Gaspare Mutolo

Gaspare Mutolo (Palermo, February 5, 1940) is a Sicilian mafioso, also known as "Asparino".

In 1965 he ended up in prison for the first time.

In the Ucciardone prison in Palermo he shared a cell with Totò Riina, the future boss of the Corleonesi.

Noticing the deference with which Riina was treated, Mutolo realized that his cellmate had to be someone important and ingratiated himself with Riina by letting him win at cards.

When they both had left prison, Mutolo was Riina's personal driver for a while – a position of great trust.

Important supply lines of morphine base and heroin to the Sicilian Mafia were set up in the late 1970s and early 1980s after Cosa Nostra members Pietro Vernengo and Gaspare Mutolo shared prison cells in Italy with the Turkish trafficker, Yasar Avni Mussullulu, and the Singapore-born Chinese, Koh Bak Kin.

In 1973, Mutolo was initiated into the Partanna-Mondello family headed by Rosario Riccobono.

"When I became a member, it was for me a new life, with new rules. For me only Cosa Nostra existed," he later recalled.

He became the right-hand man of Riccobono and Riina's trusted man for delicate missions.

In 1976 and 1982, Mutolo was arrested again, and during one of his sojourns in prison, he became the cellmate of the old boss of the Corleonesi, Luciano Leggio (later he claimed that he had painted the pictures that are attributed to Leggio).

Koh Bak Kin was first arrested at Rome airport in 1976 with more than 20 kilograms of heroin and in 1978 was sentenced to six years in prison, where he met Mutolo.

The already lenient sentence was further reduced, and Kin was released from prison in 1980.

On his return to Bangkok, he was able to guarantee a steady supply of heroin to Cosa Nostra thanks to his links in northern Thailand with an emissary of the opium "baron" Khun Sa.

By tapping the phone Mutolo, police recorded discussions about heroin smuggling between Mutolo and mafiosi in Catania.

An informant was able to confirm judge Giovanni Falcone’s suspicion about the alliance between the Palermo and Catania mafias in heroin trafficking: he had participated in a meeting at Mutolo's house in Palermo, where one of the principal bosses of Palermo, Rosario Riccobono, and the top boss of Catania, Nitto Santapaola, met to discuss a massive shipment of 500 kilos of heroin.

Sicilian judges estimate that between 1981 and 1983, Mussullulu alone supplied two Mafia individuals with two metric tons of morphine base for the sum of US$55 million after which he disappeared from circulation and his supply line to Italy ceased.

After turning state witness, Mutolo revealed that he organized a 400-kilogram shipment of heroin to the US in 1981.

The Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan received half of the load, while John Gambino of the Gambino Family in New York City took care of the other 200 kilograms.

The shipments were financed by consortium of Sicilian Mafia clans, who had organized a pool to provide the money to buy the merchandise from Thai suppliers.

The system in the heroin business was that every Mafia family could invest in a shipment if it had the money.

Thanks to his close ties with the Corleonesi, he survived the massacre that wiped out the old guard including former Corleonesi ally Riccobono of the Partanna-Mondello Mafia family at the end of 1982, in the midst of the Second Mafia War.

Mutolo was arrested in 1982 before he could finish a second shipment.

His Thai supplier Koh Bak Kin was arrested when Egyptian police seized a Greek ship in the Suez Canal carrying some 233 kilos of heroin on May 24, 1983.

Guarding the shipment was a Sicilian mafioso – a member of Mutolo's drug ring.

Mutolo received a 16-year sentence in the Maxi Trial against the Mafia in 1987.

While in prison, Mutolo started to think about becoming a state witness (pentito) in December 1991.

In 1992 he became a pentito (state witness against the Mafia).

He was the first mafioso who spoke about the connections between Cosa Nostra and Italian politicians.

Mutolo's declarations contributed to the indictment of Italy's former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and to an understanding of the context of the 1992 Mafia murders of the politician Salvo Lima and the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Mutolo grew up in the narrow streets of Pallavicino and the neighborhood of Partanna-Mondello in Palermo.

He left school and started working as a mechanic.

At the same time, he was involved in a car-theft ring.

Since he was young he lived in the world of Cosa Nostra.

Several of his blood family were members of the Mafia.

Mutolo decided to talk in early May 1992, he insisted to see Paolo Borsellino after learning that Giovanni Falcone was unavailable (Falcone ceased to be a magistrate after he had entered the Ministry of Justice in 1991).

Mutolo trusted them because he knew from firsthand experience how they had worked in the Maxi Trial.

Mutolo had been the chief organizer of the massive heroin ring that Falcone had broken.

However, Borsellino ran into problems with Chief Prosecutor, Pietro Giammanco.

Borsellino was supposed to work on cases in south-western Sicily and Mutolo was from Palermo.

There was a risk that this bureaucratic obstacle would jeopardize his cooperation.