Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto - magistrate

Brave investigator murdered by the Sicilian Mafia

Onlookers gather round Ciaccio Montalto's car
the day after the magistrate was killed

The magistrate Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto was assassinated by Mafia gunmen in Valderice, a small town near the Sicilian city of Trapani, on this day in 1983.

Ciaccio Montalto, a state prosecutor who had been involved in every major organised crime investigation in western Sicily over the previous 12 years, was a short distance from his home in the early hours of the morning when his Volkswagen Golf was forced off the road.

Three men armed with machine guns and pistols opened fire, hitting Ciaccio Montalto multiple times, leaving his bullet-ridden body slumped in the driver’s seat. Used to hearing gunshots, none of the nearby residents ventured out to see what had happened and it was not until 7.15am that a passing carabinieri patrol came across the car and discovered the magistrate’s body. He was 41 years old.

The VW’s clock, which police believed stopped working because of the damage to the car, was showing 1.12am, which suggested that Ciaccio Montalto had been dead for just over six hours.

Ciaccio Montalto was an Italian magistrate who was a public prosecutor in Trapani, known for his investigations into the Mafia’s involvement in drug trafficking and their links to the local business and banking community and politicians.

Ciaccio Montalto was a formidable
adversary of the Trapani Mafia

He had played a part in every major Mafia investigation in the western part of the island since 1971. 

Speculation linked his killing either to an investigation in 1982 that led to arrest warrants being issued for 40 Mafia members and businessmen in the Trapani area, or to the arrest of two leading politicians - a regional Liberal party secretary and a noted member of the Republican party - on charges of granting illegal building contracts to Mafia figures. 

His death did not have the same impact as the slaying of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino almost a decade later, but was nonetheless a severe blow for the fight against the Mafia in Sicily, robbing the judiciary of a courageous and dedicated magistrate.

It was the Mafia's second major strike against the Italian state in just a few months following the killing of the carabinieri chief General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and his wife in Palermo the previous September. 

Ciaccio Montalto was born into a family of legal professionals. His father, Enrico, was a judge in the Court of Cassation, and his grandfather, Giacomo Montalto, a notary and former mayor of Erice, an historic hill town in Trapani province. Giangiacomo’s younger brother, Enrico, was a political activist who died in a car accident at the age of 22.

Although he was born in Milan, Ciaccio Montalto soon dedicated himself to the fight against crime in the city of his roots. He returned to Sicily in 1971, a year after beginning his legal career in the north, and rapidly rose to the level of Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic of Trapani.

Among the high-profile investigations he led was one into the so-called “Marsala monster” that ended with Michele Vinci, who was convicted of kidnapping three girls, including his niece, and leaving them to die in a well, being sentenced to 28 years in jail. 

Ciaccio Montalto was due to be
transferred to Florence

He also broke new ground during an investigation into the involvement of the mafiosi of the province of Trapani in drug trafficking and their links with the business and banking world of Trapani. He was one of the first magistrates to use asset tracing to follow the flow of “dirty money” after becoming convinced that money being laundered through Trapani’s banks was being used to fund a clandestine laboratory for the production of drugs in the Trapani area.

And thanks to Ciaccio Montalto’s work, the Minore brothers, a Mafia clan who controlled Trapani from the 1950s to the late ‘70s and were heavily involved in drug dealing and arms trafficking, as well as being suspected of carrying out many murders, were effectively driven out of the area, brothers Antonino - known as ‘Totò’ - Calogero, Giuseppe and Giacomo being forced to live as fugitives after the magistrate issued an arrest warrant for Totò Minore in 1979 for weapons trafficking. 

Ciaccio Montalto was realistic enough to know his success would put his own safety under threat. Soon after the 40 Mafia members and entrepreneurs he ordered to be arrested in 1982 were released due to lack of evidence, a black cross was painted on the bonnet of the car in which he would ultimately be killed. Unlike some high-profile investigators in the long fight against the Cosa Nostra, he did not have the security of an armour-plated vehicle or a police escort.

