Sicily's Brutal Wars and Mafia Super Trial
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It's a little before 6pm on a warm Sicilian day, May 23rd, 1992. Giovanni Falcone, famed prosecutor and mafia hunter, is heading back in a black Fiat along the A29 Autostrada from Ponte Reci Airport to his home in Palermo, alongside his wife Francesca Morvio and another car carrying three bodyguards. As the vehicles reach the turning for the town of Capacci, a massive bomb explodes beneath the tarmac, flinging the bodyguard's car high up into the air and into an olive grove.

The second car slams into a concrete wall, flinging Falcone and Morvio out of the windshield to their deaths. As a symbolic act of terror, nothing has shaken Sicily like it. Falcone, alongside his friend Paolo Borsellino, had hounded the Sicilian mafia, the Cosa Nostra, throughout the 1980s, culminating in their spectacular so-called Maxi Trial, held in a special made bunker and dishing out unheard of sentences to some of the most dangerous criminals on earth between 1986 and 1987.

Do you think there was also, they might have been like eating gabagool? I mean, you have to bet that they did, yeah. 100%. Yeah, you kill a lawyer, you eat gabagool. Do you think that I'm not going to make tired jokes like that for the rest of this episode?

I don't doubt that for one second. I can see them coming up like a few minutes away. Sorry, continue. Yeah, so in just 57 days after this, Borsellino is going to be dead too. He's blown up as part of the Costa Nostra's violent campaign to keep it in power on the island. But it's going to backfire massively.

Welcome to the Underworld Podcast.

Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast. We got a little delay this week, blizzards and all that. Sean in quarantine, New Zealand, whatever, he's back now. But we have a great episode for you today. I'm actually – I don't know that much about this history, so I'm really fascinated to learn all this. And I've read the script. I mean it's kind of shocking, all this, you know?

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, like, we don't normally dive into the famous Italian crime families and that kind of stuff, because we want to show people stuff they might not have already heard of, really, like Arkhan or the Black Axe or Hush Puppy. But I think the Maxi Trial is one of those turning point moments for the Cosa Nostra that really deserves a closer look. And it's pretty much shaped the entire crime landscape in Sicily and Italy ever since.

I got onto the idea because Italy just this month opened this massive so-called maxi trial again. Over 500 defendants reckon to be part of the Calabrian mob, the Indrangheta, probably saying that wrong, which is the second biggest ever behind the one that we're going to talk about today.

I'll make sure we do some updates on that on the YouTube actually because it's really interesting too. Yeah, I mean these are like the pinnacle of what people think of when they think of mafias, organized crime and all that. The Sicilians obviously but then John Guetta too. And 000 just kind of owns even though Saviano is a little bit of a plagiarist but the show is just fantastic. The show is the best thing. Yeah, it really is the best thing.

I mean, I've kind of got a bit of experience about this. Like we went over in one of the earlier episodes, like I've been to Paloma a bunch of times and it's just like one of the most amazing places on earth. Mostly I've spent my time chasing Nigerian gangsters around the place, but the local mob is still pretty well represented and you can see them like everywhere, really. You can see small time crooks, thugs,

taking parking cash all around the old centre of town. And the Costa Nostra runs loads of the brothels dotted in the immigrant part of Ballaró, which is this ancient, mazy, warringy district right in the middle that's like thousands of years old. It denies this, of course, but it does do it, the sex work.

Once I was walking down the street with my pal Lorenzo Tondo, who's a journalist who's written tons about the mafia in Palermo, and he pointed out like seven or eight funeral homes along this same tiny street, and he told me how the mob likes to control every stage of their industry. I guess you could call that an end-to-end solution. I feel like there's more Borscht Belt-level jokes you could make about this, you know? Just kind of, yeah. But I can't think of any at the moment. But talk about a dangerous job, this guy Lorenzo. Crime reporter, idiot.

In Sicily or in Southern Italy, like kind of puts those, those sub stack free speech debates is to shame, you know? Yeah. That's a whole different kind of cancel culture right there.

