Luciano Leggio - Life Imprisonment

Life Imprisonment

He was finally captured in Milan on May 16, 1974, local police having tracked him down by tapping his telephone. Leggio was finally sent off to serve his life sentence for the Navarra slaying.

He is believed to have retained significant influence from behind bars, as have many other mobsters after imprisonment. However, by the end of the 1970s, his lieutenant Salvatore Riina was in control of the Corleonesi clan.

Raised in poverty, Leggio was a multi-millionaire by the time of his arrest. At the time of his capture, Italian law did not yet allow authorities to confiscate criminals' illicit fortunes, although this has since changed.

He was tried with a number of others in 1977 for previous crimes on the testimony of Leonardo Vitale; he was acquitted with all but one of the others (Vitale's uncle) when Leonardo Vitale's mental state was called into question.

In the Maxi Trial of 1986/1987, Leggio faced charges of helping to run the Corleonesi from behind bars, including the accusation that he ordered the murder of prosecutor Cesare Terranova, who was shot dead in 1979. He acted as his own lawyer and defended himself, cross examining Tommaso Buscetta and other pentiti. He claimed he had been framed for political reasons. He was eventually acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence, although he still had his life-sentence to serve and was returned to a maximum security prison in Sardinia, where he indulged in his hobby of painting, in particular landscapes.

On November 16, 1993, he died in prison from a heart attack, aged sixty-eight. He is buried in Corleone.