Defiance

by Behan, Tom

  In essence the Americans wanted the Sicilians to help solve their problems. The people from the old country were willing, had considerable skills and many of them were unknown to the US police. As an ‘offshore’ base it might be much further away than Cuba, but similar conditions existed in Sicily – a lenient police force and a working relationship with the main party of government. For this alliance to work, though, the Sicilians needed to organise themselves differently. They needed to leave their origins of being parasites on the rural economy behind them once and for all, and become international investors. In economic terms they had to become capitalists, linked to operations in three continents. Capital needed to be accumulated to invest in transport and buy raw materials, and areas for diversification and investment had to be found to reinvest the huge amounts of money that would be made. None of this could be done by men who still kept their mules on the ground floor of their houses. Given their long experience in the heart of the capitalist beast, the Americans understood that they needed to nurture a young generation of murderous entrepreneurs.

  Most of this was discussed at a more private affair separate to the summit, an interminably long dinner at Spano’s restaurant on the Palermo sea front. Lucky Luciano and ‘Joe Bananas’ had invited some of the young Turks to join them. These included 29-year-old Tommaso Buscetta from Palermo, 34-year-old Salvatore ‘Little Bird’ Greco from the Palermo suburb of Ciaculli, and Gaetano Badalamenti from Cinisi, also 34. Bonanno told the Sicilians that they needed to set up a ‘Commission’ so that things could run smoothly – the Americans had suffered a long and costly history of gang wars. The Commission’s function would not be the creation of a mini Mafia parliament that centralised all activities, but a body that set the ground rules that allowed each local gang to prosper. A lot was at stake: millions could be made, but those taking part also risked long prison sentences.

  The time was ripe for the Americans’ plan. Besides, many doors were still wide open. In 1959 the New York office of the FBI had 400 officers investigating communism, and just four dealing with organised crime. The Commission would provide the framework for Mafiosi to become global criminals.

  Towns like Cinisi, to the west of Palermo, were ideal for transporting drugs to the United States – up to 80 per cent of the inhabitants had relatives across the Atlantic. To all intents and purposes, a visit to relatives was perfectly legitimate. Furthermore, many Mafia bosses had lived in America for many years, including Cinisi godfather ‘Don’ Cesare Manzella.

  By the time he moved back to Cinisi from the US in 1946 Manzella had made large sums of money and began to play the role of a benefactor of charities, a man who resolved family disputes, or in other words a ‘man of honour’. Gaspare Cucinella, a post-office worker and amateur actor, remembers him well and agrees – sarcastically – with the stereotypical role he played: ‘Don Cesare Manzella was the town’s benefactor, he’d been in America, everybody would kiss his hand – “all the best, Don Cesare” – that was the environment you lived in. There was nothing else.’

  As a supposed ‘man of honour’, Cucinella continues, ‘it was as if he was everybody’s relative, he was related to all of us’. And, given the strength of family ties, Manzella felt he had the right to interfere in the most intimate areas of people’s lives. Cucinella remembers: ‘When I got engaged, her parents didn’t want her to marry me – and it ended up with Don Cesare Manzella getting involved: “Do you really need to marry this woman?”, he said. “Why don’t you just leave her alone and mind your own business?”’ This is typical Mafia behaviour and language. Vague and indirect questions are asked about the consequences of not giving the answer that is expected – in other words they are threats. Cucinella was one of the few who threw them back in Manzella’s face: ‘So I answered: “What’s all this got to do with you? Why don’t you mind your own bloody business? And in the meantime, I’ll mind my own.” He just walked away, laughing.’

