Leoluca Bagarella

Leoluca Biagio "Don Luchino" Bagarella (born February 3, 1942 in Corleone ) is a member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and a member of the " Corleonesi ". As a confidante and brother-in-law of Salvatore "Totò" Riina , Bagarella became his deputy after Riina's arrest in 1993 and took over command of the military wing of the Cosa Nostra. Before his arrest on June 24, 1995, his name was on the Interpol wanted list of the world's most dangerous criminals for several years .

Criminal career

Early years

Leoluca Biagio Bagarella was born in Corleone on February 3, 1942, to Salvatore and Lucia Mondello . In the late 1950s, Leoluca, like his older brother Calogero Bagarella , joined the group of the up-and-coming Luciano "Lucianeddu" Liggio , who systematically ran his own boss Michele Navarra with Salvatore "Totò" Riina and Bernardo "Zu Binnu" Provenzano and murdered his followers.

In 1966, Leoluca became Riina's brother-in-law after he married his sister Antonietta "Ninetta" Bagarella . During this time he was under Riina's authority, as Liggio appointed him deputy boss during his imprisonment from 1964 to 1969 and in 1974, after his second imprisonment, was made the official head of the " Corleonesi ".

Killer for the mafia

On the orders of Riina and his “right hand” Provenzano, Bagarella murdered together with Giovanni “u verru” Brusca , a member of the San Giuseppe Jato clan, and Giuseppe “Pino” Greco and Vincenzo Puccio , members of the Ciaculli clan August 1977 a lieutenant colonel of the Carabinieri named Giuseppe Russo and another person in the hamlet of Ficuzza near Corleone.

Giuseppe "la tigre" Di Cristina - boss of the Caltanissetta clan - disapproved of the assassination of Russo, which in any case had not been approved by the Sicilian Mafia Commission and attracted unnecessary attention from law enforcement agencies. Thus Di Cristina herself became a target of the Corleonesi and only barely survived a shootout on November 21, 1977. However, on May 30, 1978, he was shot dead by the Corleonesi in Palermo . Bagarella, who was involved in the killing, was himself injured from a gunshot wound.

On January 26, 1979, the crime reporter Mario Francese , who worked for the daily newspaper " Giornale di Sicilia ", was shot dead by Bagarella in front of his house in Palermo. His assassination was preceded by his investigation into the links between the Corleonesi, politicians and business partners in connection with public contracts.

Bagarella shot and killed Boris Giuliano , head of a mobile criminal police unit, in a bar in Palermo on July 21, 1979 . The observation by his unit meant that Bagarella had to flee from his hiding place without further ado and various evidence could be obtained. A large part of the seized documents disappeared without a trace after Giuliano's death.

About six months after Giuliano's murder, Bagarella was arrested at a Carabinieri checkpoint in Palermo. After 10 years in prison, he was released from prison in December 1990 after a legal battle.

In July 1992, Bagarella was involved in the murder of the disgraced mafio Vincenzo Milazzo and his pregnant partner Antonella Bonomo, alongside Giovanni Brusca, Giuseppe La Barbera, Antonino Gioè , Francesco Messina Denaroan and Gioacchino Calabrò.

A short time later, on September 14, 1992, Bagarella tried together with Matteo Messina "u siccu" Denaro and Giuseppe Graviano to murder the police commissioner Rino Germanà.

At the top of the Cosa Nostra

Due to the increased search pressure caused by the murder of the " Mafia hunters" Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino , commissioned by Salvatore Riina in 1992 , Riina was arrested on January 15, 1993 after 24 years on the run in his villa in Palermo. Bagarella acted from then on as his deputy.

After Riina's imprisonment, the Corleonesi split. Bagarella took over command of the military wing of the Cosa Nostra, which was in the sense of Riinas for a continuation of the previous "massacre strategy" and was composed of Giovanni Brusca, Matteo Messina Denaro and Giuseppe Graviano . The more moderate faction, led by Bernardo Provenzano, which included Antonino Nino Giuffrè , Pietro Aglieri , Benedetto Spera , Raffaele Ganci , Salvatore Cancemi and Michelangelo La Barbera, spoke out against the strategy of the attacks. Finally, Bagarella's faction prevailed against those of Provenzano, with the agreement that the attacks took place exclusively outside Sicily. A number of attacks by the Corleonesi on tourist attractions on mainland Italy followed :

• The against the journalist Maurizio Costanzo directed assassination of Via Ruggiero Fauro in Rome on May 14, the 1,993th
• The bomb attack on the Uffizi Gallery in Florence , in which five people lost their lives on May 27, 1993.
• The massacre on Via Palestro in Milan , which also killed five people on July 27, 1993.
• Another attack failed on October 16, 1993 when the ignition mechanism of a bomb that was supposed to explode in front of the Olympic Stadium in Rome after a football match between Lazio Rome and Udinese Calcio failed.

Arrest and convictions

Bagarella lived unnoticed in four different apartments in central Palermo until he was arrested on June 24, 1995 after being on the run for four years. In total, Bagarella received 13 life sentences plus 106 years and ten months, and a prison term of 6 years.

