Mauro De Mauro
Encyclopedia
Mauro De Mauro was an Italian journalist. He disappeared in September 1970 and his body has not yet been found. His disappearance and probable death remains one of the unsolved mysteries in Italian history.
Several explanations for his disappearance are current. One is related to the death of the president of Italy's state-owned oil and gas conglomerate ENI
, Enrico Mattei
. Another is that De Mauro had discovered drug trafficking between Sicily and the United States, and a third with the Golpe Borghese
a planned right-wing coup d'état
(the plan failed in December 1970). Apparently De Mauro was convinced that he had got hold of a story of a lifetime. Before his disappearance he told colleagues at the newspaper L'Ora, “I have a scoop that is going to shake Italy.”
, Apulia
. His father Oscar De Mauro belonged to a reputable family of doctors and pharmacists that had been living in Foggia for several generations. His mother Clementina Rispoli came from Naples and was a math teacher. His younger brother Tullio De Mauro
(born March 31, 1932) is a linguist and politician, who became Minister of Education in 2000-2001.
De Mauro was a supporter of the Fascist regime
of Benito Mussolini
. After the armistice with the Allied Forces in September 1943, he choose to follow the hard-line fascist regime of the Italian Social Republic
(Repubblica Sociale Italiana – RSI) in German-held northern Italy. During the German military occupation of Rome
in 1943-1944, he was vice-commander of Police under the Commander Caruso, informant of the SS Captain Erich Priebke
and of the Colonel Herbert Kappler
. He was also a member of the Koch Band
, a special unit of the Home Security in the Italian Social Republic. Using a variety of aliases (Roberto Marini, Mauro Mauri, Mariani, etc.), De Mauro managed to infiltrate several resistance organizations (in Rome and Milan) to hunt the partisans.
He and his wife Elda volunteered to join the Decima MAS, a brutal anti-partisan force under the command of prince Junio Valerio Borghese
, also known as the "Black Prince". De Mauro was arrested during the liberation in Milan
in April 1945. He escaped from the prison camp Coltano (Tuscany) in December 1945 and took refuge in Naples
with his young wife (where he also had two daughters, Junia and Valeria, named after Junio Valerio Borghese) Accused of having participated in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, he was absolved by the court in 1948.
in Sicily
under an assumed name, and worked for local newspapers such as Il Tempo di Sicilia, and Il Mattino di Sicilia. In 1959 he started working for L'Ora, a Communist-oriented paper. Other journalists were puzzled about De Mauro's presence at the newspaper: he had been a supporter of Mussolini until the bitter end and fought in the brutal war against the anti-Fascist partisans. Rumour had it that his nose had been broken by partisans.
At L'Ora, De Mauro could exercise his skills as a successful investigative reporter, in particular on issues related to the Sicilian Mafia
. He wrote on drug trafficking and the Sack of Palermo
, the construction boom in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the destruction of the city's green belt and ancient villas. He also published articles about the collusion between the Mafia and politics. In 1962, he was the first to publish a detailed map of the Sicilian Mafia, which was confirmed 22 years later by the Mafia pentito
(turncoat) Tommaso Buscetta
in his testimony to Judge Giovanni Falcone
.
In January 1962 he published a series of articles in L'Ora disclosing the testimony of Melchiorre Allegra, a medical doctor and a member of the Mafia from 1916 until his arrest in 1937. Upon being arrested, Allegra disclosed his membership and testified about Mafia activities. It was one of the first testimonies about the Mafia from within. In 1960 he was among the winners of the Premiolino
, one of the most important Italian journalism awards, for his crime investigations.
In 1962 he investigated the mysterious death of Enrico Mattei
, the powerful president of Italy's state-owned oil and gas conglomerate ENI
who died in suspicious circumstances in a plane crash on October 27, 1962. In September 1970 he was again investigating the case, upon request of the movie director Francesco Rosi
for the movie Il caso Mattei, which would be released in 1972. During his controversial tenure of ENI, Mattei had made many enemies. He tried to break the oligopoly
of the 'Seven Sisters
' (a term Mattei coined to refer to the dominant oil companies of the mid-20th century), and brokered an oil import deal with the Soviet Union
in the middle of the Cold War
over intense protests from NATO and the U.S. in 1959, while supporting independence movements against colonial powers such as Algeria
.
