Salvatore "Toto" Riina remains the most notorious boss in the history of the Sicilian Mafia. He was known above all others for his murderous appetite and for doing what had once been unthinkable: going head-to-head not only with his many rivals but with the Italian state itself.
Cosa Nostra was built to remain in the shadows. Riina decided to burn the rule book. His story is unlike anything Hollywood has come close to capturing.
He left a bloody trail of bodies that included rivals and his own men alike. No one was safe. Driven by a pathological hunger for power, he centralized the previously decentralized Sicilian Mafia almost completely under Corleonese control.
In gaining notoriety, he also sealed the fate of the Mafia in Sicily. Riina dominated the national crime scene through the 1980s. As his actions grew more audacious, including attacks on trains and the killing of judges and state figures, he put himself and the organization into a corner.
Riina hailed from the real town of Corleone. His character was shaped by a series of truly unfortunate tragedies. He was born into one of the toughest periods of modern Sicilian history, amid crushing poverty, and he witnessed the tragic deaths of loved ones.
These events had a great psychological effect on him. They are in no way a redemption or an excuse for the catalog of appalling deeds that followed, but they help explain what turned a roughly spoken peasant into a man who imposed his will so cruelly on Sicily.
Corleone is a small town set among the rolling hills of western Sicily. Its largely peasant population had long suffered exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous landowners and Mafia enforcement practices.
As far back as the late 1800s, records describe desperate poverty there. At harvest time, peasants were left with tiny mounds of grain as payment from their boss for a year of hard labor, barely enough to feed their families for a month, let alone twelve.
Most scratched a living from small plots of land they owned, alongside the more choice areas already taken by wealthier landowners. This was the case for Salvatore's father, Giovanni, who owned a handful of acres. It was just enough to provide basic food for his family, supplemented by clever bartering among locals.
It was into this poor but proud peasant family that Salvatore, or Toto as he became known, was born in 1930. The eldest of three sons and two daughters, he grew up to the seasonal rhythms of farming life.
Despite its proximity to Palermo, which was becoming an increasingly connected trade hub, life in Corleone remained stuck in a feudal past. Mussolini's infrastructure drive through the 1920s had mainly benefited the Italian mainland and done little for rural Sicily.
On the sweltering summer day of September 11, 1943, young Toto Riina was returning from working the family's hillside land with his father and two younger brothers. His father suddenly stopped the mule when he saw something metallic catch the sun in a patch of scrub.
After parting the foliage, he discovered a large US aerial bomb, dropped in one of the many air raids on the island ahead of the Allied landings two months earlier. Just as he was about to turn away, he saw another metal casing a short distance off. This time it was a German artillery shell from the period when German forces had occupied the hillside.
This was valuable material for an impoverished peasant family. He instructed the youngest boy to get off the mule so he could load the cargo. The procession then made its way home toward Corleone.
Upon getting back, Giovanni immediately unloaded the cargo and took it inside. He inspected the larger bomb, thinking it must be worth at least a few days of much-needed wages as scrap. Then he turned his attention to the shell.
Noticing it was light, and assuming it was already empty of gunpowder, he began trying to separate the head from the main body. Suddenly it slipped from his grasp and exploded on contact with the hard flagstone floor. The room was enveloped in flame and thick smoke.
The father was killed almost immediately. The youngest son also died. Young Riina, standing not far away, miraculously survived without serious injury, watching as if in slow motion, his ears ringing, as his mother rushed in screaming.
At that moment, the boy's life changed forever. To witness such a brutal scene amid an already hard life was almost too much to bear, and it turned his heart to stone. A light had been taken from Toto's life that he would not see again.
He developed a normalization of, and ability to deal with, pain that he would in time turn against others on his journey to becoming the most ruthless Mafia boss Sicily had known.
After the sudden deaths of his father and younger brother, Salvatore, as the oldest son, had to become the sole breadwinner for the household. At only 13, he was catapulted into adulthood far too young.
