Gaspare Spatuzza
| Gaspare Spatuzza | |
|---|---|
Spatuzza at his arrest on 2 July 1997
|
|
| Born |
April 8, 1964 Palermo, Sicily, Italy |
| Other names | "U tignusu" (The bald) |
| Occupation | Mafia boss |
| Criminal charge |
* Mafia Association * Multiple murder |
| Criminal penalty |
Life imprisonment ( multiple life sentences related to different homicides and mass murders ) |
| Criminal status | imprisoned since 1997 |
| Conviction(s) | Mafia Association, Multiple murder |
Gaspare Spatuzza (Palermo, April 8, 1964), is a Sicilian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He was a killer for the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano who headed the Mafia family of Brancaccio. After the arrest of the Gravianos in January 1994, he apparently succeeded them as the regent of the Mafia family. He was arrested in 1997 and started to cooperate with the judicial authorities in 2008. In his testimony he claimed that media tycoon and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a deal with the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 that put the country "in the hands" of Cosa Nostra.
Spatuzza has been convicted of six bomb attacks and 40 homicides. He confessed the murder of the parish priest, father Pino Puglisi, on September 15, 1993. Puglisi was the pastor of San Gaetano’s Parish in the rough Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio, and spoke out against the Mafia.
Spatuzza himself was arrested in July 1997. On April 14, 1998, Spatuzza, Nino Mangano, Cosimo Lo Nigro and Luigi Giacalone received life sentences for the killing of father Puglisi. He was also sentenced for the murder of the young son of state witness Santo Di Matteo, Giuseppe, who had been kidnapped and killed after 779 days in a failed attempt to force the father to retract his testimony on the killing of Antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone.
In June 1998, he also received a life sentence in a series of bomb attacks in 1993 in via dei Georgofili in Florence, in via Palestro in Milan and in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in Rome, which left 10 people dead and 93 injured as well as damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery.
The bomb attacks were part of a campaign of terror in 1993 against the state to get them to back off in their crackdown against the Mafia after the murders of Antimafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
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