The US National Security Council
described Mattei as an irritation and an obstacle in a classified report from 1958. The French could not forgive him for doing business with the pro-independence movement in Algeria. Responsibility for his death has been attributed to the CIA, to the French extreme-nationalist group, the OAS
, and to the Sicilian Mafia.
In May 1994 Mafia turncoat Buscetta declared that the Sicilian Mafia had been involved in the murder of Mattei. According to Buscetta, Mattei was killed at the request of the American Cosa Nostra because his oil policies had damaged important American interests in the Middle East. The American Mafia in turn was possibly doing a favour to the large oil companies. Buscetta claimed that the killing was organized by Mafia bosses Salvatore Greco "Ciaschiteddu", Stefano Bontade
and Giuseppe Di Cristina
on the request of Angelo Bruno
, a Sicilian born Mafia boss from Philadelphia. Gaetano Iannì, another pentito, declared that a special agreement had been achieved between Cosa Nostra and "some foreigners" for the elimination of Mattei. Buscetta also claimed that De Mauro was killed because of his investigations into the death of Mattei.
organized the kidnap, because De Mauro’s investigations into the death of Mattei came very close to the Mafia, and Bontate’s own role in the affair. Another pentito, Francesco Di Carlo
, declared in 2001 that De Mauro was killed because he had learned that one of his former fascist friends, Prince Junio Valerio Borghese
, was planning a coup d'état (the so-called Golpe Borghese
) with like-minded army officers determined to stop what they considered as Italy's drift to the left. Yet another pentito, Rosario Naimo
, who started to collaborate with the Italian authorities after his arrest in October 2010, said that the journalist was killed because of his investigative reporting that damaged the Mafia.
The investigation into the disappearance of De Mauro were seriously hampered due to deviations by people within the Italian police forces and secret services. According to police inspector Boris Giuliano
, who was involved in the investigation, there was "someone at the ministry in Rome that does not want to go to the bottom of the death of De Mauro." According to Giuliano an order to scale down the investigation was issued by the head of the secret service, Vito Miceli
, allegedly involved in the Borghese coup. Miceli had been in contact with the mafiosi Giuseppe Calderone
and Giuseppe Di Cristina
who wanted to support the coup.
The order for the killing of De Mauro came from the heads of the Sicilian Mafia Commission
, Stefano Bontate, Gaetano Badalamenti
and Salvatore Riina
, according to Di Carlo and Buscetta. Both Di Carlo and Naimo say that De Mauro was kidnapped by Emanuele D'Agostino, a mafioso from Bontade’s Santa Maria di Gesù Family.
De Mauro’s body has never been found, a victim of the so-called lupara bianca
, despite intensive search efforts by Palermo police assisted by top-level forces from Rome
and even a special investigative committee of the Italian Parliament. According to Di Carlo, the remains of De Mauro were buried under a bridge over the Oreto river near Palermo. However, the police, after a search, did not find the body. The pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia
later explained why. He had been ordered by Bontade in 1977 or 1978 to dig up several bodies at the bridge and dissolve them in acid. According to the new testimony of the pentito Naimo, De Mauro was taken to a terrain in Pallavicino neighbourhood in Palermo where the Mafia boss Francesco Madonia
owned a chicken farm. He was killed there and dumped in a pit.
in the Second Mafia War
; Badalamenti died in a US prison in April 2004.)
The “awkward journalist” (giornalista scomodo) – as he became known – was kidnapped and killed because the Mafia and their backers wanted to know his sources of confidential and potentially devastating information, according to public prosecutor Antonio Ingroia in his closing speech in March 2011. Perhaps because of information about the disappearance of Eni president Mattei, on which he was working for the film by Francesco Rosi. Perhaps the Borghese coup planned shortly thereafter in which the Mafia appeared alongside nostalgic fascists. Perhaps other events that concerned the "friends in Rome" of the Corleonesi
headed by Riina. Perhaps because of a combination of these multiple motives. Cosa Nostra was behind the murder of De Mauro, but there were other backgrounds and individuals, allied with the Mafia, such as deviated freemasons and corrupt public officials. "De Mauro was not killed out of revenge, but to prevent harm to the Mafia. The Mafia did not just execute instructions of others, but also because his investigations affected Cosa Nostra itself and other powers associated with it," according to Ingroia.
Ingroia said the investigations for the trial had unearthed an institutional cover-up in the initial probe into De Mauro's disappearance.
