Mafia boss and mass murderer Riina dies in jail

ROME (Reuters): Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Sicilian Mafia’s most powerful boss of the 20th century who was convicted for ordering dozens of murders, died of natural causes early on Friday after almost a quarter of a century in jail.

Riina, who turned 87 on Thursday, died in the prison ward of a hospital in Parma, the northern Italian city where he had been serving 26 life sentences for homicides committed between 1969 and 1992. His victims included the two magistrates who led the campaign to bring Mafia figures to justice.

He had fallen into a coma after complications during surgery a few days ago, and his family had been given permission to be by his side on Thursday, the Justice Ministry said.

Nicknamed “the Beast”, “Riina began his violent criminal career on the streets of Corleone after World War Two and became the Sicilian Mafia’s boss of bosses when it reached its 20th century apex. Riina oversaw a flourishing economic period for organised crime group Cosa Nostra, or “Our Thing”, when it was trafficking heroin to North America and pulling the levers of political power in Palermo and Rome.

But due to Riina’s savagery, hundreds of mobsters broke their code of silence in the 1980s and 1990s and testified against him, allowing magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino to uncover the long-hidden secrets of Cosa Nostra and prosecute its leaders for the crimes of its soldiers.

Riina’s January 1993 arrest, after more than 20 years as a fugitive, came just months after Falcone and Borsellino were blown up on his orders, and coincided with the tumultuous downfall of Italy’s corrupt post-war political system.

Since then, Riina has been held under high security with little access to his family in accordance with a law written to prevent bosses from commanding from prison. Refusing to cooperating with investigators until the end, Riina’s secrets now will never be known.

Given various nicknames over the years - Toto, Shorty, the Beast among them - Riina was 13-years-old when his father, a poor farmer, was blown up while trying to remove explosives from a bomb leftover from the war.