Salvatore Contorno

Salvatore Contorno (born 28 May 1946), called Totuccio, is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who turned into a state witness (pentito) against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of Tommaso Buscetta.

He gave detailed accounts of the inner-workings of the Sicilian Mafia.

Contorno and Bontade used to be hunting companions in the 1960s.

Although he was just a soldier in the Mafia family, Contorno reported directly to the boss Bontade.

He was one of Bontade's trusted hitmen.

Contorno became a cigarette smuggler and heroin trafficker.

His cousins, the Grado brothers imported morphine base from Turkey, which was refined into heroin in laboratories on Sicily.

He was also involved in kidnapping, for which he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

In 1975, the butcher Totuccio Contorno was initiated in the Santa Maria di Gesù Mafia family in Palermo, then led by Stefano Bontade, an influential member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and a close ally of Ciaschiteddu.

From 1976-79 Contorno was in compulsory internal exile in Venice after completing a prison term for belonging to a criminal organisation.

However, he frequently returned to Palermo.

At the time he was bankrupt, because his frozen-meat business had failed.

He needed to borrow money to invest in heroin shipments.

His testimonies were crucial in the Maxi Trial against the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo and the Pizza Connection trial in New York City in the mid 1980s.

Contorno was born in Palermo.

His father Antonino had been a mafioso from the later dissolved Corso Calatafimi Mafia family.

Salvatore Contorno was a godson of Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, who would go on to become the secretary of the Sicilian Mafia Commission.

During the Second Mafia War — when the Corleonesi allies of Michele Greco and Salvatore Riina attacked the established Mafia families of Palermo — the Corleonesi killed Contorno's boss, Stefano Bontade, in April 1981.

They went on to eliminate other members of the Santa Maria di Gesù family that were lured to the estate of Michele Greco where they were wiped out.

Contorno did not turn up to the fateful meeting at Greco's estate.

He sensed trouble and went into hiding.

On 25 June 1981, Contorno narrowly escaped a murder attempt by Pino Greco (Scarpuzzedda, little shoe) and Giuseppe Lucchese — the favourite hitmen of the Corleonesi.

The Corleonesi employed a scorched earth policy to hunt down Contorno, killing his relatives and friends, to prevent them from hiding him.

Despite this approach, they were unable to find him, which earned Contorno the nickname Coriolano della Floresta, a kind of popular Sicilian version of Robin Hood.

While in hiding from both the authorities and the Corleonesi, Contorno sent anonymous letters to the police, revealing information on the Mafia, its members, the various factions and the violent turmoil it was undergoing.

Police Superintendent Antonino Ninni Cassarà developed a relationship with Contorno as an informant, code-naming him Fonte di Prima Luce (Source of First Light).

Contorno was arrested on 23 March 1982, in Rome, where he had gone to prepare for the murder of Giuseppe Pippo Calò who Contorno held responsible for the murder of his boss Stefano Bontade.

"Too bad I didn't succeed," he said during the Maxi Trial.

When he was captured, police found several weapons, two bulletproof cars, tens of thousands of dollars in cash, 140 kilograms of hashish and two kilos of heroin.

The arrest probably saved his life, making Contorno one of the few survivors of the losing factions in the Second Mafia War.

Contorno's revelations were the first time the authorities really learned of Michele Greco's high-ranking membership of the Mafia.

Previously he had just been regarded as a rather secretive landowner with a suspiciously high income, although he did come from a long line of Mafiosi.

Cassarà used Contorno to create a map of the families of the Palermo region and a report on their increasingly confrontational relations and involvement in narcotics (the so-called Greco+161 report on 13 July 1982).

Working closely with Judge Giovanni Falcone, two months later the police unleashed a dragnet roundup of 162 Mafiosi wanted for drug trafficking and homicide.

Despite his arrest, Contorno refused to collaborate any more with Cassarà and Falcone.

After the decision of Tommaso Buscetta to collaborate, Contorno changed his mind.

According to some, Buscetta met Contorno who supposedly fell to his knees and kissed Buscetta's hand.

Buscetta allegedly put his hand on his shoulder and said: “It’s all right, Totuccio, you can talk.” Contorno began collaborating in October 1984, and a week later 127 arrest warrants were issued against mafiosi.

Information provided by Tommaso Buscetta, plus the evidence of Salvatore Contorno, led to the first Maxi Trial which involved 475 defendants which ended in December 1987, 22 months after it began, with 338 convictions.

Contorno received a reduced sentence of six years due to his collaboration with the prosecution.