Angelo La Barbera - Trial and Death

Trial and Death

Angelo La Barbera was charged with seven murders. He was one of the few mafiosi who received a heavy sentence at the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968. He was sentenced to 22 years, but appealed. In May 1970, a government decree established that defendants whose sentences had not yet become final after they had been held without bail for four to six years had to be released provisionally pending their appeals. La Barbera was one of the benefactors.

Pending the appeal, he was sent into banishment in the North of Italy and later to Linosa, a remote island off the coast of Sicily. When he was finally locked up in a prison in Perugia in 1975 three mafiosi stabbed him to death. By then his power and influence had declined sharply. The Mafia family he had led was dissolved.

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