De Mauro’s disappearance and likely death remains one of the unsolved mysteries in Italian history. The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia
once summarized the puzzle of De Mauro’s death: "He said the right thing to the wrong man and the wrong thing to the right man."
Several explanations for his disappearance are current. One is related to the death of the president of Italy's state-owned oil and gas conglomerate ENI
Eni
Eni S.p.A. is an Italian multinational oil and gas company, present in 70 countries, and currently Italy's largest industrial company with a market capitalization of 87.7 billion euros , as of July 24, 2008...
, Enrico Mattei
Enrico Mattei
Enrico Mattei was an Italian public administrator. After World War II he was given the task of dismantling the Italian Petroleum Agency Agip, a state enterprise established by the Fascist regime. Instead Mattei enlarged and reorganized it into the National Fuel Trust Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi...
. Another is that De Mauro had discovered drug trafficking between Sicily and the United States, and a third with the Golpe Borghese
Golpe Borghese
The Golpe Borghese was a failed Italian coup d'état allegedly planned for the night of 7 or 8 December 1970. It was named after Junio Valerio Borghese, an Italian World War II commander of the notorious Xª MAS unit, the "Black Prince", convicted of war crimes, but still a hero in the eyes of many...
a planned right-wing coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
(the plan failed in December 1970). Apparently De Mauro was convinced that he had got hold of a story of a lifetime. Before his disappearance he told colleagues at the newspaper L'Ora, “I have a scoop that is going to shake Italy.”
Fascist past
De Mauro was born in 1921 in FoggiaFoggia
Foggia is a city and comune of Apulia, Italy, capital of the province of Foggia. Foggia is the main city of a plain called Tavoliere, also known as the "granary of Italy".-History:...
, Apulia
Apulia
Apulia is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south. Its most southern portion, known as Salento peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy. The region comprises , and...
. His father Oscar De Mauro belonged to a reputable family of doctors and pharmacists that had been living in Foggia for several generations. His mother Clementina Rispoli came from Naples and was a math teacher. His younger brother Tullio De Mauro
Tullio De Mauro
Tullio De Mauro is an Italian linguist and politician.He was born in Torre Annunziata, Province of Naples. He in 1963 he published the monumental Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita...
(born March 31, 1932) is a linguist and politician, who became Minister of Education in 2000-2001.
De Mauro was a supporter of the Fascist regime
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
. After the armistice with the Allied Forces in September 1943, he choose to follow the hard-line fascist regime of the Italian Social Republic
Italian Social Republic
The Italian Social Republic was a puppet state of Nazi Germany led by the "Duce of the Nation" and "Minister of Foreign Affairs" Benito Mussolini and his Republican Fascist Party. The RSI exercised nominal sovereignty in northern Italy but was largely dependent on the Wehrmacht to maintain control...
(Repubblica Sociale Italiana – RSI) in German-held northern Italy. During the German military occupation 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...
in 1943-1944, he was vice-commander of Police under the Commander Caruso, informant of the SS Captain Erich Priebke
Erich Priebke
Erich Priebke is a former Hauptsturmführer in the Waffen SS. In 1996 he was convicted of war crimes in Italy, for participating in the massacre at the Ardeatine caves in Rome, on March 24, 1944...
and of the Colonel Herbert Kappler
Herbert Kappler
Herbert Kappler , was the head of German police and security services in Rome during World War II...
. He was also a member of the Koch Band
Pietro Koch
Pietro Koch was an Italian soldier and leader of the Banda Koch, a group notorious for its anti-partisan activity in the Republic of Salò.The son of a German Navy officer, Koch was born in Benevento...
, a special unit of the Home Security in the Italian Social Republic. Using a variety of aliases (Roberto Marini, Mauro Mauri, Mariani, etc.), De Mauro managed to infiltrate several resistance organizations (in Rome and Milan) to hunt the partisans.
He and his wife Elda volunteered to join the Decima MAS, a brutal anti-partisan force under the command of prince Junio Valerio Borghese
Junio Valerio Borghese
Prince Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese was an Italian Navy commander during the regime of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and was a prominent hard-line fascist politician in post-war Italy.-Early career:Junio Valerio Borghese was born in Artena, Province of Rome, Kingdom of Italy...
, also known as the "Black Prince". De Mauro was arrested during the liberation in 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 ,...
in April 1945. He escaped from the prison camp Coltano (Tuscany) in December 1945 and took refuge in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
with his young wife (where he also had two daughters, Junia and Valeria, named after Junio Valerio Borghese) Accused of having participated in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, he was absolved by the court in 1948.