He took over management of his father's land for the next few years. In his daily work, he observed the power of the wealthy landowners who paraded around their estates like kings. He knew, like others of his class, that even a mistimed look from a peasant could result in a beating or death at the hands of their protective enforcers.
These were hard years in which he could never forget his lowly position. During this time, he also forged key lifelong bonds, including one with an influential figure in the Sicilian Mafia, Bernardo Provenzano. Another child of extreme poverty, Provenzano lived nearby, and Riina would see him trudging up the hill outside Corleone with his father every day to tend the land they were paid to work.
After a few years tending the land, Riina began to frequent it less, delegating some duties to younger siblings. He spent more time around Corleone's main square, Piazza Garibaldi, observing the goings-on and the passing men of honor and their customs.
Importantly, he also made his presence known to the town's influential individuals. Despite being small in stature and somewhat introverted, he learned the value of presence, consistency, and composure, all traits highly valued by the Mafia.
These were the years of Dr. Michele Navarra's reign as the don of Corleone. Navarra was an interesting character from a middle-class background and a qualified doctor by trade, an unusual figure for a powerful Mafia boss.
Coming up in the postwar reconstruction years, by the late 1940s he had established his rule over Corleone. He maintained his medical profession as a front and ruled his interests calculatingly. While more than capable of taking out enemies, he was an old-guard type who harked back to the traditions of figures like Don Vito Cascio Ferro and the Mafia men of the turn of the century.
Impeccably dressed, he would parade around town greeted by subjects, his ring kissed many hundreds of times on such visits. Molded by the Mafia culture and practice of the prewar years, he avoided the audacious, attention-bringing violence that Riina would later indulge in. Yet his days in Corleone were numbered, as a new generation was on the rise.
Gradually, through his time in the square and his network building, Riina became known to Luciano Liggio, a notorious cattle rustler on the rise who now had the protection of Corleone's new boss, and therefore essential immunity for his criminal endeavors.
By around the late 1940s, Riina was visiting the barber shop with Liggio and Navarra as an unofficial associate, knowing to be silent in the back yet nonetheless part of the group. This too would change as Navarra expanded his recruitment to build a gang of young bloods who could operate for him in the area.
This group included Riina, his childhood friend Provenzano, and the already established rustler Liggio. Livestock theft, illegal butchery, and score settling were the main practices, and they proved quite profitable for their boss.
In May 1949, Riina had his first major brush with the law. His gang fought with a group of cousins behind the town. The fight escalated and ended with Riina drawing his pistol and firing multiple rounds. He struck one of the cousins, resulting in his death.
Tried and sentenced to 12 years for the murder, he ended up serving only six before being released on probation and returning to Corleone in 1955, a returning hero to his old paesani. Activities continued as before for the next few years.
But Riina and his associates, especially the group's leader Liggio, were developing an inevitable hunger for more power. They were no longer content as Navarra's runners and thugs. By 1958, the situation between Navarra's old guard and the new faction led by Liggio had come to a head.
Too many shows of disobedience had been committed, and the doctor felt forced to act. He organized a hit on Liggio, but it was executed clumsily, allowing Liggio to escape with only minor injuries.
Liggio then orchestrated his own hit in response, with the reliable Toto as one of the shooters. In early August 1958, Navarra was killed while driving with a fellow doctor. His corpse, strewn with 92 rounds, was found in the bullet-ridden car by police the following day.
Police estimated there had to have been five shooters, two using submachine guns and three using pistols. It was an audacious attack that shocked authorities with its intensity. The well-executed power play left the path open for Liggio to assume the leadership he craved.
It also placed Riina in a strong position, both as a loyal soldier to Liggio and as a man who had recently demonstrated his value in the hit. With Liggio now primed to take leadership of the Corleonesi in 1958, things looked promising for Riina.
He stood alongside those he had grown up with and built strong bonds with, and together they had removed the old guard from power. In their eyes, however, there was still cleaning up to do.
