The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (38 page)

With all effective opposition either killed or too afraid, through isolation, to oppose him, the thirty-three-year-old proclaimed himself the boss of the Corleonesi and began the transition from a small family to the largest, most feared family of the Cosa Nostra. Indeed, in the days of Navarra the Corleonesi had been known as “
i viddani
” – “the peasants” – because they were based in a poor village and were felt to be an insignificant faction in the world of organized crime. Though powerful, highly respected and feared, Navarra had never been interested in accumulating great wealth, dying with relatively little to his name, or in having a presence on a regional scale. Under Leggio’s leadership the Corleonesi became the main Cosa Nostra family of Sicily and Luciano Leggio earned himself the title of
Capo di tutti capi or
“Boss of all bosses”.

Leggio’s rise to a position amongst the leading “men of honour” was complete. He could now take his place on the Cupola or the Sicilian Mafia Commission, as it was better known when it was revived in 1970, although he never actually attended a meeting because he was in hiding on the Italian mainland at the time.

The Cupola was a body of the heads of the families of the Cosa Nostra, which was set up to decide upon matters affecting the actions of the families and to settle any disputes. Most regions of Sicily had their own Cupola and it was commonly accepted that if one family was to wage war on a second family, or if police officers, politicians, lawyers, journalists or judges were to be assassinated, the Cupola should first be consulted and give its approval, although in reality its power to enforce agreements was fairly limited,
especially
in its early years.

Leggio expanded the Cosa Nostra work beyond Corleone and began recruiting from nearby Palermo, which became the focus of his criminal activities. He seized control of legitimate businesses by buying out, threatening or murdering the often law-abiding bosses, and in doing so could provide an outwardly respectable image. The “honourable” businessman was able to forge new relations with other businessmen, politicians and others who would be of use to him and prove to be worthy allies. The relationships could be cemented to the point that they would be willing to help him perform his less legitimate business transactions if provided with a “sweetener”.

Unlike the fictional Godfather of Corleone, the only principle that Luciano Leggio had when it came to narcotics was that they should make huge sums of money for those who controlled them and that a monopoly on drugs would provide a grip on power. Whilst Mafia families in the USA were making the majority of their money from gambling operations, in Corleone the major source of revenue was the trading of heroin which was trafficked partly within Europe, but mainly to the USA where New York Mafia bosses gained a share of the profits. In order to launder the money several seemingly legitimate businesses were founded. One of the main enterprises to provide a front for the Cosa Nostra activities was real estate, with the construction of new buildings flourishing in the early years of Leggio’s supremacy.

Whilst Leggio’s violence inevitably led to calls within the police force and judiciary to clamp down on what was a rapidly growing problem, his friends in high places generally prevented the police from taking effective action. So it was outside events, at least outside of the Corleonesi, which causes Leggio’s circumstances to change.

On 30 June 1963, as the result of a Cosa Nostra feud, a car bomb exploded in Ciaculli, killing seven police and military officials in what had been a failed attempt against the life of the head of the Cupola. Although Leggio and the Corleonesi played no role in what became known as the Ciaculli Massacre, it caused him to panic. The murder of the police and military officers resulted in a major overt effort to target the leading members of Cosa Nostra and bring them to justice, but the actuality of the situation meant that few
convictions
took place. It appeared to many that the authorities only wanted to appear that they were trying to tackle the Cosa Nostra problem.

The Ciaculli Massacre forced the Corleonesi to change their ways of operating. The violence, the murders, the drug deals and other illegal operations all continued, but there was a clear recognition of the need for vigilance and discretion on a much greater level than had previously been thought necessary. Those involved had to be careful not to be caught in the face of what appeared, to the outside world, to be a determined effort to stamp out the Cosa Nostra. Yet during this whole period Leggio and his crew were still part of society, rather than fugitives in the traditional sense of the word. They did not need to make an effort to really hide their identities, which would have severely hindered their business dealings, and relied upon the fact that no one would dare testify against them or provide the police with the knowledge of their whereabouts. It is during this period that Leggio became known as “the man without a face” because of the unwillingness of those who had the ability to provide evidence against him or to assist the police in their search for the killer.

Perhaps if he had put more effort into hiding from the police, they would not have found him in the bed of a woman who had been engaged to the trade unionist Rizzoto, the man who Leggio and his accomplices killed and threw into the chasm. And so in May 1964 Leggio was to see the inside of a prison cell once again.

He stood trial in what is known as the Trial of 114 which was held on the Italian mainland due to insufficient facilities to
simultaneously
try such a large number of defendants, and also in an attempt to prevent witness intimidation. Nonetheless, following a year-long trial lasting from December 1967 to shortly before Christmas the following year, only ten of the defendants were convicted, with the rest, including Leggio, being acquitted. The trial had been to prosecute those believed to be responsible for a Cosa Nostra war. Leggio was not released just yet, however; he was still charged with the murder of nine of Navarra’s followers.

Once again he stood in the dock in February 1969 alongside sixty-eight fellow Cosa Nostra members, this time in the town of Bari on the Italian mainland. Accused of being a member of the Cosa Nostra, Leggio denied this. He said he had never even heard of the group or of the term “Mafia”. Accused of committing murder, he again denied this, alleging that he had been set up by a police officer who had asked him to pleasure his wife. Asked for the name of the police officer he responded: “Please do not ask me for names. I am a gentleman.” The “gentleman” was acquitted along with his sixty-eight co-defendants, although he had admitted to having dealt on the black market during the Second World War.

