”Darling, please don’t send me any more pasta al forno. You can send me all the cheese you want.” These words of domesticity, written between a husband and wife, betray little of the couple’s extraordinary story. The identity of the author was revealed this week as Bernardo Provenzano — the mafia boss of bosses, a man police had been hunting for 43 years.
Provenzano’s recent life had been played out in a squalid hiding place, untouched by the wealth he possessed. But his remoteness from a society he terrorised appears to have been his undoing as his wife’s missives — dealing with food, laundry and letters — eventually led to his capture.
According to Giuseppe Gualtieri, head of the flying squad who arrested Provenzano, his wife Saveria Benedetta Palazzolo wrote love letters to him once a week, using his elaborate system of ”postmen”. Zu Binnu, or Uncle Bernie, as Provenzano is known, would reply, on those now famous type-written ”pizzini”, crumpled scraps of paper easily hidden among the fluff at the bottom of a pocket. ”He never used mobile phones in case the signal was picked up,” said Gualtieri. ”A confirmed technophobe, the most advanced bit of equipment he had was a little black and white TV set.”
She would send him parcels, alerting one of his many trusted ”postmen” to begin the elaborate journey, involving several men and two or three days, to cover just a couple of kilometres up the country lanes. Ms Palazzolo’s call, and the courier’s wary behaviour on leaving her house, alerted police that another package was on its way to the ”ghost of Corleone”.
”We had been so close so many times before,” said investigating magistrate Marzia Sabella, ”we were frankly sceptical that we’d get him this time. Afterwards, we discovered he was making plans to move again, so we only had a small window of opportunity.”
Provenzano knew that his faithful circle was diminishing: in November 2004, an alleged spy ring connected to the mafia was discovered operating inside the prosecutor’s offices. In January 2005, Francesco Pastoia, one of Provenzano’s closest henchmen, and his go-between with other mafia bosses, was arrested, and hung himself in prison. But when police raided his miserable hideout, the 72-year-old boss reportedly said: ”You’re making a big mistake.”
Search for clues
Magistrates have spent the last few nights scrutinising dozens of pizzini, searching for clues as to who was helping the boss. ”The notes between him and his wife were mostly about family business, and banal practicalities,” said Sabella. ”He would ask for food, fresh cheese, more coffee; she complains of a bad leg keeping her at home; in one of them he commiserates with her on having a cold. They also exchanged notes about their son Angelo’s wedding, which was due to take place in Corleone in May.”
Despite having to live apart, the couple obviously enjoyed a passionate relationship. Many of Saveria’s letters to her husband begin ”Carissimo amore mio” (my dearest love) and end with ” I love you always”.
Other notes, to his associates, give instructions on business and financial matters, in particular protection rackets. The head of Cosa Nostra was an obsessive record-keeper; in his notes he identifies associates by numbers — up to 163. He signed himself, and referred to himself, as number 1. The secret archive of pizzini has been described as a treasure trove of clues to the enormous and powerful network of people — henchmen, business associates and politicians — who helped protect Provenzano during his 43 years on the run. Although only Provenzano knows the names behind the numbers, work has already begun on identifying them. Sabella and her fellow prosecutor Michele Prestipino have authorised what will no doubt be the first of many police investigations, based on evidence in the pizzini.
”Many of the notes are about settling disputes between mafiosi,” Sabella observes. Unlike his predecessor, the bloody warmonger Toto Riina, Provenzano’s leadership style was pacifist: he believed in keeping the organisation out of sight, the better to do business.
When Provenzano and Riina were brothers in arms as young men, their godfather, Corleone boss Luciano Leggio, famously described Provenzano as having the ”brains of a chicken”. But Provenzano has played a long game, exploiting this image of him as slow-witted — hence his nickname ”the Tractor”.
Although his business acumen is no longer in doubt, he could not have stayed out of sight for so long without his faithful support network, including his wife. But while police prepare to swoop on his closest associates, there are no plans to arrest the woman who has faithfully done his laundry all these years. Aiding and abetting a family member is not a crime in Italy.
Saveria and Bernardo never married, perhaps because they were so young when he dropped out of sight. She came from Cinisi, a town west of Palermo famous as a mob stronghold, and her family has been linked with the mafia (her brother was killed in the mafia war of the early 80s). Since he went into hiding in 1963, wanted for a triple murder, police have always hoped she would lead them to him, but on their twice-yearly assignations, she always managed to give her minders the slip. She bore two children, in 1976 and 1983, while claiming that she hadn’t seen him in years.
