Salvatore Riina

Salvatore "Totò" Riina (16 November 1930 – 17 November 2017) was an Italian mobster who became the boss of the Sicilian Mafia. He is most infamous for a brutal murder campaign that escalated in the early 1990s, including the killings of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. These assassinations sparked public outrage, legal reforms, and a major crackdown on the Mafia. He was also called "the beast" and "the boss of bosses."

Riina took over the Corleonesi crime group from Luciano Leggio in the mid-1970s and rose to power through violence, which led police to target his rivals. He had been a fugitive since the late 1960s after being charged with murder. Because law enforcement focused on eliminating established bosses who relied on bribery, Riina was less exposed to the consequences of his tactics. Breaking traditional Mafia rules, he ordered the killing of women and children and murdered innocent civilians simply to distract authorities.

Hitman Giovanni Brusca claimed he killed between 100 and 200 people for Riina. While this scorched-earth approach eliminated any internal threats, Riina showed less of his earlier cunning by openly confronting the state. In the 1986 Maxi Trial, he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia for Mafia membership and multiple murders. After 23 years on the run, he was captured in 1993, which triggered a series of random bombings of art galleries and churches by his organization. Showing no remorse, he was kept under the strict Article 41-bis prison regime until his death on 17 November 2017.

Riina was born on 16 November 1930 and grew up in a poor rural home in Corleone, then part of the province of Palermo. In September 1943, his father Giovanni found an unexploded American bomb and tried to open it to sell the powder and metal. It exploded, killing Giovanni and Riina’s seven-year-old brother Francesco, and injuring another brother, Gaetano. At age 19, Riina was sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing Domenico Di Matteo with a handgun in a fight; he was released in 1956.

The Corleone Mafia family was led by Michele Navarra until 6 August 1958, when he was shot dead by three gunmen with submachine guns on orders from Luciano Leggio, a ruthless 33-year-old Mafioso who then became boss. Along with Riina, Calogero Bagarella, and Bernardo Provenzano—the three gunmen in Navarra’s murder—Leggio began expanding the Corleonesi’s power. In the early 1960s, Leggio, Riina, and Provenzano, after spending years hunting down and killing dozens of Navarra’s remaining supporters, went into hiding due to arrest warrants. Riina and Leggio were arrested and tried in 1969 for earlier murders but were acquitted after jurors and witnesses were intimidated. Later that year, Riina went into hiding again after being charged with another murder, remaining a fugitive for the next 23 years.

On 16 May 1974, Leggio was captured and imprisoned for Navarra’s 1958 murder. Though Leggio kept some influence from prison, Riina became the effective head of the Corleonesi. He also had close ties to the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia-type organization. His compare d’anello (a trusted friend and best man) at his 1974 wedding was Domenico Tripodo, a powerful ’Ndrangheta boss and major cigarette smuggler.

The Corleonesi’s main rivals were Stefano Bontade, Salvatore Inzerillo, and Tano Badalamenti, bosses of powerful Palermo Mafia families. The murders of Bontade and Inzerillo in 1981 by Riina’s Corleonesi sparked the Second Mafia War, a period of up to a thousand killings. By the war’s end, the Corleonesi dominated the Mafia, and Riina later eliminated former allies like Filippo Marchese, Giuseppe Greco, and Rosario Riccobono. In January 1981, Tommaso Buscetta fled to Brazil to escape the brewing conflict.

Before Riina’s faction took over, the Sicilian Mafia was based in Palermo, where they controlled many votes and had profitable ties with local politicians like mayors Vito Ciancimino and Salvatore Lima. Ciancimino, also from Corleone, corruptly allowed unchecked property development in the fertile “Golden Bowl” valley, amassing a huge fortune. Lima gave a valuable tax-collection monopoly to Mafia businessman Ignazio Salvo, and helped Giulio Andreotti become a major figure in national politics. Salvo also acted as Andreotti’s financier. These links led some to suspect Riina had similar connections with Andreotti, though courts acquitted Andreotti of Mafia associations after 1980. Baldassare Di Maggio claimed Riina met then-Prime Minister Andreotti at Salvo’s home in 1987 and greeted him with a “kiss of honour.” Andreotti dismissed the allegations as “lies and slander,” calling the kiss and Mafia summits scenes from a comic horror film. Journalist Indro Montanelli doubted the claim, noting Andreotti “doesn’t even kiss his own children.” Di Maggio’s credibility was damaged when he admitted to killing during the trial’s final weeks.