Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, one of the most feared Mafia bosses of the 20th century, died this week, the day after his 87th birthday. The Sicilian mafioso was serving multiple life sentences in prison after masterminding a strategy to assassinate Italian prosecutors and law enforcement officers who were attempting to bring down the Cos Nostra crime family.
A native of Corleone, Sicily, he succeeded Luciano Leggio to become the head of the Corleonesi faction of the criminal organization in the early 1980s, achieving dominance with a campaign of violence. While he was most often referred to as 'Toto', he was also known by the nicknames "la belva" (the beast) and "il capo dei capi" (the boss of the bosses).
As a fugitive from the law, he remained hidden as his rivals (who operated more on bribery) were taken out by the police. His favoured assassin Giovanni Brusca estimated he had murdered between up to 200 people on Riina's orders. Riina violated traditional Mafia codes, namely by killing women and children - and also sanctioned the murder of uninvolved members of the public solely to distract the police.
Eventually, things had escalated to a point where much of the police force was occupied with his capture and the suppression of his criminal activities. The crackdown on the Mafia's operations stepped up in a major way after bombs killed Italy's two leading anti-Mafia magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
Riina was captured in an apartment in Palermo the six months after Borsellino and his police escorts were killed by a car bomb. With two life sentences under his belt already, convicted with over a hundred counts of murder, and with more coming out in the following two and a half decades, he eventually amassed 26 life sentences for his crimes. He refused to collaborate with law enforcement after his capture and was detained in a maximum-security prison in Milan.
After his initial arrest in 1993, over $125 million in assets were confiscated from Riina, which many believe is only a fraction of his total fortune. In addition to this, his mansion was acquired by the campaigning anti-Mafia mayor of Corleone in 1997. The mansion was then converted into a school for local children.
In 2006, Corleone's council made T-shirts that read 'I love Corleone' in an attempt to dissociate the town from its infamous Mafia gangs, but strangely enough, one of Riina's family members tried to sue the mayor by claiming that their family owned the copyright to the phrase.
In July the court denied a request by his family to transfer him to house arrest due to his ailing health, and the Justice Minister gave his family permission to visit his bedside in hospital hours before his death. Doctors put him in a medically-induced coma as his health declined following two surgeries. After serving nearly 25 years in prison for his crimes, he died from natural causes.
