own problems with Di Pisa and wanting him out of the way, and on bad terms with the La Barberas as well – contrived Di Pisa’s murder in such a way that the La Barberas would appear responsible. He kept fuelling the conflict with more bomb attacks and killings. Other Mafia families who resented the growing power of the Sicilian Mafia Commission
to the detriment of individual Mafia families backed Cavataio. Behind both Cavataio and La Barbera was an alliance of bosses from the north-west of Palermo who resented the Commission’s growing power, and the influence of the south-eastern Palermo cosche such as the Grecos.
Cavataio then participated, along with Pietro Torretta
, Buscetta and another Acquasanta capo, in several car bomb attacks on the Grecos and their allies, considered enemies because of their intrusion in the wholesale produce market. He was responsible for a car bomb that exploded near Greco’s house in Ciaculli on June 30, 1963, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The outrage over the Ciaculli massacre
changed the Mafia war into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted anti-Mafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy. The Sicilian Mafia Commission
was dissolved and of those mafiosi who had escaped arrest many went abroad. Cavataio was arrested.
Cavataio was arrested in July 1963. He received a four year sentence at the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968, despite an indictment for ten murders. He was sentenced for criminal association and soon left jail when in appeal his sentence was reduced to two years.
was already dead and his brother Angelo La Barbera
had fled to Milan
, where he was seriously wounded. It became clear that Cavataio – and not the La Barberas – had planted the bomb and fomented much of the trouble.
Other Mafia bosses started to realise Cavataio’s double-crossing role in the Mafia war. In retaliation, during a meeting in Zürich
several top Mafia bosses decided to eliminate Cavataio on the instigation of Salvatore Ciaschiteddu Greco
who had come all the way from Venezuela. Greco had come to subscribe to Buscetta’s theory about how the First Mafia War began.
Cavataio claimed to have drawn a map of the Palermo Mafia families including the names of all members in an attempt to blackmail his way out of trouble. Such a map was dangerous if the police would get a hand on it.
Cavataio and three of his men were killed on December 10, 1969, in the Viale Lazio – a modern street in the smart new northern area of Palermo
– by a Mafia hit squad including Bernardo Provenzano
, Calogero Bagarella
(an elder brother of Leoluca Bagarella
the brother-in-law of Totò Riina
), Emanuele D’Agostino of Stefano Bontade
’s Santa Maria di Gesù Family, Gaetano Grado and Damiano Caruso a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina
, the Mafia boss of Riesi
. The attack is known as the Viale Lazio massacre
(Lazio Street Massacre).
The killers entered the office of the construction company of Girolamo Moncada, the builder that previously was connected with Angelo La Barbera
and now with Cavataio. Cavataio was able to shoot and kill Calogero Bagarella
and wounding Caruso before Provenzano killed him. Provenzano saved the situation with his Beretta 38/A
submachine gun and earned himself a reputation as a Mafia killer with the attack. However, according to one of the participants who turned government witness in 1999, Gaetano Grado, it was Provenzano who messed up the attack, shooting too early. In the office 108 bullets had been fired.
Grado said he helped organize the hit and witnessed the murders first hand. "Everybody was scared of Cavataio," according to Grado, a cousin of the pentito Salvatore Contorno
. All the mafia soldiers sent to kill Cavataio "were veterans," Grado said. "We all had already murdered at least 10 people."
The composition of the hit squad, according to Buscetta, was a clear indication that the killing had been sanctioned collectively by all the major Sicilian Mafia families: not only did it include Calogero Bagarella from Corleone, and a member of Stefano Bontate’s family in Palermo, but also a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina’s family on the other end of Sicily in Riesi. The Viale Lazio bloodbath marked the end of a ‘pax mafiosa’ that had reigned since the Ciaculli massacre until the end of the Trial of the 114.
For the Moncada brothers to ‘talk’ was big news in Sicily. They were released from prison, but their father was placed in custody together with 24 alleged participants in the Viale Lazio massacre who had been rounded up on the evidence given by the two brothers. The final verdict of the jury at the first trial was that no evidence could be substantiated to prove that any of the 24 defendants had been directly responsible for the Viale Lazio massacre.
