Pietro Scaglione

Pietro Scaglione (Lercara Friddi, March 2, 1906 – Palermo, May 5, 1971) was an Italian magistrate and Chief Prosecutor of Palermo (Sicily). He was killed by the Mafia in 1971.

Scaglione graduated in law at the University of Palermo in 1927. After a career in the judiciary, he became Chief Prosecutor of Palermo in April 1962. As such, together with the head of the investigative branch of the prosecution office Cesare Terranova, he was responsible for the repression of the Mafia after the First Mafia war and the Ciaculli massacre on June 30, 1963. Their efforts were largely undone by lenient sentences of the court in Catanzaro at the so-called Trial of the 114.

On May 5, 1971, Scaglione was killed with his driver Antonino Lo Russo, when he returned from his daily visit to the tomb of his wife at the Cappuccini cemetery in Palermo. It was the first time since the end of World War II that the Mafia had murdered an Italian magistrate. The police rounded up 114 Mafiosi who would be tried in the second Trial of the 114.

No one has ever been convicted for the killing of Scaglione and his driver. In January 1991, the suspects Gaetano Fidanzati, Pietro D’Accardio, Gerlando Alberti and his son, Francesco Russo, Salvatore Riina, Luciano Leggio and Giuseppe Calò were not brought before the court by the prosecution for lack of sufficient proof.

During his long career in the judiciary Scaglione was involved in some of the unsolved political mysteries that tainted post-war Italy. He was the last one to have interrogated Gaspare Pisciotta, the right-hand man of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano, held responsible for the Portella della Ginestra massacre on May Day 1947 to impede the advance of communist and peasant movement.

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