Mariano Licari’s gang caged (1967)

Giovanni Falcone had his real impact with Cosa Nostra, the authentic, real one, ferocious and insinuating, during the trial of a group from the Trapani province (…) The boss of this criminal group was don Mariano Licari.

This first important encounter of the Palermitan judge with the mafia was hindered by various obstacles and resistances though, to the point that at the end the trial was transferred to the Salerno court. It certainly represented a fundamental episode in the professional experience of the magistrate though, who was 28 years old then, first of all regarding the concrete and direct knowledge of the mafia phenomenon.
A maxi-trial ante litteram started at the Trapani court on 26 November 1967 against 38 mafiosi from Marsala and surrounding territories.
It was one of the “historical” mafia groups, one of the most powerful in Sicily. Its members committed many murders, attempted murders, suppression of corpses, extortions, gang association (associazione per delinquere), property damaging, abusive pasture, thefts, false testimony and other crimes.
The undisputable boss of the family was the 74-year-old Mariano Licari. The other defendants were aged between 30 and 80 years. Their activity spanned for about 20 years.
They were indicted by the investigating magistrate Giuseppe Alcamo and were finally committed to trial by his colleague Marco Antonio Motisi.
More than 230 witnesses were heard, the damaged parties were 31, while the defense was represented by 24 attorneys.
Mariano Licari was represented by hon. Frino Restivo and prof. Ugo De Marsico, from Palermo, and by Melchiorre Calcara, from Trapani.
Another “illustrious” defendant, Pietro Bua, 42 years old, Licari’s son-in-law, was represented by hon. Nino Martino and prof.Giovanni Musotto.
Another prominent defendant was the hitman Giuseppe Marino, suspected of at least 5 murders, who was captured in a cave near Marsala in the Baronazzo Mafi countryside after being on the run for 5 years.
The “fate” of the trial depended very much on the position of this defendant. He was represented by the attorney Paolo Camassa who, during the same proceedings, have also assumed the defense of Domenico Di Vita and Giuseppe Tortorici.
There was only one civil action brought: Antonino Lombardo, a victim of an attempted murder.
The court was presided by Saverio Coniglio, with Carlo Rotolo as advisory assistant, and Giovanni Falcone as public prosecutor.
The arrests of the gang members were caused, among other things, by the discovery of a small diary, handwritten in an elementary school copybook by Giuseppe Valenti, whose son Biagio had been killed on 4 March 1962. He was allegedly a member of the Licari clan and had been eliminated by his own accomplices.
The elderly father, who wanted at least to find the body of the murdered son, was himself targeted by the mafia group and mortally wounded on 19 January 1963.
He died several days later in the “San Biagio” Marsala hospital.
Anyway, he managed to tell in time the chief of the Trapani flying squad, Giuseppe Peri, about the existence of the diary and the place where he hid it. What kind of mafia was involved could be read in the chronicles at the time:

The feudal system will be on trial, the big landownership and all the parasitic systems that have imposed for years the law of humiliation of peasants, a law of vexations, oppressions and sawn-off shotguns. The Licari gang, linked to the big landowners, continued the real mafia action inherited from the feudal system, imposing laws to the poor peasants. It’s the “old style” mafia that is about to be tried, it’s a subtle and heavy mafia at the same time, that has influenced the agricultural development in the Trapani province for decades with an endless series of murders and other violent actions. These Trapani ones aren’t gangsters dedicated to public works, drug trafficking and the markets: they are completely different from the defendants in Catanzaro and Lecce. The Licari gang is even more powerful, because its power comes from the underdevelopment and extreme poverty; it isn’t linked to the economic industrial development, but it has made the extreme poverty its cornerstone.

The event was announced as a unique case in the judiciary Trapani history:

The most important trial ever took place in the Trapani court with an enormous crowd of people (…) No less than 100 carabinieri and public security agents are busy keeping order.

The first hearings featured the interrogations of some minor defendants, while some of the main bosses, including Mariano Licari and Vincenzo Barraco, were absent.
The public prosecutor Giovanni Falcone objected to the appearance of Antonino Caracci, in that moment in internal banishment in the Benevento province, which was requested by an attorney, considering his presence unimportant.
29 November 1967, while the president of the court heard other defendants who weren’t imprisoned, Giuseppe Marino, 51 years, from Marsala, nicknamed “Peppe Cozzu”, disturbed the hearing, clinging to the bars of one of the cages where the defendants were locked and begging him to hear him because he had to say something urgent, to tell his “tragedy” before it was too late: “I am afraid I will be killed in prison, like they did to my daughter. I heard them say in prison: we better cut his throat, or he will tell too many things”. Meanwhile, Pietro Bua, always elegantly dressed and attentive, smiled, together with the other defendants. The president of the court assured Marino that he would be interrogated.
Giovanni Falcone also intervened:

The public prosecutor asks him who threatens him, and he states he heard in prison the brigadier Sansica saying: “E’ megghiu chi a chistu u scannanu, avanti chi scatascia”. He also states his daughter was killed but, according to his attorney Camassa, it’s not true. He is crazy, or pretends to be.

The press supposed the trial would reach its conclusion in several months, not imagining the future obstacles to its rapid development.
The old boss was heard on 1 December 1967. Accused of 7 murders, which took place between 1948 and 1962, he claimed he was innocent and justified his prosperous financial situation:

I have always worked a lot in my life, dedicating myself to agriculture first, then to the cattle trade and then to resale of fossil coal, drinks and fuel.

The other questioned defendants also claimed innocence in the following days and, when Vito Di Maria, one of the alleged hitmen of the group, was heard, the deputy prosecutor Giovanni Falcone had to intervene. The defendant in fact claimed

not to have a criminal record. The public prosecutor, recalling his precedent conviction by the Partanna magistrate and by the Trapani court, asked to indict the defendant for false testimony about personal characteristics, a crime covered by the art.495 of the criminal code. The president accepted the prosecution’s request.

