At 5:56 p.m. on May 23, 1992, a convoy carrying Italy’s most famous anti-Mafia judge left Palermo’s airport and headed east along the A29 highway. Giovanni Falcone sat in a white armored Fiat Croma beside his wife, fellow judge Francesca Morvillo. Three police officers traveled ahead. More officers followed behind. Hidden beneath the highway near Capaci sat a massive charge of TNT.
Giovanni Brusca watched from a hill as the convoy approached. At the chosen moment, he pressed a remote control. The highway rose in an explosion. The first armored car vanished into the blast. Falcone’s car smashed into a wall of broken asphalt and concrete. Falcone, Morvillo and officers Antonio Montinaro, Vito Schifani and Rocco Dicillo died. The crater looked more like damage from a military strike than a Mafia assassination.
The order came from Salvatore “Totò” Riina, the Sicilian Mafia boss known as La Belva, the Beast. His name never gained the same recognition in the United States as Al Capone, John Gotti or Pablo Escobar. If you know the Mafia mainly through American stories, Riina breaks the familiar model. He did not spend his reign cultivating celebrity or pretending to be a businessman with a violent sideline. He built authority through murder, then expanded his list of enemies until judges, police chiefs, politicians, prosecutors and ordinary civilians all became targets.
Cosa Nostra had spent generations growing through secrecy, intimidation, money and political protection. Riina pushed the organization toward open warfare. Rival bosses were killed. Their relatives were hunted. Men disappeared without graves. Public officials were shot in cars or blown apart by bombs. A child would later spend 779 days as a Mafia hostage before being strangled and dissolved in acid.
By 1992, Riina had reached a conclusion few organized crime bosses would dare test. If the Italian government refused to bend, Cosa Nostra would attack the government. Falcone died first. Paolo Borsellino followed 57 days later. Bombs soon reached Florence, Milan and Rome. Churches, museums, streets and civilians entered the target list.
The Mafia had produced killers before Totò Riina. Sicily had known bosses with money, political influence and armies of gunmen. Riina combined all three with a willingness to keep escalating after every boundary had fallen. His reign turned murder into government and terror into policy. By the time police finally put handcuffs on him, the short farmer’s son from Corleone had spent decades teaching Italy to fear a name much of America still barely knows.
