Vito Badalamenti | |
|---|---|
 Mug shot of Badalamenti | |
| Born | 29 April 1957 |
| Parent | Gaetano Badalamenti |
| Allegiance | Cosa Nostra |
Vito Badalamenti (Italian pronunciation: [ˈviːtobadalaˈmenti] ; born 29 April 1957) is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was on the "Italy's most wanted list" from 1995 until 2012 when the statute of limitations was declared expired.
Vito Badalamenti was born in Cinisi, Sicily. He is the eldest son of Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, one-time boss of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and a notorious heroin trafficker who was the principal defendant in the Pizza Connection Trial in the mid-1980s in New York.
In 1981, at the start of the Second Mafia War, Vito followed his father in voluntary exile after Badalamenti was expelled from Cosa Nostra by the rival faction of the Corleonesi headed by Totò Riina. They moved to Brazil and later to Spain.
Vito Badalamenti was involved in the heroin trafficking activities of his father, known as the Pizza Connection. After extensive surveillance, the Spanish police arrested Vito and Gaetano Badalamenti in Madrid on April 8, 1984, capping a four-year undercover investigation by Italian and US law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. The arrest set off a series of raids by the Federal Bureau of Investigation throughout the United States. [1]
Both were extradited to the United States on November 15, 1984. They were unable to post multimillion-dollar bails and remained in jail throughout the trial. On June 22, 1987, Vito was the only one acquitted at the Pizza Connection Trial, while his father was sentenced to 45 years in prison. [1] [2] In Italy, Vito Badalamenti received a six-year sentence in the Maxi Trial. [3]
Vito Badalamenti was a fugitive since 1995. In 2000, the Italian police issued an international arrest warrant. He is alleged to be either in Australia or Brazil. [3] [4] He has not lost his contacts with Sicily, Mafia boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo was in contact with Badalamenti before Lo Piccolo was arrested in November 2007. [4]
On 30 March 2012, the Appellate Court of Palermo, chaired by Gianfranco Garofalo, accepted the appeal of his legal advisers Paolo Gullo and Vito Ganci, declaring extinct by statute of limitations the punishment imposed on him. [5]
Giovanni Falcone was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian Mafia. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 23 May 1992, Falcone was assassinated by the Corleonesi Mafia in the Capaci bombing, on the A29 motorway near the town of Capaci.
Gaetano Badalamenti was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s. In 1987, he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders in the so-called "Pizza Connection", a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984. He was also sentenced in Italy to life imprisonment in 2002 for the 1978 murder of Peppino Impastato.
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