18 Facts About Cesare Terranova

From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office.

Cesare Terranova was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra.

Cesare Terranova was the predecessor of judge Rocco Chinnici, who created the Antimafia Pool, a group of investigating magistrates who closely worked together, sharing information to diffuse responsibility and to prevent one person from becoming the sole institutional memory and solitary target, as Terranova had become.

Cesare Terranova was a key figure in the Trial of the 114 which saw many prominent Mafiosi on trial for their role in the First Mafia War in the early 1960s, that ended with the Ciaculli massacre on 30 June 1963.

Cesare Terranova was the first to acknowledge the existence of a Sicilian Mafia Commission.

Cesare Terranova led investigations into the connections between the Mafia and politics.

In 1965, Cesare Terranova ordered the prosecution of over sixty Corleonesi, including Leggio, for a series of murders in Corleone from 1958 to 1963.

Cesare Terranova became the secretary of the Antimafia Commission that was established in 1963 after the Ciaculli massacre.

Cesare Terranova urged his colleagues of the majority to take their responsibility.

Cesare Terranova was again appointed as the chief examining magistrate at the Court in Palermo to take the fight against the Mafia in the courts.

However, on 25 September 1979, then aged fifty-eight, Cesare Terranova was shot to death in his car, along with his driver, policeman Lenin Mancuso, who acted as his bodyguard.

Cesare Terranova had become the worst enemy of Leggio and the Corleonesi.

Cesare Terranova had a photograph of Leggio in his office that his colleagues had given him as a joke.

The Commission decided, on instigation of Gaetano Badalamenti, that Cesare Terranova should be killed outside Sicily, in Rome.

When that failed, Cesare Terranova's murder was on the agenda again and was confirmed in June 1979 during a Commission meeting at the Favarella estate.

Cesare Terranova paved the way for a more successful prosecution of the Mafia in the 1980s.

Cesare Terranova was the predecessor of judge Rocco Chinnici, who succeeded Terranova as the chief examining magistrate at the Court in Palermo and who became a victim of a Mafia attack in July 1983.

Cesare Terranova co-founded the first permanent civil Antimafia organisation, the Associazione donne siciliane per la lotta contro la Mafia.