The following years were characterized by brutal reprisals against anyone they deemed close to Navarra. This often involved luring out enemies with the offer of peace talks, only to kill them at that meeting. Riina showed an ability to recognize traps with the cunning of a fox, and to set them without remorse.
During this period, Liggio pioneered a strategy free of rules or restraint, as seen in the murders at supposed reconciliation meetings. Riina was his right-hand man, and they took out Mafia members with an intensity that shook even old hands, earning a reputation as ruthless enforcers.
The Sicilian newspaper L'Ora boldly published an investigation into this new gang terrorizing Corleone and killing its men. Alongside a picture and description of Liggio as a cross between an old mafioso and a modern gangster was information on his suspected lieutenants, Riina and Provenzano.
Both were described as peasants, an interesting nod to the persistent social class structure and the lens through which much of Italian society still viewed the world. Membership in the Mafia was ultimately a way for men like these to escape that lowly position.
Three days after the publication of the report, L'Ora's printing presses were destroyed with a large amount of dynamite. The message came through loud and clear. The Corleonesi were here to stay and would stop at nothing. Their tactics were new and would only escalate.
Following their mopping up of perceived enemies, leadership unquestionably fell to Liggio. Corleone had a new dawn, and decisions were now theirs to make. This power was no doubt addictive and a new thrill after years of operating under the orders of elders.
Riina continued as Liggio's enforcer, carrying out hits, kidnappings, and other acts of violence. He was known for his steady hand and cold ability to pull the trigger, which made him increasingly valuable in dangerous times. As he gained more responsibility, he became instrumental in decisions too, working with Liggio at a strategic level.
The spike in violence following the removal of Navarra became known as the First Mafia War. It laid the groundwork for a spiral of conflict that would only increase under Riina's leadership. Though largely only Mafia men were affected, it saw the deaths of more than 50 individuals in the Corleonesi's attempt to remove all traces of Navarra's allies.
It came to a climax in 1963 with seven Italian policemen killed while attempting to defuse a car bomb meant for a mafioso. This large-scale killing of state targets, though not intentional, was an omen of things to come, as the Corleone-controlled Mafia would increasingly take a confrontational approach with the state under Riina's reign.
While blood stained Sicilian streets through this period, no clear victor emerged. The First Mafia War left the decentralized family model running, with many competing centers of power continuing to exist. The Corleonesi clan was powerful in this period, but not yet dominant, a reality Riina was keen to change.
In the wake of the Ciaculli bombing, which had generated great anger among the Italian population, there were mass arrests of Mafia men across Sicily. Included in this sweep was Toto Riina.
Apprehended under an alias in December 1963, he was taken for interrogation, where he eventually admitted his true identity. He would spend the next years in Ucciardone prison awaiting trial along with a host of Mafia prisoners.
The prison system was notoriously corrupt. Big bosses had lobster and champagne on tap, along with a variety of other luxury items. Riina kept mostly to himself, but by now his reputation preceded him. All knew of the fearsome reign of terror he and Liggio had imposed after Navarra's removal.
Over the years, he became increasingly respected within the Mafia prison community and eventually sought after. Cues are said to have formed in the prison yard with inmates waiting to speak with him or seek counsel on a specific issue. This period was important in molding him further into the don he would become.
His reputation had been confirmed among the movers and shakers of the organization throughout Sicily. Finally tried along with Liggio in 1969, he was acquitted in what amounted to a sham trial.
Following his release, he quickly went on the run as a new murder charge came up. Despite his status now as a fugitive, the general climate of anti-Mafia resentment in Sicily had died down since the Ciaculli bombing.
Riina immediately sought to resume activities. The first order of business was a hit on a wayward Mafia-associated businessman deemed a liability by family heads. Following that matter, Riina went into hiding, attempting to stay off police radar.
But as the 1970s progressed, the net was tightening around Liggio. Already sought for the murder of Navarra in 1958, the police were increasingly persistent, and Liggio's more flamboyant behavior left a bigger trail to follow.
