Spatuzza's story: "Synergy between 'Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra for the massacres"
February 22, 2021

"Both the Calabrians and the Neapolitans were involved hands, feet and head in the massacres." To say it was the collaborator of justice Gaspare Spatuzza, the former boss of the Brancaccio district of Palermo, heard in the Rinascita Scott trial underway in the bunker room of Lamezia Terme against the 'Ndrangheta clans of the Vibonese. A very important deposition given the criminal caliber of the character. Spatuzza is the man who stole the Fiat 126 which on 19 July 1992 was used as a car bomb in the Via d'Amelio massacre in which judge Paolo Borsellino was killed. Co-opted by Salvatore Grigoli, he was among the material perpetrators of the murder of Don Pino Puglisi, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a final sentence. He was also convicted of another 40 murders including those of Giuseppe and Salvatore Di Peri, Marcello Drago, Domingo Buscetta (nephew of the repentant historian of Cosa Nostra, Tommaso). On 23 November 1993 he kidnapped little Giuseppe Di Matteo,

Spatuzza spoke of "massacre synergy between the Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta" referring to the three attacks in Calabria between December and January 1993/1994, against three carabinieri patrols, one of which cost the lives of two soldiers. "Even in Naples there was a massacre project because explosives had been sent".

"We were in Rome and we were waiting for the definitive input from Giuseppe Graviano to act and Graviano on that occasion said that we had to hurry up to carry out the attack because the Calabrians had moved" said Spatuzza among other things, referring to the failed attack against the carabinieri in public order service at the Olympic stadium in Rome. The attack failed due to a fault in the remote control that was supposed to trigger a car bomb ready to explode when the carabinieri bus passed. The collaborator, answering the questions of the public prosecutor of the Catanzaro DDA Annamaria Frustaci, also reported on an episode that took place in the Tolmezzo prison: Spatuzza reports to Filippo Graviano about the complaints of the Calabrians and Neapolitans regarding the harsh prison, born following the season of the massacres that was attributed to the Sicilians and the Graviano in particular. To which, said the collaborator, Graviano replies "it is good for these gentlemen to talk to their fathers to understand what happened".

Spatuzza also retraced the relationship between the Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta recalling that in the 1980s the two Notargiacomo brothers were hosted in the Euromare tourist village owned by the Graviano family. Of the two brothers, Spatuzza recalls that «one was wounded in a war within the Calabrian families. The Notargiacomos were friends of Antonio Marchese, brother-in-law of Leoluca Bagarella ». The collaborator also reported on the links between the Calabrian clans Molè-Piromalli with the Graviano family and with «Mariano Agate, head of the mafia family of Mazara del Vallo, to whom Giuseppe Graviano had given 500 million of the old lire to fix a trial. The Graviano brothers - he added - had moved for the Graviano family. Mariano Agate acted as an intermediary, who held the Calabrians very much in consideration ».