His sentence included convictions for a large number of murders - of the police officer Boris Giuliano , the crime reporter Mario Francese , the lieutenant colonel Giuseppe Russo, the "mafia hunter" Giovanni Falcone, the police officer Antonino Burrafato , Enzo Salvatore Caravà in April 1976 and the Double murder of the country shepherd Simone Lo Manto and Raimondo Mulè in 1977.

He was also convicted for participating in the murder of the son of the mafioso Santino Di Matteo , Giuseppe, who was kidnapped on November 23, 1993 at the age of 12 on the orders of Bagarella and Giovanni Brusca Months of imprisonment was strangled on Brusca's order and then dissolved in acid. The kidnapping and murder was preceded by the betrayal by his father, who made himself available as a government witness after his arrest on June 4, 1993 for his involvement in the murder of Giovanni Falcone.

In the course of a transport to a planned interrogation, Bagarella attacked an employee of the prison police with a targeted bite in the prison of Bancali in Sassari on January 16, 2020 .

Trivia

Leoluca is the younger brother of Calogero Bagarella , who was also a member of the " Corleonesi " and was shot on December 10, 1969 in the Viale Lazio massacre by the mafioso Michele Cavataio .

In the summer of 1991, Bagarella married his lover Vincenzina Marchese, who, however, committed suicide on May 12, 1995 due to a depressive state.

Bagarella's successor at the head of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra was Bernardo Provenzano , who until his arrest in 2006 largely led the Cosa Nostra back into anonymity with a moderate style of leadership and consolidated and decentralized it as much as possible.

Adaptations

• In the final episode of the 2007 television miniseries Il capo dei capi , Bagarella is played by Francesco Scianna .
• Bagarella is played by Domenico Centamore in the film Die Mafia only murders in the summer of 2013 .
• Portrayed by Fabio Costanzo, Bagarella is part of the television series The Mafia murders only in the summer (2016-2018).
• The first season of the 2019 television series Il Cacciatore: The Hunter shows some facets of Bagarella's life from the early 1990s until his arrest. He is played in the series by David Coco.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The end of a bloody trail. In: The world . June 26, 1995, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
2. ↑ The new master. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved March 6, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Alexander Stille - Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic. In: Google Books . Retrieved March 6, 2020 . 
4. ↑ No other boss had that much blood on his hands. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 17, 2017, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
5. ^ Mafia, 41 anni fa l'omicidio di Russo e Costa, “Serve percorso di ricerca storica su di loro”. In: parlamento.it. August 20, 2018, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Omicidio Pecorelli, il perito ha voglia di vivere. In: antimafiaduemila.com. August 23, 2019, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Storia di Mario Francese, giornalista ucciso dalla mafia 40 anni fa. In: Agenzia Giornalistica Italia . January 26, 2019, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Domenica prossima Piazza Armerina ricorderà Boris Giuliano ucciso dalla mafia il 21 luglio del 1979. In: start-news.it. July 15, 2019, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Totò Riina e Leoluca Bagarella, nella foto inedita il sorriso del male. In: L'Espresso . January 5, 2015, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
10. ↑ Riina ordino ':' e 'incinta? Uccidete la donna del boss'. In: La Repubblica . January 5, 2015, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
11. ↑ 26 anni fa a Mazara del Vallo l'attentato a Rino Germanà. In: tp24. September 14, 2018, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
12. ↑ Italy Arrests Sicilian Mafia's Top Leader. In: The New York Times . January 16, 1993, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
13. ^ Commissione Parlamentare D'Inchiesta sul fenomeno della mafia e sulle altre associazioni criminali, anche straniere. In: parlamento.it. March 26, 2012, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
14. ↑ ^{a b} John Dickie - Omertà - The whole story of the Mafia: Camorra, Cosa Nostra and ́Ndrangheta. In: Google Books. Retrieved March 6, 2020 . 
15. ↑ 300 kilos of explosives explode in Florence. In: journal21.ch. May 26, 2013, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
16. ^ History of the Mafia. In: The time . May 10, 2012, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
17. ↑ Blood oath broken. In: Der Spiegel. July 10, 1995, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
18. ↑ Reputed Head of the Mafia Is Arrested in Palermo Chase. In: The New York Times. June 26, 1995, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
19. ↑ Calcolate le pene di Provenzano e Bagarella: insieme hanno collezionano 33 ergastoli. In: L'Espresso. March 15, 2014, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
20. ↑ Condanne via e Bagarella Brusca. In: La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. June 17, 2009, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
21. ↑ Uno sgarbo, poi il duplice omicidio: nuovo ergastolo per Leoluca Bagarella. In: Live Sicilia. July 1, 2009, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
22. ↑ Mafia. Omicidio Di Matteo, confermato ergastolo a Bagarella e pene ai boss. In: Rai News 24 . July 15, 2002, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
23. ↑ Leoluca Bagarella prende a morsi un agent della polizia penitenziaria. In: La Sicilia . January 17, 2020, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
24. ↑ Viale Lazio e piazza Fontana, Palermo e Milano: 50 anni fa le stragi che sconvolsero l'Italia. In: Giornale di Sicilia . December 10, 2019, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
25. ↑ La moglie di Bagarella si e 'impiccata. In: repubblica.it. January 17, 1996, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
26. ↑ The Godfather of Corleone: He was in hiding for 43 years, now Bernardo Provenzano has been arrested. In: The world. Retrieved March 6, 2020 .