The Underworld Podcast - Italy's Unknown 5th Mafia, The Stidda

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

In the late 1970s, as Sicily descended into all-out mafia war, the island’s allegiances split between the ruthless Corleonesi clan, led by Toto Riina, and southern gangsters fed up with Riina’s campaign of murder that was spilling innocent lives, and disgusting the Italian public. This schism would be the birth of the Stidda — Sicilian for ‘star’ — a group that fought and thrived for turf in southern Sicily, and became prominent enough that, even today, people know it as Italy’s “Fifth Mafia”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. December 22, 1988. The town of Gela, Sicily, is gearing up for Christmas. Tree in the main piazza, lights up about town, prayers held at its quaint 17th century Franciscan Kiezer, the church. It's a time for family, feast, and festivity. And perhaps, just perhaps, a chance to forget the vicious blood feud that has strangled this town of 70,000 and horrified mainland Italy for the past couple years. But as the phrase goes, things are never so bad that they cannot get worse.

And so it comes to pass when, at around 1pm on this winter's evening, Salvatore Polara in his mid-50s, sits down for lunch with his wife and three sons. The couple's two daughters are away. at their two-story villa on the historic Via Ducetia. Half an hour later, a man approaches the Polara's home and he rings its doorbell. Polara's teenage son Marcello opens the door. The stranger shoots him dead immediately. Marcello's body hits the floor, but the killer isn't done. He steps inside and, armed with two 7.65 millimeter pistols,

set about massacring the entire Polara family. family, blowing their bodies across the dining table. He's done in under a minute. Then the killer scuttles into a nearby alley, hops into an idling getaway car, and is away. Polara is, was, the head of a construction company that's been hired on a major dam project. He was also the local head of the Casa Nostra, the mafia that has held Sicily in its grip for over a century, an associate of Salvatore Tautorina, possibly the most brutal and feared mafioso the island has ever seen. Cops arrive, four of the Polaras are dead, but one of them, 14-year-old Pietro Polara, survives. The killer's wig is on the floor as a dozens of empty shell casings.

Even by jealous standards, the murder of a family in broad daylight is beyond the pale, a barely imaginable act of savagery. But the cops are clueless. All they know is that surely the hit belongs to a rival group, one comprised of former Kosoanostra members who decided to go it alone and wipe out their former comrades. Some in Italy already know these crooks and killers as the fifth mafia. Sicilians mostly know them by their local name,

one derived from the Sicilian word for star, the Stida. and while carabiniere's scramble for clues in the Polara case, the Costa Nostra already plotting their wilder vengeful response, one which will ensure that almost nobody in Little Jela is safe. This is what a mafia war truly looks like. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly podcast that delves into some corners of the criminal world. you thought you knew about and obviously you never even knew existed. I am Sean Williams in Wellington, New Zealand,

packing up my entire life to go and live in America. And I'm joined by Danny Gold in New York City, who I believe just lost our entire month's earnings on a bet. I think it was about what color dressed, the White House prex secretary was going to wear. How are you going to make that one back, mate? You know, if you just keep going double or nothing, eventually you have to win. Like, the odds eventually are in your favor. Amateurs don't know this. All professional gamblers know that. You just keep betting down. By the way, just broke like an hour ago, another gambling ring of like insider information busted. And these guys were betting like $150,000 on on Chinese baseball. And it's kind of like, buddy, if you're in America betting that, like, come on. Like you're going to, no one,

no one's betting half a million dollars on Ken State. You might as well just go turn yourself in when you make that bet. Like it's insane. Fantastic stuff. Like great all around. Yeah. I think I saw one on the Czech Super League ping pong tournament or something. thing. I mean, come on, guys. I think you can hear this and more at Danny's website. Win, win, win, win. It's where I give all my picks. Or dot co. It's where I give all my picks. Yeah, yeah, win, win, win, win, win. Anyway, yeah, you can probably press that skip button a couple of times from now on, guys, if you don't want to hear about a weekly housekeeping calls, but please subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you're listening. We've got a bunch of more bonuses

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How are your new year's resolutions coming on? Anyway, mine are great. Sleep less, worry more, experience a general feeling of dread about the world. I'm absolutely killing it. Should we talk about organized crime for a bit? Yeah? Yeah, to do it. Yeah.

Okay, let's go. So, the Stida, the star, or Stida, I don't know how you say. Italian or Sicily. It was good. Italy's so called, I just literally just said it in a different voice, didn't I? Italy's so-called fifth mafia, although some folks attribute that to the Societa Fodiana, which is an offshoot of the Neapolitan Camorra based in Pulea. I'm going to daydream about Puglia the best place in the world.

