1960s Sicilian Mafia Trials - Aftermath

Aftermath

Many of the prosecutors and judges involved in the trials, including Terranova, complained that the political will from Rome to prosecute the Mafia that followed the after the Ciaculli Massacre had evaporated by the end of the 1960s, leaving prosecutors on their own. Whilst there was undoubtedly witness intimidation and evidence tampering, a lot of the evidence was fairly thin. There were no pentiti at the time and few non-Mafiosi willing to risk death by testifying for the prosecution.

Cesare Terranova was gunned down in 1979. Leggio was accused of ordering the killing from his prison cell, but acquitted due to insufficient evidence.

On December 10, 1969, once all the trials were over, Michele Cavataio and three of his men were shot to death in a gun battle that left one of the attackers dead as well. Having drastically reduced its activities during the crackdown following the Ciaculli Massacre, the Mafia was back in business and its first job was to dispose of Cavataio, who they had finally realised had triggered the First Mafia War.

Many of those in the above trials were convicted at a later date. For example, Gaetano Badalamenti would end his days in a US prison after being convicted of doing in the 1970s and 1980s exactly what he had been accused of planning in the 1960s, namely trafficking heroin into America. Tommaso Buscetta would eventually become one of the first Mafia pentiti and revealed a great deal about the Mafia, although he was a little reluctant to implicate himself or his friends too much, his revelations concentrating on his enemies such as Leggio, Riina and Giuseppe Calo.