In Sicily
In 1948, De Mauro moved to PalermoPalermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
in 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,...
under an assumed name, and worked for local newspapers such as Il Tempo di Sicilia, and Il Mattino di Sicilia. In 1959 he started working for L'Ora, a Communist-oriented paper. Other journalists were puzzled about De Mauro's presence at the newspaper: he had been a supporter of Mussolini until the bitter end and fought in the brutal war against the anti-Fascist partisans. Rumour had it that his nose had been broken by partisans.
At L'Ora, De Mauro could exercise his skills as a successful investigative reporter, in particular on issues related to the Sicilian Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
. He wrote on drug trafficking and the Sack of Palermo
Sack of Palermo
The Sack of Palermo or scempio in Italian is the popular term for the construction boom from the 1950s through the mid 1980s that led to the destruction of the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks...
, the construction boom in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the destruction of the city's green belt and ancient villas. He also published articles about the collusion between the Mafia and politics. In 1962, he was the first to publish a detailed map of the Sicilian Mafia, which was confirmed 22 years later by the Mafia 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...
(turncoat) Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta was a Sicilian mafioso. Although he was not the first pentito in the Italian witness protection program, he is widely recognized as the first important one breaking omertà...
in his testimony to Judge Giovanni Falcone
Giovanni Falcone
Giovanni Falcone was an Sicilian/Italian prosecuting magistrate born in Palermo, Sicily. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Mafia in Sicily...
.
In January 1962 he published a series of articles in L'Ora disclosing the testimony of Melchiorre Allegra, a medical doctor and a member of the Mafia from 1916 until his arrest in 1937. Upon being arrested, Allegra disclosed his membership and testified about Mafia activities. It was one of the first testimonies about the Mafia from within. In 1960 he was among the winners of the Premiolino
Premiolino
The Premiolino is the oldestand one of the most importantItalian journalism award. It is made annually to six journalists from print media and television for their career achievements and their contributions to the freedom of the press.- History :...
, one of the most important Italian journalism awards, for his crime investigations.
The Mattei affair
Enrico Mattei
Enrico Mattei was an Italian public administrator. After World War II he was given the task of dismantling the Italian Petroleum Agency Agip, a state enterprise established by the Fascist regime. Instead Mattei enlarged and reorganized it into the National Fuel Trust Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi...
, the powerful president of Italy's state-owned oil and gas conglomerate ENI
Eni
Eni S.p.A. is an Italian multinational oil and gas company, present in 70 countries, and currently Italy's largest industrial company with a market capitalization of 87.7 billion euros , as of July 24, 2008...
who died in suspicious circumstances in a plane crash on October 27, 1962. In September 1970 he was again investigating the case, upon request of the movie director Francesco Rosi
Francesco Rosi
Francesco Rosi is an Italian film director. He is the father of actress Carolina Rosi.-Biography:After studying Law, but hoping to study film, Rosi entered the industry as an assistant to Luchino Visconti on La Terra trema...
for the movie Il caso Mattei, which would be released in 1972. During his controversial tenure of ENI, Mattei had made many enemies. He tried to break the oligopoly
Oligopoly
An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers . The word is derived, by analogy with "monopoly", from the Greek ὀλίγοι "few" + πόλειν "to sell". Because there are few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others...
of the 'Seven Sisters
Seven Sisters (oil companies)
The "Seven Sisters" was a term coined in the 1950s by businessman Enrico Mattei, then-head of the Italian state oil company Eni, to describe the seven oil companies which formed the "Consortium for Iran" and dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s...
' (a term Mattei coined to refer to the dominant oil companies of the mid-20th century), and brokered an oil import deal with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in the middle of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
over intense protests from NATO and the U.S. in 1959, while supporting independence movements against colonial powers such as Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
.
The US National Security Council
National Security Council
A National Security Council is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security...
described Mattei as an irritation and an obstacle in a classified report from 1958. The French could not forgive him for doing business with the pro-independence movement in Algeria. Responsibility for his death has been attributed to the CIA, to the French extreme-nationalist group, the OAS
Organisation armée secrète
The Organisation de l'armée secrète was a short-lived, French far-right nationalist militant and underground organization during the Algerian War . The OAS used armed struggle in an attempt to prevent Algeria's independence...
