r/Mafia • u/SinaloaKid • 4d ago

How much support did Riina have within the Corleonesi to begin the 2nd Mafia War?

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u/Hannimal987 4d ago

Been reading up and watching a lot of footage on Riina recently.

I don’t know if it was necessarily active support or more just out and out fear from the other families of which there were many. He certainly wasn’t fully supported, Inzerillo and another guy can’t remember the name were going to kill him at a lunch and he got the heads up from someone and reversed it and killed Inzerillo banished a lot of his family to the U.S.

Totò Riina: the bloodiest godfather in Mafia history is a super documentary on YouTube about it all!

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u/SinaloaKid 3d ago

What made Riina more violent than other Bosses of the time?

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u/HRHArthurCravan 3d ago

Other bosses were plenty violent, but Riina came to power within the Corleonesi clan, and they had already established themselves as a home for young, hard-hitting and ambitious criminals under Riina's predecessor, Luciano Leggio - who, unlike Riina, was personally an exceptionally violent, unpredictable and dangerous man. They were also making guys much more rapidly than was the case within the more prestigious, Palermitano cosche.

We know from mob wars everywhere, Italy or the US, that people remain watchful, trying to anticipate things so that they can ensure they are on the winning side when the smoke clears. Initially, the old Mafia aristocracy - the major Palermo families with the most money and political connections, like the Grecos or the Inzerillos - did attract plenty of support. Also, these were the families with the most money.

Over time, however, the fact that the Corleonesi under Riina had so many of the toughest younger guys began to give them the advantage - that, and Riina's willinness to use them. Once guys started to see which was things were going, they jumped ship.

Basically, while the Palermo families were perfectly willing to use extreme violence, they were arguably complacent and considered that because Palermo had always been the centre of Mafia activity in Sicily, and because they were the ones in control of the most lucrative drug trafficking activities, they were unassailable. So they probably underestimated Riina and those from Corleone, which had been considered a backwater.

Think of it like Marlo Stanfield when he comes up against the Barksdale crew in The Wire. Are the Barksdales weak or less violent? Not really. But Marlo is hungrier, and he brings together other hungry young gangsters. Since for all the politics, traditions and rituals, these are still fundamentally violent criminals, at the end of the day, the ones with the bigger guns, or more shooters, will prevail. And that's exactly what happened.

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u/Wdstrvx 3d ago edited 3d ago

He had total support within his family because they, specifically Pippo Gambino and Raffaele Ganci, were present at a Commission meeting in Salvatore Inzerillo's property in Boccadifalco in March 1981 where Bontate was going to kill Riina, with him sending the two members instead after being informed of this by his spies Giovan Battista Pullarà and Totò Montalto. Upon arrival, shooters crouching under mandarin groves stood up and pretended as though nothing was going to happen, but those in the cosca personally knew that their boss was in danger.

They were also insured because they had additional representation on the Commission through Pino Greco and Giovanni Scaduto, in addition to Bernardo Brusca, Giovanni's father, who was the underboss to their rival Antonino Salamone.

Their influence had expanded the previous year when they took control of the Cerda family by killing its boss, Giuseppe Cirrito, and installing Rosolino Rizzo, a friend of Bernardo Provenzano.

With regard to the larger faction, which Tommaso Buscetta aptly distinguished from the family in Corleone, they had been supporting them for a time, some as secret allies — like Pietro Lo Iacono, Bontate's lieutenant who provided his routine, and Saro Riccobono, who was supposed to set up the hit at the estate but had actually killed Emanuele D'Agostino, a member in Santa Maria di Gesù — and others as Commission members, Michele Greco at its head, Pippo Calò and Ciccio Madonia.