This list of victims of the Sicilian Mafia includes people who have been killed by the Sicilian Mafia while opposing its rule. It does not include people killed in internal conflicts of the Mafia itself.
1890s
1893
February 1 – Emanuele Notarbartolo, former mayor of Palermo (1873–1876) and director of the Banco di Sicilia. He wanted to "clean" the management of the bank, damaging the Mafia political power.[1]
1900s
1905
October 14 – Luciano Nicoletti, peasant, militant of the Fasci Siciliani movement, engaged in struggles against large estates.[1] He was 54 years old when he died.
1906
January 13 – Andrea Orlando, doctor, city councilor. He supported the peasants in the struggles for "collective tenancy".[1]
1909
March 12 – Joseph Petrosino, a New York City police officer on a mission in Palermo to gather information from local police files to help deport Italian gangsters from New York as illegal immigrants.[1]
May 20 – Mariano Barbato and Giorgio Pecoraro, socialist militants from Piana dei Greci.[3]
1915
November 3 – Bernardino Verro, a Sicilian syndicalist and politician, involved in the Fasci Siciliani (Sicilian Leagues) a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration in 1891–1894, and the first socialist mayor of Corleone.[1]
1916
Thanksgiving Day- Gaetano Ingrassia is gunned down in San Francisco by The Black Hand gang members Pedone brothers. His daughter, Angelina Ingrassia, weds San Francisco city mayor, Joseph Lawrence Alioto’s uncle, Mariano Alioto the following year.
1917
Thanksgiving Day- Mariano Alioto, is murdered by Anthony Lipari, on Columbus Ave near Greenwich street at noon, as retaliation for testifying against three Pedone individuals; Anthony Pedone Sr, Anthony Pedone Jr. and Joseph Pedone, against his father-in-laws Gaetano Ingrassia’s murderers in criminal court the previous year. Three witnesses said they saw Lipara shoot Alioto and flee the scene before three citizens arrested him three blocks away. Brothers of deceased Mariano Alioto, Ignats and Giuseppe rushed the police station in attempt to avenge their brother but were apprehended and charged with carrying concealed weapons.
1919
January 29 – Giovanni Zangara, elected councilor and then alderman on the list of Bernardino Verro.[1]
September 22 – Giuseppe Rumore, secretary of the Lega di miglioramento (League of improvement) in Prizzi.[4]
May 1 – Margherita Clesceri, Giorgio Cusenza, Giovanni Megna, Francesco Vicari, Vito Allotta, Serafino Lascari, Filippo Di Salvo, Giuseppe Di Maggio, Castrense Intravaia, Giovanni Grifò and Vincenza La Fata, killed in the Portella della Ginestra massacre, during Labour Day celebrations in Sicily near Piana degli Albanesi.[11][12]
November 8 – Vittorio Pipitone, trade unionist.[1]
March 11 – Giuseppe Letizia, a shepherd boy who witnessed the murder of Placido Rizzotto, was killed by the doctor Michele Navarra with a lethal injection.[13]
April 1 – Calogero Cangelosi, secretary of the Camporeale Chamber of Labor.[1]
June 30 – Mario Malausa, Silvio Corrao, Calogero Vaccaro, Eugenio Altomare and Mario Farbelli from the Carabinieri, and Pasquale Nuccio and Giorgio Ciacci from the Army. Killed while defusing a car bomb intended for Mafia boss Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco in the so-called Ciaculli massacre.[17]
1970s
1970
September 16 – Mauro De Mauro, journalist for L'Ora in Palermo. He disappeared following his investigations on the mysterious death of Enrico Mattei and on the Golpe Borghese, a right wing coup attempt. De Mauro was allegedly murdered by the Mafia to cover up these events and possible political connections.[18]
October 27 – Giovanni Spampinato, journalist L'Ora who was killed while looking into the activities of neo-fascism in Sicily and Mafia smuggling activities along the east coast of Sicily.[20]
1977
August 20 – Giuseppe Russo, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Carabinieri, and Professor Filippo Costa.[21] Russo was a confidant of Mafia boss Giuseppe Di Cristina who warned against the growing power of the Corleonesi faction, who killed Russo.