  Manzella still visited the States very often, and was making huge profits in the emerging drugs trade. As early as 1958 a police report described him as follows:

  He is the Mafia boss of Cinisi, and has a domineering and violent personality . . . Cesare Manzella is cunning, with remarkable organisational abilities . . . Such is his influence that the crimes committed by his accomplices are not even reported to the authorities. For this reason . . . he has always escaped justice, in fact he has no convictions. He makes use of hit-men for murders . . . It is beyond doubt, however, that the small number of serious crimes which have taken place in the Cinisi area were decided by him. There is no other explanation: a Mafia boss such as Manzella would not allow illegal acts to take place in his territory without his permission . . . Manzella himself is very well-off economically, being the owner of substantial real estate (olive groves, market gardens, buildings, all within Cinisi), valued at about 20 million lire.

  The drugs trade was starting to make Mafia bosses very rich. The 20 million lire mentioned in this 1958 report is worth about £300 million today. People like Manzella were no longer simply parasites organising low-level protection rackets in the countryside. They were international businessmen, albeit of an unusual kind.

  The whole town was frightened of them. People in Cinisi weren’t afraid because they were cowards, but for a reason that this report could never mention: as a rich and powerful man Manzella had a lot of influence, in essence he was protected by members of the police and local politicians. If honest people were to stand up against the Mafia, they knew that not only were local politicians and policemen unlikely to protect them, but in some cases they would actively take the Mafia’s side. That’s why, as the report states, so many crimes went unreported.

  This local power structure produces public grovelling, a reality in which people feel obliged to demonstrate their lack of self-respect publicly. A Communist activist from this period remembers: ‘As soon as Cesare Manzella arrived in the town square it was all “Don Cesare, Don Cesare” – people kissing his hand.’ This was a perfectly normal event at this time. In the nearby town of Carini another young Communist remembers ‘his’ Mafia boss thus: ‘He used to walk up and down with the mayor, the priest, the police superintendent – people used to kiss his hand, and so on.’

  Cesare Manzella and the ‘First Mafia  War’

  Despite the existence of the Commission, and the fact that Manzella’s deputy in Cinisi, Gaetano Badalamenti, was one of its three members, the massive and sudden increase in wealth and influence caused by the drugs trade created instability. To finance big drug deals individual Mafia families had to make agreements with other gangs, they had to trust each other and make huge financial investments on trust – a problematic situation that quickly brings to mind the phrase ‘there’s no honour among thieves’. Perhaps this was what Mafia leader Giuseppe Genco Russo meant at the Hotel Delle Palme summit in 1957, in the only snippet of conversation that was overheard: ‘when a hundred dogs are fighting over a bone, blessed be the man who is far away’. In any event, it was a major drug deal that was to be Manzella’s undoing.

  In February 1962 Manzella, together with other gang leaders Salvatore Greco and the brothers Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera, raised the money to buy a large consignment of heroin. Delivery to the United States was entrusted to Manzella’s gang, but when the heroin got to America less money came back than had been agreed. The Americans said they had paid for the amount they received. The La Barbera brothers suspected that Manzella’s man had kept some of the heroin.

  It was a large amount of money. Since the Hotel Delle Palme summit five years earlier the price of heroin had nearly doubled in New York, from $12,000 to $22,000 a kilo. The Sicilians were selling it on at four or five times the price they paid, and by 1963 Sicily had become the world’s largest staging area for drugs. The Mafia could no longer turn back: the drugs trade had become vital to the activities of many gangs and members. Given these serious accusations and the essential nature of the drugs trade it
self, the Commission held a summit, where it was agreed that Manzella and his accomplices were not to blame.

  But the La Barberas didn’t agree, and decided to launch the ‘First Mafia War’. It began in December when the man who had taken the consignment to the US, and other gang members, were killed in Palermo. This was a very serious move. These were attacks on another major gang and against the Commission. Salvatore La Barbera, who had taken part in the summit but ignored its outcome, was challenging the whole way the Mafia operated. This was why, three weeks later, he left home and never came back.

  The La Barberas started to hit back at the loss of one of their leaders. Early on the morning of 26 April 1963 Cesare Manzella and his estate manager Filippo Vitale were driving through their lemon groves when they saw a car identical to Badalamenti’s. Confused, they got out, but were then blown up by a massive car bomb that was heard throughout Cinisi. The police officers who arrived at the scene later wrote in their report:

  spread over the ground one could notice metal parts belonging to the vehicle, together with shreds of human remains and burnt clothing.

