Salvatore Contorno
Encyclopedia
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,...
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...
who turned into a state witness against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of 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...
. He gave detailed accounts of the inner-workings of the Sicilian Mafia. His testimonies were crucial in the Maxi Trial
Maxi Trial
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant...
against the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo and the Pizza Connection
Pizza Connection Trial
The Pizza Connection Trial was one of the longest criminal jury trials on record in the district of Manhattan. It took place between October 24, 1985 and March 2, 1987-Scope of the trial:...
trial in New York in the mid 1980s.
Early Mafia career
Contorno was born in 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 1975, the butcher Totuccio Contorno was initiated in the Santa Maria di Gesù Mafia family in Palermo, then led by 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...
, an influential member 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...
. Contorno and Bontade used to be hunting companions in the 1960s. Although he was just a soldier in the Mafia family, Contorno reported directly to the boss Bontade. He was one of Bontade’s trusted hitmen.
Contorno became a cigarette smuggler and heroin trafficker. His cousins, the Grado brothers imported morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
base from Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, which was refined into heroin in laboratories on Sicily. He was also involved in kidnapping, for which he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. From 1976-79 Contorno was in compulsory internal exile in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
after completing a prison term for belonging to a criminal organisation. However, he frequently returned to Palermo. At the time he was bankrupt, because his frozen-meat business had failed. He needed to lend money to invest in heroin shipments.
Second Mafia War
During the Second Mafia War — when the Corleonesi Mafia clan of Salvatore RiinaSalvatore 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...
and Bernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of having been the head of the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the village of Corleone, and de facto capo di tutti capi of the entire Sicilian Mafia until his arrest in 2006.His nickname is Binnu u tratturi...
attacked the established Mafia families of Palermo — the Corleonesi killed Contorno’s boss, 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...
, in April 1981. They went on to eliminate other members of the Santa Maria di Gesù family that were lured to the estate of Michele Greco
Michele Greco
Michele Greco was a member of the Sicilian Mafia, previously incarcerated for multiple murders. His nickname was "il Papa" because of his ability to mediate between different Mafia families...
where they were wiped out. Contorno did not turn up to the fateful meeting at Greco's estate. He sensed trouble and went into hiding.
On July 25, 1981, Contorno narrowly escaped a murder attempt by Pino Greco "scarpuzzedda" and Giuseppe Lucchese
Giuseppe Lucchese
Giuseppe Lucchese is a member of the Sicilian Mafia from the Brancaccio neighbourhood in Palermo. He was one of the favourite hitmen of the Corleonesi, headed by Totò Riina, during the Second Mafia War in 1981-83....
— the favourite hitmen of the Corleonesi. The Corleonesi employed a scorched earth policy to hunt down Contorno, killing his relatives and friends, to prevent them from hiding him. Despite this approach, they were unable to find him, which earned Contorno the nickname Coriolano della Floresta, a kind of popular Sicilian version of Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
.
Police informer
While in hiding from both the authorities and the Corleonesi, Contorno sent anonymous letters to the police, revealing information on the Mafia, its members, the various factions and the violent turmoil it was undergoing. Police Superintendent Antonino Ninni Cassarà developed a relationship with Contorno as an informant, code-naming him Fonte di Prima Luce (Source of First Light).Contorno was arrested on March 23, 1982 in Rome where he had gone to prepare the murder of Giuseppe Pippo Calò
Giuseppe Calò
Giuseppe 'Pippo' Calò is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was referred to as the "Mafia's Cashier" because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering....
who Contorno held responsible for the murder of his boss 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...
. "Too bad I didn’t succeed," he said during the Maxi Trial
Maxi Trial
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant...
. When he was captured, police found several weapons, two bulletproof cars, tens of thousands of dollars in cash, 140 kilograms of hashish and two kilos of heroin. The arrest probably saved his life, making Contorno one of the few survivors of the losing factions in the Second Mafia War.
Contorno's revelations were the first time the authorities really learned of Michele Greco
Michele Greco
Michele Greco was a member of the Sicilian Mafia, previously incarcerated for multiple murders. His nickname was "il Papa" because of his ability to mediate between different Mafia families...
's high-ranking membership of the Mafia. Previously he had just been regarded as a rather secretive landowner with a suspiciously high income, although he did come from a long line of Mafiosi. Cassarà used Contorno to create a map of the families of the Palermo region and a report on their increasingly confrontational relations and involvement in narcotics (the so-called Greco+161 report on July 13, 1982). Working closely with 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...
, two months later the Police unleashed a dragnet roundup of 162 Mafiosi wanted for drug trafficking and homicide.
Pentito and Maxi Trial
Despite his arrest Contorno refused to collaborate any more with Cassarà and Falcone. After the decision of Tommaso Buscetta to collaborate, Contorno changed his mind. According to some, Buscetta met Contorno who supposedly fell to his knees and kissed Buscetta hand. Buscetta allegedly put his hand on his shoulder and said: “It’s all right, Totuccio, you can talk.” Contorno began collaborating in October 1984, and a week later 127 arrest warrants were issued against mafiosi.Information provided by 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...
