1960s Sicilian Mafia Trials - The First Trial

The First Trial

The first trial opened in 1967 and concentrated on the growing involvement of the Sicilian Mafia in the international heroin trade. Specifically, the defendants were all those who had been at a series of meetings in October 1957 between American and Sicilian Mafiosi at the Grand Hotel Des Palmes in Palermo. The meeting was about heroin, with the Americans apparently not keen on getting too involved in drugs due to the lengthy sentences for trafficking, whilst the Sicilians were apparently all for it. At the time, authorities did not know of the decision the two organisations came to (which was for the Sicilians to import and distribute heroin into the US, with their American counterparts taking a slice of the profits), but they were aware it concerned trafficking heroin. (The meeting also concluded that, following the American model, the Sicilians should start up their own commission.)

Amongst the defendants were Gaetano Badalamenti, Tommaso Buscetta and Giuseppe Genco Russo. They were mostly charged with Organized Delinquency, an old law that was the nearest prosecutors had to a charge of being a Mafiosi (many in authority - whether out of niavety or otherwise - denied the existence of the Mafia in the 1960s, and in fact it was not until 1982 that being a member of the Mafia became a formal crime.)

All the Americans at the meeting, including Joseph Bonanno and Carmine Galante, were indicted, but none were extradited because the US had no such criminal charge of Organized Delinquency. Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who was the principal organizer of the meeting, would have stood trial but he had since died of natural causes.

The prosecutors did not have a great deal of evidence at the trial, principally relying on information from Joseph Valachi, an American Mafiosi who began co-operating with the government in 1962. As a low-level mobster, Valachi was not at the Grand Hotel Des Palmes meeting, but he was aware of the growing heroin trade and the Sicilian Mafia's involvement in it. The police had also put those at the meeting under surveillance at the time and for months afterwards in the hope of collecting evidence that they were dealing in narcotics.

The evidence was still thin on the ground and at the conclusion of the trial in August 1968 every single defendant was acquitted.