Pietro Torretta

Pietro Torretta
Mafia boss Pietro Torretta at his arrest in 1964
Born	ca. 1912 Palermo, Sicily, Italy
Died	October 3, 1975 (age 63) Asinara, Italy
Cause of death	Kidney failure
Known for	Protagonist in the First Mafia War
Criminal charge	Murder
Criminal penalty	27 years at the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968
Allegiance	Sicilian Mafia

Pietro Torretta (ca. 1912 – October 3, 1975) was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Mafia family in the Uditore district in Palermo and one of the protagonists in the First Mafia War. He was initially considered to be the man behind the Ciaculli massacre.

Torretta hails from a long line of Mafiosi. He probably was the son of Francesco Torretta who is mentioned in the Sangiorgi report at the turn of the 20th century as major Mafioso. Pietro Torretta was a member of the band of bandit Salvatore Giuliano. He was first arrested in 1948 on extortion charges but released for lack of evidence.

He came from a poor background and began his career as a watchman/guard and gabellotto. He rose through the ranks, first a simple Mafia soldier, to becoming a boss. According to people who knew him, he was tall, thin, elegant, casual, balanced and on the whole, sympathetic in his social relations; "he spoke and behaved as a wise father." On the other hand, the New York Times described him as short, slight and fastidious in dress, with a rock-hard impassive face, deeply sunken cheeks and a slit of a mouth.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Torretta together with other upstart Mafia bosses like the La Barbera brothers and their henchmen formed the so-called ‘New Mafia’ which adopted new gangster techniques. Other smaller cosche came to recognize the supremacy of these bosses – a supremacy achieved by sheer violence. Men who were starting their ‘careers’ in their shadow were forming into new generation of mafiosi; they had initiative, and the road to leadership of a cosca had suddenly become quicker and available to those who were fast with their tommy-guns. One of the other upstarts was Tommaso Buscetta, another was Gerlando Alberti.

Torretta actively participated in what is called the Sack of Palermo. In 1959, the Christian Democrat Salvo Lima became mayor of Palermo. That became the peak period of Palermo’s controversial building boom and of warfare among the capital’s cosche making money in the real estate business. Mafia bosses were granted building licenses through contacts with politicians. The construction boom destroyed the city's green belt and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks.