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Bernardo Provenzano was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia clan known as the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone, and de facto il capo dei capi. His nickname was Binnu u tratturi because, in the words of one informant, "he mows people down." Another nickname was il ragioniere due to his apparently subtle and low-key approach to running his crime empire, at least in contrast to some of his more violent predecessors.
Leoluca Bagarella is an Italian criminal and member of the Sicilian Mafia. He is from the town of Corleone. Following Salvatore Riina's arrest in early 1993, Bagarella became the head of the stragist strategy faction, opposing another faction commanded by the successor designate Bernardo Provenzano, creating a real rift in Cosa Nostra. Bagarella was captured in 1995, having been a fugitive for four years, and sentenced to life imprisonment for Mafia association and multiple murders.
Capo dei capi or capo di tutti i capi or Godfather are terms used mainly by the media, public, fiction writers and law enforcement community to indicate a supremely powerful crime boss in the Sicilian or American Mafia who holds great influence over the whole organization. The term was introduced to the U.S. public by the Kefauver Commission in 1950.
Philip Lombardo also known as "Benny Squint" and "Cockeyed Phil", was the boss of the Genovese crime family from the late 1960s until the beginning of the 1980s. He succeeded Vito Genovese as Boss in 1969 and was succeeded by Vincent Gigante in 1981.
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Sicilian Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra. It is composed of representatives of a mandamento that are called capo mandamento or rappresentante. The Commission is not a central government of the Mafia, but a representative mechanism for consultation of independent Mafia families who decide by consensus. "Contrary to the wide-spread image presented by the media, these superordinate bodies of coordination cannot be compared with the executive boards of major legal firms. Their power is intentionally limited [and] it would be entirely wrong to see in the Cosa Nostra a centrally managed, internationally active Mafia holding company," according to criminologist Letizia Paoli.
Michele Cavataio, also known as Il cobra was an Italian mobster and powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Acquasanta mandamento in Palermo and was a member of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission. Some sources spell his surname as Cavatajo.
Giuseppe Di Cristina was a powerful mafioso from Riesi in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, southern Italy. Di Cristina, nicknamed “la tigre’’, was born into a traditional Mafia family, his father Francesco Di Cristina and his grandfather were men of honour as well.
Gerardo "Jerry" Catena was an American mobster and a top member of the Genovese crime family during the 1950s and 1960s, along with Thomas "Tommy Ryan" Eboli, Philip "Benny Squint" Lombardo and Michael "Big Mike" Miranda. He was ranked as the fourth richest mobster in the United States by Fortune magazine.
Il Capo dei Capi is a six-part Italian miniseries which debuted on Canale 5 between October and November 2007. It tells the story of Salvatore Riina, alias Totò u Curtu, a mafioso boss from Corleone, Sicily. Riina is played by Palermo-born actor, Claudio Gioè, and the series was directed by Alexis Sweet and Enzo Monteleone. The series is inspired from the eponymous book-inquiry of Giuseppe D'Avanzo and Attilio Bolzoni. It was broadcast in the UK in the spring of 2013 on the Sky Arts channel, retitled Corleone and split into 12 one-hour episodes.
Calogero Bagarella was an Italian criminal and member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was from the town of Corleone and belonged to the Mafia clan of Corleonesi.
The Viale Lazio massacre on 10 December 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.
Salvatore Riina, called Totò 'u Curtu, was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s with the assassinations of Antimafia Commission prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, resulting in widespread public outcry and a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva and il capo dei capi.
The Ciaculli massacre on 30 June 1963 was caused by a car bomb that exploded in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The bomb was intended for Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and the boss of the Ciaculli Mafia family. Mafia boss Pietro Torretta was considered to be the man behind the bomb attack.