Blood Brotherhoods: The Rise of the Italian Mafias by Dickie John

Author:Dickie, John [Dickie, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-06-08T22:00:00+00:00

Knowing what we know about the mafia’s history so far, we can also add a third cause that the magistrate neglected to mention: the police and judiciary in Palermo were profoundly infiltrated.

Leopoldo Notarbartolo witnessed the scandalously lax handling of the investigation and began to make inquiries of his own. He was one of many Italians whose quest for truth and justice was a long and solitary one: it took over a decade out of his life. Like most such quests, Notarbartolo’s was a tale of meticulous endeavour: sifting through his father’s papers, interviewing reluctant witnesses, travelling far and wide to check dubious alibis. And like most such quests, it was also a search for political help.

Leopoldo Notarbartolo knew that his only chance of exposing the high-level intrigues that had led to his father’s death, and protected his murderers from the law, would come if he exploited high-level contacts of his own. Sometimes, in Italy, the forces for good have to operate through the same personal channels as the forces for evil.

When Francesco Crispi – the Prime Minister close to the NGI shipping lobby – fell from power following Italy’s humiliating defeat at the battle of Adowa in March 1896, his successor as Prime Minister was another Sicilian: someone that Leopoldo thought he might just be able to talk to; someone who has already had a part to play in the history of the mafia.

Antonio Starabba, Marquis of Rudinì, was the mayor of Palermo who made his name by defending the Royal Palace during the Palermo revolt of September 1866. Standing side-by-side with Rudinì during the siege was Emanuele Notarbartolo – indeed Notarbartolo had carved the mould from which the Royal Palace’s defenders made musket balls out of lead piping. We last saw Rudinì as he stood on the edge of the political wilderness, desperately expounding his baffling theory about the ‘benign maffia’ to the parliamentary inquiry of 1876. By the 1890s Rudinì’s trim blonde beard had become broad, grizzled and forked. The financial and political crises of the day had pushed Italy rightwards, and in doing so had revived the Marquis’s fortunes.

Leopoldo Notarbartolo had few illusions about Rudinì: ‘slimy’ was the adjective he used to describe him. In truth Rudinì was now so powerful he could rely on someone else to wade through the slime on his behalf. His constituency election manager at the time was one Leonardo Avellone, a local mayor. In 1892 a Sicilian newspaper gave an unforgettable portrait of Avellone.

Commendatore Avellone is a well-to-do man who is nearing sixty. He is chubby, friendly, with the cunning of a peasant and the polite, helpful nature of a Jesuit priest. But he is also vengeful and treacherous with everyone, especially his friends. He is ignorant, but quick-witted and equally adept in doing good as in doing harm. He makes friends with the virtuous and the wicked alike, without the slightest distinction. He is a father figure not just to his numerous children, but also to his relatives and hangers-on who, in his shadow, exercise an absolute tyrannical dominion in the Termini area.

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