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- [00:01]
A
Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did?
- [00:06]
B
Yep.
- [00:06]
A
On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame. You don't say. Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow.
- [00:17]
B
Talk about fast. Wow.
- [00:18]
A
Way to go. So, about that picture frame.
- [00:21]
B
Ah, forget about it.
- [00:22]
A
Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with Ms. 13, El Salvador. How the Russian mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s.
- [00:37]
B
What about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab? I'm Sean Williams.
- [00:42]
A
And I'm Danny Gold and we're the hosts of the Underworld podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over reporting on dangerous people and places. And every week we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world.
- [00:54]
B
Available wherever you get your podcasts. December 22, 1988. The town of Gela, Sicily is gearing up for Christmas tree in the main piazza. Lights up about town prayers held at its quaint 17th century Franciscan Chiesa, the church. It's a time for family feast and festivity and perhaps, just perhaps, a chance to forget the vicious blood feud that has strangled this town of 70,000 and horrified mainland Italy for the past couple years. But as the phrase goes, things are never so bad that they cannot get worse. And so it comes to pass when at around 1pm on this winter's evening, Salvatore Polara, in his mid-50s, sits down for lunch with his wife and three sons. The couple's two daughters are away at their two story villa on the historic Via Ducezia. Half an hour later, a man approaches the Polara's home and he rings its doorbell. Polara's teenage son Marcello opens the door. The stranger shoots him dead. Immediately, Marcello's body hits the floor. But the killer isn't done. He steps inside and armed with two 7.65 millimeter pistols, sets about massacring the entire Polara family, blowing their bodies across the dining table. He's done in under a minute. Then the killer scuttles into a nearby alley, hops into an idling getaway car, and he's away. Polara is was the head of a construction company that's been hired on a major dam project. He was also the local head of the Cosa Nostra, the mafia that has held Sicily in its grip for over a century, an associate of Salvatore Totorina, possibly the most brutal and feared mafioso the island has ever seen. Cops arrive. Four of the Polaras are dead. But one of them, 14 year old Pietro Polara, survives. The killer's wig is on the floor, as are dozens of empty shell casings. Even by jealous standards, the murder of a family in broad daylight is beyond the pale. A barely imaginable act of savagery. But the cops are clueless. All they know is that surely the hit belongs to a rival group, one comprised of former Cosa Nostra members who decided to go it alone and wipe out their former comrades. Some in Italy already know these crooks and killers as the fifth Mafia. Sicilians mostly know them by their local name, one derived from the Sicilian word for star. And while carabinieris scramble for clues in the Polara case, the Cosa Nostra are already plotting their wilder, vengeful response. One which will ensure that almost nobody in little Xela is safe. This is what a Mafia war truly looks like. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly podcast that delves into some commas of the criminal world you thought you knew about and others you never even knew existed. I am Sean Williams in Wellington, New Zealand, packing up my entire life to go and live in that in America. And I'm joined by Danny Gold in New York City, who I believe just lost their entire month's earnings on a bet. I think it was about what color dress the White House press secretary was going to wear. How are you going to make that one back, mate?
- [04:41]
A
You know, if you just keep going double or nothing, eventually you have to win. Like, the odds eventually are in, are in your favor. Amateurs don't know this. All professional gamblers know that. You just keep betting down, by the way. Just broke like an hour ago, another gambling ring of like, insider information busted. And these guys were betting like $150,000 on, on Chinese baseball. And it's kind of like, buddy, if you're in America betting them, like, come on, like, you're going to. No one, no one's betting half a million dollars on Kent State. You might as well just go turn yourself in when you make that bet. Like, it's. It's insane. Fantastic stuff, like, great all around.
- [05:17]
B
Yeah, I think I saw one on the Czech Super League ping pong tournament or something. I mean, come on, guys. I think you can hear this and more at Danny's website. Win, win, win, win.
- [05:29]
A
It's where I give all my picks.
- [05:30]
B
Or.Com where I give all my picks. Yeah, yeah. Win, win. Four wins. Win, win, win, win. Co. Anyway, yeah, you can probably press that skip button a couple of times from now on, guys, if you don't want to hear about our weekly housekeeping calls, but please subscribe on Spotify, itunes or wherever you're listening. We've got a bunch more bonuses coming on the Patreon. Plus we're finally getting into the YouTube game. So yeah, 10,000 more followers there. We're going to send Danny to Vegas on a mafia junket.
- [05:59]
A
Yeah. Patreon.com General podcast or sign up on Spotify right at show page or an iTunes. We've actually been in the YouTube game for a while. We just haven't put any effort into it. We're going to try putting effort into it and see how that works out. Usually in life it doesn't, but you know, you never know.
- [06:14]
B
Yeah, yeah. Why put effort into anything? More, more tips and advice from us. Anyway, the underworld podcastmail.com for tips, abuse and show ideas. Yeah. Underworldpod.com info merch. How are your New Year's resolutions coming on anyway? Mine are great. Sleep less, worry, more experience. A general feeling of dread about the world. I'm absolutely killing it. Should we talk about organized crime for a bit? Yeah.