Yeah, I mean, this guy is tough as nails and like he's one of those reporters that's just always running from place to place, drinking tons of coffee. Like he's a cool guy, Lorenzo. I'm going to try and get him on the show, actually, and get him to talk about some of his own reporting because it's pretty sick. But yeah, when all this shit that we're going through at the moment is over, visit Palermo, guys. The food's sick. The people are awesome. It's just an amazing, amazing place. But of course, there's tons and tons of crime. Always has been.

And I'm not going to get into some deep dive on the history of the Cosa Nostra here, which means our thing in Italian, by the way. People can go listen to proper history podcasts for that or just watch The Godfather. Basically, it grew out of vigilante groups. They organized against the state in the 19th century, and it turned into something way more organized from there. I actually – I do kind of want to do a history of –

of the Sicilian Mafia episode, right? It's like orange groves or lemons. What was it? That's kind of how it started. Yeah. And that's going to crop up a bit later on in this one as well. So yeah, look out for that. But I mean, yeah, it's like super interesting and how it kind of morphed into this big, gross monster that kind of couldn't be stopped. But the golden age of the mob, really, the years after the Second World War, when after when Mussolini reigned them in and the country was battered and confused when fascism had lost the war,

and I know we talk about a bunch of gangs around the world on this show, but I don't think many of them have actually built entire cities the way the Cosa Nostra have in Palermo. I mean, when you go on your trip on the place, like the trip that I'm getting everyone to go on, if you head outside the thousands of year old stuff in the middle of the castles and the cathedrals and things, you'll see a bunch of drab, brutalist buildings built almost exclusively with mob cash in the 50s and 60s. I mean, there's nothing new, but the way that it was built was pretty much all with the mafia. Like,

locals call it Palermo sack, which I guess is a reference to the invasions they've had over time and how it upset the city's character. And sometimes the mob even knocked down historic villas for these shitholes. I mean, Palermo sack doesn't really translate. I think the way that they want it to, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the thing that does translate is the violence, right? I mean, there's something called the First Mafia War in the 60s, and that ends with this giant car bomb in 63 when different families are fighting against each other. And then they have a bunch of big trials, but they don't really make a dent on the mob. And by the 1970s, Palermo is pretty much a mafia mini-state, right? So...

By now, by this time, there's something called the Mafia Commission, which is a body of bosses that comes together to settle disputes, the kind of thing you've seen in Sopranos, or dish out death sentences to pesky politicians, judges, or journalists, that kind of cuddly stuff. But soon it's all going to fall apart. I mean, it always does with these guys, right? Like, they just can't get along.

Those fancy handshakes and nice suits only go so far, right? Yeah. Luciano Leggio, who's the boss of the Corleone... I'm going to screw these names up all episode. Corleonezi clan from the town of Corleone, made famous by the Godfather, of course. This guy, he decides he wants to take over the entire Sicilian mafia. Actually, the local guys know all about the Godfather. Totorina, who we're going to get into a lot in this episode...

His brother-in-law even played the theme tune at his own wedding. I wonder if it's like The Wire, you know, where actual gangsters started borrowing stuff that was from the show and everything because it was just kind of more advanced than what they were doing. And it just like becomes this weird meta narrative, you know? Yeah. I mean, actually one of the characters we're going to speak about later on in this episode kind of reminds me of something from The Wire. I wonder if you'd agree with me. It's going to come in a little bit, but yeah.

At this moment in time, like, drugs are getting really big. So it's like the late 60s, early 70s. And the Italians are making a packet shipping heroin made with Turkish chemicals across the Atlantic with the help of American gangsters.

So cops lock up Leggio in 1974, but he hands over the reins to his deputy, Salvatore Totorina, who's this short, pug-faced little thug who bumps up mob membership and in 1981 kicks off what's called the Second Mafia War. And this thing, it's not like the first one. This is insane. Thousands are murdered across Sicily and bodies are showing up in Germany, even the U.S.,

Many have disappeared by deep burial or something called Lupada Bianca or the White Saunov Shotgun, which is basically dissolving a body in acid. I had no idea how absolutely brutal this all was until I researched this episode. Between 1981 and 1983, 400 people were killed in this war. I mean, I was looking up comparisons and 1,000 were dropped in Juarez, I'm going to say it.

