Benedetto “Nitto” Santapaola, the Sicilian mafia boss convicted of a string of mafia murders in the 1980s and ’90s, has died in a Milan prison at 87. Image courtesy of UPI
Benedetto “Nitto” Santapaola, the Sicilian mafia boss convicted of a string of mafia murders in the 1980s and 1990s, has died in a Milan prison at 87.
Santapaola is believed to have been the mastermind behind the murder of one of Italy’s most famous anti-mafia judges in 1992. His base was in Catania, Sicily, and he controlled much of eastern Sicily.
Santapaola was known as “il cacciatore,” the hunter. He was convicted of the 1984 murder of journalist Pippo Fava and a 1992 car bomb that killed Giovanne Falcone, an anti-mafia judge in Palermo, Sicily. That attack, which became known as the Capaci massacre, also killed Falcone’s wife, Francesca Morvillo, and three of his bodyguards.
A few weeks later, another anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino was killed in a car bombing with his bodyguards. In 2006, Santapaola was sentenced to life in prison for both attacks.
He was convicted in 1987 in absentia for the killing of Alfio Ferlito, a rival mobster, and three police officers. They were transferring Ferlito to prison in 1982 when the attack happened. In 1993, he was found in a farmhouse where he had been hiding out for 11 years.
Santapaola was considered one of the most powerful Sicilian mafia figures. He was an ally of Toto Riina, who called himself the “boss of bosses,” and Bernardo Provenzano, another of the Cosa Nostra’s leaders.
The journalist Fava’s son, Claudio, a former member of the European parliament and former-president of Sicily’s anti-mafia commission, said he doesn’t hate Santapaola.
“I wasn’t capable of it,” The Guardian reported he said. “And I feel no relief now that he’s gone.”
He said he had visited the prison once. “He recognized me,” Fava said. “He came to the bars and said he was innocent, that he would shake my father’s hand when they met in heaven. I listened. It seemed a sad performance by a man imprisoned by his own legend.”
Santapaola died in the prison medicine department of the San Paolo hospital in Milan. An autopsy has been ordered.
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