Word: buscetta
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Dates: during 1984-1984
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According to Judge Giusto Schiacchitano, one of the Italian state prosecutors involved, Buscetta's revelations "opened doors that before had always remained closed...
Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, whose territory covers the southern district of New York, said that as a result of Buscetta's disclosures, "we have a whole new area of intelligence that wasn't available to us before." U.S. and Italian authorities hope to use that information to round up even more Mafiosi and crack the Sicilian connection that has smuggled billions of dollars' worth of heroin into the U.S. in the past few years...
Many Mafia leaders are clearly worried. Late last week Leonardo Rimi, a mid-level Sicilian mobster and ally of Buscetta's, was gunned down as he hid in a farmhouse 30 miles from Palermo. Some Italian law enforcement officials interpreted the murder as a warning to Buscetta and to anyone else who might be tempted to talk. There was anxious speculation that the upheaval caused by Buscetta's revelations could produce a new round of all-out bloodletting...
Even before the discovery of the pizza connection, Italian authorities had been seeking Buscetta, a native of Palermo and an ally of the Badalamenti organization, who had fled Italy in 1970 and gone to New York, where he acquired a second wife, a new daughter and new pizzerias. He also owned property in Brazil, where he was arrested in 1972 when police found 60 kilos (132 Ibs.) of heroin on his farm. Extradited to Italy, Buscetta spent eight years in various jails, living well and even giving away his daughter in a marriage held within the prison's walls...
...Italian authorities, Buscetta slipped back into Palermo with a false passport. The reason for his return: to help his gang and its allies regain the control that had been wrested from it by Luciano Liggio, a tough crime boss from Corleone, one of the traditional Mafia strongholds in western Sicily...