And in case you're wondering, the fourth mafia, which is also in Pulaia, that is the Sacra Corona Unita, which we somehow, I still haven't done a show on yet. Anyway, it is still a topic. Yeah, we definitely should do that. And this one has been on our radars at the pod for some time. Yeah, shout out to our dude, AJ Jackson, for pushing us to do this. Yeah, shout out. But actually, there is not a huge amount out there at all on these guys, actually.

And a lot of it seems to come from sources, citing themselves, back and forth as kind of online circle jerk of bad information. That's just so much of that when it comes to, like, organized crime, geopolitics. That's all it is. you know, they'll get one figure and people will just endlessly quote it and it's, ends up being wrong. But like, they'll be like, oh, so-and-so mentioned this, so it's the, you know, whatever. Yeah, and you can hear it all on this show. Actually, members can check out the reading list for some really solid books on this, though. The best is probably Alexander Stills, excellent cadavers from 1995, which is one of the best

books about Italian organized crime. It's actually made into a 1990-My movie starring F. Murray Abraham and Chas Pounderre, who I cannot believe I'm doing this on a non-danny episode famously turned down the role of Sony Soprano because he had cancer at the time. Look, I'm going to give you like one free-fro, like one Sopranos reference before we move on. Let's just flush it out.

I don't know, David Chase's barber or some continuity error in season five episode two, go on. I'm big Chas Bahamani fan, man. World-class Bronx Tale up there with like the best Mothie movies of all time. I keep meeting people who haven't seen it, and frankly, I'm disgusted. Yeah, does that include me? I'm afraid that it might do. Anyway, let's get into this, the stidder.

And straight off the bat, these guys are different to other Italian mobs. For starters, the country's three main organized criminal groups. So you've got the Camorra of Campania, Calabrias and Drengetta and the Casa Nostra in Sicily. These guys at least claim to trace their lineage back centuries, right? to bandits, to shepherds and smugglers of law, especially regarding the Andrangetta, a lot of this storytelling is complete BS. Check out our episode with Alex Perry for a few years back for more on that. But in the case of the Koso Noster, there really is a deep history. Sicily is the biggest island in the Med, between Italy and North Africa. And for centuries,

it's been a battleground between the region's great powers, Romans, Carthaginians, Greeks, Normans, goths, Arabs and, unfortunately, the French. In downtown Palermo, the island's biggest city, and, in my opinion, one of the best places to visit on the planet, you will see ancient street signs in Italian, Arabic, and Hebrew. It's a really great place. In the 13th century, French bastards, sorry, soldiers take over the island, and there is a massive uprising from locals known as the Vespers. Their battle cry is, please, forgive me all of Italy. Morta, a la Franci Italia, Aneila, which means, apparently, death to the French is Italy's cry, and whose first letters also spell out the word mafia.

I bet you didn't know that. You know, I didn't. Isn't there something about like orange and lemon farmers and all that, or does that come later on? We'll kind of touch on that. Yeah. And to be fair, actually, to come back to this, it's only one of several theories about the origin of the word mafia. It's just a coolest one, right?

Others include a Sicilian word for caves, which are used as criminal hiding places. And another is it comes from the Arabic word ma'afi, which is the Islamic tax on non-Muslims living in Muslim lands. In the following centuries, Austrians and Spaniards take Sicily, but in 1860, it is swallowed into the newly minted kingdom of Italy under Gary Baldi. Fantastic Biscuit. The locals aren't too keen on this, writes Peter DeVico in his book Mafia Made Easy. quote, even under unification, Sicily was deemed a substandard society by the ruling powers of mainland Italy, a destitute, bleak place, populated by uneducated, uncouth commoners. The peasants who worked the soil for centuries under foreign feudal landlords found themselves slaves to the new regime from the mainland.

There was no justice. After centuries of hardship, bloodshed and false hopes, the average Sicilian was no better off under the new United Italy than he was, 400 years previous. Nothing had changed. There was no future, only more hardship and poverty. You see, Sean, the north of Italy, they always have the money and the upower. They punished the South for years. Even today, they put their noses up at them, like their peasants. I hated the North. Jesus Christ. I cannot believe. Right. You get one. There better not be more. It's hard to tell from this guy in this book quote, not that quote, what he means by this. Is it bad?

I think he means that it's bad. Anyway, throughout the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, Sicilians just generally despise authorities, and bands of peasant vigilantes grow across the island, especially in those poor rural areas. But don't be fooled. Despite what they might claim, the Costa Nostra isn't some virtuous league of shadows, protecting the poor from the rich. Actually, they've been a bunch of robing bastards forever. This is the era of the so-called Gabilotti, sharecroppers who leased land from land-owning aristocrats, who'd rather spend their time in the city.

