Gaetano Badalamenti
| Gaetano Badalamenti | |
|---|---|
Gaetano Badalamenti
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| Born |
September 14, 1923 Cinisi (Sicily, Italy) |
| Died | 29 April 2004 (aged 80) Ayer (Massachusetts, United States) |
| Criminal charge | Drug trafficking (Pizza Connection); Murder of Giuseppe Impastato |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment |
| Criminal status | Deceased (cardiac arrest) |
| Allegiance | Cosa Nostra |
Gaetano Badalamenti (September 14, 1923 – April 29, 2004) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s. In 1987 he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders of the so-called Pizza Connection, a USD 1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984.
Tano Badalamenti was the youngest of a family with five boys and four girls. His family owned a dairy farm in Cinisi. He had minimal schooling, attending school for only four years, before he was put to work as a field hand at age ten. Drafted into the Italian army in 1941, he deserted before the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943. His elder brother Emanuele Badalamenti migrated to the United States and operated a supermarket and gas station in Monroe, Michigan. In 1946 Gaetano was named in an arrest warrant on charges of conspiracy and kidnapping. In 1947 he was charged with murder as well, and he fled to his brother Emanuele in the US. Badalamenti was arrested in 1950 and deported back to Italy. He married Theresa Vitale (her sister was married to Filippo Rimi, the capomafia of Alcamo) and set up a business on the family land as a lemon grower. His judicial difficulties were all resolved because of insufficient evidence.
Badalamenti founded a successful construction business that supplied the crushed rock for Palermo's Punta Raisi Airport which fell within the Cinisi family's sphere of influence. In the early 1960s he successfully bribed officials to have the airport built near his hometown, despite its inconvenient geographical position. The construction needed large quantities of rock and gravel, which were available in large quantities on the family property. His two construction firms, a concrete plant and a fleet of trucks provided much needed employment for the townsfolk and enriched Badalamenti.
Badalamenti assumed leadership of the Mafia in Cinisi in 1963 after a car bomb killed Cesare Manzella during the First Mafia War. The Ciaculli Massacre on June 30, 1963 – when seven police and military officers sent to defuse a car bomb intended for mafioso Salvatore Greco were killed – changed the Mafia War into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted anti-mafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy. Within a period of ten weeks 1,200 mafiosi were arrested, many of whom would be kept out of circulation for five or six years. The Sicilian Mafia Commission was dissolved.
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