Totò and Paolo of Corleone - Frank Psaila

Totò Riina was no ordinary man. For decades his criminal organisation, Cosa Nostra terrorised the country and killed hundreds of journalists, politicians, rivals within the Sicilian Mafia, and innocent civilians. But magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were Riina’s most notorious victims. Their legacy, it is said, was Riina’s downfall. He went into hiding, until he was arrested and sentenced to 25 life sentences. The ‘boss of bosses’ was left to rot in prison. When he died, journalists went to Corleone, his birth place, looking for reactions from those who knew him. In omerta’ fashion, residents weren’t forthcoming. But a 77-year-old gentleman, heart on sleeve, told reporters what many and mostly people of his age didn’t have the courage and the honesty to say: “When Riina was around, everybody had a job here in Corleone,” said Paolo. “These men gave us jobs.” La Repubblica, reported how, on social media, people, presumably younger than Paolo of Corleone, mourned Riina. It wasn’t just in Italy that Riina was mourned but in Malta too, said the daily. No surprises there. These youngsters couldn’t have remembered Riina’s days of ‘glory’ in Corleone. The mobster had...