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this project is -under construction- and aims to combine genealogy with the interest in Cosa Nostra-related information; There is a lot of information available (online), but ancestors and descendants of mafia victims are hardly available. This project aims to make these connections for current and future generations. all this with the intention to honor and always remember these heroes who became victims of the mafia - additions to the family tree of these people are always very welcome
The Capaci bombing (Strage di Capaci) was a terror attack by the Sicilian Mafia that took place on 23 May 1992 on Highway A29, close to the junction of Capaci, Sicily. It killed:
Giovanni Salvatore Augusto Falcone (magistrate)
Francesca Morvillo (his wife)
Vito Schifani (police escort)
Rocco Dicillo (police escort)
Antonio Montinaro (police escort)
Agents Paolo Capuzza, Angelo Corbo, Gaspare Bravo and Giuseppe Costanza survived.
Salvatore Cancemi, who later turned pentito, described the Mafia's victory celebration that followed the Capaci bombing: “Totò Riina ordered champagne while they toasted”.
Santino Di Matteo, who also later turned pentito, revealed all the details of the assassination: who tunnelled beneath the motorway, who packed the 13 drums with TNT and Semtex, who hauled them into place on a skateboard, and who pressed the button.
Preparation
Falcone's killing was decided at meetings of the Sicilian Mafia Commission between September and December 1991, and orchestrated by boss Salvatore Riina, in which other targets were also identified. Following the judgment of the Supreme Court of Cassation confirming the claims of the Maxi Trial (30 January 1992), the Sicilian Mafia decided to start the attacks on political figures.
Between April and May 1992, Salvatore Biondino, Raffaele Ganci and Salvatore Cancemi conducted inspections at Highway A29 in the Capaci area to find a suitable place for the attack to be carried out. During the same period, there were organizational meetings near Altofonte consisting of Giovanni Brusca, Antonino Gioè, Gioacchino La Barbera, Pietro Rampulla, Santino Di Matteo, and Leoluca Bagarella, where some 200 kilograms of quarry explosives were procured by Giuseppe Agrigento (mobster of San Cipirello). The explosives were then taken to the house of Antonino Troia (under the Capaci family), where another meeting took place also including Raffaele Ganci, Salvatore Cancemi, Giovanni Battista Ferrante, Giovanni Battaglia, Salvatore Biondino and Salvatore Biondo, during which the transfer of the other part of the explosive (TNT and RDX) was carried out by Biondino and Giuseppe Graviano (head of the Brancaccio Family)
According to imprisoned ex-mafia informant Maurizio Avola, boss John Gotti of the powerful New York mafia Gambino family sent an explosives expert to train the Corleonesi Mafia clan killers in the use of explosives.
Brusca, La Barbera, Di Matteo, Ferrante, Troia, Biondino and Rampulla repeatedly experimented with the functioning of the electrical devices that had been procured by Rampulla to be used for the explosion. They also tested an electrical appliance at the agreed-upon site on the highway, and cut tree branches that blocked the view of the highway. On the evening of 8 May, Brusca, Barbera, Gioè, Troia and Rampulla arranged 13 barrels loaded with about 400 kilograms of explosives onto a skateboard placed in a drainage tunnel under the highway. In the middle of May, Raffaele Ganci, his sons Domenico and Calogero and his nephew Antonino Galliano took care of monitoring the movements of the Fiat Cromas which carried Falcone and his entourage returning from Rome to Palermo.
Bombing
On 23 May, Domenico Ganci first heard from Ferrante and La Barbera that a Fiat Croma had left for Falcone. Ferrante and Biondo, who were stationed near Punta Raisi Airport, later saw the cars from the airport and warned La Barbera that Falcone had arrived. La Barbera followed Falcone's procession on a road parallel to Highway A29, staying in contact by telephone for 3–4 minutes with Gioè, who was stationed with Brusca on the hills above Capaci adjacent to the detonation site on the highway. At the sight of the procession, Brusca activated the remote control that caused the explosion. The first car was hit by the full force of the explosion and thrown from the road surface into a garden of olive trees a few tens of meters away, instantly killing agents Antonio Montinaro, Vito Schifani and Rocco Dicillo. The second car, carrying Falcone and his wife, crashed against the concrete wall and the debris, fatally ejecting Falcone and his wife, who were not wearing seat belts, through the windscreen.