as well juarez last year and that's a city of like two and a half million people so palermo which is like a quarter of that in the 80s is probably actually more violent you know that's

kind of shocking because I typically think of this old school mob stuff as paling in comparison, especially compared to like narco wars right now. Um, but it's, it's just, it's surprising. I mean, it's, it's, it's worse if anything, like it just, this, this complete and utter chaos going on at that time. I couldn't believe either. Um, basically like the Koolion Asia just wiping out everyone in their path led by Rina, um,

who emerges as the organization's boss of bosses. And of all the guys we've covered on the Underworld pod, like, Reena is down there with the worst of them. He's described as the, quote, fiercest and nastiest mob boss in history by one expert. And he's reckoned to have ordered over 150 assassinations. Journalist Tony Gentile told the BBC in 2017 that Reena was, quote, the living proof of how evil man could be.

Another quote on Rina here is from the author John Dickey, who's, by the way, book on the mafia I've taken a lot of my info from. Dickey writes, quote, he assassinated his rivals. He killed all of them, hundreds of them. He literally ethnically cleansed them out of Palermo. Goddamn. I mean, this guy, I'm shocked he's not known more in the States considering how much everyone loves, you know, Sicilian mafia stories. Like it's not a name that would ring out, right? People wouldn't be like,

Oh, I know that guy, like Escobar or like any of the Italian mafia guys. I think he just doesn't fit the stereotype, right? Like he's this kind of like blotchy, like scraggy looking guy. He's always wearing shitty polo shirts. Like he just looks a bit of a scruff bag and he doesn't really have much charisma. Like he's not the kind of slick backed, smart suit wearing mobster. He's just a kind of thug. What? And as I like, yeah. What year is this? Like, what are we talking about here?

This is early 80s now. So, yeah, this is getting into, like, the height of the drugs, the height of, like, just the sheer money coming out of Italy is massive. Yeah.

And, yeah, I mean, this guy is just awful, right? And he just kills his way to the top of the Cosa Nostra with the help of a bunch of gangsters, including Michele Greco, who's this slick, snowy-haired boss from the pre-war times. He's more like your kind of godfather guy. And he's so powerful that locals call him the Pope, which is probably a pretty decent nickname.

Greco's villa hosts a heroin refinery, as all good villas must, and he often hides killers on the run. In this one movie-like episode, a rival family member is grotted at Greco's dinner table, and his men are hunted down among the fruit trees outside. So there's your oranges and lemons. There.

Another key member of the Corleonesi is this guy called Reno Greco, who I don't think is related, who Reno likes to use as his hitman. This guy, he is gross. He's known as the Little Shoe. He's reckoned to have killed over 300 people, mostly with his favorite AK-47.

Greco murders this big boss called Stefano Bontade in 1981, which helps start the Second War. And he becomes this evil, like, Bane character who just descends into brainless cruelty, killing anybody he can't find a use for. And he even strangles a bunch. He'll actually end up dead in 85, just before the trial kicks off. Shot by two colleagues because Rina thinks he's getting too big for his boots. Or little shoes, I suppose. Yeah.

That's the guy actually that reminded me of Chris from The Wire. You know the kind of hit guy for the mob and he's like...

I don't know. He starts out as this sort of just contract killer, and then he ends up, you realize that he's just a fucking psychopathic serial killer. I get more Luca Brasi vibes, but I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so at this time, there's obviously all kinds of collusion with the government, politicians, cops on the books, that kind of stuff. Palermo's a narco state for sure. My Italian history isn't sharp. Is this, you know, we've heard a lot, and it's something I didn't know a lot about, but during the talk of Palermo,

all the stuff happening in the US, you heard a lot of talks about the years of lead, which from my understanding was the years of political assassinations happening in Italy that were pretty brutal. Is this sort of crossover with that? Is this after that? It's the same time, right? So the years of lead was the 60s to the 80s. So it's like exactly the same time. But I was having a look at this as well. I was thinking the same as you did, and I couldn't actually find much of a crossover. But you'd think

that if the country was in this state of disarray with the left and the right setting off bombs everywhere, that it'd probably be a good thing for the mafia. Oh, yeah. Usually is, right? Wide open. You know, a vacuum of power, a lot of focus on the political violence as opposed to the criminal violence, especially if you're talking the south of Italy, which is traditionally ignored. Yeah, yeah. And Tosio Rion is just like licking his lips at all this shit. Yeah. And he's like...