, plus the evidence of Salvatore Contorno led to the first Maxi Trial
Maxi Trial
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant...
which involved 475 defendants which ended in December 1987, 22 months after it began with 338 convictions. However, by early 1989 only 60 of those convicted at the maxi-trial were still in prison. Contorno received a reduced sentence of six years because he collaborated with the prosecution.
While Buscetta provided important information on the inner-workings of the 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...
, it was Contorno who was more effective as a witness, naming names and explaining the Mafia’s heroin trafficking. He testified in a rapid, often incomprehensible specific Palermitan dialect and Mafia jargon that had to be translated for the official record. He held the court room captivated with his open contempt for the brotherhood he had once belonged to. Now, he said it was "just a gang of bullies and murderers." They had killed a dozen of his direct relatives.
Pizza Connection Trial
Contorno was a key witness in the Pizza Connection TrialPizza Connection Trial
The Pizza Connection Trial was one of the longest criminal jury trials on record in the district of Manhattan. It took place between October 24, 1985 and March 2, 1987-Scope of the trial:...
. He agreed to testify in return for entry in the US Witness Protection Program (in Italy there was no such programme at the time). He gave the evidence that directly linked the defendants to heroin trafficking. He told how in the spring of 1980 he was present at a meeting in the iron factory of Leonardo Greco in Bagheria
Bagheria
Bagheria is a town and comune in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy.-Etymology:According to some sources, the name Bagheria originates from the Phoenician term Bayharia meaning "land that descends toward the sea." Other sources claim that it derives from the Arabic Bāb al-Gerib, or "windy...
, 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,...
. Among those present were five of the defendants at the trial: Salvatore Greco, Giuseppe Ganci, Gaetano Mazzara, Salvatore Catalano, and Francesco Castronovo.
Contorno watched as the men, "took out two plastic garbage bags and extracted packages of white powder in clear plastic envelopes, each bearing different tiny scissor cuts or pen or pencil marks to identify the individual owner. They poured samples of the powder into a bottle heating on a hot plate." These same marked samples would later be intercepted by the DEA
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States...
as a seizure of 40 kilograms of 85 percent pure heroin which was "$8 million worth at Mafia importer’s prices and at least $80 million worth at street prices."
The defence suggested in the cross-examination that Contorno, who feared that he would be killed in Italy, made up his testimony about the meeting to please Federal prosecutors who put him in a protection program in the United States.
Back in Sicily
Contorno could not adjust to life in the Witness Protection Program the US and was unable to support his family. He returned to Italy in November 1988. On May 26, 1989 Contorno was arrested again in a hide out in an area called the triangle of death (BagheriaBagheria
Bagheria is a town and comune in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy.-Etymology:According to some sources, the name Bagheria originates from the Phoenician term Bayharia meaning "land that descends toward the sea." Other sources claim that it derives from the Arabic Bāb al-Gerib, or "windy...
, Altavilla
Altavilla
Altavilla is a village and former municipality in the district of See in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland.-History:It was first recorded in 1340 as Alta villa. It has also had the German name Altenfüllen and the French Hauteville....
and Casteldaccia
Casteldaccia
Casteldaccia is a town and comune in the province of Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy. It is the seat of the Vini Corvo wine producer, and the Tomasello Pasta factory....
) near Palermo together with his cousin Gaetano Grado and a cache of weapons. In the previous weeks members of the winning factions of the Second Mafia War allied with the Corleonesi had been killed and the police suspected the raided hide out had something to do with the killings. Examination of the weapons showed that they were not used in the murders.
The affair became a scandal in July 1989 when anonymous letters signed by "il corvo" (literally "raven", but meaning "provocateur") claimed that prosecuting 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...
and his close collaborator, police inspector Gianni De Gennaro, had organised Contorno’s secret return from protective custody in the US to Sicily to start a state sponsored vendetta against the Corleonesi. The allegations against Falcone and De Gennaro proved to be a hoax, but further weakened Falcone’s already difficult position in the prosecuting office in Palermo. Contorno was in contact with De Gennaro prior to his arrest, who tried to monitor his movements.
In and out witness protection programme
In April 1994, a powerful bomb was discovered close to the secret hideout of Contorno near Rome in the midst of a campaign of the Corleonesi against state collaborators. In January 1997 Contorno was arrested again, because of his involvement in dealing 2 kilograms of heroin in the early 1990s, which resulted from the investigations into the bombing attempt. He was sentenced to six years in prison. In October 1997, an arrest warrant was issued against Contorno for dealing in cocaine together with his cousin Gaetano Grado.Contorno was removed from the Italian witness protection programme, but re-admitted in 2001. In November 2004, Contorno was arrested again for extorting a former fellow cellmate, but the charges were dropped. While Contorno was expelled from the Mafia because he collaborated with the Italian authorities, mentally the streetwise ruffian remained a mafioso, which is the only reality he knows. According to the 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...
, Contorno lived inside the world of the Mafia "the way the rest of us live inside our own skin, as if the Mafia were a state into which you were born and always remained a citizen of."