Angelo La Barbera - First Mafia War

First Mafia War

The La Barbera brothers were the protagonists in a bloody conflict between rival clans in Palermo in the early 1960s. Known as the First Mafia War—a second started in the early 1980s—the struggle was about wresting control of Palermo’s rackets in the markets, sale of building-sites, construction and heroin trade to North America from the older Mafia.

The conflict erupted over an underweight shipment of heroin. Cesare Manzella, the Greco cousins from Ciaculli and the La Barbera brothers had financed the shipment. Suspicion fell on Calcedonio Di Pisa, who had collected the heroin for Manzella from the Corsican supplier, Pascal Molinelli, and had organised the transport to Manzella’s partners in New York.

The case was brought before the Mafia Commission, but disagreement on how to handle it, and old hostility towards the La Barberas, led to a bloody conflict, between clan’s allied with the Greco’s, headed by Salvatore Greco "Ciaschiteddu", and clan’s allied with the La Barberas. What sparked a series of attacks and counter-attacks was the killing of Di Pisa on December 26, 1962. The Grecos suspected Salvatore and Angelo La Barbera of the attack.

On January 17, 1963, Salvatore La Barbera disappeared and was never heard of again. Angelo La Barbera also disappeared, but two weeks later he reappeared in Milan, in the north of Italy, giving a press conference. The involvement of the media in Mafia affairs was unheard of at the time. Meanwhile La Barbera tried to retaliate, but the rival clans were closing in. On May 25, 1963, he was shot in Milan and severely wounded. He was arrested in the hospital. Buscetta admits to having accepted a contract to kill Angelo La Barbera, but claims that someone else carried out the shooting in Milan before he could.

On June 30, 1963, a car bomb in Ciaculli killed seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The outrage over the Ciaculli massacre changed the Mafia war into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted anti-Mafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy. The Sicilian Mafia Commission was dissolved and of those mafiosi who had escaped arrest many went abroad.