, and to the Sicilian Mafia.
In May 1994 Mafia turncoat Buscetta declared that the Sicilian Mafia had been involved in the murder of Mattei. According to Buscetta, Mattei was killed at the request of the American Cosa Nostra because his oil policies had damaged important American interests in the Middle East. The American Mafia in turn was possibly doing a favour to the large oil companies. Buscetta claimed that the killing was organized by Mafia bosses Salvatore Greco "Ciaschiteddu", Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He was the capomafia of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo...
and Giuseppe Di Cristina
Giuseppe Di Cristina
Giuseppe Di Cristina was a powerful mafioso from Riesi in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, southern Italy...
on the request of Angelo Bruno
Angelo Bruno
Angelo "The Gentle Don" Bruno was a Sicilian-American mobster who ran the Philadelphia crime family for two decades. Bruno gained his nickname and reputation due to his preference for conciliation over violence.-Early years:Born in Villalba, Sicily, Bruno emigrated to the United States in his...
, a Sicilian born Mafia boss from Philadelphia. Gaetano Iannì, another pentito, declared that a special agreement had been achieved between Cosa Nostra and "some foreigners" for the elimination of Mattei. Buscetta also claimed that De Mauro was killed because of his investigations into the death of Mattei.
Disappearance
De Mauro was kidnapped on the evening of September 16, 1970, while coming back home from work, in the via delle Magnolie in Palermo. Buscetta claimed that Mafia boss Stefano BontadeStefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He was the capomafia of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo...
organized the kidnap, because De Mauro’s investigations into the death of Mattei came very close to the Mafia, and Bontate’s own role in the affair. Another pentito, Francesco Di Carlo
Francesco Di Carlo
Francesco Di Carlo is a member of the Mafia who turned state witness in 1996...
, declared in 2001 that De Mauro was killed because he had learned that one of his former fascist friends, Prince Junio Valerio Borghese
Junio Valerio Borghese
Prince Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese was an Italian Navy commander during the regime of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and was a prominent hard-line fascist politician in post-war Italy.-Early career:Junio Valerio Borghese was born in Artena, Province of Rome, Kingdom of Italy...
, was planning a coup d'état (the so-called Golpe Borghese
Golpe Borghese
The Golpe Borghese was a failed Italian coup d'état allegedly planned for the night of 7 or 8 December 1970. It was named after Junio Valerio Borghese, an Italian World War II commander of the notorious Xª MAS unit, the "Black Prince", convicted of war crimes, but still a hero in the eyes of many...
) with like-minded army officers determined to stop what they considered as Italy's drift to the left. Yet another pentito, Rosario Naimo
Rosario Naimo
Rosario Naimo is a member of the Sicilian Mafia, also known as Saro or Saruzzo. He was seen as an important go-between between the Sicilian and American Mafia, closely related with the Gambino crime family...
, who started to collaborate with the Italian authorities after his arrest in October 2010, said that the journalist was killed because of his investigative reporting that damaged the Mafia.
The investigation into the disappearance of De Mauro were seriously hampered due to deviations by people within the Italian police forces and secret services. According to police inspector Boris Giuliano
Boris Giuliano
Giorgio Boris Giuliano was a police chief from Palermo, Sicily. He was the head of Palermo's Flying Squad ....
, who was involved in the investigation, there was "someone at the ministry in Rome that does not want to go to the bottom of the death of De Mauro." According to Giuliano an order to scale down the investigation was issued by the head of the secret service, Vito Miceli
Vito Miceli
Vito Miceli was an Italian general and politician. He was chief of the SIOS , Italian Army Intelligence's Service from 1969 and SID's head from October 18, 1970 to 1974...
, allegedly involved in the Borghese coup. Miceli had been in contact with the mafiosi Giuseppe Calderone
Giuseppe Calderone
Giuseppe “Pippo” Calderone was an influential Sicilian mafioso from Catania. He became the ‘secretary’ of the interprovincial Sicilian Mafia Commission, formed around 1975 on his instigation. Its purpose was to coordinate the provincial Mafia commissions and avoid conflicts over public contracts...
and Giuseppe Di Cristina
Giuseppe Di Cristina
Giuseppe Di Cristina was a powerful mafioso from Riesi in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, southern Italy...
who wanted to support the coup.
The order for the killing of De Mauro came from the heads of the Sicilian Mafia Commission
Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra...
