14 Facts About Michele Cavataio

Michele Cavataio, known as Il cobra was an Italian mobster and powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia.

Michele Cavataio was the boss of the Acquasanta mandamento in Palermo and was a member of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission.

Michele Cavataio was described as a cunning killer with a gorilla-like face.

Michele Cavataio was seen as an exponent of a 'new' Mafia of Americanised gangsters that appeared in the mid 1950s.

Michele Cavataio became the new boss of the clan and had to agree to split the profits of the wholesale market racket with the Greco Mafia clan of Ciaculli, who traditionally controlled fruit and vegetable supply to Palermo wholesale market.

However, it had been Michele Cavataio who had killed Di Pisa in the knowledge that the Grecos would blame the La Barberas and a war would be the result.

Michele Cavataio kept fuelling the conflict with more bomb attacks and killings.

Behind both Michele Cavataio and La Barbera was an alliance of bosses from the north-west of Palermo who resented the Commission's growing power, and the influence of the south-eastern Palermo cosche such as the Grecos.

Michele Cavataio was responsible for a car bomb that exploded near Greco's house in Ciaculli on 30 June 1963, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call.

Michele Cavataio received a four-year sentence at the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968, despite an indictment for ten murders.

Michele Cavataio was sentenced for criminal association and soon left jail when in appeal his sentence was reduced to two years.

Michele Cavataio used this map as a visual aid to describe how he wanted the Palermo families to be reorganized.

The other mafiosi in the meeting were outraged that Michele Cavataio had drawn that map, for if it fell into the hands of the police, it would have made the Mafia extremely vulnerable.

All the mafia soldiers sent to kill Michele Cavataio "were veterans," Grado said.