And at the same time, they're making closer ties with the likes of the Gambinos in the States, and they're making fortunes in the process. I mean, at one point in the mid-'80s, Sicilian process smack is making $750 million in New York alone, which is about $2.3 billion today. Well, you know what they say about New Yorkers. They're like, we love our smack, you know?

It is. I've seen that. Yeah, it's on the sign at JFK, right, when you get in. So this is the network that some prosecutors are trying to crack, and it's all pretty nightmarish, right? They come up with this group called the Anti-Mafia Pool, and it explores ways to dig into the Cosa Nostra, similar to what magistrates had done pretty successfully in northern Italy in the 70s.

They build this special bunker courthouse inside the walls of Palermo's... Oh, God. Ucciardone. It's a good effort, man. It's a good effort. People don't expect us to be able to pronounce things at this point. We've set the bar pretty low in that regard. Yeah.

It's the Ukiadome prison. And Falcone and Borsellino lead the charge, right? And in November 1985, they submit 8,797 pages and 40 volumes of an indictment against 475 people. That is a lot of homework right there. Yeah, I mean, I hate trawling through Pacer just to get files for some of my stories, and I'd fucking have a heart attack if I had to do this.

So, interestingly, this is all going on at the same time as this so-called pizza connection trial in the States, which is trying to knock out the mafia's U.S. operations. And Falcone is helping out with that, too. And, in fact, there's a bust of him outside the FBI quarters in Virginia. And, of course, Rudy Giuliani is prosecuting it over there. Rudy, what happened, mate? Can you break down what the pizza connection was?

Yeah, I mean, it was just massive collaboration between the Italian mafia and the major families in the US. So that was where it was mostly about heroin, I think, at the time. And they just led this huge operation. And as we're going to get into in a minute, one of the main guys in this story is also

heavily involved in the pizza connection trials as well was it was it being laundered through pizza pizza places or was it being sold out of them like I don't know the exact details now I might be getting in some shit here but I actually think it's just because they're Italian oh really I

I always thought, I mean, fuck, I always thought that's making me want to look it up now. I always thought there was a connection there. And we should, I mean, we should know this by now. But, you know, I haven't, I haven't focused on the historical aspects of this stuff in my work. So this is going on the same time as this massive investigation in the States. And in February 86, this maxi trial kicks off.

and there's over 600 journalists watching, and these special-made cells holding tons of mafiosos that are just all kind of hollering like zoo animals. Some press think the whole thing is complete bullshit. The Guardian says it has, quote, "...overtones of a Barnum and Bailey production," and many other rags write off as a showy, doomed project.

But the court isn't treating like that, of course. And Judge Alfonso Giordano is thanked by two alternative judges, and there's like a whole backup cast of magistrates and other guys ready to step in if anything happens to the A-team. That's kind of dark, man. I mean, just guys there in case you get killed, these are like your substitutes right there? Or maybe if he just gets tired or, like, you know, he wants to go on holiday. I don't know, it might be really nice. Yeah, I think it's the getting killed part, to be honest with you. Yeah, I think it's that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. But this is like...

Pretty unsurprising, right, given that Falcone and Borsellino's all-star cast of mafia turncoats, these guys are called the Pentiti or Penitents. And these guys are breaking the Cosa Nostra's famous code of silence, the Omerta.

And there's a bunch of these guys, right? There's some small-time crooks, other local capos. There's a bloke called Ignazio Salvo, who's a wealthy businessman described as this matchmaker between the political class and the mob. And there's another guy called Salvatore Contorno,

And he goes into detail about the mob's hierarchy. Is this the first time that Omerta has... I mean, I know it kind of means nothing these days. People break it all the time. But is this really the first time that it's kind of being broken and then this sort of code of silence is just revealed or broken? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure... I mean, I'm sure they had, like, turncoats and snitches before, but, like, in an official trial like this, as far as I can find, this is the first time it's been, like, officially broken. And...