July 21 – Boris Giuliano, a police chief from Palermo and head of Palermo's Flying Squad (Squadra mobile), while investigating heroin trafficking by the Mafia.[1]
September 25 – Judge Cesare Terranova and his driver, policeman Lenin Mancuso. Terranova had been the examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office and a former member of the Italian Antimafia Commission.[1]
August 6 – Judge Gaetano Costa, Chief Prosecutor of Palermo, after he signed the 53 arrest warrants against the heroin-trafficking network of the Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino clan in May 1980.[1]
1982
April 30 – Pio La Torre, regional secretary of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) and his driver Rosario Di Salvo. La Torre was killed after he initiated a law that introduced a new crime in the Italian legal system, mafia conspiracy, and the possibility for the courts to seize and to confiscate the assets of the persons belonging to the mafia conspiracy.[1]
June 16 – a squad of hitmen armed with AK-47 rifles kills Catanese boss Alfio Ferlito, who was transferred from Enna to the Trapani jail, and died with the three escort carabinieri Salvatore Raiti, Silvano Franzolin and Luigi Di Barca, and the driver Giuseppe Di Lavore in the so-called Circonvallazione massacre.[1]
August 12 – Paolo Giaccone, director of the institute of legal medicine.[1]
November 14 – Calogero Zucchetto, Police officer of the Palermo Flying Squad.[1]
1983
January 26 – Gian Giacomo Ciaccio Montalto, magistrate.[1]
June 13 – Captain of the Carabinieri Mario D'Aleo, Giuseppe Bommarito and Pietro Morici.[1]
July 29 – Judge Rocco Chinnici, two of his police escorts, Mario Trapassi and Salvatore Bartolotta, and the concierge of his apartment block, Stefano Li Sacchi are killed by a bomb in via Pipitone.[1] Chinnici had created the Antimafia Pool, a group of investigating magistrates who closely worked together investigating the Mafia.
1984
January 5 – Giuseppe Fava, an investigative journalist and founder of the I Siciliani monthly magazine in Catania. The magazine investigated Cosa Nostra and its tentacles in politics and business, in particular those of Sicily's biggest Catania-based construction firms.[26]
1985
April 2 – Barbara Asta, and her little sons, the twin-brothers Salvatore and Giuseppe, by a car bomb intended to kill the magistrate Carlo Palermo in the so-called Pizzolungo massacre.[1]
July 28 – Giuseppe "Beppe" Montana, a flying squad officer in Palermo in charge of the hunt for Mafia fugitives.[1]
August 6 – Antonino "Ninni" Cassarà, police chief in Palermo and his bodyguard Roberto Antiochia. Cassarà drew up the 'Michele Greco + 161' report in July 1982, listing 162 Mafiosi who warranted arrest.[1] The report was the start of an investigation that was to become the Maxi Trial, where most of the leadership of the Mafia were tried. He was massacred with his partner Roberto Antiochia by a team of gunmen armed with AK-47 outside his home in front of his horrified wife.
December 12 – Graziella Campagna, a 17-year-old girl who found a list of names of mafiosi inside of a coat at the laundromat where she worked. She recognized it as being important information and gave it to her brother who was a Carabinieri.[1] Shortly after, she was tricked to get into a car with her killer, and she was led to an area in which she tried to run away, but was killed by five blasts of a shotgun.
January 12 – Giuseppe Insalaco, the former mayor of Palermo. During the brief stint as mayor in 1984 he had tried to clean up the area of city contracts.[1]
September 25 – Judge Antonino Saetta and his son Stefano as they are returning to Palermo after a weekend in the country.[1] Saetta was a member of the Palermo Court of Appeal. He was scheduled to hear the appeal of the Maxi Trial and had shown to be incorruptible.
September 26 – Mauro Rostagno, a former radical student of Lotta Continua and journalist who had started a drug rehabilitation centre in Trapani.[1] He denounced Mafia drug traffickers on the local television.
1989
April 21 – Gianluigi Barletta, a ten-year-old boy[28] wounded by a member of clan Cappello in Catania.
June 9 – Salvatore Incardona, operator of the Vittoria fruit and vegetable market.[1]
August 5 – Antonino Agostino, a police officer shot to death with his wife outside his home, he was killed for investigating the attempted murder of judge Giovanni Falcone.
