The first conviction of Cosa Nostra, as is well known, took place at the Maxi Trial (1986-1987). However, not everyone knows that many bosses had already been arrested twenty years earlier following the “First Mafia War” (1962-1963), a feud between clans culminated in the Ciaculli massacre (June 30, 1963). The martyrdom of seven soldiers was followed by the police first reaction, which in Palermo, in that summer, arrested two thousand people. This first anti-Mafia season fade so soon that, at the end of the legislature, the chairman of the parliamentary commission of inquiry delivered to Parliament a report of just three pages. In the wake of the failure to reach political conclusions, in the two trials in Catanzaro (Dec. 22, 1968) and Bari (June 10, 1969) nearly all the defendants, including Totò Riina, were acquitted for insufficient evidence. The author reconstructs in detail the internal conflict witihin the cosche to the point of outlining their political and judicial failures.
Vincenzo Cassarà (Sat,) studied this question.