Salvatore Riina - also known as Totò Riina - (born 1930) is one of the most infamous members of the Sicilian Mafia. He was nicknamed The Beast or sometimes Shorty ("U' curtu" in the original sicilian vernacular) due to his diminutive height, although no-one ever dared to called him either nickname to his face. Riina is believed to have personally murdered around forty people and ordered the murders of around a thousand more as he waged a war against rival Mafiosi as well as the authorities in the 1980s and early 1990s. His bloody actions led to a major crackdown against organized crime in Sicily.

Rise To Power

Born in 1930, Riina was raised in Corleone and joined the local Mafia clan - the Corleonesi - as a young adult after committing a murder on their behalf. In his twenties he served a sentence for manslaughter after shooting dead a man during an arguement.

The boss of the Corleonesi was Luciano Liggio , and together with Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, Liggio began to increase the power of the Corleonesi. Because they hailed from a relatively small town, the Corleonesi were not a major factor in the Sicilian Mafia in the 1950s, at least not compared to the major Families based in the capital, Palermo. In fact, the Palermo bosses often referred to the Corleonesi as i viddani - "the peasants".

In the early 1960s, Riina, Leggio and Provenzano were forced to go into hiding thanks to arrest warrants. Riina was handed a life sentence in 1963 for murder, but it was an in absentia sentence, meaning Riina was not present in court. He was to remain a fugitive for three-decades.

In 1974, Liggio was arrested and imprisoned for life on a murder charge, and although he retained some influence from behind bars, Riina was now the effective head of the Corleonesi. By the end the decade, Sicily became an important location in the international heroin trade, especially with regards to the refining and exporting of the narcotic. The profits to be had from heroin were vast, and exceeded those of the traditional activities of extortion and loan-sharking. Riina wanted to take control of the trade and was to do so he planned a war against the rival Mafia Families.

The Mafia War Of 1981/82

The Corleonesi's primary rivals were Stefano Bontade , Salvatore Inzerillo and Antonino Badalamenti , bosses of various powerful Palermo Mafia Families. On April 23, 1981, Bontade was shot to death after attending his 43rd birthday party. A few weeks later, on May 11, Inzerillo was gunned down. Various relatives and associates of the pair were subsequently killed or vanished without trace, and by the end of the year Badalamenti was also dead. Riina also ordered the murders of judges, policemen and prosecutors in an attempt to terrify the authorities. One of the most high profile slayings was of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who was brought in to become the prefect of Palermo to combat the rising tide of Mafia violence. On September 3, 1982, Dalla Chiesa, his wife and one of their bodyguards were shot to death in an ambush. The killer is believed to have been Pino Greco, one of Riina's favourite hitmen . An ace shot with an AK-47, and bearing the inexplicable nickname "The Shoe", Pino Greco is suspected of killing around eighty people on behalf of Riina, including Bontade and Inzerello.

During 1981 and 1982, around a thousand Mafiosi were killed as Riina decimated his opponents and they in turn tried to fight back, and at least two-hundred others vanished without trace. It was an appalling bloodbath, even for Sicily and its history of Mafia violence.

One of the most horrific tales of the period was of the so-called "Room Of Death", a squalid apartment in Palermo run by one of Riina's men, Filippo Marchese. Victims were brought there to be tortured for information, then killed and either dissolved in acid or dismembered and thrown out to sea. An informant who worked alongside Marchese claimed that Marchese insisted on strangling the victims himself, although he had his underlings dispose of the bodies.

Riina employed treachery in his war, often talking rivals into joining him and then murdering them when they were no longer of any use. He even turned on his two most ruthless and loyal killers, Pino Greco and Filippo Marchese. In 1982, having decided Marchese was no longer of any use, Riina had him murdered by Greco. Then, in 1985, Riina killed Greco just in case Greco planned to make a bid for power for himself.

