Salvatore Riina

Salvatore "Totò" Riina (16 November 1930 – 17 November 2017) was an Italian mobster who ran the Sicilian Mafia. He earned the nicknames "the beast" and "the boss of bosses" for a brutal campaign of murder that climaxed in the early 1990s with the killings of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Those assassinations sparked public outrage, legal reforms, and a major crackdown by authorities.

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

Hitman Giovanni Brusca estimated he killed between 100 and 200 people for Riina. This scorched-earth approach eliminated any internal threats, but Riina eventually lost his earlier cunning and brought his organization into open conflict with 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, prompting his organization to set off indiscriminate bombs at art galleries and churches. 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 in a poor rural house in Corleone, then part of Palermo province. In September 1943, his father Giovanni found an unexploded American bomb and tried to open it to sell the powder and metal, but it exploded, killing Giovanni and Riina’s seven-year-old brother Francesco, and injuring another brother, Gaetano. At 19, Riina got a 12-year prison sentence for killing Domenico Di Matteo with a handgun in a fight; he was released in 1956.

The Corleone Mafia family was headed 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 shooters in Navarra’s murder—Leggio began building the Corleonesi’s power. In the early 1960s, Leggio, Riina, and Provenzano, who had spent years hunting down and killing dozens of Navarra’s remaining supporters, went into hiding because of arrest warrants. Riina and Leggio were arrested and tried in 1969 for murders from earlier in the decade 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 group. His compare d’anello (a kind of best man and trusted friend) 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. Bontade and Inzerillo were killed in 1981 by Riina’s Corleonesi, triggering the Second Mafia War, which saw up to a thousand murders. By the war’s end, the Corleonesi ruled the Mafia, and Riina later eliminated 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 it controlled large numbers of votes and had mutually beneficial ties with local politicians like mayors Vito Ciancimino and Salvatore Lima. Ciancimino, also from Corleone, corruptly allowed unchecked property development in the “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 force in national politics. Salvo also acted as Andreotti’s financier. These connections led some to suspect Riina had similar links with Andreotti, though courts acquitted Andreotti of Mafia associations after 1980. Baldassare Di Maggio claimed Riina met with then-Prime Minister Andreotti at Salvo’s home in 1987 and greeted him with a “kiss of honour.” Andreotti dismissed the charges as lies and slander, calling the kiss and Mafia summits scenes from a comic horror film. Journalist Indro Montanelli doubted the claim, saying Andreotti “doesn’t even kiss his own children.” Di Maggio’s credibility was shaken during the Andreotti trial when he admitted to killing.