Francesco Turatello was an important Italian crime figure, and mob boss who operated during the seventies mainly in the city of Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

. He was popularly known by his pseudonym Francis Turatello. His nickname was "Faccia d'Angelo" (Angel Face).

Early Career

Born in Veneto

Veneto

Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...

, Turatello was the son of a maiden seamstress from Asiago

Asiago

Asiago is the name of both a minor township and the surrounding plateau region in the Province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of Northeastern Italy...

 in the Province of Vicenza

Province of Vicenza

The Province of Vicenza is a province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Its capital city is Vicenza.The province has an area of 2,723 km², and a total population of 840,000 . There are 121 comuni in the province...

 who returned her hometown during the war. According to some sources, he is the biological son of the powerful Italian-American Gambino family

Gambino crime family

The Gambino crime family is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia . The group is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the family at the time of the McClellan hearings in 1963...

 figure, Frank Coppola aka "Frankie Three Fingers". In any case, he was Coppola's godson. Turatello moved with his mother to Milan in his early childhood and settled in the district of Lambrate

Lambrate

Lambrate is a district of Milan, Italy, located within the Zone 3 administrative division, 6 km north-east of the city centre. It owes its name to the Lambro river that traverses the area. Lambrate houses one the major railway station of north-eastern Milan, the Stazione di Milano Lambrate...

. He became an amateur boxer in his youth and later made his first appearance in the local Milanese underworld as a petty car thief. Driven by a strong personality and a firm ambition to succeed, he rose up in position and increasingly began taking serious roles, eventually becoming the head of a criminal gang consisting mainly of immigrants from Catania

Catania

Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse. It is the capital of the homonymous province, and with 298,957 inhabitants it is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy.Catania is known to have a seismic history and...

, Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

.

Mob boss

His gang sought to control all the clandestine criminal rackets within the city as well as being the sole controller of prostitution

Prostitution

Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

. The gang made billions of lire from these rackets, and also participated in several robberies and kidnappings, with the complicity of the Banda dei Marsigliesi, headed by Albert Bergamelli. Turatello was the boss of all illegal rackets in the Po valley as far north as Milan and was a close protege of the Mafia.

Allies and Rivals

Turatello became infamous for his strong rivalry against Renato Vallanzasca

Renato Vallanzasca

Renato Vallanzasca Costantini is a notorious Italian mobster from Milan who was a powerful figure in the Milanese underworld during the 1970s...

 which generated a bloody feud with numerous victims on both sides. However, after both Turatello and Vallanzasca were arrested for their part in the gang war, they reconciled their differences and became close friends. Turatello was the witness to the marriage of Vallanzasca to Giuliana Brusa which was celebrated in prison.

Turatello had close allies and powerful contacts within the Sicilian Mafia, and throughout his criminal career was always in contact with Sicilian Mafiosi and Neapolitan Camorristi. He was a close ally of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata

Nuova Camorra Organizzata

The Nuova Camorra Organizzata was an Italian Camorra criminal organization founded in the late 1970s by a Neapolitan Camorrista, Raffaele Cutolo, in the region of Campania. It was also known by the initials NCO...

, headed by Raffaele Cutolo

Raffaele Cutolo

Raffaele Cutolo is an Italian crime boss and the charismatic leader of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. Cutolo has a variety of nicknames including "'o Vangelo" , "'o Principe" , "'o Professore" and "'o Monaco"...

. He was also a trusted friend of Luciano Liggio, the head of the Corleonesi

Corleonesi

The Corleonesi is the name given to a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was called the Corleonesi because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca...

 faction of the Sicilian Mafia. In fact, Liggio had himself put Turatello in charge of all drug trade in the region of Milan. Turatello has also been linked to many murky incidents of the history of Italy in the seventies, including the abduction and murder of former Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro

Aldo Moro

Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....

, and some criminal acts carried out by the Banda della Magliana

Banda della Magliana

The Banda della Magliana was an Italian criminal organization based in Rome, particularly active throughout the late 1970s until the early 1990s. Given by the media, the name refers to the original neighborhood, the Magliana, of most of its members....

 of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

Arrest

After being absconding for a long time, Francis Turatello was arrested on August 17, 1981 in Piazza Corduso in Milan. He was tried for a long list of crimes and was sentenced to a long period of detention coupled with a harsh prison time. He was successful in controlling his gang and coordinating his business activities in prison, but his position within the organization was usurped and overtaken by his former right-hand man, Angelo Epaminonda.

Assassination

On August 17, 1981, during the open yard exercise in the courtyard of Bad'e Carros, the high security prison in Nuoro

Nuoro

Nuoro is a city and comune in central-eastern Sardinia, Italy, situated on the slopes of the Monte Ortobene. It is the capital of the Province of Nuoro. With a population of 36,443 Nuoro is a city and comune (municipality) in central-eastern Sardinia, Italy, situated on the slopes of the Monte...

, Sardinia

Sardinia

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

, Turatello was ambushed by the NCO hitman Pasquale Barra

Pasquale Barra

Pasquale Barra is a former Italian Camorrista who was a senior member and hitman for the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , a Camorra organization in Naples. Barra has the distinction of being the first NCO member to become a pentito, when he decided to collaborate with Italian Justice in 1982.Barra...

 and Vincenzo Andraus and Antonino Faro, two well known assassins from Catania, Sicily. Turatello was unable to escape the ambush. Barra and Andraus held Turatello, while Faro stabbed him sixty times. In the ensuing confusion from the attack, Andraus was also wounded and would later receive minor surgery in the prison infirmary. After Turatello was dead, Faro disemboweled and chewed Turatello's intestines, then spat it out as a sign of contempt.

The murder was ordered by Raffaele Cutolo and the death sentence was passed by Carmela Provenzano, the wife of Pasquale D'Amico

Pasquale D'Amico

Pasquale D'Amico is a former Italian Camorrista who was a senior member of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , a Camorra organization in Naples. His nickname was "'o Cartunaro" . D'Amico defected from the NCO and subsequently became a pentito in 1983. Among the pentiti, D'Amico was one of the highest...

, a senior NCO figure. The motive for his murder is unknown. The murder of Turatello was done without the consent of the Sicilian Mafia, and as Turatello was a close friend of Luciano Liggio and Frank Coppola, it was an insult to their honor. As a result, the murder brought severe repercussions on the main hitman, Pasquale Barra, and would lead to his defection from the NCO and becoming a pentito

Pentito

Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...

. After Turatello's death, his successor Angelo Epaminonda also became a pentito.