  Seventeen metres from the crater were the smoking remains of the front end of the vehicle; and at 28 metres the remains of a human pelvis together with a right leg missing its lower extremities. Fifteen metres away there was a pistol, around which there were other human remains, including a severed but intact human head. On the branch of a walnut tree there were the remains of a dark grey pair of trousers, in the back pocket of which there was a wallet containing 27,000 lire and some sheets of paper with notes written on them.

  In one of these notes Manzella had written down the address of one of Luciano Leggio’s gang from Corleone – the top Mafia leader at the time, who was also in alliance with Manzella – as well as the car registration number of La Barbera’s top killer. The La Barberas had got to Manzella first, yet despite all his notoriety Manzella died without ever being convicted of a single crime.

  The killing continued. Two months later Angelo La Barbera was attacked and riddled with six bullets, but somehow he survived. Significantly, he wasn’t attacked on the ‘mean streets’ of Palermo but at the other end of Italy – in Milan – the country’s financial capital. Clearly, the Mafia was no longer just something local, confined to small Sicilian towns.

  When the dust settled, it became clear that Manzella’s death had produced three changes. The first took a few years to have an effect. One of the mourners at Manzella’s funeral was a 15-year-old boy named Peppino Impastato, who was taken along by his mother, and who was deeply shocked by the death of Manzella, his uncle. The second immediate consequence was that Manzella’s right-hand man, Gaetano Badalamenti, became the new Mafia boss in Cinisi.

  Then something completely unexpected happened, and produced the third change. On 7 July a car bomb was planted in the town of Ciaculli as part of this gang war; the intended targets were probably Salvatore Greco and Luciano Leggio. But the bombers partly bungled the operation and the police were called to investigate. When one of them opened the boot a huge explosion rocked the whole area. Flames shot fifty feet into the air, a nearby villa was totally destroyed, and seven policemen were literally blown to pieces.

  The media and the government were now driven into action. A permanent parliamentary committee was set up, the Anti-Mafia commission, and 2,000 arrest warrants were issued, including ones for Tommaso Buscetta and Badalamenti. Both went on the run: Badalamenti may have been one of the Mafia’s top three, but now he had to learn fast how to be invisible, even to his own organisation. For the foreseeable future there was to be no more Commission, no more regional meetings, no ‘boss of bosses’. From 1963 to the end of the decade it was ‘every man for himself’, or more precisely every local gang for itself.

  But who was Badalamenti, the new boss in Cinisi and one of three most powerful members of the Mafia?

  4

  The Man Who Made Leaves Move

  During his most difficult trial, an American lawyer once said of ‘Don Tano’, an abbreviation of Gaetano Badalamenti: ‘There are three things guaranteed

  in life – death, taxes and Badalamenti’s silence.’ Facing a life sentence in the ‘Pizza Connection’ trial, 63-year-old Badalamenti refused to plead guilty to a minor charge, and imposed the same response on his son Vito and many other relatives. When one of his co-defendants started to break ranks, Badalamenti ominously warned him: ‘if you take this plea, you’re out of the family’.

  Families are hugely important to Italians, both in the north of the country, and in the deep south such as Sicily – they are probably the strongest organising bond in Italian society. Being part of a family is almost like being a soldier in an army: your life is not your own. Although many Italians go through family life happily, the rhythm of their lives is often dictated by the marriages, deaths, birthdays, births, illnesses, graduations, engagements of many of their close relatives, not to mention the rituals of Easter, Christmas and New Year. Due respect has to be shown at all times. Once you get married – and still today the traditional view is that there must be something a bit wrong with unmarried people – your family duties almost doubled because you now have obligations towards your spouse’s family too.