Like no one breaks it. Like the guy that I'm going to get into in a moment, like,

There's loads of relatives that take the stand and a load of those people won't talk. And it's actually kind of heartbreaking to watch all these mothers say they didn't see anything when you see footage of the maxi trial online. They're just so cowed into submission by the mob. But one guy is undoubtedly the star of the show, and that's Tommaso Bruschetta. Now, I wish he didn't have that name because my spellcheck's been changing it to Bruschetta all week.

But I'm likely to say Bruschetta here too. Is it Bruschetta or Bruschetta? I don't know. Yeah, I got no idea, man. Anyway, Tommy, let's call him that. He's like a lifelong mobster from Palermo. Slicked back hair, sideburns, tashed like a cohiba, like the whole shebang. He's risen pretty highly up the ladder in Italy, fencing illegal smokes. And then he went off to work in the Gambinos in New York. Tommy loved his women, which earned him the mistrust of Rina for one. I mean, it makes sense. You can't.

You can't trust a man who loves the hoes that much, you know? Nah, I've always said that. There's a ton of great stuff about this guy, right? And F. Murray Abraham played him in a 1999 HBO movie called The Excellent Cadavers, which I haven't seen, so maybe someone can tell us what that's like.

And there's this great Netflix doco called Our Godfather, which I massively recommend. It's like... It's all on the reading list on the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Underworld Podcast, guys. Get on it. Yeah, make sure you get that website right. Yeah, I actually... I haven't seen either of these films and I really want to now. I had no idea. Yeah, the Our Godfather one is especially good. It's like...

It's like a couple of journalists go around and they meet members of this guy's family basically are all in hiding for whatever reason. It only came out a couple of years ago, I think. It's really, really good. I think it's only on American Netflix because I had to find it somewhere else. But yeah, check it out.

Anyway, Tommy, who is called Don Massino to many, he's arrested in Brooklyn in 1970 in the fallout of the first mafia war, right? And then he buggers off to Rio to get plastic surgery and his vocal cords changed. And if you look at pictures of him after that, he basically looks like somewhere between Anton Chigurh and a mobbed up Tim Curry. I mean, these guys and their plastic surgery, right? The Colombian cartels, Mexican cartels, some of them there too, and it's kind of...

You know, nowadays, these guys are all posting up on Instagram, but back then nobody knew what anyone looked like. You know, just grow a mustache, dye your hair and call it a day.

Yeah, I mean, if you think that people were playing on like Ataris in the 70s, then like, and they're playing on PS5s now, God knows what plastic surgery was like then as well. I mean, this guy looks like a melted candle for the most part. Yeah, there's no, there was no facial ID back then, I don't think. Like, no, no, you didn't have people on like seven screens going enhance, enhance to get like, I don't know, man. It just seems like a lot of, pretty unnecessary for something so risky.

Yeah, I reckon Tommy could have just shaved his moustache off and he would have been fine. But he goes the full, like, cat lady thing. And when he's in Rio, the Cosa Nostra tells Tommy it wants him back in Palermo to fight Reno in the war.

Then he refuses. And then during the second war, shootouts kill his brother, son-in-law and two nephews. And this is kind of when Don Messino decides, all right, I've had enough of this mafia. And he turns super grass for the state in New York and Italy. He's by a mile the biggest fish to turn Pentito. And it's going to cost him pretty much every single thing he's got.

But he takes the stand in Palermo, and this is him at the Maxi trial. Quote, I'm not a spy. I'm not a grass either. I was a mafioso, and I've done many wrong things for which I'm willing to pay in full my debt to society. I mean, he definitely is a grass, but yeah. And then he turns to Falcone and he says, first they'll try to kill me, then it will be your turn. They'll keep trying until they succeed.

Jesus, I mean, this whole thing is wild, man. I don't want to spoiler alert this, but yikes. Yeah, it's getting dark. I mean, what he just said definitely was true, right? Reena was even allegedly testing out bazookas to kill Falcone during his trial.

Anyway, I couldn't find a good transcript of Tommy's testimony in the Maxi trial at which he speaks behind bulletproof glass and he's filmed from behind. But here's a speech he delivers to a DC subcommittee in 1988. I think it's really, really interesting.