Finally, in 1974, Liggio was arrested in Milan, where he had relocated for treatment of a spinal problem that had blighted him since youth. While it is unclear exactly how long Liggio continued his rule from behind bars, at some point in the next few years Riina took over and assumed full responsibility.
Interestingly, this was not a leadership coup or a rivalry boiling over, as seen so many times in both the Sicilian and US Mafia. It was instead a fairly well-organized and smooth transition. They had been associates since youth, and Liggio had been unofficially mentoring Riina for the role.
While both were very violent characters, and Riina in particular was not afraid of chaos, the transition was quite peaceful, something incredibly rare in that world.
In a series of events showing an interesting relationship between the Sicilian and US Mafia, a key American don named Joseph Bonanno had come to his homeland of Sicily for a holiday in 1957. There for leisure, he naturally also had business on the agenda, more specifically heroin.
The drug was discussed in meetings over four days held at Palermo's Grand Hotel des Palmes. Key players fleshed out details of a potential collaboration. The US Mafia had recently lost its foothold in Cuba due to Fidel Castro's communist takeover of the island and was looking to make Sicily its new trafficking outpost.
Here, the product would arrive and be processed by Sicilian Mafia men before being sent on to the US and Europe. This activity in the heroin trade would go on to become a cornerstone of Riina's rule and a key method for obtaining funds.
There was also another crucial outcome: the formation of a Sicilian commission known as the Cupola, meaning dome. It would represent Sicilian Mafia family heads with a governing council where key decisions would be made collectively.
Prior to his arrest, Liggio and Riina had been working on expanding the Corleonesi's influence within the commission. While they may not have been the most politically well-connected or wealthy family, they were quickly becoming the most powerful internally within the Mafia's own structure, in terms of force.
Riina continued this work during the early years of his rule, consolidating their power over decision-making bodies and biding time until the next power move could be made. That move was initiated by Riina in 1981 and became known as the Second Mafia War, one of the bloodiest episodes in modern Sicilian history.
The aim was total control for the Corleonesi and the wiping out of anyone standing in the way. For an organization that was traditionally decentralized, with different family power centers, this vision was a dramatic departure from the past and would take the Mafia into uncharted territory.
Driving in his new Alfa Romeo back from his own birthday party, Mafia boss Stefano Bontate was shot dead with a variety of weapons while stopped at traffic lights. The lethal arsenal included two newly acquired AK-47s, marking the first time they were used by the Mafia in Palermo.
Less than three weeks later, another don, Salvatore Inzerillo, was shot dead outside his lover's house just as he was about to enter his newly received bulletproof Alfa Romeo. With them, the leadership of a rival faction was gone.
In the following months, over 200 men from the Bontate-Inzerillo group were killed. These were huge numbers of dead. Riina's appetite did not end with Sicily. He also ordered all those fleeing to American shores to be eliminated.
This eventually included Inzerillo's brother, found dead in New Jersey with dollar bills stuffed in his mouth. After Riina felt satisfied that external enemies had been dealt with and that Corleone control now extended almost throughout Sicily, he turned his attention inward.
In an increasingly paranoid drive, similar to Stalin's great purge of military officers, he began wiping out those deemed not loyal enough. Even some of his own shooters from earlier hits in the Mafia war were removed.
The tactics employed by Riina in this period were the culmination of a brutal strategy developed over more than 20 years. The foundations had been laid by himself and Liggio with their high-intensity removal of Navarra in 1958, a level of shock-and-awe violence unknown even for a Mafia-riddled society.
All of it had led to this point, with Riina essentially imposing himself as a tyrannical dictator, a new Caesar overseeing his centralized crime empire through constant threat of violence. But as with many tyrannical figures before him, the question was whether he could stop before flying too close to the sun.
As the 1980s progressed, Riina increasingly included figures from the state in his attacks. This included Pio La Torre, a leader of a large political party in Italy who was attempting to introduce a new anti-Mafia law. He was killed while driving in 1982.
