THE SIGNATURE
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July 22, 2016
Bernardo Provenzano Obituary: Mafia Boss who Turned Around Fortunes of Cosa Nostra but Ended His Days in Jail Story by The Guardian
Bernardo Provenzano, who has died at age 83 in a secure hospital ward, was the former boss of the Corleone clan, once the most vicious and voracious of the Sicilian mafia families. He had been imprisoned in solitary confinement since 2006, serving a number of life sentences for murder. Provenzano was credited with rescuing Cosa Nostra after its disastrous war against the state, in which the mafia murdered lawyers, journalists, police, judges and politicians, incurring a backlash of mass arrests and huge financial losses. His predecessor at the head of the organization, Totò Riina, had waged a bombing campaign from 1989 to 1993 in an attempt to force the government to repeal anti-mafia laws, dragging Cosa Nostra to the brink of annihilation. Provenzano’s strategy of halting the killing, which he considered bad for business, was key to the organization’s survival. Provenzano and Riina got their start as small-time gangsters in the agricultural town of Corleone, in the mountains of central Sicily. Bernardo was the third of seven children of farm workers, Angelo Provenzano and Giovanna Rigoglioso, and left school early to contribute to the household income. In the early 1950s, a challenger for control of the Corleone clan, Luciano Liggio, spotted his potential as a cattle rustler and a crack shot (earning young Provenzano his nickname, “the tractor”), and he and Riina rode shotgun for Liggio on his clandestine meat-trading runs into Palermo. His first arrest was for stealing cheese. Liggio’s upstart faction took on the established Corleone boss Michele Navarra and won. They then went to war against the Palermo families for control of the illegal economy in western Sicily, leaving scorched earth behind them, and by 1963 Provenzano was in hiding. During the maxi trial in the mid-1980s, the biggest case against Cosa Nostra in history, both Riina and Provenzano were tried for murder in absentia while their boss and mentor, Liggio, smoked cigars and regarded the proceedings through the bars of his cell with contempt. When, in a shocking reverse of the status quo, 338 (not including Liggio) were convicted of mafia crimes and, five years later, the convictions were upheld on appeal, the Corleonesi made their fateful decision. The judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who had built the case against the mafia by tracking laundered drug money, and persuading disillusioned mafiosi to give evidence, had to die. In May 1992, as his motorcade sped from the airport towards Palermo, a bomb killed Falcone, his wife and three police officers. Two months later, as Borsellino pressed the bell of his elderly mother’s apartment, a car bomb exploded, killing him and five bodyguards. Provenzano later distanced himself from these outrages, but magistrates are convinced he was in full support of Riina’s war. In early 1992, just before the assassinations, Provenzano’s common-law wife, Saveria Palazzolo, had suddenly taken up residence in Corleone with their two young sons. Mafia seismologists were in a frenzy, trying to work out what this meant. It was said that Provenzano was dead, or gravely ill. Later, it was thought he was preparing for war, and wanted his family out of danger. Provenzano always insisted that his boys, Angelo and Francesco Paolo, should have no part in organized crime, which they – alienated from both criminal and civil society – have at times found difficult. After Riina was arrested the following February, Provenzano called a meeting of his generals. Without Riina’s dictatorship to keep the factions in check, tensions were high. The men, including two serial murderers, waited to see what kind of leader “the tractor” would prove to be. In a small office inside a
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Bernardo Provenzano being taken into police custody in 2006 after decades in hiding. Italy's most wanted mafioso nicknamed as 'the tractor' for how he mowed down nemeses, died after an arduous battle with bladder cancer last week. He was arrested in 2006 after 40 years living on the run. The price on Provenzano's head was 1.5 million euro during mid-1990s (Photo and caption by Daily Mail)