Nitto Santapaola: 30 years ago the arrest of the ''hunter''
Albert Castiglione May 18, 2023
It was dawn on May 18, 1993 when in a remote farmhouse among the companions of Caltagirone, the head of the Sco Antonio Manganelli and his colleague Alessandro Pansa led the Full Moon operation which put an end to the Catania godfather's inaction. Benedetto Santapaola known as Nitto is certainly one of the mafiosi with the highest criminal standing in the history of Cosa Nostra, one of the bloodiest and most powerful bosses.
Nicknamed "The Hunter" because of his passion for hunting, his criminal history is intertwined with the history of the last 40/50 years of Sicily.
Never any repentance, no collaboration with justice, Santapaola was the symbol of a mafia that dialogues on an equal footing with the institutions. Esteemed and feared, he was the man of a thousand entries into Catania, with the approval of the Corleonesi who held him in high esteem, leaving him freedom of action and movement in his territory.
The climb to the top of Cosa Nostra is rapid for Nitto who, starting from the San Cristoforo district, begins to go through the criminal stages starting with his "boss" Giuseppe Calderone, boss of the Catania mafia, by order of the Corleonesi : it's 1978. On August 13, 1980, Vito Lipari, Mayor of Castelvetrano, is found killed. By chance, a car with four people on board is stopped by a patrol of carabinieri: the travelers are Nitto Santapaola , Francesco Mangione and Rosario Romeo , from Catania, together with Mariano Agate , boss of Mazara del Vallo. In the immediacy of the arrest Santapaola and his traveling companions are not even subjected to the paraffin glove because he himself claims to have been on a hunting trip at a friend's house. Captain Vincenzo Melitohe also goes to Catania to verify the alibis, and on his return the four are released from prison by the pro-tempore magistrate. In 1984, part of the facts was revealed. In subsequent interrogations it would emerge that Santapaola had gone to the province of Trapani to solve problems that the building contractor Gaetano Graci had (the friend whose name had not been mentioned in 1980), who had interests in the Trapani area, on behalf of characters above all suspicion:
«Immediately after the award of the contracts, the first intimidations, threats and warnings began against the workers and technicians of the Graci company; and the matrix - local crime, probably backed by some families in the area - was immediately clear. An extremely explicit invitation, in short, to go and cultivate one's contracts elsewhere. The invitation, on the other hand, had not been accepted, and it was Santapaola himself who intervened to resolve the matter by interceding for the businessman from Catania. All his weight as a mafia boss on the scale: to mediate, convince, and - if necessary - threaten».
On January 5, 1984 Giuseppe Fava , founder journalist of the magazine I Siciliani, is killed in front of the Teatro Stabile in via dello Stadio in Catania. The motive is initially covered by everyone.
The "four horsemen of the mafia apocalypse", as defined by Giuseppe Fava on the historic cover of the first issue of I Siciliani of January 1983, were the knights of work who managed the Catania (and Sicilian) building entrepreneurship at the turn of the seventies. eighty: Mario Rendo , Carmelo Costanzo , Francesco Finocchiaro and Gaetano Graci .
The relationship between the Santapaola clan and the knights emerged thanks to the work of the editorial staff of I Siciliani. The first article only mentions "what appears, what people think and what is probably true": it appears that they are all under investigation for even serious crimes, it is thought that they were the ones who ordered the murder of Carlo Alberto from the Church and there is probably mutual protection but there is no proof.
In the mid-1980s Giovanni Falcone managed to demonstrate his at least indirect interest in the crime of the General from the Church: in fact, the prefect, as soon as he took office, had focused his interest on the business of the Catania entrepreneurs Carmelo Costanzo , Gaetano Graci, Mario Rendo andFrancesco Finocchiaro and on their relationship with Santapaola [19][20].
On the night of December 17, 1993, the "Ursa Maggiore" operation was triggered, which provided for 156 arrest warrants against affiliates and supporters of the Santapaola clan for mafia-type criminal association and a series of other crimes (including several murders, such as that of the journalist Giuseppe Fava and inspector Giovanni Lizzio , and numerous damages for the purpose of extortion, such as the fire of the Standa warehouses in via Etnea in 1990) and was largely based on the statements of the collaborator of justice Claudio Severino Samperi. 53 of the 156 arrest orders hit subjects already detained (including Santapaola himself) and the operation occupied a total of about a thousand carabinieri, police officers and financiers [49].
An important page ended with the capture of this large fugitive but, as always in the history of this country, the true and clear reconstruction of the role of the boss in the dialogue with more or less deviant parts of the state is absolutely vague and uncertain.