Wait, so the Gabliotti, whatever you can say it, they're the poor peasants or they're the rich landowners? They're the guys in between. So you've got the wealthy landowners and the peasants, and these guys, like, insinuate themselves in the middle. They lease land off the wealthy, aristocrats and then they sublet it to the poor. So they're kind of like wedging themselves. So they're like middle managers. Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of, because sharecroppers mean something something different. Really? Okay. Yeah. So these guys, these guys are just taking the land, essentially. They're not, I guess, yeah, in the American sense, they wouldn't be sharecroppers, right? Because those would be the low down guys, wouldn't they? Yeah, the sharecroppers in America are like

the really poor, I think usually like blacks after slavery was, was, uh, was ended, like, who got stuck basically like, you know, farming plots of land for landowners where they got like nothing, you know? Yeah, these would be in Sicily, these would be the kind of like third tier of that. Uh, these guys, the Gabalotti, like, they would control the farm, right? And then the peasants would sublease and work it. In other words, these guys are kind of slumlords. And since the peasants are always in debt to these guys, they hire a bunch of guys,

to keep the peasants in their place, make sure they pay and extort them at will. And this, and not some Robin Hood fiction, is the tale of the first organized mafia in Sicily. And because the Gabelotti give them a long leash, and they're the island's premier hired muscle, they quickly get stuck into all kinds of criminal money-making schemes. You've got contraband, protection rackets, lemon trees and olive groves, yes, and later, by controlling large parts of the illegal immigration way from Sicily, into the United States. I don't think I'm going to mention that huge amount from here on, but yeah, they do play a big role, like the fresh produce and stuff, especially with the guys

who came over to America, right? I think they were like involved in that kind of world before they came over. I mean, you got into this a bunch with the Earl of Anastasia episode about a year ago. You've got Giuseppe Masseria, one of the pioneer kingpins of the American mafia. He arrives in New York on a boat from Sicily in 1902, and he'll become the head of the Genovese crime family nickname Joe the boss. And he does it with the help of Sicilian Mafiosi, who consolidate their groups of standover men into one powerful confederacy infused with Masonic rituals and at least a surface-level nod to some kind of code of honor.

They are the Kosoostra, our thing. Right. And then after Joe the boss, you have basically Luciano and the sort of rise to the five families and they go to war, the sort of newer American-style Kosoostra against the mustache piece, which are the old Sicilian types. And I think we went into that too in the Anastasia episode, that sort of war. We've definitely gone into that in like four different episodes for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like there is some crossover between these worlds, and we're going to go into it a bit more of the later parts of this episode as well. Anyway, Mussolini and his fascists take control of Italy in 1922 by April 945. Of course, he's hanging upside down with his mistress outside of the land. gas station, according to New York Times, a fitting end to a wretched life. The Allies had actually occupied Sicily since 1943, destroying institutions, banning political parties, and even opening the gates of the island's prisons. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, though, like those institutions were fascist. Yeah, they were fascist institutions. A lot of those prisons were filled with political

prisoners, though it was a mess during the ally occupation. That's to be expected. If you read them, I feel like I mentioned it every seventh episode, but Naples, 44 about the occupation of Naples is just a fantastic book and really sort of breaks down what was happening. I mean, it was just the middle of World War II. Everything was chaos. Yeah, I think we did, I think I did a show on the Comor like six months ago and we were talking about this and it's like unsurprisingly a super, super chaotic time all over Italy. But yeah, in Sicily especially as well, like where it was pretty weak institutions begin with, it kind of falls apart. Unsurprisingly in all of this, the Kosoanostra thrives, and it makes bank in Sicily's new black market.

Many people aim for political power by denouncing fascism, but they turn out to be Mafiosi themselves. And when the war ends and left-wing Sicilians demand a reform of land laws that produce the Gabelotti and their criminal enforcers, the Kosoanostra runs riot. They execute communists and reformers across the territory. It's complete madness. By the 1950s, the cosnoisseur are at the heart of europe's booming trade in narcotics too they help ferry heroin and other substances into the united states with the french connection which i'm going to do a show on very soon yeah we should really we should have done that already too but that's i mean they're mostly the french connections mostly corsicans that right yes yeah um yeah i think i'm going to try and do a show on um record he's the big guy uh they're like big in fishyy france The Kosoanostra takes hold in Sicily's main cities, particularly Palermo, where between

1959 and 1963, just five men, all of them, Mafiosi, win 80% of all building contracts. They demolish historic sites and erects seas of ugly concrete blocks known today as the sack of Palermo. But because these guys are hardly saints, they often squabble and fight over access to resources themselves. So in 1962, this spills into something called the First Mafia War, which happens when a group of Kosa Nostra families descend into years-long violence that lasts until a series of high-profile trials in 1968. Now, you can tell already, but I'm skipping through a lot of this history. We'll definitely dive into this in greater detail in like 50 episodes' time, but by the early 1970s, most Kosa Nostra families have regrouped in the aftermath of the first

mafia war and they are making millions from corrupt state contracts and the drug trade. But the peace, if it ever lasted at all, won't be for long. Enter Giuseppe de Cristina. I think I'm going to just call him DeCristina because I can't keep doing these Italian accents for long. He's a powerful crime boss from Riesci on the southern side of Sicily, so kind of the opposite side to Palermo. DeCristina is born in 1923. His father was a mafioso and his grandfather was too.