Many appeals would follow. In 2007, Salvatore Riina
and Bernardo Provenzano
went on trial for their role in the Viale Lazio Massacre that resulted on Cavataio and his men's deaths. Riina is accused of ordering the massacre and Provenzano is accused of taking part in it. In April 2009, nearly forty years after the attack, they were both sentenced to life imprisonment.
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 boss of the Acquasanta mandamento
Mandamento
Historically a mandamento was the part of Italian territory under the jurisdiction of a "pretore" which is a kind of magistrate. These divisions were abolished in 1923....
in 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...
and was a member of the first 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...
. Some sources spell his surname as Cavatajo.
Cavataio was one of the most feared mafioso gangsters of his time. His nickname The Cobra allegedly came from his favorite firearm, the Colt Cobra, a six-shot revolver. He was described as a cunning killer with a face like a gorilla.
Early Mafia career
Cavataio was seen as an exponent of a 'new' Mafia of Americanised gangsters that appeared in the mid 1950s. After World War II, he made his fortune selling petrol that was stolen from the Italian Navy. From the modest position of a taxi driver, he accumulated a considerable fortune in a few years, according to a report of the Parliamentary Antimafia CommissionAntimafia Commission
The Italian Antimafia Commission is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate . The Antimafia Commission is a commission of inquiry into, initially, the “phenomenon of the Mafia”...
. The Acquasanta Mafia family controlled the docks of Palermo that were situated in their area. They acted as strike breakers against the dockworkers, and did not hesitate to shoot at the strikers if necessary.
In 1955, the bosses of the Acquasanta Mafia clan, Gaetano Galatolo and Nicola D’Alessandro were killed in a dispute over the protection rackets when the fruit and vegetable wholesale market moved from the Zisa area to Acquasanta, disturbing the delicate power balances within Cosa Nostra. The killer of Galatolo was never identified, but Cavataio was suspected. Cavataio became the new boss of the clan and had to agree to split the profits of the wholesale market racket with the Greco Mafia clan of Ciaculli
Ciaculli
Ciaculli is an outlying suburb of Palermo, Sicily in Italy. It counts less than 5000 residents. Ciaculli is close to the suburb of Croceverde. Ciaculli has been important within the history of the Cosa Nostra. The best known Mafia family is the Greco Mafia clan...
, who traditionally controlled fruit and vegetable supply to Palermo wholesale market.
Cavataio actively participated in what is called the 'Sack of Palermo
Sack of Palermo
The Sack of Palermo or scempio in Italian is the popular term for the construction boom from the 1950s through the mid 1980s that led to the destruction of the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks...
' during the reign of Salvo Lima as mayor of 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...
. Mafia bosses were granted building licenses through contacts with politicians. The construction boom destroyed the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks.
First Mafia War
Cavataio was one of the protagonists of the first Mafia War in 1962-63. According to the pentitoPentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
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...
it was Michele Cavataio who deliberately escalated a dispute between different factions. The conflict erupted over an underweight shipment of heroin. The shipment was financed by Cesare Manzella
Cesare Manzella
Cesare Manzella was a traditional Mafia capo, who sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission. He was the head of the Mafia family in Cinisi, a small seaside town near the Punta Raisi Airport. As the airport was in their territory it was an invaluable asset for the import and export of contraband,...
, the Greco cousins from Ciaculli and the La Barbera brothers
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...
. Suspicion fell on Calcedonio Di Pisa
Calcedonio Di Pisa
Calcedonio Di Pisa , also known as Doruccio, was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Mafia family in the Noce neighbourhood in Palermo and sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission, the coordinating body of Cosa Nostra in Sicily.-Mafia career:Di Pisa was described by Norman...
, who had collected the heroin and had organised the transport to New York.
The case was brought before the 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...
, but disagreement on how to handle it led to a bloody conflict between clans allied with the Grecos, headed by Salvatore Ciaschiteddu Greco, and clans allied with the La Barberas – in particular when Di Pisa was killed on December 26, 1962. The Grecos suspected the La Barberas of the attack.