- [06:41]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [06:42]
B
Yeah. Okay, let's go. So the Stida, the star or Stida, I don't know how you say it. Italian. Italy, so called. I just literally just said it in a different voice, didn't I? Italy's so called fifth Mafia. Although some folks attribute that to the Societa Foggiana, which is an offshoot of the Neapolitan Camorra based in Puglia. I'm gonna daydream about Puglia. The best place in the world. And in case you're wondering, the fourth Mafia, which is also in Puglia, that is the Sacra Corona Unita, which we somehow still haven't done a show on yet anyway. Yeah, we should still is still a topic. Yeah, we definitely should do that. And this one has been on our radars at the pod for some time.
- [07:23]
A
Yeah. Shout out to our dude AJ Jackson for, for pushing us to do this.
- [07:26]
B
Yeah, ciao. But actually there is not a huge amount out there at all on these guys actually. And a lot of it seems to come from sources citing themselves. Back and forth is kind of online circle jerk of bad information.
- [07:41]
A
That's just so much of that when it comes to like organized crime, geopolitics, that's all it is. You know, they'll get one figure and people will just endlessly quote it and it's ends up being wrong. But like they'll be like, oh, so and so mentioned this. So it's the, you know, whatever.
- [07:53]
B
Yeah. And you can hear it all on this show. Members can check out the reading list for some really solid books on this, though the best is probably Alexander Still's excellent cadavers from 1995, which is one of the best books about Italian organized crime. It's actually made into a 1999 movie starring F. Murray Abraham and Chaz Palminteri, who I cannot, I cannot believe I'm doing this on a non Danny episode. Famously turned down the role as Tony Soprano because he had cancer at the time. Look, I'm going to give you like one free throw, like one Sopranos reference before we move on. Let's just flush it out. I don't know, David Chase's barber or some continuity error in season five, episode two. Go on.
- [08:33]
A
Big Chaz Bahama on Terry fan and world class Bronx tale up there with like the best mafia movies of all time.
- [08:38]
B
Yep.
- [08:38]
A
I keep meeting people who haven't seen it and frankly, I'm disgusted.
- [08:43]
B
Yeah, that. Does that include me? I'm afraid that it might do. Anyway, let's get into this. The Stidder and straight off the bat, these guys are different to other Italian mobs. For starters, the country three main organized criminal groups. So you've got the Camorra of Campania, Calabria's Ndranghetta, and the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. These guys at least claim to trace their lineage back centuries, right to bandits, to shepherds and smugglers of law. Especially regarding the Ndranghetta, a lot of this storytelling is complete bs. Check out our episode with Alex Perry from a few years back for more on that. But in the case of the Cosa Nostra, there really is a deep history. Sicily is the biggest island in the medium between Italy and North Africa. And for centuries it's been a battleground between the region's great powers. Romans, Carthaginians, Greeks, Normans, Goths, Arabs, and unfortunately the French in downtown Palermo, the island's biggest city and in my opinion, one of the best places to visit on the planet. You will see ancient street signs in Italian, Arabic and Hebrew. It's really great place. In the 13th century, French. Bastard. Sorry. Soldiers take over the island and there is a massive uprising from locals known as the Vespers. Their battle cry is Please forgive me, all of Italy. Morta ala Francia Italia. Anila which means apparently death to the French is Italy's cry and whose first letters also spell out the word Mafia. I bet you didn't know that.
- [10:18]
A
You know I didn't. But isn't there something about like orange and lemon farmers and all that? Or does that come, does that come later on?
- [10:24]
B
We'll, we'll kind of touch on that, yeah. And, and to be fair, actually, to, to come back to this, it's only one of several theories about the origin of the word Mafia. It's just, it's just the coolest one, right? Others include a Sicilian word for caves, which are used as criminal hiding places. And another is, it comes from the Arabic word maafi, which is the Islamic tax on non Muslims living in Muslim lands. In the following centuries, Austrians and Spaniards take sicily. But in 1860 it is swallowed into the newly minted Kingdom of Italy under Gary Baldy. Fantastic biscuit. The locals aren't too keen on this, writes Peter De Vico in his book Mafia Made Easy. Quote. Even under unification, Sicily was deemed a substandard society by the ruling powers of mainland Italy. A destitute, bleak place populated by uneducated, uncouth commoners. The peasants who worked the soil for centuries under foreign feudal landlords found themselves slaves to the new regime from the mainland. There was no justice. After centuries of hardship, bloodshed and false hopes, the average Sicilian was no better off under the new united Italy than he was 400 years previous. Nothing had changed. There was no future, only more hardship and poverty.
- [11:40]
A
You see, Sean, the north of Italy, they always have the money and the power. They punish the south for years. Even today, they put their noses up at them like they're peasants. I hated the north.
- [11:51]
B
Jesus Christ. That's one I cannot believe. Right, you, you get one. There better not be more. It's hard to tell from this guy in this book. Quote, not that quote. What he means by this, is it, is it bad? I think he means that it's bad. Anyway, throughout the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, Sicilians just generally despise authorities and bands of peasant vigilantes grow across the island, especially in those poor rural areas. But don't be fooled. Despite what they might claim, the Costa Nostra isn't some virtuous league of shadows protecting the poor from the rich. Actually, they've been a bunch of robbing bastards forever. This is the era of the so called Gabelotti. Sharecroppers who lease land from landowning aristocrats who'd rather spend their Time in the city.