And he began his life, actually, his grandfather as a gabbilotto. And so Giuseppe follows in their footsteps. He becomes the family's patriarch in 1961 and he earns the nickname La Tigre, the tiger, although looking at him, he looks a bit more like a pug or a bulldog. The DiChristina family has been plugged into the region's politics for decades, Giuseppe is no different. He backs a series of Christian Democrats, right-wingers, power. Wrights Alexander still, quote, they were the bosses of the Riesi Mafia for three generations.

They supported the Democasia Christiana. They were all D.C. DeC. Christina is also, of course, a murderer. In 1962, he's believed to have played a role in sabotaging the plane of state oil executive Enriqueau Maté, which goes down in a small village on route for Catania, Sicily's second largest city, to Milan, that October, which reminds me of Catania. What a great place. I spent a couple of weeks there back in 2021. I followed the tail of a rugby club fighting the Mafia for Sports Illustrated. RIP. For some reason, I mean, it was a great week, but I just can't get over the espresso and orange juice at the stand for like, I think it was no. I think it was 70 cents, which is like 50 cents in America. I don't

know. It's like nuts. Anyway, DeChristina doesn't stop oil execs. In 1969, yeah, cheap things, Hey, do you remember when things were cheap? It's my stand-up. He orchestrates the deaths in 1969. Yeah, it's good, isn't it? Of feared mafia boss, Michele, Cavatio, and three of his henchmen in Palermo. Cavatio, nicknamed Il Cobra, which is Italian for a six snake, Danny, had been on a rampage, committing massacres and setting off car bombs amid the first mafia war.

So when the war ends, most mafiosi are pretty delighted that this unhinged nut job has been taken out by to Christina, who by this point works alongside Totorina, the Beast, head of the powerful Corleonezi crime family. In 1975, DiCristina becomes head of the Costa Nostra in Caltaniseta, right in the middle of Sicily, and he's appointed to the interprovincial commission of the mafia, which is its sort of Sicily-wide board of directors. But he's worried about the rise of Totorina and the Corleonezzi, who are on a tear-up. They're snatching members from other families. They're killing rivals and inducting folks into the Kosoanostra

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They're ahead of their time, the Corleonezzi, in that their peers are all wringing their hands about honor and secrecy, and Rina is just a straight-out psychopath, the manifestation of despotic power, committing to becoming the most powerful crime bossing Sicily, no matter who he has to kill to do so. He murders rival members and he installs Corleonezzi friendly Patsis in their place. He murders reporters, business people, police officers, politicians, not in the shadows to pull the strings of power carefully, but in the open, brutally, to bend the public and authorities to his will. He's a terrorist, basically. This is when Cicely had like that impossibly high murder rate, yeah?

Or does that come later? The crazy high rate comes slightly later, but this is like, it's already. getting up there at this point. I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty bloody. In November 1977, Rina turns his sights on his old pal de Christina, who by this point is snitching to the caribiniary, which is kind of like the gendarmes in Italy, that the Corleonez are a force they've never reckoned with before. On November 21st that year, DeCristina survives a shooting that claims the lives of two of his most loyal men. DeCristina then plans a hit on the guy who had allegedly carried out the hit on behalf of.

of Rina, but his accomplice dies of natural causes and his plot is shelved. In the meantime, Sotorina manages to get a prominent rival boss thrown out of the commission and into exile in Brazil over false accusations he's been carrying out unauthorized murders and pocketing drug money for himself. Who would have thought? A major drug smuggler pocketing the drug money for himself. How crazy. In 1978, in April, DeCristina, desperate at this point, gives a false statement to the caribini about Totorina and the mendacious collienese.

Here is part of it as retold in excellent cadavers. Quote, their criminal strategy, while crazy, has its rewards. It provokes police activity, but primarily against

the old mafiosi, who are easily to identify. It causes their terrifying prestige to grow, and it undermines the prestige of the traditional mafia and the principles on which it depends. It attracts to them

either through fear, or through the appeal of such daring undertakings, new recruits and new forces. This statement, this kind of schism between the old and the new, the tradition and the modern, it's going to be DeChristina's final major act as a mobster. On May 30th, 1978, a team of Corleonezzi gunned downed DeCristina at a bus stop in Palermo, and thousands will turn out to mourn him in Riesi. Copps discover a check in DeCristina's pocket, which they have. handover to Giovanni Falcone, a crusading state prosecutor. You also did a big episode on him,