Disappointed with the result of that investigation and others, Ciaccio Montalto asked for a transfer to Florence, hoping to investigate the activities of an enclave of Trapani mafiosi who had settled there. The request was granted, but he was killed before it could happen.

Initial investigations into Ciaccio Montalto’s death pointed towards the Minore clan.  Salvatore Minore, in fact, was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for ordering the killing and two mafiosi for carrying it out, although all three were later acquitted by an appeal court. It was later discovered that Minore himself had been killed a year before Ciaccio Montalto.

Ultimately, on the basis of evidence provided by new witnesses and Mafia informers, the killing was attributed to the notorious Corleonesi mobster Salvatore ‘Totò’ Riina, who was seen as the capo di tutti capi - boss of all bosses - on Sicily, along with another leading mob figure, Mariano Agate. Riina, by then already in jail serving several life sentences, was handed another, along with Agate. Two corrupt lawyers, one of whom tipped off Riina after learning of Ciaccio Montalto’s intention to tackle the Trapani gangs in Florence, were acquitted on the grounds of unreliable testimony.

Ciaccio Montalto was granted a state funeral, conducted by the bishop of Trapani, Monsignor Emanuele Romano, at the cathedral of San Lorenzo, where 20,000 people gathered outside.

He was survived by his wife, Marisa La Torre, who would later be appointed deputy mayor of Trapani, and their three daughters Maria Irene, Elena and Silvia. 

The territory of Valderice includes mountain
scenary and a sweep of coastline 

Travel tip: 

The small town of Valderice, where Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto lived and sadly died while investigating crimes in Trapani province, has gone under that name only since 1958. It was previously known as Paparella but was renamed following the division of the Monte San Giuliano municipal area. Valderice, which is 8km (five miles) northeast of Trapani and about 95km (60 miles) west of Palermo, includes several scenic areas such as the stunning Zingaro Nature Reserve with its 7km of wild cliff top walks and the remains of a stone age settlement, and three beach areas: Bonagia, Lido Valderice and Rio Forgia.  In the town, the churches of Santa Maria della Misericordia, built in 1637, and Sant’Andrea Apostolo are among the oldest in the area. The Molino Excelsior is an old mill now converted to the Centro di Cultura Gastronomica, which every year provides gastronomic events, workshops and lessons to promote local customs and traditions. 

Erice is one of Sicily's most beautiful towns with
an abundance of picturesque narrow streets

Travel tip:

Dating back 3,000 years, Erice is one of Sicily’s most beautiful towns, a mediaeval gem that nestles some 2,464 feet above the sea, surrounded by vineyards in the mountains behind Trapani.  It is a fortified town with charming, narrow streets, echoing with history and blessed with a pace of life from a different age. Erice is watched over by an impressive 12th-13th century Norman castle, the Castello di Venere, where visitors can stroll around the grassy interior courtyard, flanked by an impressive stone wall allegedly built by Daedalus, the architect of Greek mythology. The castle offers spectacular panoramic views.  Erice has many churches and chapels, including the Norman-style church of San Martino, the church of Sant’Albertino degli Abbati and Chiesa Madre, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, with its quadrangular bell tower. One of the most attractive parts of Erice is the Spanish quarter, said to have been built in the period of Spanish domination to house Spanish soldiers, a requirement for every Sicilian city.

Also on this day:

1348: The Friuli earthquake

1755: The birth of physician Paolo Mascagni

1852: The birth of explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza

1866: The birth of operatic baritone Antonio Scotti

1982: The birth of singer-songwriter Noemi

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Giovanni Falcone - anti-Mafia crusader

Sicilian lawyer made life's work of taking on Cosa Nostra 

Giovanni Falcone (left), pictured with his fellow anti-Mafia
magistrate Paolo Borsellino. Both were murdered in 1992

Giovanni Falcone, who would become known as an anti-Mafia crusader during his career as a judge and prosecuting magistrate, was born on this day in 1939 in Palermo.

