Stefano Bontade

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Scene of the murder on Via Aloi
Stefano Bontade in the autopsy
Stefano Bontade's grave

Stefano Bontade , also Stefano Bontate , (born April 23, 1938 in Palermo , † April 23, 1981 ibid) was a powerful Sicilian Mafioso and long-time member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission . His nickname was "Prince of Villagrazia". It is almost proven that he was in contact with several powerful politicians; He was also a member of the Freemasons and served as a liaison between them and the Cosa Nostra .

Life

Ascent to head

Stefano Bontade was born into a very traditional Mafia family that went back to the 19th century . Both his father Francesco “Paolino” Bontade and his grandfather Stefano were influential “men of honor” in the mafia family of Santa Maria di Gesù , a village outside Palermo, which was incorporated after the Second World War and soon became a part of Palermo. Francesco Bontade was famous for publicly slapping an MP on one occasion. Unlike most of the men of honor of his generation , Stefano Bontade studied just like his brother Giovanni Bontade . His father, who had been one of the pallbearers at the funeral of the mighty Don Calò Vizzini , suffered from diabetes and was in poor health; Stefano as his studies had almost ended, he began to cultivate his father and broke the study off. In 1964 “Paolino” Bontade died and Stefano Bontade advanced to become the new leader of the “Santa Maria di Gesù” family at the age of only 25 after an internal election. This happened at the moment when the First Mafia War was just coming to a standstill: the war that had started in 1962 developed a whole new dynamic; in Palermo there were several attacks in which car bombs exploded. The vice representative of the Santa Maria di Gesù family, Bernardo Diana, was also killed in one of these attacks. In the so-called Ciaculli massacre in 1963, seven Carabinieri died when a car bomb intended for the Mafia boss Salvatore Greco exploded while attempting to defuse it. The Italian state then took decisive action against the Cosa Nostra for the first time, and within a short time hundreds of men of honor were arrested, including the representative of the Santa Maria di Gesù family in the commission , Francesco Sorci. Bontade now took over the management when Cosa Nostra decided to temporarily liquidate and to suspend all business until further notice. In the period that followed, public opinion calmed down and turned to other issues. The determination of the state in the fight against the Cosa Nostra also weakened. The subsequent trials of Catanzaro against the imprisoned men of honor ended in 1968 with a victory for the Cosa Nostra, because only a few convictions were made, which also affected rather old representatives of the Mafia, such as Giuseppe Genco Russo .

After this triumph, Bontade and Salvatore Greco were now the two bosses who wanted to punish the person responsible for the First Mafia War, Michele "The Cobra" Cavataio . They finally prevailed within the Cosa Nostra and in the famous massacre in Viale Lazio on December 10, 1969, Cavataio was killed by a killer squad. Now it was decided to rebuild the "Commission" (also known as the dome), the governing body of the Cosa Nostra. This was initially done on a provisional basis. From 1970 to 1974 Bontade was, together with Gaetano Badalamenti and Luciano Liggio , a member of the triumvirate that led the Mafia instead of the regular 12-14-member commission. On the initiative of Badalamenti, the General Prosecutor of Palermo, Pietro Scaglione, was murdered in 1971. The probable perpetrator was Luciano Liggio himself. In 1972 Bontade was arrested like most of the well-known Mafia bosses and brought to justice. He was acquitted, but the prosecutor took advantage of a peculiarity of Italian criminal law and banished Bontade, who was now forced to leave Sicily for some time. He spent this time in Qualiano near Naples , where he made contacts with the Neapolitan criminal organization Camorra and organized the smuggling of cigarettes from Naples to Sicily, which kept the financially troubled Cosa Nostra alive. He also established a branch for his family in Naples. From 1974 until his death in 1981 he was a member of the renewed regular commission and was clearly one of the leading figures of the Cosa Nostra; in alliance with Badalamenti and the family of Passo di Rigano (this was led first by Rosario Di Maggio, then by his nephew Salvatore Inzerillo ) he dominated the organization. Together with them, he also organized the heroin trade via the so-called Pizza Connection , which grew in the 1970s and 1980s and brought the Cosa Nostra enormous profits and extraordinary prosperity. The Santa Maria di Gesù family was the most powerful in Palermo at this time and controlled not only Santa Maria di Gesù but also Guadagna, La Kalsa and other parts of the city. According to the later key witness Stefano Calzetta, Stefano Bontade controlled “the entire area around Palermo, from the train station to Ciaculli, even if there were individual families with a limited area of ​​their own in this section. However, everyone was subordinate to Stefano Bontade, and when decisions had to be made, everyone went to his territory ”.