- [12:40]
A
Wait, so the gabliot. The gablioti, whatever the, however you can say it, they're the poor peasants or they're the rich landowners.
- [12:48]
B
They're the guys in between. So you've got the wealthy landowners and the peasants and these guys like insinuate themselves in the middle. They lease land off the wealthy aristocrats and then they sublet it to the poor. So they're kind of like wedging them.
- [13:03]
A
So they're like middle managers. Yeah, yeah, they kind of sharecroppers mean something. Something different.
- [13:09]
B
Really. Okay. Yeah, so these guys, these guys are just taking the land essentially. They're not, I guess. Yeah. In the American sense. They wouldn't be sharecroppers. Right. Because those would be the low down guys, wouldn't they?
- [13:20]
A
Yeah, the sharecroppers in America are like the really poor, I think usually like blacks after slavery was, was, was ended, like who got stuck basically, like you know, farming plots of land for landowners where they got like nothing, you know.
- [13:33]
B
Yeah, these would be in Sicily. These would be the kind of like third tier of that. These guys, the Gabalotti, like they would control the farm, Right. And then the peasants would sublease and work it. In other words, these guys are kind of slum lords. And since the peasants are always in debt to these guys, they hire a bunch of guards to keep the peasants in their place, make sure they pay and extort them at will. And this, and not some Robin Hood fiction is the tale of the first organized mafia in Sicily. And because the Gabalotti give them a long leash and they're the island's premier hired muscle, they quickly get stuck into all kinds of criminal money making schemes. You've got contraband protection rackets, lemon trees and olive groves. Yes. And later controlling large parts of the illegal immigration way from Sicily into the United States. I don't think I'm going to mention that huge amount from here on. But yeah, they do play a big role, like the fresh produce and stuff. Especially with the guys who came over to America. Right. I think they were like involved in the, that kind of world before they came over. I mean, you got into this a bunch with the Arable Anastasia episode about a year ago. You've got Giuseppe Masseria, one of the pioneer kingpins of the American Mafia. He arrives in New York on a boat from Sicily in 1902 and he'll become the head of the Genovese crime family, nicknamed Joe the Boss. And he does it with the help of Sicilian Mafiosi who Consolidate their groups of standover men into one powerful confederacy infused with Masonic rituals and at least a surface level nod to some kind of code of honor. They are the Cosa Nostra, our thing. Right.
- [15:12]
A
And then after Joe the Boss, you have basically Luciano and the sort of rise of the Five families and they go to war. The sort of newer American style Cosa Nostra against the Mustache Pete's, which the old Sicilian types. And I think we went into that too in the Anastasia episode that sort of. We've definitely gone into that in like four different episodes for sure.
- [15:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like there is some crossover between these worlds and we're going to go into it a bit more in the later, later parts of this episode as well. Anyway, Mussolini and his fascists take control of Italy in 1922. By April 1945, of course, he's hanging upside down with his mistress outside of Milan gas station. According to New York Times, a fitting end to a wretched life. The Allies had actually occupied Sicily since 1943, destroying institutions, banning political parties, and even opening the gates of the island's prisons.
- [16:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, to be fair though, like, those institutions were Fascist. Yeah, they were Fascist institutions. A lot of those prisons were filled with political prisoners, though. It was a mess during the Ally occupation. That's to be expected if you read them. I feel like I mentioned it every seventh episode, but Naples 44, about the.
- [16:17]
B
It's amazing.
- [16:18]
A
The Occupation of Naples is just a fantastic book and really sort of breaks down what was happening. I mean, it was. It was just the middle of World War II, like everything was chaos.
- [16:27]
B
Yeah, I think we did. I think I did a show on the Camora like six months ago and we were talking about this and it's like unsurprisingly, a super, super chaotic time all over Italy. But yeah, in Sicily especially as well, like where it was pretty weak institutions to begin with, it kind of falls apart. Unsurprisingly in all of this, the Costa Nostra thrives and it makes bank in Sicily's new black market. Many people aim for political power by denouncing fascism, but they turn out to be Mafiosi themselves. And when the war ends and left wing Sicilians demand a reform of land laws that produce the Gabalotti and their criminal enforcers, the Cosa Nostra runs riot. They execute communists and reformers across the territory. It's complete madness. By the 1950s, the Cosa Nostra are at the heart of Europe's booming trade in narcotics too. They help ferry heroin and other substances into the United States with the French Connection, which I'm going to do a show on very soon.
- [17:27]
A
Yeah, we should really. We should have done that already too. But that's. I mean, they're mostly the French connections, mostly Corsicans that run it, right?