The following month, a well-respected police general sent down to quell the violence was himself killed, similarly in his vehicle, with his wife and bodyguard among the dead. These extremely provocative actions by the Corleonesi were building ammunition for a state response.
The audacity would only increase in the coming years. As the flames of lawlessness and chaos began to engulf Sicily, fate intervened. Two key new judges were appointed to the Sicilian Mafia issue: Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
As the stakes soared higher, their appointment promised a new chapter in the battle against the Mafia. Falcone in particular led the charge and was a highly respected and capable figure, a true warrior for the integrity of the Italian state. His commitment was unquestioned, and he was viewed as incorruptible.
At this time, he also received a new weapon in his legal arsenal: a Mafia turncoat named Tommaso Buscetta, who, through fear of death at Riina's hands, had agreed to collaborate with the state.
Through his evidence, the Mafia's overall structure was revealed, including the existence of the commission that ruled over affairs. From a legal perspective, this was extremely significant, as it essentially implicated all family heads in criminal activity below them, with a direct line of culpability back to the centralized ruling commission. It was a deadly blow to Riina's empire.
This increase in heat was felt by Riina, and the large upcoming state maxi trial against the Mafia loomed large. Despite all his remorseless violence for domination during the preceding Mafia war, the state was now making it increasingly difficult to operate and enjoy his newfound position.
Riina then, in characteristic high-intensity style, decided to broaden his war against the state. Instead of turning the temperature down, he would double down and surpass his previous transgressions. He would carry out an attack so indecent, yet with perpetrators so mysterious, that the Italian state would be forced to divert resources away from the Mafia toward this apparent terrorist crime.
On December 23, 1984, a bomb he ordered exploded on train 9004, killing 17 people and wounding 267. All were innocent bystanders with no relation to the Mafia. While the state initially attributed the attack to terrorists rather than the Mafia, it did not achieve Riina's aim of drawing resources away from the Mafia investigation.
The maxi trial went ahead in spite of the train bombing. It lasted from 1986 through 1992 and was the largest state trial in history. A total of 474 defendants faced charges for a variety of high-profile and murderous crimes spanning decades.
In the end, 332 Mafia men were sentenced to a total of 2,665 years, including a number of high-level bosses who received life sentences. This was not the usual slap on the wrist for higher-ups with a foot soldier taking the wrap, but a full-scale state assault on the Mafia not seen before, far broader with more defendants and evidence than even Mussolini's action of the 1920s. Riina himself was sentenced in absentia to life.
The increasingly frantic game of cat and mouse continued through the late 1980s. The state was becoming relentless and clearly was not going to let the issue pass as it had in previous decades. Riina had pushed things too far and left too many dead.
Whether this sense of entrapment fit into his already at times unstable psychology is unclear. However, his strategies became increasingly unhinged. What followed was one of the most extreme and well-prepared Mafia operations in history.
By 1992, he had settled on taking out the top judges themselves, going to the source of the issue as he saw it. Through meticulous preparation, a bomb was placed in a drainage channel by the motorway Falcone was known to pass along.
It involved 400 kilograms of high explosives with a remote detonator manned by a team looking down from a vantage point. A parked car on the side of the motorway acted as a marker guide for detonation.
The explosion was brutal, forcing the asphalt up in a huge wave that sent the vehicle of Falcone's bodyguards flying off into an adjacent olive grove. Falcone and his wife, in the car behind, died in the crash moments after the detonation. The hit was a success and Falcone was dead.
However, it did not bring the respite from police attention Riina sought. In fact, along with the killing of fellow judge Borsellino a short while later, it was the final straw for the Italian state. Whether pushed by unheard-of levels of public anger across the nation or by daily international headlines shining a light on the dysfunction in Sicily, the state acted.