During this time, the family grew rapidly and increased from around 50 members in the early 1960s to more than 160 members in the late 1970s; in addition there were the members of the smaller families, which were controlled by the Santa Maria di Gesú family, so that Bontade had more men of honor than other families and was considered the most powerful boss of all. Bontade was considered to be more moderate and significantly less bloodthirsty than, for example, the Corleonesi and their allies, who in the 1970s, under their leaders Luciano Liggio , Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, became increasingly powerful and sought sole rule over the Cosa Nostra. According to his close friend and later “Pentito” Antonino Calderone , Bontade often criticized disproportionately brutal actions; In 1976, for example, he vigorously opposed the recent unprovoked murders of four young people in the commission . These murders were carried out by the boss of Catania, Nitto Santapaola . However, Bontade was "the only Commissioner who found words of rebuke".

At the end of the 1970s, he gave the order to kill every tenth thief in the districts he controlled in order to give them a warning after a fatal handbag theft and to put them in their place. This earned him a high level of popularity among the local population . All of this earned him the reputation of being the “last true man of honor” outside of the Cosa Nostra. In general, Bontade represented traditional values; the “man of honor” Gaetano Grado, who was one of the members of the death squad that murdered Cavataio in 1969, “almost was killed by his boss Stefano Bontade because he had gone on a woman hunt after his involvement in the 1969 Viale Lazio massacre in Milan ".

Political contacts

Bontade cultivated extensive political contacts; According to a statement by Pentito and key witness Antonino Giuffrè, he met the then entrepreneur and later Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Milan in the mid-1970s , as he was afraid of being kidnapped like many other rich Italians before him. At this meeting, Bontade called his interlocutor Berlusconi, while he insisted for himself that he should be ranked higher. According to statements from several “Pentiti” such as Tommaso Buscetta and Francesco Marino Mannoia, he was also in contact with the seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and especially his right-hand man Salvatore Lima . Mannoia testified that Andreotti and Bontade met in Palermo in 1980 because Andreotti wanted to protest the murder of the chairman of the Sicilian Christian Democrats, Piersanti Mattarella . However, Bontade gave Andreotti a refusal and asked him to remain calm, because otherwise "very bad things" would happen. Salvatore Lima was the first point of contact for Cosa Nostra when it sought help from government agencies. According to Mannoia, the MP and Minister Gioa was a protégé of Bontade. The long-time mayor of Palermo, Nello Martellucci , also had close ties to Bontade, according to Buscetta. Since the mid-1960s, Bontade had also had relationships with the powerful Vito Ciancimino , who came from Corleone and had also been mayor of Palermo for a short time. During an initial conversation with him, he once revealed his impressions of Riina and Provenzano: “You can talk to Provenzano, but it's better to avoid Riina. He is stubborn and irascible and rarely changes his mind. He and I have had several differences of opinion, but Provenzano has always reached an agreement between us ”. His ties to their Democrazia Cristiana party were so close in the 1970s that in 1978, during the kidnapping of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades , he wanted to get in touch with them to obtain their release. He called the commission together to present his point of view, but the Corleonesians around Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano were finally able to prevail with their position of staying out of politics. Around this time he and the head of the powerful family of Ciaculli , Michele Greco , also joined the Sicilian Masonic lodges at their request in order to establish closer contact between them and the Cosa Nostra.

The conflict with the Corleonesians

In the 1970s, the established Palermitan bosses around Bontade were no match for the intrigues of Salvatore "Totò" Riina, Liggio's successor; they increasingly lost their reputation, which is so important within the mafia. The Corleonesians carried out several kidnappings of wealthy Sicilian entrepreneurs who were actually under the protection of Bontade and his allies, even though the Commission had decided to ban kidnappings in Sicily. In 1975 Luigi Corleo, the father-in-law of Antonio Salvo , who, together with his cousin Ignazio Salvo, was probably the richest entrepreneur in Sicily at the time (both were also subordinate men of honor of the Cosa Nostra of Salemi ), was kidnapped and murdered by the Corleonesians. Riina denied having carried out the kidnapping within the commission. Bontade was unable to find Corleo's body and prove the crime to the Corleonesians. In 1977 Badalamenti was even expelled from the Mafia at the instigation of the Corleonesians. His successor as chairman was Michele "the Pope" Greco. This was the most important ally of the Corleonesians. Bontade's former ally Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò changed sides during this time and openly allied with the Corleonesians. In 1978, Bontade lost two of his most important allies outside Palermo when Giuseppe Di Christina from Riesi and Giuseppe Calderone from Catania were murdered. Calderone was replaced by Nitto Santapaola , who was a close ally of Riina. Bontade feared the same fate at times and "slept (...) armed to the teeth with his family in his villa in Magliocco".

