Many consider Luca Patti the first instance of a Sicilian mafioso in recorded history, but his ring appears to have had a predecessor, or possibly competition, in Corleone.
The first Mafia gang in Sicily
If you give them an inch
From the “inchino” this spring to the recent dissolution of Corleone’s city council, recent events in Corleone demonstrate the relevance of research into mafia genealogy. Science is cool, but also, sometimes boring. In order to bring some rigor to my work, and quantify some of my hunches, I decided last week that I need a... Continue Reading →
Legacy of the Rapanzino gang
While most of Rapanzino’s gang was exterminated by the police in the mid-1830s, their legacy continues, with a clear line of descent, all the way to the Five Families of New York and the Mafia in Corleone today. The Rapanzino gang of cattle thieves, active in the early 1830s in Palermo province, were closely related... Continue Reading →
A family business
Mafia leadership for the past hundred years in Corleone have all been related to one another, through blood and marriage. Cattle theft in Sicily, before the twentieth century, was like car theft today, in that it was a crime that required a village. A thief who takes a car needs a network of criminals to... Continue Reading →
The 1969 Corleonesi trial
In 1958, Luciano Leggio started a mafia war that lasted five years, and killed more than fifty people, starting with Dr. Michele Navarra, the former boss in Corleone. The victory was short lived, as police swept up dozens of mafiosi from Corleone and Palermo in the early 1960s. Three major trials were held in mainland Italian... Continue Reading →
Killer Queens
Are Toto Riina and Tommy Reina related? A few days ago, I discovered that I confused the histories of two different gangsters from Corleone, Toto Riina (b. 1930- ) and Luciano Leggio (1925-1993), in this blog, a couple of weeks ago. I wrote that Leggio’s father was killed in an explosion that was, in fact, based on... Continue Reading →
The physician and the patient
Dr. Michele Navarra and his successor, Luciano Leggio, dominated the Corleonesi Mafia after World War II. A few months before Domenico Liggio married, in the summer of 1834, he lived with his widowed mother and an older brother, Salvatore, near the ancient Ospedale dei Bianchi in Corleone: the same hospital Dr. Michele Navarra would run,... Continue Reading →
The Ficuzza
The woods to the northeast of Corleone were a natural place to hide stolen cattle.
Kissing cousins
Cousin marriage, and double in-law marriages, reinforced familial bonds among the Fratuzzi of Corleone.
The murder of Giovanni Vella
Even the biographies of well-known mafia figures like Giuseppe Morello are made up, in part, of rumors and legends. Morello was called “The Clutch Hand” because three of the fingers on his right hand were fused at birth. His birth defect did not prevent Morello from learning to write, or to fire a gun. It’s... Continue Reading →
Mafia Genealogy 