The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (37 page)

The small town of Corleone on the island of Sicily is one where the values of tradition and family honour have prevailed throughout the centuries. In most families the women are expected to stay in the home after 8 p.m. and great loyalty and respect is given to the elderly relatives, who are taken in by their young families.

Agriculture has always been the main contributor to the local economy, and today it employs 70 per cent of the workforce who grow corn, tomatoes and vines, and rural poverty is common as the town’s development has been stifled by the actions of a minority of its population. Indeed Corleone does not have a cinema and only in recent years has its first supermarket opened. Its road network and infrastructure are primitive but change is taking place. Still, its
landscape
has a certain beauty, without modern buildings, and this beauty has disguised the horror and masks the blood that has been shed.

Today Corleone has forty-three churches for its population of 11,000 and a statue of the Virgin Mary is present in most of the shops; its links with religion have been an important part of its history. Indeed, it was the home of Pope Leo II and it bore witness to the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, driving out the Moors and colonizing Corleone with Italians.

In addition to an Arab invasion, the island has also been invaded by the Normans as part of their conquest of southern Italy. Due to its position in Sicily, Corleone, at the mid-point between the key towns of Palermo and Agrigento, has been a key strategic location in the island’s battle against a long series of invaders and
oppressors,
and it became known as “Courageous Civitas” in recognition of this fact.

At one time a wall surrounded Corleone to defend it from attack. More recently its mobsters were also protected by a wall, a wall of silence; the code of
Omertà
.
It is this wall, and the town’s more recent history, that Corleone is most famous, or most infamous, for. A major part of the inspiration for
The Godfather
trilogy, Corleone has attracted tourists wishing to walk through the streets of the town in which the fictional Vito Corleone was born. The village’s links to mafia activities are far from confined to the Hollywood blockbusters, however. Its real-life organized crime and the
highprofile
nature of the Cosa Nostra (the name by which the Sicilian Mafia is known) activities has led to calls for Corleone to be renamed and even a public relations exercise was undertaken, but a new name and T-shirts bearing the slogan “I love Corleone” will not allow it to escape its vile and ugly recent past. One constant reminder of that past is in the form of a grave containing the remains of one of Sicily’s most violent and feared men of all time. That man is Luciano Leggio.

Leggio was born in Corleone on 6 January 1925, the day of the Epiphany in the Christian calendar, but religion never appears to have played a role in Leggio’s life. He was born into a poor family, one of ten children, and only a life of crime offered him the
opportunity
to prosper if he was to remain in his birthplace, which was a victim of the rural poverty that was well known in many parts of Europe in the post First World War years, and this poverty has continued throughout the twentieth century.

He left school at the age of nine, unable to read or write, yet insisted in adulthood that he be called the Professor and liked to convey the impression that he was an intellectual of sorts. Of his early post-school years, little is known, but upon leaving the
primitive
education system he soon recognized that an honest life would be difficult to find and even if a good job was provided, it is likely that at least during his teenage years he would have chosen to turn to crime anyway.

Leggio began his criminal apprenticeship stealing cattle, which he would butcher and then he would sell the meat. In addition to
livestock,
he stole other products of the local farms, providing the first of many scrapes with the police.

At the age of eighteen, Leggio was to encounter the experience that would see his transition from petty thief to vicious killer. Six months of contemplation of his actions was sufficient time to allow the darkness of evil to take over what had always been a small actor on the stage of crime. It began when Leggio was caught stealing grain. He was arrested and convicted. His sentence was six months and he deeply resented the interruption to his criminal career. No doubt long before his release he began to plot his revenge on the man who had sent him to prison. Leggio’s punishment had been only six months yet he sentenced the man responsible for his
imprisonment
to death.

Following this, the first of many murders, Leggio met the man who was to help shape his future. Michele Navarra was the boss of the Cosa Nostra in Corleone. He was a successful man who had power thanks to his association with judges, lawyers, politicians and journalists. As a doctor for the local hospital he also had the essential ability to convey a respectable image in order to hide his wicked criminal personality. Leggio was only too willing to work for Navarra as his enforcer and hitman.

In his early days working for Navarra, Leggio set his sights on a job working as a farmhand but there were no vacancies for such a position. Never one to let little trivialities such as that stand in his way, Leggio created a vacancy by shooting dead one of the hands. With a growing taste for murder and a desire to rapidly ascend the career ladder, he made the farm’s owner an offer he could not refuse; he held a gun up to the terrified owner’s head and told him to sign over the deeds of the farm or he would be killed. The owner complied.

As a
gabellotto
or tenant farmer, Leggio began to be accustomed to the benefits of violence in satisfying his greed. A
gabellotto
managed the land and took responsibility for it, and he also had the power to charge the already poor workers for as much rent as he wished.
Gabellottos 
were a key source of revenue for the Cosa Nostra for their ability to exploit workers and secure finance for criminal activities. And when people were unable to pay what Leggio believed was only fair, then he could release his violent urges. He would obtain more land and again charge what he liked, knowing that the workers relied upon working the land for their livelihood and there was nothing they could do, or so he thought.

Regardless of the fear that Leggio instilled in the community, there were those who were willing to stand up against him and against the system that allowed him to get away with his
exploitation.
Placido Rizzoto was a socialist trade unionist who tried to mobilize the town’s people to oppose Leggio and he began to achieve some success. It is unlikely that Rizzoto would have actually had sufficient power to undermine the work of Leggio and other
gabellottos,
especially as they were under the protection of
influential
men such as Michele  Navarra, but his words of resistance evidently panicked the tenant farmer.