- [17:33]
B
Yes. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm gonna try and do a show on record. He's the big guy there. Like big. In Vichy France, the Cosa Nostra takes hold in Sicily's main cities, particularly Palermo, where between 1959 and. And 1963, just five men, all of them mafiosi, win 80% of all building contracts. They demolish historic sites and erect seas of ugly concrete blocks known today as the Sack of Palermo. But because these guys are hardly saints, they often squabble and fight over access to resources themselves. So in 1962, this spills into something called the First Mafia War, which happens when a group of Cosa Nostra families descend into years long violence that lasts until a series of high profile trials in 1968. Now you can tell already, but I'm skipping through a lot of this history. We'll definitely dive into this in greater detail in like 50 episodes time. But by the early 1970s, most Costa Nostra families have regrouped in the aftermath of the first Mafia War. And they are making millions from corrupt state contracts and the drug trade. But the peace, if it ever lasted at all, won't be for long. Enter Giuseppe Di Cristina. I think I'm going to just call him Di Cristina because I can't keep doing these Italian accents for long. He's a powerful crime boss from Riesi on the southern side of Sicily, so kind of the opposite side to Palermo. Di Cristina is born in 1923. His father was a Mafioso and his grandfather was too. And he began his life, actually his grandfather, as a gabilotto. And so Giuseppe follows in their footsteps. He becomes the family's patriarch in 1961, and he earns the nickname La Tigre the Tiger. Although looking at him, he looks a bit more like a pug or a bulldog. The Di Cristina family has been plugged into the region's politics for decades. Giuseppe is no different. He backs a series of Christian Democrats, right wingers to power, writes Alexander still quote, they were the bosses of the riesi mafia for three generations. They supported the Democracia Cristiana. They were all DC. Di Cristina is also of course, a murderer. In 1962, he's believed to have played a role in sabotaging the plane of state oil executive Enrico Matei, which goes down in a small village on route for Catania, Sicily's second largest city, to Milan that October, which reminds me of Catania. What a great place. I spent a couple of weeks there back in 2021. I followed the tale of a rugby club fighting the Mafia for Sports Illustrated. RIP for some reason. I mean, it was a great week, but I just can't get over the espresso and orange juice at the stand for like. I think it was naught. I think it was 70 cents, which is like 50 cents in America. I don't know, it's like nuts. Anyway, Di Christina doesn't stop oil execs in 1969. Cheap things. Hey, what? Do you remember when things were cheap? It's my stand up. He orchestrates the deaths in 1969. Yeah, it's good. In it of feared Mafia boss Michele Cavatao and three of his henchmen in Palermo. Cavatajo, nicknamed Il Cobra, which is Italian for a sick snake, Danny had been on a rampage, committing massacres and setting off car bombs amid the first Mafia war. So when the war ends, most mafiosi are pretty delighted that this unhinged nutjob has been taken out by Ti Cristina, who by this point works alongside Totorina, the beast head of the powerful Corleonese crime family. In 1975, Di Cristina becomes head of the Cosa Nostra in Caltanisetta, right in the middle of Sicily. And he's appointed to the Inter Provincial Commission of the Mafia, which is its sort of Sicily wide board of directors. But he's worried about the rise of Totorina and the Corleonese who are on a tear up. They're snatching members from other families, they're killing rivals and inducting folks into the Cosa Nostra whom other families don't think are fit for purpose. They're ahead of their time, the Corleonese, in that their peers are all wringing their hands about honour and secrecy. And Riina is just a straight out psychopath, the manifestation of despotic power committing to becoming the most powerful crime boss in Sicily. No matter who he has to kill to do so. He murders rival members and he installs Corleonese friendly patsies in their place. He murders reporters, business people, police officers, politicians. Not in the shadows to pull the strings of power carefully, but in the open, brutally, to bend the public and authorities to his will. He's a terrorist, basically.
- [22:24]
A
This is when Sicily had like that impossibly high murder rate. Yeah. Or does that come. Does that come later?
- [22:29]
B
The crazy high rate comes slightly later, but this is like. It's already getting up there at this point. I mean, it's pretty. It's pretty bloody. In November 1977, Rena turns his sights on his old pal Di Cristina, who by this point is snitching to the Carabinieri, which is kind of like the gendarmes in Italy, that the Corleonese are a force they've never reckoned with before. On November 21 that year, Di Cristina survives a shooting that claims the lives of two of his most loyal men. The Cristina then plans a hit on the guy who had allegedly carried out the hit on behalf of Rina. But his accomplice dies of natural causes and his plot is shelved. In the meantime, Sotorina manages to get a prominent rival boss thrown out of the Commission and into exile in Brazil over false accusations. He's been carrying out unauthorised murders and pocketing drug money for himself. Who would have thought? A major drug smuggler pocketing the drug money for himself. How crazy. In 1978. In April, Di Christina, desperate at this point, gives a false statement to Carabinieri about Totorina and the mendacious Colionese. Here is part of it, as retold in excellent cadavers quote their criminal strategy. While crazy has its rewards. It provokes police activity, but primarily against the old mafiosi who are easily to identify. It causes their terrifying prestige to grow and it undermines the prestige of the traditional Mafia and the principles on which it depends. It attracts to them either through fear or through the appeal of such daring undertakings, new recruits and new forces. This statement, this kind of schism between the old and the new, the tradition and the modern. It's going to be Di Christina's final major act as a mobster. On May 30, 1978, a team of Corleonese gunned down Di Cristina at a bus stop in Palermo and thousands will turn out to mourn him. In Riesi, cops discover a check in Di Cristina's pocket, which they hand over to Giovanni Falcone, a crusading state prosecutor.