too, I think a while back, right? One of our, one of the first ones, or first year. Yeah, I think it was like maybe episode four or five, like way back when. This one piece of evidence will help Falcone unravel a gigantic heroin racket running between Sicily and the United States. In short, two Palermo-based Mafiosi have been spearheading a smuggling route for the drug from morphine labs across Sicily, which is then shipped to Milan in produce trucks before being trafficked into New York City alongside powerful members of the Gambino crime family. The main guy in this case, Salvatore and Senillo, then decides to assassinate the cases prosecuting judge in Palermo without running it by the Corleonezi. And if you know anything by this point in the episode,

you know how this is going to end. On May 11, 1981, Insirio is stopped by a group of Corleone Nasey Tufts as he's operating the door of his van and he is shot with an automatic shotgun and an AK-47. The photos of his body are pretty grisly, like half his face basically hanging off. These are among the first deaths of the second Mafia War, which officially breaks out in 1981, and it is utterly brutal. Instead of your son is tortured and murdered, and the slayed judge is standing, he is also killed. Essentially, this is a war between Toto Rina, the Corleonezi and the rest of the Mafia, but it's also between the Koso Nostra and the Italian state, with the deaths of prosecutors, policemen, and even judges growing frighteningly commonplace.

Wait, wait, Totorina, his guys are the Colliennesi, right? Yes, he's at the top of them. So, like, it's a war between Ria and the Corleonezzi and the mafia, but it's also between the mafia more generally and the state. So this is like when that death toll that you were talking about really just like. goes crazy. And again, this show isn't going to jump into all the details of that war. I mean, the second Mafia War could easily be a dozen episodes in its own right. But the gunning down of Di Cristina at the Palermo bus stop in 1978, it lights the spark for a new mafia movement in Sicily just before the war, one that will reject Totorina and his homicidal Corleonezi

triggermen, but by employing just as much, if not more, violence. This is the birth of the Stidder, the star. And his star, Danny, will rise to stardom until all the assiduous stars of Sicily are staring the saucy stidder straight in their starry eyes. Sorry, I think this move is affecting me in ways I haven't fully processed yet. You're on drugs there, pal? If by drugs you mean no sleep and lots of bureaucracy, yes. Yes, I'm on drugs, the best drugs. one of the simplest ways by which the Stedda differs to other Italian crime groups is precisely this, right?

History can be traced directly to the fallout of DeCristina's killing and the disgust of, quote, men of honor within the Koso Nostura over Toto Arena's bloodthirstiness, the terror he has wages on the Sicilian public and the out-of-control Kolionezi. So I'm going to predict that they as well, the Stead are going to get very bloodthirsty too, because that's pretty much always how it works in these situations. But it's very like a, you know, movie plot twist, right? Like after some innocent civilians gets killed, like the one guy being like, I wanted to be a gangster, but I never thought it would be like this.

And then he pauses and it's like, something's got to change. Then he forms like his breakaway faction to go against the other guys, but they also just kill everyone as well. Yeah, I mean, there's something that's got to change is that in that voice is like, I got to do the killing and I got to do more, which doesn't really work for a hero. journey. But yeah, these guys are pretty mad, right? They called the Stidder for a star tattooed that many of their members were, just like me and Danny are often known as the terrible life choices. And they are particularly strong in southern Sicily. In Riesi, of course, where

this Christina was from, but also Caltoniceta, where he was the boss, and in the towns of Agrigento and Jela. In particular, the group's actions are laid out by an infamous Mafia Pentito or turncoat named Leonardo Messina, who testifies to Giovanni Falcone and his colleague Paolo Borsalino, as they pieced together the inner workings of the Kosoinostra, writes Alexander Stil, quote, Although the Stidda was less organized and less deeply rooted than Kosoenostra, it was second to no one in violence. As Messina helped Borsellino understand, the terrifying rise in murders in many towns in southern Sicily was due to the vicious war between Kosoostra and its new rival. Unlike the Kosoenostra, the stidda is made up of tight-knit and syndicated groups.

It's united, unlike its far larger foe, which has exploded into internecing bloodshed. And because of this, it quickly commands position in extortion and drug smuggling, sniffing away at the dominance of the Kosoostra. I guess it's a kind of bit like the story of the Alto Defenses in Mexico. And for a long time, these guys deny their very existence as an organized criminal group. The Stidda doesn't exist. You journalists invented it, an alleged founder tells reporters. We were just an organization of friends who came together in a paraco, a family, a paraco, which is, of course, a family, a paraco.

Yeah, we all know that Paraco is a family, don't we? Go. Come on, guys. The Stitters main claim to fame is its use of youngsters to carry out crimes. These include child's hitmen called Carousi, and they have crazy names. Sityo Chute Chut, Salvuccio Coca-Cola, and Toto Battery because he's our pacemakers fitted. All right, that last one, that last one's like legit pretty funny. Yeah, it's like, you know, choose your player.