He says, quote,

exists only for the personal benefit of its members its members care nothing for the needs of anyone but themselves damn dude i mean he's just this guy's mark he's like we're off our we're off our mission statement like we're not what we were i mean it's kind of you know you you this isn't in everything like you you hear this sort of trade of the younger dudes getting wilder getting into heroin all that it's uh yeah what a crazy what a crazy piece of testimony

Yeah, I mean, he goes on to say basically like the mafiosi are not romantic figures like you see in the movie. And he says, quote, these are men of violence, men who let gross amounts of money rule their actions until the public really understands the true nature of the Cosa Nostra. Its power and violence will continue. I mean, he's right.

But he's screwed. Yeah. Yeah. So back to Palermo, though. Tommy's testimony goes on for 45 days and it blows the court away. He even names Giulio Andreotti, seven-time PM of Italy, as working with the mob. And honestly, if you look into Andreotti's life, you're going to fall down an internet hole like I did. He's this crazy Machiavellian guy, puppet string pulling kind of stuff. He once said that, quote, power only burdens those who don't possess it.

He was even convicted of ties to the mafia hit on a journalist in 1979. And he was sentenced to 24 years behind bars, but it's Italy, so he was acquitted in 2003. There's way, way more to Andriotti, though. There's a secret Masonic lodge turned illegal far-right society propaganda, do we? Like a real-life Legion of Doom, the death,

of God's banker Roberto Calvi in London in 1982. He was found swinging from Blackfriars Bridge. The Banco Ambrosio that held Vatican assets and is thought to have funneled cash to the IRA. The Contras, the Argentine military during the Falklands War. It's a wild ride and cases are still going on about it today.

Yeah, I actually have Propaganda Dewey, however you see it, on the list of episodes I want to do eventually. I remember reading about it and it just kind of blew my mind. Yeah, it's crazy. And this was all linked to Cosa Nostra too, so you can just see how deep this mob's ties were to the world of politics and even religion. Anyway, on December 16th, 1987, after almost two years, Judge Giordano reads out his verdicts.

The whole thing takes an hour, but he dishes out 344 guilty verdicts, 19 life sentences, and 2,665 years of jail time. That includes bosses, which is a first, and Rina, although cops hadn't been able to find him, so he's sentenced to life in absentia, he's also on the ticket.

Crucially, the Maxi trial is the first time the Italian state punishes mafia involvement as an actual crime, meaning it's pretty much the first time Italy formally recognises the Cosa Nostra at all, which is just amazing.

This is from author Severio Lattardo, speaking to an Al Jazeera documentary a few years ago. Quote, for over 130 years in Italy, we pretended the mafia didn't exist. Not until Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Bossolino did we have judges in Sicily who said, no, the mafia exists.

Yeah, these guys, I mean, they're like the ultimate crusaders, you know, like they, and not crusaders in like the bad sort of storming Jerusalem way. I mean, crusaders in like fighting for justice sort of way, you know? Yeah, like if you take home anything from this pod, it's that these two guys are absolute heroes. They're awesome.

Greco, the old mob boss who piled up with Rina during the war, he gives the most memorable speech of the trial. He says, quoting the Bible to shield a threat, may there be utmost serenity when it comes to passing judgment. It's the fundamental basis. What's more, your honor, may this peace accompany you for the rest of your life. So that's pretty menacing. And to be honest, like despite Falcone and Borsellino's win, the war is actually just beginning.

Falcone is expected to become Palermo's chief justice, but he gets edged out for a less experienced candidate. Politics shifts and the mob switches allegiance to socialists from Andriotti's centre-right, Christian Democrats. This is important because they strip the legislature and the anti-mafia pool and 3,000 gangsters get released from prison.

So they get this big win, they risk their lives, their families' lives and all that, and then politics just shifts and they get screwed over because of so much corruption within the political system. Yeah, pretty much. Like,

It just went all the way to the top and the top didn't like it. So like heads had to roll pretty much. Someone at this point calling themselves the Raven, by the way, they published letters claiming Falcone has abused his power. And the letters are clearly bullshit, but this writer has knowledge of the inner workings of the court and the state. So it's pretty much an open threat.