Mafia wives
Like other Sicilian mafia wives, Palazzolo has played a key support role. In the 60s and 70s, Provenzano registered businesses and properties under her name. In 1983, a warrant was issued charging her with money laundering and conspiracy, but she disappeared before police could arrest her. She was convicted in absentia and sentenced to three years, later commuted to two.
In 1992, after the sentence had expired, Palazzolo, aged 48, marched into the police station in Corleone, with her two sons, aged nine and 16. She announced she was taking up residence, but refused to answer questions. She moved into Provenzano’s sister’s house in the middle of Corleone, the boys went to the local school, where teachers described them as well behaved, if aloof. They spoke German fluently, which was the only indication of where they had been living. She ran a laundry, and only ever left the house to speak to her lawyers.
It was widely assumed that for her to return so openly to Corleone, her husband’s heartland, he must be dead. But she wasn’t giving anything away. ”She wasn’t under investigation, she did not have to answer for her movements,” says Liliana Madeo, author of a study of mafia women. ”It was simply assumed she wasn’t active in organised crime.”
Police described Palazzolo as dignified and reserved. She drove a Fiat Tipo, not a Mercedes. She was elegant but not showy. ”She and her sons hid themselves under the guise of normality,” says Madeo.
Provenzano’s long-time brother in arms, Cosa Nostra boss Toto Riina, was arrested in 1993. After years in hiding (although in far more luxurious surroundings than Provenzano), his wife, Ninetta Bagarella, also brought their four children home to Corleone. The two women did not, apparently, swap recipes for pasta sauce.
Bagarella has made dramatic public declarations in defence of her violent children, while Palazzolo has kept her counsel.
”The Provenzano boys were very different from Riina’s sons,” says Anna Puglisi of the Giuseppe Impastato research centre in Palermo. ”Riina’s boys were always throwing their weight around, roaring around on motorbikes and behaving like sons of the boss. One of them is serving a life sentence, and the other is in prison for mafia association.”
Most sons of mafiosi who get an education become lawyers, or businessmen, but Francesco Paolo Provenzano is teaching Italian in a top school in Germany, while his brother Angelo has a degree from Palermo University and runs the laundry business. Their mother has apparently decided that their lives will not run the same course as their father’s. The family lives in conspicuous modesty, since any visible income is liable to be confiscated.
Medical treatment
Uncle Bernie has depended on other women during his years on the run: in October 2003, when he went for his prostate treatment in a clinic in Marseille using the name Gaspare Troia, he was allegedly looked after by Madeleine Orlando, wife of one of Provenzano’s associates. (In a further display of sang-froid, the millionaire boss is said to have applied for the cost of the operation to be covered by the Palermo regional health scheme.)
His main source of wealth in recent years has been private health care. After the arrest of a number of health professionals suspected of mafia association, a tunnel was discovered under one of the private hospitals, which Provenzano may have used in hiding.
”Don’t be deceived by the poverty of Uncle Bernie’s peasant hideout,” said John Dickie, author of Cosa Nostra. ”He commands immense wealth, from private health and construction. He was said to be very excited at the prospect of the money that would come to the mafia from the bridge planned between Reggio Calabria and Messina.”
At Palazzolo’s large grey house in Corleone, the shutters remain closed, and there is no sign that anyone is home. The wife of the mafia boss has not been seen since his arrest on Tuesday. Her younger son arrived from Germany a week ago, but has gone to ground. Through their lawyer, the family has expressed concerns about Provenzano’s health, claiming he needs treatment for his prostate problems. His wife has expressed a hope that she will be able to visit her husband in prison, a request that seems unlikely since Provenzano is being held in isolation in maximum security conditions which ban visits even from family members.
This arrest was remarkable in that it involved no pentiti, or mafia collaborators. Police said they did not expect Provenzano to talk. It’s a certain bet that neither will his wife.
The people of Corleone are having to cope with the fact that their town is once again notorious. Media from Japan and the United States have descended on the little community made famous in the Godfather films. Many refuse to talk to the press but the manager of the local hotel who gave his name as Giuseppe said: ”Corleone isn’t only about the mafia. There are lots of good people who want all this to change and will be happy that he has been arrested.” – Guardian Unlimited Â