I think I'm Salvuccio Coca-Cola. I like that one too. Anyway, says Carlton Issetta's police commissioner, quote, it's not just the big guys who are fighting now. They are mostly removed from the scene. It's the small fish fighting out, an action-reaction syndrome, and they are out of control. So, like, you can see what's happening here, right? It's in the middle of a war. So you've got the rest of the Costa Nostra against the Colionese and Totorina.

You've also got the whole of the mafia fighting the Italian state who are trying to stamp them out. And you've got the Stidda who are trying to rise amid all this chaos battling out on their own turf with members of the Kosoosa. I hope this all makes sense. Stidari, as the group's members are known, preach an old-school version of Mafia life that they claim, like Di Cristina had, had been lost through the various periods of Mafia warfare. But it's this hunger for young blood that is their true calling card, the Coca-Cola's and the total batteries of the world. Anybody can join their ranks. And, according to one Mafia source, quote, because it is a newcomer on the broader scene, breaking its provincial bounds,

there is no sense of limit in the lack of cohesion. We all think we understand Koso Nostla and its hierarchy. Stidda, at this stage of development, is more amorphous. One might say a mafia in its early stages, with growing pains, searching out an identity separate from Kosoostla. By 1983, over 400 people have been killed in the second. mafia war, which is quite a lot of people in a pretty small place. Totorina is the boss of bosses of Kosoostra, reckoned to have ordered over 150 assassinations. According to John Dickey, who wrote the seminal 2005 book Kosoostra, Rina, quote, assassinated his rivals. He killed all of them, hundreds of them. He literally ethnically cleansed them out of Palermo, which I'm not sure if that's

the definition of ethnic cleansing. But anyway, among the worst of the worst, we've covered on this show is Rina and he's obviously, you know, like 5,000 episodes in. He's in pretty good company. At this time, Sicilian made heroin is worth almost $2.5 billion in today's money on the streets of New York alone. So between this and the mass murder, there is a huge clamor from the Kossin Nostrida to be dragged out of the shadows, out of their own murder and into the justice system by the public, right? In November 1985, best month that's ever existed, Falcone and Borsellino submit almost 9,000 pages and 40 volumes of an indictment against no fewer than 475 alleged Mafiosi.

By February 1986, this has turned into the legendary Maxi trial, the largest trial in world history, held in a special-made Palermo bunker containing cells where Mafiose holler and scream like they. zoo animals. There are over 600 journalists present on the opening day. It is an insane sight. The Guardian says it has, quote, overtones of a Barnum and Bailey production. If you want to learn more about the Maxy Troll, it's one of our very first episodes, as we mentioned. I think back in like early 2021, I think I was recording out of the bunker of one of my friends, DJ flats in Berlin. What different times. Anyway, maybe just play it on silent. They weren't quite as good back there. In any case, at the same time as the maxi trial, across Sicily, another mafia process is coming to a close. Antonio Mider, who is a leading member of the Stidda, he copps 22 years in prison for drug trafficking,

robbery, and gun possession at the hands of a judge named Rosario Livatino. Unsurprisingly, Finally, Maida's fellow Steadari think the sentence is too harsh, and they plot a typically Sicilian form of vengeance that will echo throughout the world for decades to come. But we'll get back to that. The Maxi trial is in full swing, the Kossonosri is in disarray, and all of its secrets are just spilling out into the open, thanks to Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the crusading prosecutors. And the band of Pentiti, they've accrued from the brutal Second Mafia War. And it is right at this moment that the Stidda begins to conduct a campaign of terror against its former underworld colleagues, across the southern side of Sicily, particularly in the town of Jela. The war between the two factions, however, that is actually started by the Kosa Nosa,

when two hit men gunned down a pair of stidda bosses at car yards just off one of the main highways, from Jela to Messina, which is the city right next to the Italian mainland. The spark for the double murder is the control of contracts to build a dam at the man-made lake of De Sueri, which is a few miles inland from Jella, plus of course the drugs that are still making their way out of Jela's harbour. The Y Jella part of this story isn't just confined to the docks and the dam. This small historic town of 70,000 people, it is also honed to a massive petrochemical park owned by the state and run shortly before his plane crashed death by Enrico Matei, The same state energy boss Di Cristina is supposed to have killed. By the late 80s, 60% of jealous residents live in illegal neighborhoods with no access to services, which have names like Beirut, Inferno, and Slaughterhouse City, just three of the many betting apps on Danny's phone.

You know, I really, I really have to, I got to stop with, with the mention, betting on the mentions, dude, it's degenerate. But yeah, Italy, it's wild with all the, how much graft and corruption. Like, what do you think the Winter Olympics, dude, it must have been insane, the amount of money that was stolen. Do you see the, like, videos of hockey rinks that just aren't ready? It's supposed to happen in, like, two weeks. Oh, yeah, that's incredible. Which part is it, is that, that must be up north, right? It's in the north.