Investigations
In 1993, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia managed to locate and intercept Antonino Gioè, Santino Di Matteo and Gioacchino La Barbera, who were heard on phone calls referencing the Capaci bombing. After being arrested, Gioè committed suicide in his cell, while Di Matteo and La Barbera decided to cooperate with the government, revealing the names of the other executors of the massacre. To force Di Matteo to retract his statements, Giovanni Brusca, Leoluca Bagarella, Giuseppe Graviano and Matteo Messina Denaro decided to abduct his son Giuseppe Di Matteo, who was brutally strangled and dissolved in acid after 779 days of being held hostage. Despite this, Di Matteo continued to cooperate with justice.
The Via D'Amelio bombing (Strage di Via D'Amelio) was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed:
Paolo Borsellino (anti-mafia magistrate)
Agostino Catalano (police escort)
Emanuela Loi (the first Italian female member of a police escort and the first to be killed on duty)
Vincenzo li Muli (police escort)
Eddie Walter Max Cosina (police escort)
Claudio Traina (police escort)
Bombing
The bombing occurred at 16:58 on 19 July 1992, 57 days after the Capaci bombing, in which Borsellino's friend, anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, had been killed with his wife and police escort. The only survivor of the escort in the bombing, Antonino Vullo, said the judge had stayed in his summer residence outside Palermo from 13:30 to around 16:00, when he and the escort drove to Via D'Amelio in the Sicilian capital, where he was to meet his mother. When they arrived, Vullo and the other agents noticed nothing unusual except some parked cars. The car in which Borsellino had been travelling exploded, along with one of the escort cars, while Vullo was sitting in a third car.
The bomb, containing some 100 kilograms (220 lb) of TNT, had been placed in a Fiat 126. Normal procedure when Borsellino travelled was to clear the road of cars before his arrival, but this was not allowed by the administration of the comune of Palermo, as reported by another anti-mafia judge, Antonino Caponnetto. Gaspare Spatuzza, a mafioso who later became a pentito, eventually revealed he had stolen the Fiat 126 on the orders of the Graviano and Brancaccio mafia clans.
The bloodbath provoked outrage. The night after, protesters peacefully besieged the prefecture of Palermo. Borsellino's funeral saw vehement protests by the crowd against the participants; the national police chief, Arturo Parisi, was struck while trying to escape. A few days later, questore (local police commander) Vito Plantone and prefetto Mario Jovine were transferred. The chief prosecutor of Palermo, Pietro Giammanco, resigned. Meanwhile, 7,000 soldiers were sent to Sicily to patrol roads and possible locations for attacks.
Aftermath
Borsellino used to carry a red notebook, the so-called agenda rossa, in which he wrote down details of his investigations before making an official record in judicial reports. His colleagues were not given access to the agenda rossa.
Carabinieri officer Rosario Farinella said later that, after recovering the agenda rossa from the car, he gave it to Ayala. Ayala said he was staying in a hotel nearby and rushed to the place after hearing the explosion. He initially stumbled on the corpse of Borsellino without recognizing it, as the dead judge was limbless. Ayala said "an officer in uniform" had offered him the notebook, but that he had refused it because he lacked authority. Carabinieri captain Arcangioli said he was not wearing uniform at the scene. In September 2005, Ayala changed his version, saying he took the agenda rossa while exploring the destroyed car and later gave it to a carabinieri officer who was there. Ayala's subsequent statements speak of an agent alternately in uniform and not in uniform.
On 1 July 1992 Borsellino had held a meeting with Nicola Mancino, who at the time had just been appointed Minister of the Interior. Details of the meeting have never been disclosed, but it is likely that Borsellino had annotated them in his agenda. Mancino, however, always denied having met Borsellino. In a television interview of 24 July 2009, Ayala said, "Mancino himself told me that he had met Borsellino on 1 July 1992. Moreover, Mancino showed me his appointments book, with the name of Borsellino on it.” Ayala repudiated this account in an interview in Sette magazine.
A video showing Arcangioli holding the agenda rossa while inspecting the bombing area was aired in news on Italian state channel Rai 1 in 2006.
A personal diary in the possession of Borsellino's family has an annotation by the judge that reads: "1 July h 19:30 : Mancino".
Vittorio Aliquò, another magistrate, later said he had accompanied Borsellino "up to the threshold of the minister's office"