Gaetano Badalamenti

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Gaetano Badalamenti (born September 14, 1923 in Cinisi , Sicily , Italy , † April 29, 2004 in Ayer , Massachusetts , USA ) was a high-ranking member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . At times he was considered the most powerful man in the organization.

Life

Early Years and Rise in the Mafia

Left to right: Leonardo Pandolfo, Cesare Manzella, Luigi and Masi Impastato, Sarino and Gaetano Badalamenti (1952)

Gaetano "Tano" Badalamenti, later also known as Don Tano, was born as the youngest of five children. As a young man he served in the Italian army during the Second World War and deserted before the Allies landed in Sicily in 1943. In 1946 he was arrested for the first time and a.o. a. for murder accused, and he in the United States fled. There he was arrested in 1950 and immediately extradited to Italy. The charges against him were disregarded because of a lack of evidence. He quickly made a career in the Cinisi mafia family and became their new boss after his predecessor, Cesare Manzella , was killed by a car bomb in April 1963 in the First Mafia War .

Badalamenti was, unlike most Mafiosi at that time, not poor and earned a lot of money with his legal business, especially with his construction companies. This was made possible, among other things, by the fact that the airport of Palermo, Punta Raisi , was located on the territory of his mafia family. The Cinisi family also exported heroin to the United States from this airport .

When the Mafia was reorganized in the late 1960s, Badalamenti was already one of the most important bosses. In the provisional triumvirate from 1970 to 1974, he ran the Cosa Nostra together with Stefano Bontade , the young boss of the traditionally important Palermo family of Santa Maria di Gesù , and Luciano Liggio , the boss of the Corleonesi . During this time Badalamenti was arguably the most powerful man in the Cosa Nostra and organized a series of bomb attacks on palaces of justice and other public institutions. In 1971, on the orders of “Don Tano”, the Attorney General of Palermo, Pietro Scaglione , was murdered. All of this was allegedly done to demonstrate the regained strength of the Cosa Nostra. Badalamenti was also the one who ordered the murder of the left-wing activist Giuseppe "Peppino" Impastato in the late 1970s , who in previous years had repeatedly and publicly opposed the corrupt Christian Democratic Party and the mafia.

Drug trafficking and relegation

In the early 1970s, Badalamenti was one of the first to develop drug trafficking in the United States. He did this through Punta Raisi Airport and without informing the other bosses. However, they found out about it and soon followed his example. In early 1974, on Badalamenti's initiative, the commission was re-established to manage the Cosa Nostra. He himself was elected their representative, with Liggio as his adviser and Bontade as his vice-representative. Badalamenti's power waned during the 1970s and his prestige within the Cosa Nostra declined. In alliance with Bontade and Salvatore Inzerillo , boss of the mafia family of Passo di Rigano , he still dominated part of the Cosa Nostra. The other part of the Cosa Nostra was dominated by the increasingly powerful Corleonesi around Liggio, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano . After Liggio's arrest in 1974, Riina headed the Corleonesi. In 1977 Badalamenti was voted out of office as chairman of the commission and replaced by the Corleonesi's close ally, Michele Greco (nicknamed "The Pope"). The Badalamenti-Bontade-Inzerillo alliance subsequently suffered further setbacks in the power struggle with the Corleonesi. At the end of 1977 Don Tano Badalamenti was even expelled from the Cosa Nostra at the instigation of the Corleonesi. The official reason for this is unclear. Badalamenti then stayed in Spain , Brazil and the USA and continued to earn money from drug trafficking through the so-called Pizza Connection . In the Second Mafia War from 1981 to 1983, Badalamenti's allies Bontade and Inzerillo were murdered and the Corleonesi gained unchallenged power. Badalamenti went about his business unimpressed. Finally, in 1985, in the course of the investigation against the Pizza Connection, Badalamenti was arrested with his nephew in Madrid . Badalamenti was sentenced to life in prison for heroin trafficking and murder. He died of heart failure in the prison hospital at the age of 80.

literature

Movie

  • Marco Tullio Giordana: 100 steps (I cento passi), 2000

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ spiegel.de: [1]
personal data
SURNAME Badalamenti, Gaetano
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Don Tano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sicilian mafioso
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Cinisi
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 2004
Place of death Ayer , Massachusetts