The north, yeah, yeah. I think Milan on a lot, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's going to be an absolute nightmare. Anyway, these, these neighborhoods unsurprisingly, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. if anyone knows anything about like curling or bobsledding or a sport that like maybe the guys who make the odds don't you DM me and i'll get back in the game right away just to i mean that out there curling's going to be fine right you can just like pour water on a piece of concrete and you've got a curling stadium i've been gambling odds i don't know man this is going to be pretty nuts but yeah please send all your betting tips to uh the underworld podcast at gmail dot com so we can make no money unsurprisingly back to jela given these places names like slaughterhouse

city, the neighborhoods do live up to their names. Cops believe they're home to know fewer than 500 Stidati divided across 16 subgroups, which is a staggering number of gangsters in a pretty smallish place. And by 1988, the Stidda-Cosa conflict has erupted into an all-out gang war. On October 3, 1988, two gunmen shoot dead a 32-year-old man beside a Milan schoolyard as the kids are playing on their break. Months later, another body drops in the northern city whom prosecutors say is part of a stidder drug racket between Jella and Milan that presumably is not enthusing their Kosoostra former compatri's. On December 22nd that year, we get the massacre from the cold open, and that is when a stidogoon

kills local boss Salvatore Pallara, his wife and two of his three young sons. On February 27th the next year, 1989, Polara's brother Pietro Pilara, who was an agricultural cultural machinery dealer and not a member of organized crime at all is also shot dead on the edge of town. But the worst is yet to come. On the afternoon of November 22, 1990, a team of still a trigger men fan out across Jella on Enduro motorbikes, preparing to launch a series of coordinated attacks on Costa Nostra members. At 7 p.m., the attacks begin at a billiard hall on Via Vittorio Emanuelli, Jella's main street. One man guards the entrance while two others jump on the billiard table and spray the room with bullets.

They kill three and leave six wounded. The youngest victim is just 17 years old. Seven minutes later, a pair of gunmen opened fire on a fruit and vegetable not far away. They murder two and injure three. It's 7.15 now, and a hitman guns down a man on the Via Butera. The only way he's connected to organized crime is via a broving law, which in Jela is about as tangential as it can possibly get, but it's enough, apparently, for him to die.

Three minutes later, at 7.18 p.m., a team park up outside a butcher's shop in the Via Venetia and pump 50 bullets into a local Mafia don close to Jela's Costa Nostra. 18 minutes, seven dead. A bloodbath. Shout to Gangsters In, by the way, who published a great feature on this. Yeah, this is like a Michael Corleone montage right here. Yeah, it is.

It's pretty crazy. But if the Stidder are great at hiring young murderers and for carrying out brutal vendettas, they're not such master criminals. In the aftermath of the November 27th massacre, cops discover evidence that the killers have been hiding out a disused building in Gela, including cocaine, weapons, champagne, and half-eat and lobster.

Eat all a lobster, guys, it's expensive. In a secret room, they find an 18-year-old named Carmelo Rapisada, who says he's been there for three days. Through Rappasada, police will arrest six more Stidati. A witness to the Billiard Hall murders, the first that night, of course, fingers Rappazada as the culprit, burying him, which is an incredibly brave thing to do given the climate back then. And yet, thanks to the Stidda's vow of Omerta,

the cops can't bust the entire racket. In the meantime, its mobsters continue to battle the Kosoenostra and brutalize the people of Sicily. On September 21st, 1990 as the Maxi trial continues to make headlines across the island in Palainmoor, Judge Rosario Livertino, the guy who'd sentenced that still a member to 22 years in prison, he is shot dead while driving to court in the town of Agrisento. He's just 37 years old. But what have I done to you, he says before dying, echoing the words of Jesus Christ and the cross.

Jesus, a little heavy, dude. Yeah, pretty heavy. It's going to, I was going to say it's going to work out for him. We'll find out maybe in a bonus part of this show. Anyway, for a while, Livertino's killers remain unknown. But in 1991, as part of the Maxi trial, Paulo Borsellino discovers a stidder cell working out of the German city of Mannheim, directing murders in Sicily.

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which is named from Palermans, Borsellino was able to connect it to the power struggle going on in central Sicily and to issue a series of a west warrants. One of the men to fall into the net was a young Steadaro named Gioshino Chembri, who Borsellino flew to meet in his German prison. And still goes on. Quote, Borsalino was able to convince Shemri to cooperate. Already, in their initial informal meeting,