- [24:38]
A
You also did a big episode on him too, I think, a while back. Right? One of our. One of the first ones or first year.
- [24:44]
B
Yeah, it's. I think it was like maybe episode four or five, like way back when. This one piece of evidence will help Falcone unravel a gigantic heroin racket running between Sicily and the United States. In short, two Palermo based Mafiosi have been Spearheading a smuggling route for the drug from morphine labs across Sicily, which is then shipped to Milan in produce trucks before being trafficked into New York City alongside powerful members of the Gambino crime family. The main guy in this case, Salvatore Encinillo, then decides to assassinate the case's prosecuting judge in Palermo without running it by the Corleonese. And if you know anything by this point in the episode, you know how this is going to end. On May 11, 1981, Inserillo is stopped by a group of Corleonese toughs as he's operating the door of his van, and he is shot with an automatic shotgun and an AK47. The photos of his body are pretty grisly, like half his face basically hanging off. These are among the first Deaths of the Second Mafia War, which officially breaks out in 1981. And it is utterly brutal. In Serillo's son is tortured and murdered, and the slave judge is standing. He is also killed. Essentially, this is a war between Toto Rina and the Corleonese and the rest of the Mafia, but it's also between the Cosa Nostra and the Italian state, with the deaths of prosecutors, policemen, and even judges and growing frighteningly commonplace.
- [26:15]
A
Wait, wait, Totorina, his guys are the Colone, right?
- [26:19]
B
Yes, he's at the top of them. So, like, it's a war between Ria and the Colonesi and the Mafia, but it's also between the Mafia more generally and the state. So the. Okay, this is like when that death toll that you were talking about really just, like, goes crazy. And again, this show isn't going to jump into all the details of that war. I mean, the second Mafia war could easily be a dozen episodes in its own right, but the gunning down of Di Cristina at the Palermo bus stop in 1978, it lights the spark for a new Mafia movement in Sicily just before the war. One that will reject Toto Rina and his homicidal Corleonese trigger men, but by employing just as much, if not more, violence. This is the birth of the Stidda. The star and his star, Danny, will rise to stardom until all the assiduous stars of Sicily are staring the saucy Stidder straight in their starry eyes. Sorry, I think this move is affecting me in ways I haven't fully processed yet.
- [27:19]
A
Yeah, you're on drugs there, pal.
- [27:22]
B
If by drugs you mean no sleep and lots of bureaucracy, yes, yes, I'm on drugs. The best drugs. One of the simplest ways by which the Stitter differs to other Italian crime groups is, is precisely this. Right. Its history can be traced directly to the fallout of Di Christina's killing and the disgust of, quote, men of honor within the Cosa Nostra over Toto Arena's bloodthirstiness, the terror he is wages on the Sicilian public and the out of control Corleonese.
- [27:53]
A
So I'm going to predict that they as well, the state, are going to get very bloodthirsty too, because that's pretty much always how it works in these situations. But it's very like, you know, movie plot twist, right? Like after some innocent civilians gets killed, like the, the one guy being like, I wanted to be a gangster, but I never thought it would be, it would be like this. And then he pauses and it's like something's gotta change. Then he forms like his breakaway faction to, to go against the other guys, but they also just kill everyone as well.
- [28:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, there's something that's gotta change is that in that, in that voice is like, I gotta do the killing and I gotta do more. Which doesn't really work for a hero's journey. But yeah, these, these guys are pretty mad, right? They called the stidder for a star tattoo that many of their members wear. Just like me and Danny are often known as the terrible life choices. And they are particularly strong in southern Sicily, in Riesi, of course, where Cristina is from, but also Caltoniceta, where he was the boss. And in the towns of Agrigento and Gela in particular. The group's actions are laid out by an infamous Mafia pentito or turncoat named Leonardo Messina, who testifies to Giovanni Falcone and his colleague Paolo Borsellino as they piece together the inner workings of the. Writes Alexander still quote. Although the Stida was less organized and less deeply rooted than Cosa Nostra, it was second to no one in violence. As Messina helped Borsalino understand the terrifying rise in murders in many towns in southern Sicily was due to the vicious war between Cosa Nostra and its new rival. Unlike the Cosa Nostra, the Stida is made up of tight knit and syndicated groups. It's united, unlike its far larger foe, which has exploded into internecine bloodshed. And because of this, it quickly commands position in extortion and drug smuggling, sniffing away at the dominance of the Cosa Nostra. I guess it's a kind of bit like the story of the Auto Defensos in Mexico. And for a long time these guys deny their Very existence as an organized criminal group. The Stida doesn't exist. You journalists invented it. An alleged founder tells reporters, we were just an organization of friends who came together in a paraco family. A paraco, which is of course a family. A family. A paraco, yeah. We all know that Paraco is a family, don't we? Go, come on, guys. The stitter's main claim to fame is its use of youngsters to carry out crimes. These include child hitmen called Karusi and they have crazy names. Sitchio, Chute Shoot, Salvuccio, Coca Cola and Toto Battery because he's had pacemakers fitted.