, Stefano Bontate, Gaetano Badalamenti
Gaetano Badalamenti
Gaetano Badalamenti was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s...
and Salvatore Riina
Salvatore Riina
Salvatore "Totò" Riina is a member of the Sicilian Mafia who became the most powerful member of the criminal organization in the early 1980s. Fellow mobsters nicknamed him The Beast due to his violent nature, or sometimes The Short One due to his diminutive stature...
, according to Di Carlo and Buscetta. Both Di Carlo and Naimo say that De Mauro was kidnapped by Emanuele D'Agostino, a mafioso from Bontade’s Santa Maria di Gesù Family.
De Mauro’s body has never been found, a victim of the so-called lupara bianca
Lupara
Lupara is an Italian word used to refer to a sawn-off shotgun of the break-open type. It is traditionally associated with Cosa Nostra, the Italian organized crime group dominant in Sicily for their use of it in vendettas, defense—such as its use against Mussolini's army when he decided to break up...
, despite intensive search efforts by Palermo police assisted by top-level forces from 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...
and even a special investigative committee of the Italian Parliament. According to Di Carlo, the remains of De Mauro were buried under a bridge over the Oreto river near Palermo. However, the police, after a search, did not find the body. The pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia
Francesco Marino Mannoia
Francesco Marino Mannoia is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who became a pentito in 1989. His nickname was Mozzarella. He is considered to be one of the most reliable government witnesses against the Mafia...
later explained why. He had been ordered by Bontade in 1977 or 1978 to dig up several bodies at the bridge and dissolve them in acid. According to the new testimony of the pentito Naimo, De Mauro was taken to a terrain in Pallavicino neighbourhood in Palermo where the Mafia boss Francesco Madonia
Francesco Madonia
Francesco Ciccio Madonia was the Mafia boss of the San Lorenzo-Pallavicino area in Palermo. In 1978 he became a member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission....
owned a chicken farm. He was killed there and dumped in a pit.
Trial
In April 2006 a trial on De Mauro’s murder started at the Court of Palermo with the former Mafia boss of bosses Riina as the only defendant. In 2011 the new Mafia turncoat Naimo testified at the trial saying that the journalist was killed by the Mafia on the orders of Riina. (D'Agostino and Bontate were killed by Riina’s CorleonesiCorleonesi
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...
in the Second Mafia War
Second Mafia War
The Second Mafia War was a conflict within the Sicilian Mafia, mostly taking place in the early 1980s. As with any criminal organization, the history of the Sicilian Mafia is replete with conflicts and power struggles, and the violence that results from them, but these are generally localised and...
; Badalamenti died in a US prison in April 2004.)
The “awkward journalist” (giornalista scomodo) – as he became known – was kidnapped and killed because the Mafia and their backers wanted to know his sources of confidential and potentially devastating information, according to public prosecutor Antonio Ingroia in his closing speech in March 2011. Perhaps because of information about the disappearance of Eni president Mattei, on which he was working for the film by Francesco Rosi. Perhaps the Borghese coup planned shortly thereafter in which the Mafia appeared alongside nostalgic fascists. Perhaps other events that concerned the "friends in Rome" 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...
headed by Riina. Perhaps because of a combination of these multiple motives. Cosa Nostra was behind the murder of De Mauro, but there were other backgrounds and individuals, allied with the Mafia, such as deviated freemasons and corrupt public officials. "De Mauro was not killed out of revenge, but to prevent harm to the Mafia. The Mafia did not just execute instructions of others, but also because his investigations affected Cosa Nostra itself and other powers associated with it," according to Ingroia.
Ingroia said the investigations for the trial had unearthed an institutional cover-up in the initial probe into De Mauro's disappearance.
Mystery continues
On June 10, 2011, Riina was acquitted of charges for ordering the kidnap and killing of De Mauro by the Court in Palermo because of insufficient evidence. "It's certainly a surprise, but we'll see the reasons for this ruling," said Franca De Mauro, daughter of the journalist. "I am very upset because after 40 years we still have no answer about what happened that day."De Mauro’s disappearance and likely death remains one of the unsolved mysteries in Italian history. The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia was an Italian writer, novelist, essayist, playwright and politician. Some of his works have been made into films, including Open Doors and Il giorno della civetta .- Biography :Sciascia was born in Racalmuto, Sicily...
once summarized the puzzle of De Mauro’s death: "He said the right thing to the wrong man and the wrong thing to the right man."