Cesare Terranova

Cesare Terranova (25 August 1921 – 25 September 1979) was an Italian judge and politician from Sicily notable for his anti-Mafia stance.

Cesare Terranova was born on 25 August 1921, in Petralia Sottana, a small town located at about 70 km southeast of Palermo (Sicily).

He entered the judiciary in 1946.

The jury found Leggio guilty of stealing grain in 1948, for which he received a suspended sentence, but he was pronounced not guilty on all other accounts, including the murders of Placido Rizzotto and Navarra.

The judges and prosecutors received anonymous letters threatening them with death.

From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office.

He was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra.

In 1958 he became the head of the Examining Office at the Palermo Court.

At the time the prosecution was separated in an examining phase (the so-called instruction phase) and a prosecuting phase.

Terranova helped bring numerous Mafiosi to trial and subsequent imprisonment.

He was a key figure in the Trial of the 114 which saw many prominent Mafiosi on trial for their role in the First Mafia War in the early 1960s that ended with the Ciaculli massacre on 30 June 1963.

He based himself on a confidential report of the Carabinieri of 28 May 1963, where a confidential informant revealed the existence of a commission composed of fifteen persons – six from Palermo city and the rest from towns in the province – "each with the rank of boss of either a group or a Mafia family."

Judge Terranova did not believe that the existence of a commission meant that the Mafia was a tightly unified structure.

Terranova also led investigations into the connections between the Mafia and politics.

He looked into the exploits of the prominent Sicilian politician Salvatore Lima as mayor of Palermo and concluded that Lima was in league with a number of Mafiosi, including Angelo La Barbera.

He became the secretary of the Antimafia Commission that was established in 1963 after the Ciaculli massacre.

In an indictment in 1964, Terranova wrote: "it is clear that Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera (well-known bosses in the Palermo area) ... knew former mayor Salvatore Lima and maintained relations in such a way as to ask for favours. ... The undeniable contacts of the La Barbera mafiosi with the one who was the first citizen of Palermo ... constitute a confirmation of ... the infiltration of the Mafia in several sectors of public life."

However, nothing came of his enquiries or allegations.

Terranova made little attempt to hide the fact that his ambition was to bring Luciano Leggio, the boss of the Corleone Mafia Family – known as the Corleonesi – to justice.

On 31 May 1965, he ordered the prosecution of 114 mafiosi.

In 1965 Terranova ordered the prosecution of over sixty Corleonesi, including Leggio (Trial Leggio + 63), for a series of murders in Corleone from 1958 to 1963.

The most prominent victim had been the Mafia-boss of Corleone, Michele Navarra.

However, despite Terranova’s efforts, the sentence of the Trial of the 114 on 22 December 1968, by the Court of Catanzaro was a disappointment and many prominent mafiosi were acquitted.

All but 10 of the 114 defendants were acquitted.

Angelo La Barbera got 22 years and Tommaso Buscetta 14 years for two so-called “white deaths” - the so-called lupara bianca which is used to refer to a mafia-style murder in which the victim's body is deliberately hidden.

Terranova was the first to acknowledge the existence of a Sicilian Mafia Commission.

However, the sentence of the Bari Court on 10 June 1969 resulted in acquittals for all the 64 defendants.

Salvatore Riina – Leggio's eventual successor – was acquitted in 1969 and remained at large until his capture in 1993.

The Corleonesi were also indicted in the Trial of the 114 related to the First Mafia War that resulted in the Ciaculli Massacre, that was also prepared by Terranova.

During an interrogation preparing the trial, Leggio refused to answer questions.

When in response to one of them, Leggio replied that he could not even recall his own name or his parents, Terranova instructed the clerk: “Write that Leggio does not know whose son he is.” Leggio was infuriated with the implication that he was a bastard.

The incident was the beginning of a deep hatred by Leggio for Terranova.

“Leggio actually had foam on his lips; he would have killed me on the spot if he could,” Terranova told his wife.

The prosecution appealed successfully against the Catanzaro verdict that had acquitted Leggio and had him tried in absentia in 1970.

In May 1972, he was elected as a representative in the Italian Parliament for the Independent Left under the auspices of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

This time Leggio was found guilty, although he had left jail after the Catanzaro trial, given the time they had already spent in detention while awaiting trial, and it was not until 1974 that Leggio was finally captured again and taken into custody.

After the failure to fight the Mafia through the courts, Terranova changed strategy.

He was re-elected in 1976.

He was killed by the Mafia in 1979.

Cesare Terranova was the predecessor of judge Rocco Chinnici who created the Antimafia Pool signing all indictments along with the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were also killed by the Mafia in 1992, and other Sicilian judges that, by signing together, presented a unified front to fight the Mafia by joining efforts that were a more difficult target for mafiosi and preserved institutional memory by sharing information.