- [30:33]
A
All right, that last one, that last one's like legit. Pretty funny.
- [30:37]
B
Yeah, it's like, you know, choose your player. I think I'm Salvuccio. Coca Cola. I like that one too. Anyway, says Carlton Isetta's police commissioner, quote, it's not just the big guys who are fighting now. They are mostly removed from the scene. It's the small fish fighting out an action reaction syndrome and they are out of control. So, like, you can see what's happening here right this in the middle of a war. So you've got the rest of the Cosa Nostra against the Corleonesi and Totorina. You've also got the whole of the Mafia fighting the Italian state who are trying to stamp them out. And you've got the Stida, who are trying to rise amid all this chaos, battling out on their own turf with members of the Cosa Nostra. I hope this all makes sense. Stidari, as the group's members are known, preach an old school version of mafia life that they claim, like Di Cristina, had had been lost through the various periods of Mafia warfare. But it's this hunger for young blood that is their true calling card. The Coca Colas and the total batteries of the world. Anybody can join their ranks. And according to one Mafia source, quote, because it is a newcomer on the broader scene, breaking its provincial bounds, there is no sense of limit and a lack of cohesion. We all think we understand Cosa Nostra and its hierarchy. Stida at this stage of development is more amorphous, one might say Amathia in its early stages, with growing pains searching out an identity separate from cosa Nostra. By 1983, over 400 people have been killed in the second mafia war, which is quite a lot of people in a pretty small place. Sotorina is the boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra, reckoned to have ordered over 150 assassinations according to John Dickey, who wrote the seminal 2005 book Cosa Nostra, Rina assassinated his rivals. He killed all of them, hundreds of them. He literally ethnically cleansed them out of Palermo, which I'm not sure if that's the definition of ethnic cleansing. But anyway, among the worst of the worst we've covered on this show is Rina, and. And he's obviously, you know, like 5,000 episodes in. He's in pretty good company at this time. Sicilian made heroin is worth almost $2.5 billion in today's money on the streets of New York alone. So between this and the mass murder, there is a huge clamor from the Cosa Nostra to be dragged out of the shadows, out of their omer and into the justice system by the public. Right. In November 1985, best month that's ever existed, Falcone and Borsalino submit almost 9,000 pages and 40 volumes of an indictment against no fewer than 475 alleged mafiosi by February 1986. This has turned into the legendary maxi trial, the largest trial in world history, held in a special made Palermo bunker containing cells where mafiosi holler and scream like they're zoo animals. There are over 600 journalists present on the opening day. It is an insane sight. The Guardian says it has, quote, overtones of a Barnum and Bailey production. If you want to learn more about the Maxi troll, it's one of our very first episodes, as we mentioned I think back in, like, early 2021, I think I was recording out the bunker of one of my friends, DJ flats in Berlin. What different times. Anyway, maybe just play silent. They weren't quite as good back then. In any case, at the same time as the maxi trial, across Sicily, another Mafia process is coming to a close. Antonio Maeda, who is a leading member of the stida, he cops 22 years in prison for drug trafficking, robbery and gun possession at the hands of a judge named Rosario Livatino. Unsurprisingly, Maeda's fellow stidari think the sentence is too harsh, and they plot a typically Sicilian form of vengeance to that will echo throughout the world for decades to come. But we'll get back to that. The maxi trial is in full swing. The Cosa Nostril is in disarray, and all of its secrets are just spilling out into the open. Thanks to Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the crusading prosecutors and the band of Pentiti, they've accrued from the brutal second Mafia war and it is right at this moment that the Stidda begins to conduct a campaign of terror against its former underworld colleagues across the southern side of Sicily, particularly in the town of Gela. The war between the two factions, however, that is actually started by the Cosa Nostra when two hitmen gun down a pair of stitter bosses at car yards just off one of the main highways from Gela to Messina, which is the city right next to the Italian mainland. The spark for the double murder is the control of contracts to build a dam at the man made lake of Disueri, which is a few miles inland from Gela. Plus of course the drugs that are still making their way out of Jela's harbour. The why Jela part of this story isn't just confined to the docks and the dam, this small historic town of 70,000 people. It is also home to a massive petrochemical park owned by the state and run shortly before his plane crash death by Enrico Mate, the same state energy boss, Di Cristina is supposed to have killed. By the late 80s, 60% of jealous residents live in illegal neighborhoods with no access to services which have names like Beirut Inferno and Slaughterhouse City. Just three of the many betting apps on Danny's phone.
- [36:17]
A
You know, I really. I really have to. I gotta stop with. With the men betting on the mentions, dude, it's. It's degenerate. But yeah, Italy just. It's wild with all the. How much graft and corruption. Like what do you think, the Winter Olympics? Dude, that must have been insane. The amount of money that was stolen. Didn't. Do you see the like videos of hockey rinks that just aren't ready? It's supposed to happen in like two weeks.
- [36:39]
B
Oh yeah. That's incredible.
- [36:41]
A
Where.
