Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio (January 6, 1925 – November 16, 1993) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia Family from the town of Corleone. Some sources spell his surname Liggio a result of a mispelling on court documents in the 1960s.
Early life
Leggio was born in 1925, one of ten children raised in extreme poverty on a small farm. He turned to crime in his teens. His first conviction was when he was aged 18 for stealing corn and as soon as he completed a six-month sentence for this crime he murdered the man who had reported him to the police for the theft. In 1945 he was recruited by the Corleonesi boss, Michele Navarra, to work as an enforcer and hitman. That same year Leggio took over a large farm by threatening the previous owner to sign it over to him at gunpoint.
Many pentiti have described Leggio as being highly volatile and violent, as well as possessing a streak of vanity. According to Tommaso Buscetta, during meetings with Mafia bosses from Palermo, Leggio insisted on correcting grammatical errors made by Gaetano Badalamenti when Badalamenti tried to speak Italian rather than his native Sicilian. Leggio apparantly liked to be called "The Professor", even though, like many of his fellow Corleonesi criminals, he was poorly educated. Leggio tended to wear expensively tailored suits at his repeated court appearances, often along with sunglasses and grandly puffing on a cigar.
On March 10, 1948, on Navarra's orders, he kidnapped trade unionist Placido Rizzotto in front of dozens of witnesses and took him into the fields. He shot Rizzotto dead and flung his body into a cave with the bodies of two previous murder victims. When the bodies were found the following year, Leggio was arrested on suspicion of murder, but after spending almost two-years behind bars he was released and the charges dropped when witnesses refused to testify. Whilst behind bars he met Salvatore Riina, who was then aged nineteen and starting a six-year sentence for Manslaughter. The two eventually became accomplices in crime after Riina's release, as did another young local criminal, Bernardo Provenzano.
Mafia War
Leggio soon began to build his own faction of mobsters loyal to him alone, and in 1956 he went to war with Navarra and his faction. One evening in June 1958 he was walking across a field when some of Navarra's men opened fire on him. He escaped with just a slight injury to his hand.
A couple of months later, on August 2, Leggio, Riina, Provenzano and a number of other gunmen set up an ambush just outside Corleone. Michele Navarra soon drove round the corner and the gunmen opened fire, riddling the car with two-hundred bullets. Navarra died instantly along with a friend (unconnected with the Mafia) he was giving a lift to, Lercara Friddi. Leggio proclaimed himself boss of the Corleonisi and over the next five-years he and his men hunted down and killed around fifty more of Navarra's remaining supporters.
Leggio and his faction emerged victorious, although the increase in violence (coupled with a separate Mob War in Palermo around that time) had inspired a crackdown against the Mafia in 1963, meaning Leggio and his associates had to go into hiding.
Corleonisi Boss
Leggio spent the 1960s and early 1970s increasing the strength of the Corleonesi, murdering anyone who got in its way. In particular, he wanted control of the refining and trafficking of heroin that soon provided a huge source of income to the Sicilian Mafia.
He was captured in 1964 and charged with nine murders relating to his war with the Navarra faction, including the killings of Navarra and his friend, Lercara Friddi. He stood trial in late 1968, early 1969 along with many other defendants, but the trial was regarded as farcical, with reports of blatant witness intimidation and evidence tampering. For example, fragments of a broken car light found at the Navarra murder scene which had been identified as belonging to an Alfa Romeo car owned by Leggio had, by the time of the trial, been replaced by bits of a broken light from a completely different make of car.
Only a handful of defendents were found guilty; Leggio and Riina were amongst those acquitted.
A determined prosecutor named Cesare Terranova appealed against the acquittal and had Leggio indicted in 1970, once again for his role in the Navarra/Friddi killings. Leggio fled into hiding once again. He later moved to Rome, and then Milan, running a profitable kidnapping ring.
Life imprisonment
He was captured in Milan on May 16, 1974 and sent back to Sicily to stand trial once again for the Navarra/Friddi slaying. This time a guilty verdict was reached and Leggio was given two life sentences.
He is believed to have retained significant influence from behind bars, as have many other mobsters after imprisonment. However, by the end of the 1970s, his lieutenant Salvatore Riina was fully installed as the new boss of the Corleonisi.
Leggio was also said to be a multi-millionaire by the time of his arrest, having been raised in poverty. At the time of his capture, Italian law did not yet allow authorities to confiscate criminal's illicit fortunes, although this has since changed.
In the Maxi Trial of 1986/1987, Leggio faced charges of helping to run the Corleonesi from behind bars, including the accusation that he ordered the murder of prosecutor Cesare Terranova, who was shot dead in 1979. He acted as his own lawyer and defended himself, cross examining Tomasso Buscetta and other pentiti. He claimed he had been framed for political reasons. He was eventually acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence, although he still had his double life-sentence to serve and was returned to a maximum security prison in Sardinia where he indulged in his hobby of painting, in particular landscapes.
On November 16, 1993, Leggio died in prison from a heart attack, aged sixty-eight.
References
- Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (1995) Alexander Stille, Vintage ISBN 0099594919
- Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia (2004) John Dickie, Coronet, ISBN 0340824352