Meanwhile, Reno is crazy and out for revenge. He decides to go to war with the state, almost exactly the same time, by the way, that Pablo Escobar is doing the same thing in Colombia. And between 92 and 94, the Cosa Nostra, under the Corleonesi, quarterbacks this giant campaign of terror just to keep mafia assets from the cops and bring the Italian state back to the negotiating table after the Maxi trial.

In May 92, it blows up Falcone on the highway. Two months later, Borsellino and five bodyguards along with him. Corrupt cops are accused of the butchery at that point. In 93, a bomb planted outside Florence's Uffizi Gallery kills five people, including the mother and her two young daughters. Five more are killed outside a Milan art gallery, and on that same day, a blast shatters two churches in Rome.

This is wild, though, because, you know, they're going after these powerhouse cities, right? Not just in the south, like in the north, where there's always this sort of rivalry in Italy. It just kind of seems like pretty aggressive in terms of attacking the state and sort of willing them to come after you. I mean, it's one thing, I think my impression of Italy, it's one thing to do these things in the south. It's another to go after Florence, Milan, Rome, you know? Yeah, I mean, and that kind of shows you what,

the state is like to Sicily, right? It kind of treats it like this other place that the mafia just kind of runs. And, you know, you've got to get into Rome if you want to make real change, I guess. And the mafia was doing the same thing. Ignacio Salvo, remember him? He was the businessman who was like a matchmaker. He testified at the Maxi Trial. He's murdered outside his home in 92, as well as tons of gangsters who've fallen foul of Rina.

Salvo's killer, by the way, is Falcone's killer too. This is Giovanni Brusca, known as the People Slayer or simply the Pig. I don't know which one of those is the worst. This guy is Irina's chief enforcer and he'll be responsible for the deaths of kids, relatives, anybody who gets in the Cosa Nostra's path. In fact, Brusca kills so many people that when cops catch him in 96, just as he's tucking into a TV dinner to watch a movie about Falcone's death,

They give him a list of all suspicious deaths in the past 20 years, and he just crosses off the ones he thinks might be him.

Yeah, so I mean that's more lucabrasia, I would say, than, yeah. I mean these guys are eating TV dinners too. It's always like these guys who do the dirty work, the hitmen, are always just like broke kind of losers in a way. Yeah, there's like this funny, well, funny, there's this like weird news segment that I watched from like British TV in the 90s and they show you a bunch of the houses of these guys and they're just like holes in the wall, shacks, and they've got food all over the floor. They're basically just like,

living in squats and then just killing people on the side.

But around 94, this terrorism ends. But the mob has massively underestimated the people of Palermo, who are just all revolted by the bloodshed, especially Falcone and Borsellino's deaths. Thousands get out into the streets demanding an end to the mafia. Today, the airport is named after the two guys. And there are these two giant red pillars either side of the A29, which is where you go if you're going from the airport to the city. And that's where Falcone was killed. So the people love these guys.

Arguably, though, no one cops it as bad as Tommy Buschetta, the most famous pentito of the whole trial. His life is one of constant tragedy after he testifies. Because Italy doesn't have witness protection, can you, like, imagine doing the trial without witness protection? I mean, are you kidding me? Like, no wonder the mafia was in charge for so long. And I mean, after the trial, they just let them all out. It's a joke. The States actually takes Tommy on, and they ferry him between Florida and Italy until his death in 2000, aged 71.

But that's not even the half of it. This is from a 1995 Mother Jones article. Quote, Tommy Buschetta can attest to the gravity of the mafia's expansive news course and its awful toll.

Since he began talking to prosecutors, mafia hitmen have killed his wife, his three sons, his parents, his aunts and uncles, his in-laws and their assaulted children. And the toll continues to rise. On March 6th, which is 1995, a full 11 years after Busqueta turned state's evidence, his nephew Domenico was shot dead. In all, there are 33 Busqueta corpses.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, they just stripped everything from this guy's existence. It just wiped him off the planet. Anyway, yeah, if you want to know more about Tommy, watch that doco. It's a really, really great piece of journalism.