During the 7th hearing, some of the non-imprisoned defendants exchanged big words and threatening gestures pertaining to the hospitality given to a fugitive, Antonino Barbera: Nino Caracci admitted to have harbored him following the orders of his boss, Nino Giammarinaro; while the latter denied everything.
During the 8th hearing the claims of innocence continued, while during the next one an episode took place that determined the “fatal” delay of the trial, that was definitely removed from the Trapani court.
Paolo Camassa, the attorney of the alleged hitman from Marsala, Giuseppe Marino, stated on 11 December 1967 that his client, who had just been interrogated, should be subjected to psychiatric expertise.
The court accepted the request and postponed the trial.

During the interrogation Giuseppe Marino claimed to have nothing to do with the murders and other crimes he was accused of and had

even with uncertainty and contradictions, confirmed only his fear to be killed, but has underlined that he was first of all continuously bothered, even during the nights, by some prison agents, both in Marsala and Trapani. When the president asked him, he also stated that a brother of his, Salvatore Marino, was suddenly killed in prison and a daughter, the one he considered dead, who has recently returned from America, is mentally ill and he himself has been visited in prison by prof. Tripi who prescribed to him specific medications for nervous disorders.

His attorney concluded from the defendant’s statements, that he had

a symptomatology that should induce the court to ask for a psychiatric examination. Marino, the attorney Camassa said, exactly because of his apparent serenity and continuous sincerity, has all the symptoms of the illness that his daughter has, meaning the schizophrenia.

The public prosecution protested in vain:

The public prosecutor Giovanni Falcone objected to this request, supposing that the trial couldn’t be postponed. But the court, after about 30 minutes in the council chamber, accepted the defense’s request, ordering Giuseppe Marino to be immediately admitted to the judicial psychiatric hospital in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and his case to be examined. Since the position of this defendant is strictly linked to the position of the other defendants in this trial, and Marino’s case couldn’t be severed, and because this involves a long investigation, the court decided the postponement of the trial.

But this trial “shouldn’t have taken place” in Trapani and, in fact didn’t.

The “legitimate doubt” thesis overcame the elementary common sense. Trapani couldn’t put its mafia on trial: “the justice has suffered a defeat”, Giovanni Falcone said years later.

Nino Marino, an attorney from Trapani, too, underlined the importance of the trial of Mariano Licari’s group for Falcone.

It was a small maxi-trial ante litteram. (…) So many analogies with Giovanni’s future “creation” (…) The investigation involved much confirmation evidence obtained in the banks (…) It was a story where there was everything: a suspicious negotiation about the selling of ecclesiastic property, the menacing sharecrop farmers’ role, the project related to the allotment process, the involvement of a Christian Democracy councilor and president of the Coldiretti. (…) On that occasion, in Trapani, I am certain of it, Giovanni Falcone had his ideas clear, when he needed it, about how things went on in Sicily. First there was a disinformation campaign, then there were threats to the judges, so it was decided to transfer the trial to Salerno. Goodbye.

The trial, transferred to Campania “for public order reasons”, continued in March 1969.
With reference to the medical examination of the defendant Marino,

the court’s general attorney asked the big trial to be moved to another court, outside Sicily. The Supreme Court, accepting the request, moved it to Salerno.

The defendant Giuseppe Marino, whose condition determined the postponement of the hearings 15 months earlier, was still in the judicial psychiatric hospital in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and

found to be mentally sane after the appropriate examination requested by his attorney Paolo Camassa.

The trial featured an uninterrupted sequence of claims of innocence and many defendants flaunted the absolute ignorance of the mafia phenomenon, often to the point of hilariousness.
The public prosecutor Nicola Giacumbi didn’t have any doubts about the existence of the Marsala clan and, first of all, of the actions committed by Mariano Licari and his men, so he asked the court to hand down 14 life sentences.
The defense of course claimed the absolute innocence of their clients.
Mariano Licari and many members of his gang received on 20 December 1969 much lighter sentences compared to the ones requested by the public prosecutor.
The Marsala boss was sentenced to 8 years for gang association and other minor crimes.
Since many of the convicted had been in prison for many years (some had been arrested in January 1963), they were freed after sentencing. But, after they returned to Marsala, the ones considered most socially dangerous (Mariano Licari, Pietro Bua, Domenico Curatolo and others) were arrested again and sent in internal banishment.
Mariano Licari was sent for 5 years to Sarmato, in the Piacenza province, but was later sent to Linosa and then to Fagnano Olona, in the Varese province.
To year later an appeal trial started and this time Licari and his associates suffered a worse fate: the mafia boss received 2 life sentences on 15 March 1972 and other 5 members of the “family” also got life sentences, including his son-in-law, Pietro Bua.
This sentence was overturned on 19 April 1972 by the Supreme Court that ordered a third trial in Napoli.
Meanwhile don Mariano Licari and his son-in-law Pietro Bua travelled between Marsala and various internal banishment locations.
Several months after the second trial, there have been bewildering news about Mariano Licari being named Knight of the Republic, as many thousands of war veterans, even though he didn’t have civil and political rights, had been a deserter and was in prison.
Some time later the Home Office stated it was a “mistake” due to many requests presented. The mafia boss was therefore stripped of his Knighthood of Vittorio Veneto.


P.S. It’s not clear how did the trial end in the Supreme Court, I didn’t find anything in the newspaper archives and neither did the author of the book, as it seems. The only things available on internet are that Pietro Bua got a life sentence in 1975, went on the run and was captured only in 1998, while the hitman Vito Di Maria was arrested in Venezuela in 1998 and died before the extradition.