Word: buscetta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1984-1984
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...even Buscetta's family was immune from the bloodletting. One day, gunmen burst into Buscetta's Palermo pizzeria and shot and killed his son-in-law. A day later, armed men cut down three of his lieutenants. Before long, Buscetta's brother and nephew were dead and Buscetta's two sons had disappeared. They are presumed dead...
Understandably shaken, Buscetta fled back to Brazil, though not to the obscurity he sought. In October 1983, Brazilian authorities picked him up on an Italian warrant and made plans to extradite him to Italy. Fearing what awaited him, the hunted boss of two worlds unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide by taking strychnine. Facing a probable prison sentence and Mafia vengeance, he decided to talk...
Italian officials were delighted by Buscetta's offer. But they were also skeptical, knowing that no high-level Mafioso was likely to violate omerta, the code of silence, and disclose secrets about the criminal organization. Palermo Deputy District Attorney Vincenzo Geraci was understandably surprised when he met Buscetta in Brazil last June and found him willing to tell what he knew. In their initial interview, Geraci recalled, Buscetta told the prosecutor, "I am not your adversary." A month later, after Buscetta had been extradited to Italy and assured that his family would be protected, he began to talk, said...
Some U.S. Mafiosi believe that Buscetta may also be trying to get back at those who kept him out of the Mob's higher councils because he had abandoned his first wife, thereby showing disrespect for the institution of marriage Others see a simpler motive. "He's settling scores," says a former New York detective who has spent most of his ife studying the Mafia. "He's trying to get even with the people who killed his family...
Whatever his purpose, Buscetta has apparently been forthcoming. In a series of conversations lasting through the summer and covering 3,000 pages, he offered a history of the Sicilian Mafia's operations going back, in some cases, to 1950. He volunteered details that authorities had long suspected but never been able to prove. Not since Joseph Valachi, a soldier in New York's Lucky Luciano family, spilled what he knew to a U.S. Senate committee in 1963 has anyone provided such a comprehensive picture of the Mafia and its operations. Said Judge Schiacchitano: "Buscetta has offered confirmation...