Shemri was able to identify the killers of Rosario Lifatino, the prosecutor assassinated near Agrigento in September 1991. Contrary to assumptions that the killing was the work of Cosa Nostra, Livertino had been murdered by the Stida, which was evidently anxious to assert its new power by claiming an excellent cadaver of its own. That's like that bit where they say the title of a movie and the movie. Amazing. I love that he's actually just written that in himself. By this point, the Stida Kosa Nostra War has claimed around 100 lives since it began in 1987. People across Sicily are

unsurprisingly fed up with all these gangsters running around, killing each other in the middle of the street, next to kids, hiring their own teenagers to commit crimes, and running heroin labs all over the island. By this time, the Maxi trial is done, having convicted 338 of its 475 defendants to a combined 2,665 years behind bars. Among them are some of the most notorious serial killers in mob history. Mikhaili Greco, head of the commissioner nicknamed the Pope, the trial's biggest scout among them. Toto Reno, though, he's only sentenced to life in absentia, having slipped into hiding amid the carnage many years before. Nonetheless, Falcone and Borsolino lorded by the Italian public as heroes, called the process a massive victory against Sicilian

organized crime, which it is. And Italy has finally earned what a shower of scumbags these guys really are, when they've been pleading for decades doing that Italian thing with their hands. Like, is it like this or like this? I'm thinking of like defenders for A.C. Milan in the 90s. Hey, that kind of thing. Hey, did they're men of honor? That they live by a code. Yeah, I mean, there's like literally seven people in all of organized crime who've ever actually lived by a code. Yes, correct. And none of these guys are among them. Quote, he who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so, says Falcone. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head high dies only once, which is quite poetic, but obviously

literally true as well. In 1992, the inner workings of the Stidda as well threatened to spill into the public realm when one of its leaders, a guy called Gaetano, Jani decides he had enough of the endless views of the Koso Nostra and he turned state's witness. His testimony will finally expose the truth about a group some people at this point are still denying even exists. But if you know about the history of the Sicilian Mafia, you know what is coming next. A little before 6pm on May 23rd, 1992, Giovanni Falcone is heading back along the A-29 Outerstraata from Punta Racy Airport to his Palermo home, along with. alongside his wife Francesco Morvillo and a second car carrying three bodyguards when a massive bomb explodes beneath the tarmac.

The blast is so powerful it tosses the bodyguard's car high into the air and crashes down into an olive growth. Falconia Morveo's vehicle meanwhile slams into a concrete wall, flinging both of them through the windshield to their deaths. Just 57 days later, Paolo Borsellino will suffer a similar fate, blown to ribbons alongside. side five bodyguards when a car bomb goes off in downtown Palermo. Totorina has plotted the entire thing. His killer, Giovanni Bruska, nicknamed the People's Slayer, a guy who's killed men, women, and children in the Corleonez's reign of underworld terror. Thousands march through the cities of Sicily to protest the deaths.

Leonardo Messina, Falcone and Borsellino's most important Pentito, thinks this might be the end of the Sicilian mafia as anybody knows it. There are some who believe that Koso Nostra will disappear within the space of the next decade, he says, destroyed by the intemperance of Salvatore, Rina, and the war with the Stidda. But Rina and Briska aren't finished. In 1993, a bomb explodes outside Florence's famed DeFizi Gallery, killing five people, including a mother and her two kids. Five more die outside a gallery in Milan, while on the same day a blast rips through two Rome churches.

Finally, on January 15, 1993, having been a fugitive for a full 23 years, cops capture Totarina in a Palermo apartment. I can't believe, like he was just sitting in an apartment this higher time in the main city. Anyway, they nabriska three years later, by which time Gittano Yanni, the Stidipentito, has spilled the beans on the past 10 years of bloodshed between his group and the Kosoostra. The war, however, dies down. And by all accounts, the Stidda and Kosovo, reach a kind of pact, writes the Italian newspaper Fato Kordidiano. Quote, since the 1990s, however, there has been a real division of criminal activity between Kosoostra and the Stidda. The main organization, that's the Kosoostra, handles major contracts and maintains connections with the worlds of politics,

finance and business. The fifth mafia, more closely tied to the local community, instead focuses on classic mafia crime activities, drug trafficking for local needs, extortion and loan sharking, the management of clandestine gambling dens, prostitution, and armed territorial control. So like gangstuff, you know, they kind of sound like a foreign from a bit, basically the fast, easy money, not to like big boy government contracts, massive corruption type stuff. Yeah, I guess it's like, you know, two decades after D. Christina's death, the stuff that he was saying about returning, it's like back to the land, Mafiosi. I literally, I guess if they're the gambolos.

Artisanal. Yeah. Return. The Stidder branch even further into Campania and even to Milan doing this kind of stuff, like the low down classic stuff. But like Mount Etna, a Sicilian gang feud doesn't stay dormant for long. And to find out what happens from 1999 until today, including a gas station massacre, the solving of the Polaro.

a family murders, a beatification, and an end to one of the longest manhunts in Italian organized criminal history, you're going to have to tune into the Patreon bonus, which will be online for those subscribers the day after this show airs. Until then, don't Instagrammy crimes. Definitely do for our show ideas, and we'll see you next week. Patreon.com slash the underworld podcast to sign up or sign up on Spotify, right at the top of our show page, or on iTunes, right at the top of our show page. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount.

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