Within a year, Riina was arrested, strangely at his villa in Palermo. The surrounding community was still in too much fear of retribution from the Corleonesi to share his location with police. Toto was finally off the streets after more than 20 years on the run and too many bodies behind him to count.
He held his cool and somewhat detached composure through questioning and trial, except when asked about turncoats and traitors, at whom he seethed through gritted teeth. During exchanges with reporters, it was also clear he objected to the image of the beast being cultivated in the national press, feeling it was unfair.
Here was a remorseless killer who had cut short so many lives, put out by his characterization as a murderer. He likely saw himself more in the vein of Robin Hood, the Mafia of old, distributing loot taken from feudal landowners among fellow peasants.
But this was not who Riina was. Even the few who emphasized with or benefited from his rule were no longer buying it. He had taken the Mafia on a journey far removed from its traditional practices concerning violence and the distribution of power between families.
In pursuing his highly audacious strategy of taking violent methods directly to the state, Riina gained notoriety, perhaps more than all before him. But he also sealed his organization's fate, a tale of hubris clouding strategic thinking.
By centralizing the Mafia so much under Corleonesi control, he removed one of its key strengths: its somewhat decentralized power base. Like a multi-headed serpent, the Italian state could occasionally slash a head down in the past, but enough others existed to maintain operations and fill the void. Riina had given the state one target, and with its removal, the whole house of cards could fall in.
Never before had the secretive world of Cosa Nostra been so brazen. After the highly performative trial and his protestations of honest character as the humble peasant from Corleone, he was sentenced in 1993 to 26 life sentences. Assets worth $125 million were also seized, illustrating his extraordinary level of wealth.
Forced to watch without real power as the family he had so long worked to build struggled under continuous state pressure, a shadow of its former self, he may have entertained dreams of a successful appeal and a return to his place as head of the family. It never occurred.
Riina died in 2017, a cold and calculating man who had led the Sicilian Mafia far from its founding practices and sacrificed its fate, as well as the lives of countless people, for the sake of his own ego. Born unknown into poverty, he died in infamy, known worldwide as a remorseless killer and a fearsome mobster.
Following Riina came a period of governance with power held between Provenzano and Leoluca Bagarella. After Provenzano's death in 2016, leadership eventually fell to Matteo Messina Denaro.
Born in 1962 and of a completely different generation to Riina, who himself was already not of the old ways, Denaro had to operate in a challenging environment. He was a fugitive for the entire period, and with continued state attention following Riina's reign of terror, police were relentless in their search for him.
For the next seven years, he led the organization through a world the dons of old would hardly have recognized, doing deals with foreign cartels in the global drugs market and seeking even more creative ways to generate funds, becoming one of the wealthiest Mafia leaders.
The story of Toto Riina is ultimately a lesson about greed, that unquenchable thirst for constantly wanting more. Greed and ambition are often conflated. While they can be related, the distinction matters.
Ambition is a double-edged sword. No one in human history has achieved something impactful without a certain level of ambition. But ambition is often the catalyst that gains success, and sooner or later it can turn into greed, compounded by arrogance.
You begin to rely on past successes to gauge your capabilities. Although relevant, those successes do not guarantee the ability to surpass certain thresholds. There is nothing more intoxicating than a victory, and at the same time nothing more dangerous.
In the realm of power, you must be guided by reason. To let a momentary thrill or an emotional victory influence your moves will prove fatal. When you attain success, step back. Be cautious. When you gain victory, understand the part played by circumstance and never simply repeat the same actions again and again.
History is littered with the ruins of victorious empires and the corpses of leaders who could not learn to stop and consolidate their gains. The powerful vary their rhythms and patterns, change course, adapt to circumstances, and learn to improvise. Rather than letting their dancing feet impel them forward, they step back and look where they are going.
Success messes with your head. It makes you feel untouchable, but it also makes you more defensive and emotional when people question your power. It hampers your ability to adjust to new situations. You start thinking it is your personality, not your planning, that is responsible for your success.
As Napoleon once said, the greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory.