Salvatore Contorno

Salvatore "Totuccio" Contorno (born 28 May 1946) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who turned into a state witness against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of Tommaso Buscetta. He gave detailed accounts of the inner-workings of the Sicilian Mafia. His testimonies were crucial in the Maxi Trial against the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo and the Pizza Connection trial in New York in the mid-1980s.

Contorno was born in Palermo. In 1975, the butcher Totuccio Contorno was initiated in the Santa Maria di Gesù Mafia family in Palermo, then led by Stefano Bontade, an influential member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission. Contorno and Bontade used to be hunting companions in the 1960s. Although he was just a soldier in the Mafia family, Contorno reported directly to the boss Bontade. He was one of Bontade’s trusted hitmen.

Contorno became a cigarette smuggler and heroin trafficker. His cousins, the Grado brothers imported morphine base from Turkey, which was refined into heroin in laboratories on Sicily. He was also involved in kidnapping, for which he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. From 1976-79 Contorno was in compulsory internal exile in Venice after completing a prison term for belonging to a criminal organisation. However, he frequently returned to Palermo. At the time he was bankrupt, because his frozen-meat business had failed. He needed to lend money to invest in heroin shipments.

During the Second Mafia War — when the Corleonesi Mafia clan of Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano attacked the established Mafia families of Palermo — the Corleonesi killed Contorno’s boss, Stefano Bontade, in April 1981. They went on to eliminate other members of the Santa Maria di Gesù family that were lured to the estate of Michele Greco where they were wiped out. Contorno did not turn up to the fateful meeting at Greco's estate. He sensed trouble and went into hiding.

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