Raffaele Ganci

Raffaele Ganci (born January 4, 1932) is a member of the Italian Mafia in Sicily from the Noce neighbourhood in Palermo. He was considered to be the right-hand man of Cosa Nostra boss Totò Riina and sat on the Sicilian Mafia Commission.

Ganci was close to the Corleonesi of Riina and sided with them against other Palermitan Mafia families in the Second Mafia War. He is held responsible for the killings of Riina’s rivals Stefano Bontade and Salvatore Inzerillo in 1981. He is sentenced to life for the killing of general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the prefect of Palermo, appointed to crack down on Cosa Nostra in 1982.

Riina appointed him on the Sicilian Mafia Commission in 1983 for the Noce mandamento. As a member of the Commission he was responsible for ordering the killings of Antimafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.

The family ran a popular butcher shop in the Via Lo Jacono. During the day Raffaele Ganci and his sons Calogero, Stefano and Domenico attended clients, while they went on killing sprees at night. The shop was located somewhere between the residences of Antimafia judges Rocco Chinnici in Via Pipitone Federico and the one of Giovanni Falcone. The wives of the judges regularly bought meat there, while the Ganci’s plotted the killing of their husbands.

On June 10, 1993, Raffaele Ganci was arrested in Terrasini after five years on the run, together with his son Calogero Ganci and his son-in-law Francesco Paolo Anselmo.

His son Calogero Ganci, a pentito, became a witness for the prosecution, in 1996, and confessed to more than 100 murders. He also gave testimony about his father and his brothers and their involvement in Mafia killings such as the car-bomb that killed Antimafia judge Chinnici in 1983, police officers Ninni Cassarà, captain D'Aleo and the first pentito, Leonardo Vitale.

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