1990s
1990
May 9 – Judge Giovanni Bonsignore, government official.[1]
August 9 – Judge Antonino Scopelliti, a Supreme Court prosecutor murdered by the 'Ndrangheta on behalf of the Mafia while reviewing the final sentence of the Maxi Trial for the Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione).[29]
August 29 – Libero Grassi, a businessman from Palermo, who was killed after taking a solitary stand against their demands for extortion, known as "pizzo".[30]
1992
March 12 – Salvo Lima, a Christian Democrat politician and former mayor of Palermo, three weeks before Italy's national election of 1992. The Mafia felt betrayed by Lima and his political patron Giulio Andreotti. In their opinion they had failed to block the confirmation of the sentence of the Maxi Trial against the Mafia by the Court of Cassation (court of final appeal) in January 1992.[31]
April 4 – Marshal of the Carabinieri Giuliano Guazzelli.[1]
May 23 – Judge Giovanni Falcone, with his wife, judge Francesca Morvillo and their escort of three policemen: Rocco Di Cillo, Antonio Montinaro and Vito Schifani, by a car bomb in what is known as the Capaci bombing. Falcone had been a member Antimafia pool of the prosecution office in Palermo that laid the groundwork for the Maxi Trial against the Sicilian Mafia.[31]
September 17 – Ignazio Salvo, a wealthy businessman from the town of Salemi with strong connections with the Mafia and the Christian Democrat party, in particular with the former mayor of Palermo, Salvo Lima, and Giulio Andreotti. He was killed because they had failed to block the confirmation of the sentence of the Maxi Trial against the Mafia by the Court of Cassation (court of final appeal) in January 1992.[31]
July 19 – Judge Paolo Borsellino, and his escort of five policemen: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Claudio Traina in the so-called Via D'Amelio bombing, less than two months after the death of his colleague and friend Falcone, with whom he was part of the Antimafia pool.[31]
July 26 – Rita Atria, a witness of justice in a major Mafia investigation in Sicily. She committed suicide a week after the Mafia killed Antimafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino.[32]
January 8 – Giuseppe Alfano, journalist of the newspaper La Sicilia.[1]
May 27 – Angela Fiume, Fabrizio Nencioni, Dario Capolicchio, 50-day-old Caterina Nencioni and nine-year-old Nadia Nencioni in the so-called Via dei Georgofili massacre against the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in a series of terrorist bomb attacks after the arrest of Mafia boss Totò Riina in January 1993.[33]
July 27 – The firemen Carlo La Catena, Stefano Picerno and Sergio Pasotto, the traffic policeman Alessandro Ferrari, and Driss Moussafir, a homeless Moroccan citizen, in the so-called Via Palestro massacre in Milan in a series of terrorist bomb attacks after the arrest of Mafia boss Totò Riina in January 1993.[34]
September 15 – Pino Puglisi, the priest of San Gaetano's Parish in the Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio, the stronghold of Graviano clan, who spoke out against the Mafia.[35]
1995
March 24 – Luigi Botenza, prison police officer.[1]
October 8 – Domenico Geraci, member of the Italian Popular Party, candidate for mayor's chair.[1]
2000s
2000
February 5 – Salvatore Vaccaro Notte, foreman of foresters and brother of Vincenzo Vaccaro Notte, was killed for not having bowed to the influence of a local gang better known as "Cosca dei Pidocchi" (Gang of the lice).
2004
February 11 – Attilio Manca, a medical urologist, was found dead in his house in Viterbo. The autopsy showed the presence of drugs in his body and it was initially thought that this was a case of overdose. But in fact, he was perhaps killed to cover up an action by the boss Bernardo Provenzano in Marseilles.
2006
August 22 – Giuseppe D'Angelo, a pensioner, was accidentally killed in front of a greengrocer in the Sferracavallo district of Palermo because he was mistaken for the boss Bartolomeo Spatola.
2010s
2010
February 26 – Enzo Fragalà, a lawyer and a politician, was killed because he instructed his clients to be open to the judiciary.
^Arrigo Petacco (2004). Mondadori (ed.). Il prefetto di ferro. L'uomo di Mussolini che mise in ginocchio la mafia (in Italian). Mondadori. ISBN978-88-04-53275-0.