- [36:41]
B
Which parts is it. Is that. That must be up north, to the north.
- [36:44]
A
The north, Yeah, I think Milan a lot, right?
- [36:47]
B
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's going to be an absolute nightmare anyway, these. These neighborhoods.
- [36:54]
A
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. If anyone knows anything about like curling or bobsledding or a sport that like, maybe the guys who make the odds don't. You DM me and I'll get back in the game right away. Just to put that out there.
- [37:09]
B
Curly's gonna be fine, right? You can just like pour water on a piece of concrete and you've got a curling stadium.
- [37:14]
A
I've just been gambling on.
- [37:15]
B
I don't know, man. This is gonna be pretty nuts. But yeah. Please send all your betting tips to theunderworldpodcastmail.com so we can make no money. Unsurprisingly, back to Jeller. Given these places names like Slaughterhouse City, the neighborhoods do live up to their names. Cops believe they're home to no fewer than 500 sdidati divided across 16 subgroups, which is a staggering number of gangsters in a pretty smallish place. And by 1988, the Stida Kos Nostra conflict has erupted into an all out gang War. On October 3, 1988, two gunmen shoot dead a 32 year old man beside a Milan schoolyard as the kids are playing on their break. Months later, another body drops in the northern city, whom prosecutors say is part of a Stidda drug racket between Jela and Milan. That presumably is not enthusing their Cosa Nostra former compadres. On December 22 that year, we get the massacre from the cold open. And that is when a stidagoon kills local boss Salvatore Polara, his wife and two of his three young sons on February 27. The next year, 1989, Polara's brother Pietro Polara, who is an agricultural machinery dealer and not a member of organized crime at all, is also shot dead on the edge of town. But the worst is yet to come. On the afternoon of November 22, 1990, a team of Stida trigger men fan out across Jela on Enduro. Motorbikes preparing to launch a series of coordinated attacks on Cosa nostra members. At 7pm the attacks begin at a billiard hall on the Via Vittorio Emanuele, Jela's main street. One man guards the entrance while two others jump on the billiard table and spray the room with bullets. They kill three and leave six wounded. The youngest victim is just 17 years old. Seven minutes later, a pair of gunmen open fire on a fruit and vegetable not far away. They murder two and injure three. It's 7:15 now and a hitman guns down a man on the Via Butera. The only way he's connected to organized crime is via a brother in law, which in Gela is about as tangential as it can possibly get. But it's enough apparently for him to die three minutes later. At 7.18pm, a team park up outside a butcher's shop in the Via Venezia and pump 50 bullets into a local mafia don close Tagela's Cosa Nostra. 18 minutes, seven dead. A bloodbath. Shout out to gangsters in. By the way, who published a great feature on this?
- [39:50]
A
Yeah, this is like a Michael Corleone montage right here.
- [39:52]
B
Yeah, it is. It's pretty crazy. But if the Stitter are great at hiring young murderers and for carrying out brutal vendettas, they're not such master criminals. In the Aftermath of the November 27 massacre, cops discover evidence that the killers have been hiding out a disused building in Jela, including cocaine, weapons, champagne and half eaten lobster. Eat all the lobster guys, it's expensive. In a secret room they find an 18 year old named Carmelo Rapasada who says he's been there for three days. Through Rappasada, police will arrest six more. Sidati, a witness to the billiard hall murders. The first that night, of course, fingers Rapizada as the culprit, burying him, which is an incredibly brave thing to do given the climate back then. And yet, thanks to the Stidders vow of omerta, the cops can't bust the entire racket. In the meantime, its mobsters continue to battle the Cosa Nostra and brutalize the people of Sicily. On September 21, 1990, as the maxi trial continues to make headlines across the island, in Palermo, Judge Rosario Livatino, the guy who sentenced that still a member to 22 years in prison, he is shot dead while driving to court in the town of agrigento. He's just 37 years old, but what have I done to you? He says before dying, echoing the words of Jesus Christ and the cross.
- [41:16]
A
Jesus. Little heavy dude.
- [41:18]
B
Yeah, pretty heavy. But it's gonna. I was gonna say it's gonna work out for him. We'll find out. Maybe in a bonus part of the show. Anyway, for a while, Libatino's killers remain unknown. But in 1991, as part of the maxi trial, Paolo Borsalino discovers a steadocell working out of the German city of Mannheim directing murders in Sicily. Writes Alexander still in excellent cadavers quote. When German police passed on information about a shootout in Mannheim involving several Palmesi, which is named from Palermon's Borsalino, was able to connect it to the power struggle going on in central Sicily and to issue a series of arrest warrants. One of the men to fall into the net was a young Cidado named Giorgino Shembri, who Borsalino flew to meet in his German prison. And still goes on. Borsalino was able to convince Shembury to cooperate. Already in their initial informal meeting, Shembri was able to identify the killers of Rosario Livatino, the prosecutor assassinated near Agrigento in September 1991. Contrary to assumptions that the killing was the work of Cosa Nostra Libatino had been murdered by the Stida, which was evidently anxious to assert its new power by claiming an excellent cadaver of its own. That's like that bit where they say the title of a movie in the movie. Amazing. I love that he's actually just written that in himself. By this point, the Stida Cosa Nostra war has claimed around a hundred lives since it began in 1980. People across Sicily are, unsurprisingly, fed up with all these gangsters running around, killing each other in the middle of the street next to kids, hiring their own teenagers to commit crimes and running heroin labs all over the island. By this time, the maxi trial is done, having convicted 338 of its 475 defendants to a combined 2,665 years behind bars. Among them are some of the most notorious serial killers in mob history. Michele Greco, head of the commission and nicknamed the Pope the trial's biggest scout among them, Toto Rino, though he's only sentenced to life in absentia, having slipped into hiding amid all the carnage many years before. Nonetheless, Falcone and Borsalino, lauded by the Italian public as heroes, call the process a massive victory against Sicilian organized crime, which it is, and Italy has finally owned. What a shower of scumbags these guys really are when they've been pleading for decades, doing that Italian thing with their hands. Like, is it like this? Or like this? I'm thinking of, like, defenders for AC Milan in the 90s. Hey, that. That kind of thing. Hey, that they're men of honor, that they live by a code, that.
