Viale Lazio massacre

Viale Lazio massacre
The body of Michele Cavataio after the hit in Viale Lazio.
Location	Office in the Viale Lazio in Palermo, (Sicily).
Date	December 10, 1969 7:30 PM
Target	Michele Cavataio, Mafia boss of the Acquasanta quarter of Palermo.
Attack type	Massacre
Deaths	Five killed
Perpetrators	Mafia hit squad composed of Bernardo Provenzano, Calogero Bagarella, Emanuele D’Agostino, Damiano Caruso, Gaetano Grado and Salvatore Riina.

The Viale Lazio massacre (Lazio Street Massacre) on December 10, 1969, was a settling of accounts in the Sicilian Mafia. Mafia boss Michele Cavataio and three men were killed in the Viale Lazio in Palermo (Sicily) by a Mafia hit squad. The bloodbath marked the end of a ‘pax mafiosa’ that had reigned since the Ciaculli massacre until the end of the Trial of the 114 against Cosa Nostra.

Cavataio had been one of the protagonists of the First Mafia War in 1962-63. According to pentito (government witness) Tommaso Buscetta it had been Cavataio who deliberately escalated a dispute between different factions. He was held responsible for the Ciaculli massacre, a bomb attack against Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco. He kept fuelling the war through other bomb attacks and killings. Another pentito, Gaetano Grado, confirmed Buscetta’s testimony.

After the Trial of the 114 relating to the First Mafia War, was over in December 1968, several top Mafia bosses decided to eliminate Cavataio during a meeting in Zürich on the instigation of Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco who had come all the way from Venezuela. Greco had come to subscribe to Buscetta’s theory about how the First Mafia War began. Cavataio claimed to have drawn a map of the Palermo Mafia families including the names of all members in an attempt to blackmail his way out of trouble. Such a map was dangerous if the police would be able get hold of it.

A Mafia hit squad was composed including Bernardo Provenzano, Calogero Bagarella (an elder brother of Leoluca Bagarella the brother-in-law of Totò Riina), Emanuele D’Agostino and Gaetano Grado of Stefano Bontade’s Santa Maria di Gesù Family, and Damiano Caruso a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina, the Mafia boss of Riesi.