The son of a state clerk, he was raised in a poor district of the Sicilian city. Some of the boys with whom he played football in the street would go on to become Mafiosi but Falcone was determined from an early age that he would not be drawn into their world.

Educated at the local high school, he studied law at Palermo University. In 1966, at the age of 27, he was appointed a judge in Trapani, a crime-ridden port on the west coast of Sicily and began his lifelong quest to defeat the criminal organisation.

In time, Falcone became the Mafia's most feared enemy and by 1987, when he was the chief prosecutor at the so-called 'maxi-trial' in Palermo which convicted 342 members of the so-called Cosa Nostra, the likelihood he would be murdered meant he could not leave home without a heavily armed police escort.

He worked in a bomb-proof bunker underneath the city's law courts. His home was similarly protected and when he travelled between the two it was with a convoy of armoured police cars.

Yet he refused to be cowed, even when a wave of Mafia reprisals led to the deaths of many of his colleagues.  The first was Gaetano Costa, Palermo's chief magistrate, who was murdered shortly after signing 80 arrest warrants for Mafia bosses that Falcone's investigations had linked to mobsters in America.

The assassination of Boris Giuliano, the Head of Police in Palermo, soon followed, after which Falcone was assigned to a select pool of anti-Mafia judges and prosecutors.

In 1982 Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the carabinieri general who had smashed the Red Brigades, was despatched to Palermo to co-ordinate Rome's anti-Mafia policy. Only 100 days after taking office, he was machine-gunned to death in the street.

Falcone became effective head of the anti-Mafia drive after its co-ordinator, Judge Rocco Chinnici, was blown up by a car bomb in July 1983.

His work led to the dramatic 'maxi-trial' of 1986-87, in which 8,000 pages of evidence, much of it based on information passed on by pentiti - the Mafiosi turned informants - led to the conviction of 342 gang members.

They received sentences totalling 2,665 years in prison, including 19 life sentences, although the success of the operation was much undermined when all bar around 30 of those found guilty were later released on appeal, with doubts expressed over the validity of testimony from informants.

After the 'maxi-trial', Falcone had hoped to be appointed chief prosecutor in Palermo but was denied the opportunity.

Instead, he took a position in Rome with the Ministry of Justice, where he was successful in preparing a decree that overturned the judgment of the Supreme Court to quash so many of the 'maxi-trial' convictions and led to the re-arrest of many Mafia bosses.  In another judgment by the Supreme Court, in January 1992, the original convictions were upheld.

Falcone died four months later, on one of the visits to his home in Palermo he made every week. He was killed when a half-ton of explosives was detonated under a section of the coastal motorway he always used on his way from the airport. His wife, Francesca, died with him, along with three police officers.

The assassination had been ordered by the head of the Corleonesi faction of the Sicilian Mafia, Salvatore "Toto" Riina, who was arrested the following year and jailed for life.  Less than two months after Falcone's death, his friend and close associate in the anti-Mafia fight, the magistrate Paolo Borsellino, was killed by a car bomb in Palermo.

Gold mosaics line the ceilings of the Cappella Palatina,
one of Palermo's main tourist attractions 

Travel tip:

Despite its inevitable association with the criminal underworld, Palermo is an attractive tourist destination, a vibrant city with a wealth of history, culture, art, music and food. It has many outstanding restaurants as well as fine examples of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches, palaces and buildings.  Top attractions include the extraordinary Cappella Palatina, featuring Byzantine mosaics decorated with gold leaf and precious stones.

Travel tip:

Sicily's most famous coastal resort is the clifftop town of Taormina, overlooking the Ionian coast. Full of restaurants and shops, with beaches nearby, it is rich in history. The Greek amphitheatre, with its panoramic view of Mount Etna and the coast, is used for concerts and plays, and the town's old streets are enclosed within medieval walls.

(Photo from Cappella Palatinia by Woodguy CC BY-SA 3.0)

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