- [44:06]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's like, literally seven people in all of organized crime who've actually, ever actually lived by a code.
- [44:11]
B
Yes, correct. And none of these guys are among them. Quote, he who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so, says Falcone. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head high dies only once. Which is. Which is quite poetic, but obviously literally true as well. In 1992, the inner workings of the Stidda as well threatened to spill into the public realm when one of its leaders, a guy called Gaetano Ianni, decides he had enough of the endless views of the Cosa Nostradamus, and he turned state's witness. His testimony will finally expose the truth about a group some people at this point are still denying even exists. But if you know about the history of the Sicilian Mafia, you know what is coming next. A little before 6pm on May 23, 1992, Giovanni Falcone is heading back along the A29 Alta Strada. From Punta Raisi airport to his Palermo home, alongside his wife, Francesca Morvillo, and a second car carrying three bodyguards, when a massive bomb explodes beneath the tarmac. The blast is so powerful, it tosses the bodyguard's car high into the air and crashes down into an olive grove. Falcone and Morvillo's vehicle, meanwhile, slams into a concrete wall, flinging both of them through the windshield to their deaths. Just 57 days later, Paolo Borsalino will suffer a similar fate, blown to ribbons alongside five bodyguards when a car bomb goes off in downtown Palermo. Toto Rina has plotted the entire thing. His killer, Giovanni Brusca, nicknamed the People Slayer, a guy who's killed men, women and children in the Corleonese's reign of underworld terror. Thousands march through the cities of Sicily to protest the deaths. Leonardo Messina, Falcone, Borsellino's most important pen. Tito thinks this might be the end of the Sicilian Mafia as anybody knows it. There are some who believe that Cosa Nostra will disappear within the space of the next decade, he says, destroyed by the intemperance of Salvatore Riina and the war with the Stidda. But Riina and Brusca aren't finished. In 1993, a bomb explodes outside Florence's famed Uffizi Gallery, killing five people, including a mother and her two kids. Five more die outside a gallery in Milan, while on the same day, a blast rips through two Rome churches. Finally, on January 15, 1993, having been a fugitive for a full 23 years, cops capture Totorina in a Palermo apartment. I can't believe, like he was just sitting in an apartment this higher time in the main city. Anyway, they nab Brusca three years later, by which time Gaetano Yanni, the Stida Pentito, has spilled the beans on the past 10 years of bloodshed between his group and the Cosa Nostra. The war, however, dies down, and by all accounts, the Stida and Cosa Nostra reach a kind of pact, writes the Italian newspaper Fatto Corigiano. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a real division of criminal activity between Cosa Nostra and the Stida. The main organization handles major contracts and maintains connections with the worlds of politics, finance and business. The fifth Mafia, more closely tied to the local community, instead focuses on classic Mafia crime activities. Drug trafficking for local needs, extortion and loan sharking, the management of clandestine gambling dens, prostitution and armed territorial control.
- [47:53]
A
So, like gang stuff, you know? They kind of sound like a far into a bit. Basically, the fast, easy money, not the, like, big boy government contracts, massive corruption type stuff.
- [48:01]
B
Yeah, I guess it's like, you know, two decades after Di Christina's death, the stuff that he was saying about returning, it's like back to the land Mafiosi. I literally, if they're the Gambiloto artisanal. Yeah. Return the Stidda branch even further into Campania and even to Milan doing this kind of stuff, like the low down, classic stuff. But like Mount Etna, a Sicilian gang feud doesn't stay dormant for long. And to find out what happens from 1999 until today, including a gas station massacre, the solving of the Polara family murders, a beatification, and an end to one of the longest manhunts in Italian organized criminal history, you're gonna have to tune in to the Patreon bonus, which will be online for those subscribers the day after this show airs. Until then, don't Instagram your crimes. Definitely do throw show ideas. And we'll see you next week.
- [48:53]
A
Patreon.com the Underworld podcast to sign up or sign up on Spotify right at the top of our show page, or on itunes right at the top of our show page.
- [50:04]
B
Sam.