Inzerillo family (Mafia clan)

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Salvatore Inzerillo

The Inzerillo family was a major criminal organization of the Palermitan mafia families . She was once one of the most powerful families in Sicily and was associated with Carlo Gambino and his family in New York . In modern times there was a connection to the international heroin businesses of John Gambino and Frank Cali .

history

The Inzerillo family's criminal businesses, which mainly involved drug trafficking and money laundering , emerged in the 1950s and initially concentrated in Palermo and the surrounding area. You were originally located in the Mandamento Passo di Rigano. Her allies included the Santa Maria di Gesù family under Stefano Bontade , the Greco clan from Ciaculli and Croceverde-Giardini , and the Gambino family of the five families in the USA . The Corleonesi they in the Second Mafia War ( 1981 - 1983 ) hunted and decimated, were among their rivals.

The founder or progenitor of the Inzerillo clan was Salvatore "Totuccio" Inzerillo (1944–1981), who was married to Giuseppa Di Maggio, daughter of Rosario Di Maggio , the then Capomafia of the Passo di Rigano family. Salvatore had two sons, Giuseppe (* 1964; † June 12, 1981 in Palermo) and Giovanni (* April 30, 1972 in Brooklyn / New York). Blood relationships existed between the Inzerillos and the Spatola, Mannino, Castellano, Gambino and Di Maggio families (partly through cross-marriages) and varied business relationships. In 1978 , Salvatore Inzerillo temporarily presided over the Cupola after his predecessor, his uncle Rosario Di Maggio. For about half a century, the family was considered the “Mafia aristocracy ” of Palermo because of their abundance of power . In 1956 , family members of the Inzerillos settled in Cherry Hill, New Jersey . Carlo Gambino, cousin of Salvatore Inzerillo, acted there as protégé of the Inzerillo-Gambino-Spatola network. In Sicily, the clan was historically allied with the Capomafia Stefano Bontade and Gaetano Badalamenti and got into the heroin business early on. With the help of the profits from the drug trade, the family generated great wealth, which aroused the desires of the Corleone family under Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano , who also wanted to get into this business with an unprecedented violence.

On August 6, 1980 , Inzerillo had judge Gaetano Costa, who had signed an arrest warrant for Rosario Spatola, killed without the Cupola's permission. The hostilities of the Second Mafia War began on the part of the Corleonesi on April 23, 1981 with the murder of Stefano Bontade and on May 10, 1981 by Salvatore Inzerillo. Inzerillo died in a hail of bullets from AK-47 automatic rifles in the head , delivered by four perpetrators of a "Squadra della Morte - Death Squad" and could only be identified by the police using his fingerprints. Salvatore had previously been certain not to expect any bloody deed from Corleone, as he was still expecting payment for a delivery of 50 kilograms of heroin to the USA on their behalf. But the Corleonesi wanted to completely and radically eliminate them from the market. In the period that followed, the members of the Inzerillo family were systematically and mercilessly persecuted on the orders of Salvatore Riina. Two other prominent victims were Santino "Santo" and Pietro Inzerillo. Santo, Salvatore's brother, was strangled on May 26, 1981 in Palermo when he tried to make a peace offer to Totò Riina in the form of a suitcase with drug money as a reconciliation gift; and Pietro Inzerillo was abducted from a restaurant in Trenton, New Jersey on January 15, 1982 . A little later his decapitated body was found in a trunk with dollar bills in his mouth and genital area to show that he had become "too greedy" . The Inzerillos then fled to the United States, with the exception of Filippa Spatola, Salvatore Inzerillo's wife and son Giovanni. They were called “gli Scappati” , the fugitives. Under pressure from the American Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia Commission decided to grant the rest of the Inzerillo family a pardon, on the condition that none of them or their descendants would ever return to Sicily.

Members of the Inzerillo family, including Franco Inzerillo, did not return to their homeland until the beginning of 2000 . In the summer of 2007 , a new series of murders in Palermo seemed to usher in a new Mafia war. Giovanni Inzerillo, Salvatore's son, was arrested and charged on February 7, 2008 in the anti-mafia operation " Old Bridge " against the New York Gambinos and their drug trafficking connections in Palermo.

Important members of the Inzerillo clan

literature

  • John Dickie: Cosa Nostra. A story of the Sicilian Mafia . London. 2004. Coronet. ISBN 0-340-82435-2 .
  • Pino Arlacchi: Mafia from within: The life of Don Antonino Calderone . S. Fischer Verlag
  • John Follain: The Final Godfathers: Rise and Fall of the Corleones . Fischer paperback. 2017. ISBN 978-359-6-31906-0 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ La guerra di mafia, l'esilio e il ritorno a Palermo: la saga degli Inzerillo. Giornale di Sicilia. 17th july 2019 (it.)
  2. ^ Strike against the Italian-American mafia clan in Palermo. Once they had to flee from the “boss of the bosses”, Totò Riina, but after his death the mafiosi of the Inzerillo-Gambino clan returned to Palermo from New York. They have now been arrested and some of their drug-trafficking wealth confiscated. Alessandro Mannino was a nephew of Salvatore Inzerillo. The New Zurich Times. 17th July 2019
  3. ↑ Werner Raith: Parasites and Cartridges: Sicily's Mafia is reaching for power. S. Fischer Verlag. 2016. ISBN 978-310-5-61587-4 .
  4. ↑ Werner Raith: Parasites and Cartridges: Sicily's Mafia is reaching for power. S. Fischer Verlag. 2016. ISBN 978-310-5-61587-4 .
  5. ^ I Gambino e gli Inzerillo Famiglie tra stragi e potere. La Repubblica.it. February 7, 2008 (it.)
  6. ↑ Cherry Hill Gambinos
  7. ↑ on the Grecos estate in La Favarella
  8. ↑ Italy's largest trial opens. UPI. November 29, 1982 (en.)
  9. ^ Italy get's tough with the Mafia. The New York Times Magazine. November 13, 1983. In: www.nytimes.com. Retrieved April 1, 2020 .
  10. ^ The Case of the Exiled Mobsters. Time. February 7, 2008. (en.)