Whilst they helped them become the most powerful clan in Sicily, the Corleonesi's tactics backfired to some degree when, in 1982, a convicted double-killer named Tommaso Buscetta became the first Sicilian Mafioso to become an informant and co-operate with the authorities. Buscetta was from a losing family in the Mafia war, and he had lost several relatives and many friends to Riina's hitmen which made him feel that becoming an informant was the only way to save himself and get his revenge against Riina. Buscetta provided a great deal of information to judge Giovanni Falcone, and he testified at the maxi-trials in the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of Mafiosi imprisoned. Riina picked up another life sentence for murder at the maxi-trials, but it was another in absentia sentence as he was still a fugitive.

Crackdown

Giovanni Falcone and his colleague Paolo Borsellino were making good progress in their war against the Mafia, which naturally meant they were under the constant threat of death. They also felt that they were being hampered by colleagues and superiors, some of whom were in the pay of the Mafia.

In 1992, Falcone and Borsellino were killed in separate bomb attacks ordered by Riina and carried out by his men. Falcone's wife and eight bodyguards were also killed in the bombings. The public were outraged, both at the Mafia and also the politicians who they felt had failed to adequately protect Falcone and Borsellino, and the Italian government arranged for a massive crackdown of the Mafia.

On January 15, 1993, acting on a tip-off from an informant, police arrested Totò Riina in Palermo. Riina claimed to be just a poor harassed accountant, and in his ill-fitting suit, the chubby 63-year-old looked to be just that; asked about the firm he worked at, he answered he would not mention it in order not to damage their reputation. The authorities knew otherwise and hauled him into custody. The public's delight at Riina's arrest (one newspaper had the sensationalistic headline "The Devil" pasted over Riina's mugshot) was dampened somewhat when it was revealed that, during his thirty-years as a fugitive, Riina had actually been living at home in Palermo all along. He had obtained medical attention for his diabetes and registered all four of his children under their real names at the local hospital. Many cynically declared that the authorities only arrested Riina because they were under public pressure to do so after the Falcone/Borsellino murders, and saw the ease in which Riina had evaded justice for so long as an example of what many regarded as the apathetic - if not, actually complicit - attitudes of the Sicilian authorities when it came to the Mafia.

Although he already had two unserved life-sentences, Riina was nonetheless tried and convicted of dozens of crimes over the next decade, including the murders of Falcone and Borsellino. In 1998, Riina picked up yet another life sentence for the high-profile murder of Salvo Lima, a politician who had long since been suspected of being in league with the Mafia and who had been shot dead after he had failed to prevent the convictions of Mafiosi in the maxi-trials of the mid-1980s.

Riina is currently held in a maximum-security prison with limited contact with the outside world, in order to prevent him from running his organization from behind bars as many others have done. Over $125,000,000 in assets were confiscated from Riina - probably just a fraction of his illicit fortune - and his vast mansion was also acquired by the crusading anti-mafia mayor of Corleone in 1997. In a move that was both practical and symbolic, this mansion was turned into a school for the local children.

One of Riina's close friends in the Corleonesi Clan, Bernardo Provenzano, is believed to have taken over as head of the organization.

Family And Personality

Toto Riina was married and had four children. His two sons, Giovanni and Giuseppe, followed in their father's footsteps and have since joined him behind bars. In November 2001, 24-year-old Giovanni Riina was convicted of committing four murders in 1995. On December 31, 2004, Riina's youngest son, Giuseppe Riina, was sentenced to fourteen-years for various crimes, including Mafia association, extortion and money laundering. His daughter was elected class representative in high school.

Thanks to his natural habit of being secretive and evasive, Riina remains enigmatic with regards to his personality. An informant, Antonino Calderone , described Riina as being "unbelievably ignorant, but he had an intuition and intelligence and was difficult to fathom and very hard to predict". He said Riina was soft-spoken and was a dedicated father and husband. One of the more bizarre anecdotes Calderone related was that of Riina giving a tearful eulogy at the funeral of Calderone's murdered brother, even though Riina himself had ordered the killing.

References

Excellent Cadavers (1995) Alexander Stille, Vintage ISBN 0099594919

The Antimafia (2000) Alison Jamieson, MacMillan Press Ltd ISBN 033380158

Also See

BBC report on Riina's participation in a prison hunger strike

CNN report on Giovanni Riina's conviction

news24.com's report of Giuseppe Riina's conviction