31 Facts About Salvatore Riina

Salvatore Riina was known by the nicknames la belva and il capo dei capi.

Salvatore Riina succeeded Luciano Leggio as head of the Corleonesi criminal organisation in the mid-1970s and achieved dominance through a campaign of violence, which caused police to target his rivals.

Salvatore Riina had been a fugitive since the late 1960s after he was indicted on a murder charge.

Salvatore Riina was less vulnerable to law enforcement's reaction to his methods, as the policing removed many of the established chiefs who had traditionally sought influence through bribery.

In violation of established Mafia codes, Salvatore Riina advocated the killing of women and children and killed innocent members of the public solely to distract law enforcement agencies.

Salvatore Riina was born on 16 November 1930, and raised in a poverty-stricken countryside house in Corleone, in the then-province of Palermo.

At the age of 19, Salvatore Riina was sentenced to a 12-year prison sentence for having killed Domenico Di Matteo with a handgun in a fight; he was released in 1956.

Salvatore Riina went into hiding later that year after he was indicted on a further murder charge and was to remain a fugitive for the next 23 years.

Salvatore Riina had close relations with the 'Ndrangheta, the Mafia-type association in Calabria.

Salvatore Riina's compare d'anello at his wedding in 1974 was Domenico Tripodo, a powerful 'Ndrangheta boss and prolific cigarette smuggler.

Bontade and Inzerillo's assassinations in 1981 by Salvatore Riina's Corleonesi instigated a period of up to a thousand murders known as the Second Mafia War.

Baldassare Di Maggio alleged that Salvatore Riina met with the then Prime Minister Andreotti at Salvo's home in 1987 and greeted him with a "kiss of honour".

Whereas his predecessors had kept a low profile, leading some in law enforcement to question the very existence of the Mafia, Salvatore Riina ordered the murders of judges, policemen and prosecutors in an attempt to terrify the authorities.

Salvatore Riina pinned his hopes on the lengthy appeal process that had frequently set convicted mafiosi free, and he suspended the campaign of murders against officials while the cases went to higher courts.

Ignazio Salvo, who had advised Salvatore Riina against killing Falcone, was himself murdered on 17 September 1992.

Salvatore Riina was given a life sentence for each of Falcone's and Borsellino's murders, in 1997 and 1999 respectively.

Giovanni Brusca later claimed that Salvatore Riina had told him that after the assassination of Falcone, Salvatore Riina had been in negotiations with the government.

Salvatore Riina reprimanded Balduccio Di Maggio, an ambitious mafioso who had left his wife and children for a mistress, telling him he would never be made a full boss.

On 11 January Di Maggio returned to Sicily under the custody of the Carabinieri operative squad because he could recognize Salvatore Riina despite having been a fugitive since 1969.

On 14 May 1993, television host Maurizio Costanzo, who had expressed delight at the arrest of Salvatore Riina, was almost killed by a bomb as he drove down a Rome street; 23 people were injured.

When Ciancimino was informed that the goal was to arrest Salvatore Riina, he seemed unwilling to continue.

In 2014, it was revealed by former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s.

Salvatore Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts to prosecute the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings.

Salvatore Riina was held in a maximum-security prison in Parma with limited contact with the outside world in order to prevent him from running his organization from behind bars.

In total, Salvatore Riina was given 26 life sentences, and served his sentence in solitary confinement.

On 31 August 2014, newspapers reported that in November of the previous year, Salvatore Riina was threatening against Luigi Ciotti.

In 2017, Salvatore Riina's lawyers applied to the Bologna Surveillance Court for the deferral of the sentence to house arrest, submitting the precarious state of health of Salvatore Riina as a reason.

Salvatore Riina was found to have established Mafia-controlled companies to hide money from protection rackets, drug-trafficking and tenders for public building contracts on the island.

In 2006, the council of Corleone created T-shirts reading I love Corleone in an attempt to dissociate the town from its infamous Mafiosi, but a brother-in-law of one of Salvatore Riina's daughters began an attempt to sue the Corleone mayor by claiming the Salvatore Riina family owned the copyright to the phrase.

Salvatore Riina died on 17 November 2017, one day after his 87th birthday, while in a medically induced coma after two operations in the prison unit of the Maggiore Hospital in Parma.

Salvatore Riina was refused a public funeral by the church and Archbishop Michele Pennisi; he was privately buried in his hometown of Corleone.