It is no surprise that all were acquitted when one considers that evidence was tampered with due to the intervention of politicians, lawyers and police officers who were in the pocket of the Cosa Nostra.  Furthermore, the judges presiding over the trial and members of the jury received direct threats against their lives and specific orders to acquit: 

Leggio walked free to recommence his criminal career. Some close aides of Leggio who became
pentiti
(the plural of
pentito
, a member of the Cosa Nostra who has testified against a boss in exchange for a lesser sentence, from the Latin for “he who has repented”) claimed that Leggio’s luck in evading justice was due to the corruption of senior figures in the criminal justice system. Indeed, it was argued that Sicily’s Chief Prosecutor, Pietro Scaglione, took a personal interest in keeping Leggio at large. When Scaglione was shot dead in 1971 it was said that Leggio had pulled the trigger of the murder weapon, because he did not want to risk the possibilities of having someone around who knew his secrets. It has also been suggested that Leggio wished Scaglione dead because the Chief  Prosecutor was assisting in the acquittal of one of Leggio’s rivals. Whatever the motive for Scaglione’s death, Leggio was acquitted of his murder.

In July 1969, shortly after the Bari trial, he was once again indicted for murder following a successful appeal by magistrate Cesare Terranova. In his absence in December 1970, Leggio was convicted of murdering Michele Navarra and sentenced to life imprisonment but his whereabouts were, as far as the justice system was concerned, unknown and had been since his earlier acquittal. Yet he had not been making much effort to hide, having spent the latter half of 1969 in a private hospital where he underwent
treatment
for Pott’s disease, an ailment that had affected him for much of his life. When the police went to arrest him at the hospital in January of the following year they found he had discharged himself.

The conviction of Leggio was largely down to Terranova, who was only too aware of Leggio’s brutality and was determined to keep him out of circulation. He would become even more familiar with Leggio’s murderous personality when he too was assassinated in 1979, allegedly on the order of the killer who had by this time been imprisoned, though he was yet again acquitted of any
involvement
in the murder due to a lack of evidence.

Whilst on the run, he set up a lucrative kidnapping operation in Milan and expanded his drug-trafficking business to the northern part of the Italian mainland. In this respect his forced exile of sorts was successful in providing opportunities he might not otherwise have had. During this period he came across an old adversary by the name of Damiano Caruso, who he always suspected had killed one of his associates. Caruso disappeared without a trace. Later his
girlfriend
and fifteen-year-old daughter also vanished. According to several
pentiti,
Leggio killed Caruso and when his girlfriend became suspicious he raped and strangled her, and committed the same atrocity to the teenage daughter.

It was in Milan that Leggio’s luck ran out. He was found on 16 May 1974 and sent straight to prison to begin his life sentence for murder. The killer was finally caged and would not be given any opportunity to kill again, at least in person.

Although convicted of only one murder – that of Navarra – there can be no doubt that Luciano Leggio was one of the most brutal, evil and murderous of the Cosa Nostra, or indeed the whole global Mafia. The number of lives he personally took are unlikely ever to be known and even the man himself probably could not keep count of them. Added to that are the lives that were taken at his request and those who were killed in murders that he, in some way, was part of a conspiracy to commit. We can be confident that this was a man who murdered a father because of suspicions which may or not have been based on fact, that he then murdered the man’s girlfriend, and that he raped and gained pleasure out of strangling the distraught teenage daughter whose only crime was to be worried about where her father was.

In the case of many dangerous criminals, good and evil coexist. When he was not killing, or ordering his men to commit murder, or organizing any of his other illegal business interests, Leggio was a family man. One relative spoke about the memories of Leggio during the 1960s when the killer was at his peak: “I only met him when I was a child back in the sixties when he and a few guys would come to my house and play cards with my Dad. My Dad passed away in 1966 and I lost touch with him and his crew. He was jovial but feared. I liked him. It was family first, always! Around family was respect to and for all. I remember laughing a lot around him and at night while I was in bed, I could hear more hearty laughter, some yelling and arguing, but that was it. Boy, could he and his crew eat!”

In the end Leggio’s violence and pursuit of power, regardless of the shocking cost in human life, were his undoing. He broke
unwritten
laws of the Cosa Nostra and shocked even hardened killers who began to think that enough was enough, especially when the net closed in around them and their eagerness for lenient sentences began to be recognized.

Leggio’s reign of terror and his crime family’s breach of Cosa Nostra law, which was exacerbated further by his successor Riina, led to the authorities realizing, in the face of national and
international
condemnation, they had to clamp down once and for all on what was plaguing Sicily. Whilst organized crime in the form of the Cosa Nostra continues (a fragmented Cupola is known to have met as recently as December 2008), it is a shadow of its former self; Leggio’s ever increasing ferociousness bore witness to the beginning of the end. It is one of the greatest of paradoxes that through actions of great evil and violence, peace could begin to filter through the village and region that had experienced and lost so much.

Ironically, petty crime increased following the imprisonment of Leggio and his associates. With the top dogs out of the way, there was room for the low-level criminals to start their careers. 

From his prison cell, Leggio apparently put all his efforts into attempting to maintain control of the Corleonesi before power slipped into the hands of his former student, Salvatore Riina.

Even whilst serving a life sentence the trials continued. In 1977 he was acquitted of earlier crimes following a lengthy trial, yet again due to a lack of evidence. Leggio’s final court appearance was in a two-year trial known as the Maxiprocesso, or Maxi Trial, between 1986 and 1987. The trial lasted so long due to the complexities of hearing the cases of 474 defendants, although more than 100 were fugitives being tried
in absentia.
Leggio was accused of attempting to run the Corleonesi operations from inside prison and of having ordered the assassination of Terranova.