  At the head of any traditional family is the patriarch, the father. Italians have a useful expression for describing his power – padre padrone – literally ‘boss father’. When this widespread mentality is then reproduced within a Mafia gang, which is normally based on blood ties, the power of the leader becomes virtually absolute. A woman who married into the Badalamenti clan noticed the tradition and hierarchy at weddings and christenings: ‘All the men are on one side of the room, all the women are on the other. The women who never talk but know everything sit near the men, whereas the younger or more stupid women sit further away.’ This was how she saw things being organised:

  A Mafia family is organised like a beehive. First of all there’s the queen bee, the boss, then come the drones, the soldiers, then the worker bees – generally the women or men who are distant relatives. Women can only marry men approved by the queen bee, there’s no getting away from that. But in a way women have an easier life because their husbands always have to show them respect.

  The claustrophobic power of family ties is magnified in towns such as Cinisi because almost everybody is related to many other people – even second or third cousins are important links. Letterboxes are dominated by just a few surnames: Badalamenti, Bartolotta, Impastato, Mangiapane, Maniaci, Manzella, Palazzolo, Ruvolo and Vitale.

  Another very strong characteristic of Cinisi is the use of nicknames, which often help in distinguishing people with identical names. The one used for the Badalamenti clan began one day when an ancestor of Don Tano decided he wanted to be noticed, so he put huge cow bells on his livestock to make sure everybody would notice it was his cattle that were passing by – indeed, cattle were the family’s main source of income. And that became the family’s nickname: ‘cow bells’.

  The Badalamenti clan is descended from two patriarch brothers, Vito and Salvatore, both of whom had cattle herds and sired many children. Gaetano, as the song that introduces The Sopranos television series says, was ‘born under a bad sign’ in 1923, in the sense that his father died the same year. While he may not have ‘got himself a gun’ straight away, he grew up in a violent town, with his four older brothers getting involved in various kinds of crime before him. He went to school for four years, but at the age of 10 he started work in the family business.

  His parents were respected locally, although not in the way he later became. Someone who married into the family remembers the reason for that respect: ‘both because they were experts in choosing cattle and because their cheeses were the best. All this was due to their skill in preparing the cheese, as well as their knowledge of when to move their cattle – from the coast to the mountains and vice versa – therefore their milk was always the best.’

  One of the main reasons for Don Tano’s early
success was cattle rustling, for which the 18-year-old Gaetano was first reported in 1941. Cattle rustling might seem quaint and low-level criminal activity to most, but at that time it was an important crime. People were so poor – or supplies were so scarce – that a few aspirin tablets could be exchanged for several fish or hens. The theft, or killing, of even a single cow was a serious economic blow to a family.

  Another of his early activities was robbing houses, often with another young sidekick, Procopio Di Maggio. One of their favourite targets was young women’s dowries, the luxurious presents families collected for many years in expectation of a daughter’s marriage. All of these criminal activities, whether it was cattle rustling or burglary, were taking place in a small town where news travels fast. And to a large extent, a professional criminal wants his reputation to be known far and wide, so word spread very quickly about their actions.

  Although Gaetano Badalamenti did not come from a strictly Mafia background, after the Second World War his family links read like a Mafia family tree. His wife, Teresa Vitale, is from nearby Castellammare del Golfo, a key town in terms of links with the US. One of her sisters is married to Filippo Rimi, of the powerful Alcamo Mafia; that marriage made Badalamenti and Filippo Rimi cousins. In turn, his cousins from Alcamo were linked with the Bonannos in New York, his sons-in-law with the Maggadinos of Buffalo. The clan was clearly international. Indeed, for a long period one of Gaetano’s brothers, Emanuele, virtually commuted from Cinisi to Detroit – there was a jumbo jet a week from the local airport. Many of Badalamenti’s relatives worked at the airport, and when drug smuggling got big it was often they who would load and unload all the baggage, drugs and dollars. In its heyday there were about 200 people in the Badalamenti clan, who managed to move about a thousand foot soldiers, picciotti. It was something more than a family; it was an organisation, often prepared to use force.