Tosio de Lina captured himself in 1993, and he carried on running the Costa Nostra from his prison cell in the northern city of Parma. By all accounts, he's just a fucking psychopath. He later threatens a courtroom, quote, when you talk about people from Corleone, you have to wash your mouth out for good with vinegar. He also said he didn't regret anything, quote, they'll never break me, even if they give me 3,000 years.

Which brings us to the final part of this episode, which I hope dispels the idea we glorify the mob on this show.

I think it's pretty clear these people are just violent nutjobs. And all these ideas about honor or respect, it's really hard to stand those up when you're keeping 12-year-old boys in a pit, then strangling them to death and dissolving them in acid. That was actually something Brisker did to the son of a pentito, by the way, but that's another story. I mean, these guys are monsters, man. Yeah, apparently the kid didn't fight back because they kept him in this hole for like two years and he didn't really have any muscles left. It's just like so dark.

Anyway, in 2016, cops, politicians and gangsters went to trial over the bombings in the early 90s. Now, prosecutor Nino Di Matteo, as a Palermo local his heroes are, you guessed it, Falcone and Borsellino, he's arguing at that point that the state colluded with Rina and the Cosa Nostra, doing a deal to stop the bombings in return for leniency and hands-off mob assets. Like I mentioned earlier, there's this great Al Jazeera doco about the case, which I've put on the Patreon reading list, of course.

Anyway, it comes across in this film that Di Matteo is being hunted like a lot of his heroes, and the state in Rome is just leaving him out in the cold, politicians ignoring him. It's such shady shit. At one point, Reno's caught on prison CCTV plotting to execute Di Matteo, quote, just like we used to have in Palermo. When that footage airs, people get out onto the streets to protest again. It's all going on again.

In court, Di Matteo reads out a letter from a mafia capo, which says he'd be killed with authority from the state, just like Falcone and Borsellino. I mean, this is shocking. The one thing, it's the 80s, but now? Like, 2012? I don't know, man. It's crazy. And all this is on this documentary as well. It's pretty crazy stuff. In 2017, Rina dies in jail, unrepentant. Anti-climactic, man. I know, such a shame. Cancer. So, so boring, isn't it?

Then in 2018, Di Matteo's trial ends with the conviction of a host of high-profile figures, including cops and a member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. You know Berlusconi, right? He's that slick-haired, bunga-bunga guy, probably the biggest mafioso in the country, to be honest.

But a trially sick success, and since then the Cosa Nostra has been cut down a bit more to size. It's even getting competition from African mobsters, like we went into in episode four. Here's a quote in The Guardian from my friend Lorenzo Tondo to cap things off.

We'll definitely have Lorenzo on here talking about the mafia real soon. Quote, the Sicilian mafia is far weaker now, left in disarray by Irina, who sought unsuccessfully to lead it from his prison cell in Parma. The crime syndicate still exists and still shapes people's social and economic lives in part of Sicily, but it's a shadow of what it once was, undermined by the relentless scrutiny of Italian police and prosecutors and unable to regain its dominance of the illegal drug trade.

So there you go. The cosa nostra is a shadow of its former self. And judging by all this misery in this episode, that's a really cool thing, right?

Yeah, no, it sounds good. I mean, I guess that's why you hear a lot more now about the Calabrians and what they're doing and all that. But yeah, I mean, this is crazy, man. I really want to see this doc now. I'm glad we had it. And I look forward to having Lorenzo on the Patreon because I mean, I have a lot of questions. I'll shoot them over to you because there's definitely stuff I'm still interested in. But thanks again for joining us at the Underworld Podcast.

Apologies. This is going to be a couple days late, I think, because of blizzards and home recordings and all that. But thank you guys again for all the support we've been getting. We had a great month last month. We're hoping to keep it going and keeping to do more episodes. Patreon.com slash The Underworld Podcast. Subscribe if you can help us out so we can keep doing this. It would be great. You're going to get some merch out soon, right?

Yeah, we are going to get merch out. We'll let you guys know on the Twitter and Instagram and all that for when we do that. And of course, we'll talk about it in the next episode. The YouTube channel too is a good way for us to keep making some money so we can keep doing this. It's the Underworld Podcast. And yeah, I mean, thanks again. Thanks for all the support and keep listening and keep subscribing. Give us some reviews because we need them and it helps out. And that's all. That's all I got.