Word: mafiosi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even as the court wound up its courageous deliberations, another trial against 78 alleged mafiosi continued in the same Palermo courtroom. Meanwhile, a new wave of killings was feared imminent: only three hours after he was acquitted of charges of international drug trafficking and Mafia association, Antonino Ciulla, 35, was gunned down in Palermo on his way to celebrate his release. Italian police also launched an investigation into the execution- , style slaying of Businessman Francesco Gitto, 58, a first cousin of Matilda Cuomo, the wife of New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Gitto, a well-known figure in his hometown...
...around Mafia hangouts and listened to endless hours of tiresome chatter about horses, cars and point spreads while waiting patiently for incriminating comments. They pressured mobsters into becoming informants. They carefully charted the secret family ties, linking odd bits of evidence to reveal criminal patterns. They helped put numerous mafiosi, one by one and in groups, behind bars. But last week, after a half-century in business, the American Mafia itself finally went on trial...
From 1981 through last year, federal prosecutors brought 1,025 indictments against 2,554 mafiosi, and have convicted 809 Mafia members or their uninitiated "associates." Many of the remaining cases are still pending. Among all criminal organizations, including such non-Mafia types as motorcycle gangs and Chinese and Latin American drug traffickers, the FBI compiled evidence that last year alone led to 3,803 indictments and 2,960 convictions. At the least, observes the FBI's Hogan, all this legal action means the traditional crime families "are bleeding, they're demoralized...
...adjacent L'Ucciardone Prison into a succession of holding pens in the enormous courtroom. The scene is Palermo, Sicily, where for seven months a Mafia trial that dwarfs the various legal proceedings in New York has been under way. In the homeland of the Cosa Nostra, 474 alleged Mafiosi, whose ranks range from the reputed "Boss of Bosses," Luciano Liggio, to a corps of picciotti, or soldiers, are in the dock for crimes as high as assassination and as low as auto theft...
...night for chest pains," said one federal investigator about the arrests on racketeering charges of nine New York City mobsters, including the leaders of the five Mafia families in the city. U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, who brought the indictments, suspects that the Mafiosi were trying to establish a record of illness in hope of proving they are too ill to stand trial or to endure imprisonment if convicted. Several, in fact, do have | various illnesses, including heart ailments. "If a guy claims he's sick and, like Dellacroce, he looks sick, we take him to a hospital," said the investigator...