However, it had been Cavataio who had killed Di Pisa in the knowledge that the Grecos would blame the La Barberas and a war would be the result. Cavataio – having his own problems with Di Pisa and wanting him out of the way, and on bad terms with the La Barberas as well – contrived Di Pisa’s murder in such a way that the La Barberas would appear responsible. He kept fuelling the conflict with more bomb attacks and killings. Other Mafia families who resented the growing power of 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...
to the detriment of individual Mafia families backed Cavataio. Behind both Cavataio and La Barbera was an alliance of bosses from the north-west of Palermo who resented the Commission’s growing power, and the influence of the south-eastern Palermo cosche such as the Grecos.
Cavataio then participated, along with Pietro Torretta
Pietro Torretta
Pietro Torretta was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Mafia family in the Uditore district in Palermo and one of the protagonists in the First Mafia War. He was considered to be the man behind the Ciaculli massacre.-Early career:Torretta hails from a long line of Mafiosi...
, Buscetta and another Acquasanta capo, in several car bomb attacks on the Grecos and their allies, considered enemies because of their intrusion in the wholesale produce market. He was responsible for a car bomb that exploded near Greco’s house in Ciaculli on June 30, 1963, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The outrage over 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...
changed the Mafia war into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted anti-Mafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy. 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...
was dissolved and of those mafiosi who had escaped arrest many went abroad. Cavataio was arrested.
Cavataio was arrested in July 1963. He received a four year sentence at the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968, despite an indictment for ten murders. He was sentenced for criminal association and soon left jail when in appeal his sentence was reduced to two years.
Growing suspicion
The Ciaculli bombing made the other Mafia clans aware of Cavataio’s manipulation of the Mafia War. When the bomb exploded, Salvatore La BarberaSalvatore La Barbera
Salvatore La Barbera was a Sicilian mafioso. Together with his brother Angelo La Barbera he ruled the Mafia family of Palermo Centro. Salvatore La Barbera sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission that was set up in 1958 as the capo mandamento for Mafia families of Borgo Vecchio, Porta Nuova and...
was already dead and his brother 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...
had fled to 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 was seriously wounded. It became clear that Cavataio – and not the La Barberas – had planted the bomb and fomented much of the trouble.
Other Mafia bosses started to realise Cavataio’s double-crossing role in the Mafia war. In retaliation, during a meeting in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
several top Mafia bosses decided to eliminate Cavataio on the instigation of Salvatore Ciaschiteddu 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...
who had come all the way from Venezuela. Greco had come to subscribe to Buscetta’s theory about how the First Mafia War began.
Cavataio claimed to have drawn a map of the Palermo Mafia families including the names of all members in an attempt to blackmail his way out of trouble. Such a map was dangerous if the police would get a hand on it.
Killed by the Mafia
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...
– by a Mafia hit squad including 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...
, Calogero Bagarella
Calogero Bagarella
Calogero Bagarella was an Italian criminal and member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was from the town of Corleone and belonged to the Mafia clan of Corleonesi.-Biography:...
(an elder brother of Leoluca Bagarella
Leoluca Bagarella
Leoluca Bagarella is an Italian criminal and member of the Sicilian Mafia. He is from the town of Corleone and was a member of the Corleonesi.-Biography:...
the brother-in-law of Totò 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...
), Emanuele D’Agostino of Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He was the capomafia of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo...
’s Santa Maria di Gesù Family, Gaetano Grado and Damiano Caruso a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina
Giuseppe Di Cristina
Giuseppe Di Cristina was a powerful mafioso from Riesi in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, southern Italy...
, the Mafia boss of Riesi
Riesi
Riesi is a comune in the Province of Caltanissetta in the Italian region Sicily, located about 110 kilometres southeast of Palermo and about 20 kilometres south of Caltanissetta...
. The attack is known as the Viale Lazio massacre
Viale Lazio massacre
The Viale Lazio massacre on December 10, 1969, was a settling of accounts in the Sicilian Mafia. Mafia boss Michele Cavataio and three men were killed in the Viale Lazio in Palermo by a Mafia hit squad...