The opposing Mafia families were also increasingly infiltrated by the Corleonesians; many “soldiers” betrayed their bosses and secretly joined the Corleonese when they noticed that the scales were tipping more and more in favor of the Corleonese. These controlled the commission, in which Bontade, Salvatore Inzerillo and Rosario Riccobono were now almost completely isolated and were repeatedly left in the dark about important decisions. In 1980, which at that time was (and is) rather unusual within a Mafia family, elections took place in the Santa Maria di Gesù family. A not insignificant group within the family wanted to vote Bontade out as boss. This group included Pietro Lo Iacono , Ignazio Pullara and Giovanni Bontade , who traditionally did not get along with his brother Stefano and rivaled him. The elections were in favor of Stefano Bontade, who refrained from taking any action against his internal opposition. At the beginning of 1981 Giuseppe "Piddu" Panno, head of the Casteldaccia family , was murdered by the Corleonesians. He had been a close friend and ally of the Bontades for several decades. In response to this murder, Bontade planned to have Salvatore Riina murdered or to kill him himself at a meeting of the commission, according to several concurring statements.

Late in the evening at 11:30 p.m. on April 23, 1981, his 43rd birthday, Bontade was shot on the way home from a festival given in his honor. While he was stopping at a red light on Via Aloi at the corner of Via delle Regione Siciliana, his car was shot at by several men and rifled with bullets. Shortly before, Bontade had ordered a bulletproof car, an Alfa Romeo Giuletta 2000 , which was to be delivered in a few weeks. The shot driver lost control of his vehicle and came to a halt on a wall. Bontade was killed by gunfire from an AK-47 and a shotgun. Half his face was shot away. He had five million lire in notes with him.

The attack was carried out by a Corleonese squad that included Pino Greco , the shooter and a notorious and particularly brutal mafioso, Mario Prestifilippo , Antonio Rotolo , Giuseppe Lucchese and the later “Pentito” Giuseppe Marchese . The Second Mafia War , also known in Sicily as Mattanza (“the bloody harvests”), had begun. Although Italy then expected an angry counter-attack from the Bontade faction, nothing like this happened. On May 11, however, Salvatore Inzerillo was shot dead. In the following months, hundreds of men of honor (and their friends and relatives) of the families of Bontade and Inzerillo were also liquidated. All men of honor who had voted against Stefano Bontade in the elections the previous year were spared; these often helped the Corleonesians lure their opponents into traps and murder them. In 1981 and 1982, one mafia murder occurred in Palermo on average every three days. The management of the Santa Maria di Gesù family was taken over by the previous vice-capo Pietro Lo Iacono, with Gianbattista Pullara and Giovanni Bontade as his vice-representatives. Giovanni Bontade, however, was also murdered by the Corleonesians together with his wife in 1988. After their total victory, the Corleonesians subsequently established an absolute dictatorship within the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, which lasted for over a quarter of a century. Even today the alliance that the Corleonesians founded plays an important role in the Cosa Nostra of the province of Palermo.

Private

Stefano Bontade was married and had two children from his marriage. One of Bontade's closest friends was Tommaso Buscetta , who later became an important informant for the Italian police as Pentito and was a key witness in the so-called mammoth trial against the Cosa Nostra in the mid and late 1980s. He described Bontade in retrospect as a "gentleman". Two important members of the Bontade-led family later also testified as key witnesses against the Cosa Nostra: Salvatore Contorno , Bontade's bodyguard and preferred killer, and Francesco Marino Mannoia , who had mainly worked as a chemist in the manufacture of heroin.

Bontade's last name is also spelled Bontate in some publications; the reason for this is unclear and could possibly be found in diverging court records.

Films and documentaries

  • 2007: The Boss of the Bosses (OT: Il capo dei capi ) : 6-part series about the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, in which Bondate is played in episodes 3 and 4 by Francesco Foti.

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diego Gambetta: The company of the godparents: The Sicilian Mafia and their business practices , Munich: dtv, 1994 ISBN 3-423-30417-0 , p. 150
  2. ^ A b Pino Arlacchi: Mafia from the inside - The life of Don Antonino Calderone , Frankfurt a. M. 1995, Fischer Verlag, ISBN 3-596-12477-8
  3. ^ A b Giovanni Falcone: Inside Mafia , Herbig Actuell, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7766-1765-9
  4. ↑ Clare Longrigg: The godfather of godparents , Herbig, Munich 2009 ISBN 978-3-7766-2591-2
  5. ↑ Massimo Ciancimino and Francesco La Licata: Don Vito , Munich 2010, Piper Verlag, ISBN 978-3-492-05444-7
  6. ^ Diego Gambetta: The company of the godparents: The Sicilian Mafia and their business practices , Munich: dtv, 1994 ISBN 3-423-30417-0
  7. ↑ a b c d Trent'anni fa l'assassinio di Bontade so iniziò la guerra di mafia. la Repubblica. Palermo. April 23, 2011
  8. ^ Street in the Bonagia district on the outskirts of Palermo
  9. ↑ Ord maxiprocesso volume 13 pagina 2515-2631
  10. ^ Salvatore Lupo: The history of the Mafia , Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2002 ISBN 3-491-96152-1

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bontade, Stefano
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bontate, Stefano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian mafioso
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Palermo
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1981
Place of death Palermo