Leggio decided to try and silence Rizzoto with words of fear. With a small group of thugs he approached Rizzoto down a narrow alley but, far from afraid, the trade unionist simply picked up the killer and hung him up on a gate. The humiliated man soon realized that threats would not suffice and murder quickly came to mind.

Just days later, on 10 March 1948, as Rizzoto was walking home he was ambushed by three men. His body was later found in the bottom of a deep chasm along with the bodies of two others. He had been shot and then thrown into the fifty-foot deep void. According to several witnesses Leggio was one of the three men responsible for the murder.

Leggio’s hatred for Rizzoto was well known and his arrest was inevitable, especially when witnesses came forward with evidence that implicated the young murderer. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and held in custody for two years awaiting trial, but charges were dropped when witnesses were encouraged not to testify, following immense intimidation. Leggio’s two accomplices were then murdered to help ensure that the rising criminal got away with his crime without anyone being able to testify against him. In addition to witness intimidation, the only actual eyewitness was murdered. Giuseppe Letizia was an eleven-year-old shepherd who saw the crime being committed. Suffering from severe shock he was taken to the local hospital where he was treated by none other than Doctor Michele Navarra, who gave an injection to the only witness to his hitman’s alleged crime. Shortly afterwards the young boy passed away. Navarra was accused of murder but there was
insufficient
evidence to bring about a successful prosecution. What role Leggio played, if any, in the boy’s death was never established.

Although he escaped conviction, Navarra was forced into an exile that was supposed to last for five years. No doubt the doctor’s absence played some role in fuelling Leggio’s already growing
leadership
ambitions but these hopes were dashed when, due to Navarra’s political connections, he was able to return to Corleone after only a few months. In spite of his boss’s return, Leggio began setting up his own independent operations in cattle theft and real estate, as well as ordering the deaths of anyone who got in his way and killing people himself when it satisfied his ever growing blood lust. He was assisted by Salvatore Riina, whom he had met in prison, and another criminal named Bernardo Provenzano. Luciano Leggio saw a great deal of potential in both of them, and they were to become ruthless killers under his tutorship.

Despite the doctor having helped Leggio get away with murder, there were many grievances between the two and the feelings of loyalty which Leggio had once had for his boss began to wane. With his new, small faction he began to launch a minor war against his boss and the war would escalate until it reached a bloody climax. One of the key points in the vendetta was a dispute over Leggio’s business aspirations, which he hoped would secure for himself wealth and more power. Leggio hoped to gain some work out of the construction of a controversial dam which was opposed by Navarra. The doctor was greatly angered that his pupil should have the audacity to challenge him over what was a hugely contentious issue in the town and one which had a lot of political and economic implications that would undermine Navarra’s influence over the public and the regional officials. Tensions rose and Navarra, feeling threatened by what was clearly Leggio’s growing ambition and determination to succeed whatever the price, decided to order a hit. Leggio was requested to meet Navarra at one of his estates in June 1958, but as he walked across a field he was greeted by the presence of fifteen men armed with guns. Somehow, due to a combination of assassins who were not of the same calibre as himself and no doubt a great deal of luck, Leggio managed to escape the farm with only an injured hand and other superficial wounds.

If the Mafia nickname had not already been given to a New York mobster, Leggio could easily have been known as Lucky Luciano following his near death experience and the way that he would escape capture and prosecution for much of his criminal career.

Any feelings of loyalty that may have lingered in Leggio’s mind were now entirely crushed as he recognized that if he did not
retaliate
soon then there would surely be a further attempt on his life and he would not be so lucky.

And so it was that on 2 August 1958 Leggio struck and in doing so turned his vision of a Cosa Nostra family of his own into a reality. On that evening Navarra was driving home accompanied by a fellow doctor by the name of Lercara Friddi, who had no
connections
to the Cosa Nostra, organized crime or indeed criminal activity in any shape or form. As the vehicle travelled along a lonely stretch of road, a car blocked the way ahead and soon Navarra also found a car behind him, making a getaway impossible. No doubt he realized what was happening but was helpless to react as
submachine
guns began to be fired from the side of the road. His car became perforated with bullet holes and the doctor had no chance of survival. He was dead at the scene within seconds of the first shot being fired, as was his colleague whose only crime was to accept a lift home.

With the boss dead there was no stopping Leggio in his pursuit of completing his power struggle. Those who had been loyal to Navarra and those who Leggio believed to be a threat to his own regime had to be destroyed, regardless of who they were. Leggio had to gain control of the soldiers and gain their loyalty.

Unlike many Cosa Nostra bosses, including his predecessor Michele Navarra, Leggio had no problems committing murders personally. Whilst he did order the execution of a large number of mobsters, with innocent bystanders often dying for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Leggio’s early background as a hitman and enforcer appears to have created a personal interest in inflicting suffering and death that he could never abandon. Although he committed murders with guns, by strangulation and through a large variety of different methods, his preferred
modus operandi
was to stab or slash his victims. The desire for the personal contact that is associated by inflicting knife wounds, when a bullet can be fired from a distance, gives a valuable insight into the mind of this ruthless killer. Those who knew him described him as a
“bloodthirsty”
man who gained pleasure from killing and watching life fade from his victims.

When he was not killing personally he had little difficulty in finding “soldiers” who would kill on his behalf. In order to strengthen the Corleonesi hold on the region, it is known that brothers killed brothers, cousins killed cousins and the underlings assassinated members of other families and those from within their own ranks who posed a threat to the family or simply to further their own interests. During the mob war that followed Navarra’s assassination it is estimated that 140 mobsters were killed, the majority of which were deaths caused by Leggio and his followers, and approximately fifty of whom had been followers of Navarre.