(Lazio Street Massacre).
The killers entered the office of the construction company of Girolamo Moncada, the builder that previously was connected with 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...
and now with Cavataio. Cavataio was able to shoot and kill Calogero Bagarella
Calogero Bagarella
Calogero Bagarella was an Italian criminal and member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was from the town of Corleone and belonged to the Mafia clan of Corleonesi.-Biography:...
and wounding Caruso before Provenzano killed him. Provenzano saved the situation with his Beretta 38/A
Beretta Model 38/42
The Model 38 and its variants were the official submachine guns of the Royal Italian Army during World War II. The MAB 38A , or Modello 38A, was introduced in 1938...
submachine gun and earned himself a reputation as a Mafia killer with the attack. However, according to one of the participants who turned government witness in 1999, Gaetano Grado, it was Provenzano who messed up the attack, shooting too early. In the office 108 bullets had been fired.
Grado said he helped organize the hit and witnessed the murders first hand. "Everybody was scared of Cavataio," according to Grado, a cousin of the pentito 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...
. All the mafia soldiers sent to kill Cavataio "were veterans," Grado said. "We all had already murdered at least 10 people."
The composition of the hit squad, according to Buscetta, was a clear indication that the killing had been sanctioned collectively by all the major Sicilian Mafia families: not only did it include Calogero Bagarella from Corleone, and a member of Stefano Bontate’s family in Palermo, but also a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina’s family on the other end of Sicily in Riesi. The Viale Lazio bloodbath marked the end of a ‘pax mafiosa’ that had reigned since the Ciaculli massacre until the end of the Trial of the 114.
Viale Lazio trials
In September 1972, the trial for the Viale Lazio massacre took place; 24 defendants had been rounded up. Filippo and Angelo Moncada, the builder’s sons, were at first imprisoned on suspicion of being part of the plot. In hospital, where he was interned for his gunshot wounds, Fillippo started talking about his father’s meetings with notorious mafiosi, and described how Cavataio had gradually become the real boss in Moncada’s firm.For the Moncada brothers to ‘talk’ was big news in Sicily. They were released from prison, but their father was placed in custody together with 24 alleged participants in the Viale Lazio massacre who had been rounded up on the evidence given by the two brothers. The final verdict of the jury at the first trial was that no evidence could be substantiated to prove that any of the 24 defendants had been directly responsible for the Viale Lazio massacre.
Many appeals would follow. In 2007, 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...
and 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...
went on trial for their role in the Viale Lazio Massacre that resulted on Cavataio and his men's deaths. Riina is accused of ordering the massacre and Provenzano is accused of taking part in it. In April 2009, nearly forty years after the attack, they were both sentenced to life imprisonment.
Sources
Relazione sull’infiltrazione mafiosa nei Cantieri Navali di Palermo Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sul fenomeno della mafia, 26 gennaio 1998. Caruso, Alfio (2000). Da cosa nasce cosa. Storia della mafia del 1943 a oggi, Milan: Longanesi ISBN 88-304-1620-7- Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet, ISBN 0-340-82435-2
- Longrigg, Clare (2008). Boss of Bosses. How Bernardo Provenzano Saved the Mafia, London: John Murray, ISBN 978-0-7195-6849-7
- Schneider, Jane T. & Peter T. Schneider (2003). Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo, Berkeley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-23609-2
- Servadio, Gaia (1976), Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg ISBN 0-436-44700-2
- Stille, AlexanderAlexander StilleAlexander Stille is an American author and journalist. He is the son of Ugo Stille, a well-known Italian journalist and a former editor of Italy's Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper. Alexander Stille graduated from Yale and later the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism...
(1995). Excellent CadaversExcellent CadaversExcellent Cadavers is a 1995 non-fiction book by American author Alexander Stille about the Sicilian Mafia, concentrating on magistrate Giovanni Falcone's fight against the Mafia and his 1992 assassination....
. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage ISBN 0-09-959491-9