Benedetto Santapaola, known as Nitto, led the Cosa Nostra organization in Catania, in eastern Sicily, from the 1970s until his arrest on May 18, 1993. Italian courts sentenced him to life imprisonment, ergastolo, in several separate proceedings. In the case of the murder of Giuseppe Fava in Catania on January 5, 1984, the Corte di Cassazione confirmed in 2003 that he was the mandante, the person who ordered it. A 2003 ruling in a further set of proceedings found him mandante, in a final decision, of the July 1992 killing of Giovanni Lizzio in Catania. For the two massacres of 1992 that killed Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, he was sentenced to life as one of the leaders whose consent the decisions required. He was held in custody in Lombardy from 1993 and died in Milan on March 2, 2026, aged 87.
The outcomes differed from case to case. He was acquitted in the case of the killing of Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa in 1982, and for a time the appeal court in the via D'Amelio proceedings reduced his life sentence before the Cassazione sent the case back.
Santapaola was born in Catania on June 4, 1938 and grew up in the San Cristoforo district. He became an "uomo d'onore", a made member of Cosa Nostra, in the early 1960s. In the 1970s he worked in open business, as a greengrocer, a seller of shoes and the owner of a kitchen shop, and in 1981 he opened what was described as the largest Renault dealership in Sicily. The prefect and the police chief of Catania attended the opening.
Inside the organization he allied himself in the 1970s with Salvatore Riina and the Corleonesi of Palermo, turning away from the older Catania leadership. That alliance gave Catania a place on the regional Commission of Cosa Nostra and made the city a stronghold of the Corleonesi. Under Santapaola, the clan reached into public contracts, extortion and drug trafficking. In the late 1970s and the 1980s Catania recorded roughly one killing a day. The clan fought a violent feud with the rival Alfio Ferlito in the early 1980s and, in the early 1990s, with the Cursoti, Cappello and Pillera groups, a conflict that left more than 220 dead in the city and its province in two years.
On June 16, 1982 Alfio Ferlito, Santapaola's main Catanese rival, was killed on the Palermo ring road. Four other men died with him: Salvatore Raiti, Silvano Franzolin, Luigi Di Barca and Giuseppe Di Lavore.
In the Palermo maxi-trial against Cosa Nostra, Santapaola was sentenced to life imprisonment at first instance in 1987. On December 10, 1990 the Corte d'assise d'appello of Palermo issued its verdict in the same trial. It cleared everyone charged with the killing of Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, and it kept a life sentence for Santapaola only in relation to the ring-road killings. The date on which that sentence became final is not on record.
Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa and Emanuela Setti Carraro were killed in Palermo in 1982. Santapaola was charged in connection with those deaths and received a life sentence at first instance. The Corte d'assise d'appello of Palermo overturned it, and the Corte di Cassazione confirmed the acquittal. In law, therefore, the two deaths are not among his convictions.
Giuseppe Fava was killed in Catania on January 5, 1984. The proceedings that followed rested on the finding that Fava's published writing about links between the mafia, politics and business in the city had driven the decision. According to the court's reasoning, Santapaola was a fugitive at the time and could not pass the order to the organization himself, so he used Aldo Ercolano as the necessary intermediary and official spokesman, chosen for Santapaola's trust in him and for his standing within the organization.
The Corte d'assise of Catania convicted Santapaola and Ercolano as instigators and convicted three other defendants as organizers and executors. On appeal, the Corte d'appello of Catania upheld the life sentences of Santapaola and Ercolano and acquitted the other three. The Corte di Cassazione confirmed the ruling in November 2003. Santapaola's conviction is therefore as mandante: he was found to have ordered the murder, not to have carried it out.
After eleven years as a fugitive, Santapaola was arrested on May 18, 1993 near Mazzarrone, in the province of Catania, in a police operation named "Luna Piena". A separate operation, "Orsa Maggiore", also in 1993, led to 156 arrest warrants against members of the clan, including one for the Fava murder. A trial began in 1994.
On May 23, 1992 Giovanni Falcone, Francesca Morvillo and three other people were killed at Capaci, near Palermo. In July 1992 Paolo Borsellino and others with him were killed in via D'Amelio, in Palermo. Riina had ordered both, and Santapaola, as a member of the Cosa Nostra leadership, was tried for his part.
For Capaci he received a final life sentence as one of the instigators; it runs concurrently with his via D'Amelio sentence.
The via D'Amelio proceedings took a longer path. On December 9, 1999 the Corte d'assise of Caltanissetta sentenced Santapaola to life imprisonment. On appeal the life sentence was reduced to twenty years. The Corte di Cassazione annulled that ruling as it concerned him and sent it back for a new appeal trial in Catania, which reimposed life imprisonment. On September 18, 2008 the Cassazione confirmed it. The Court held that he sat at the top of the organization's leadership at the time, and that, although he favored a wait-and-see line over an interventionist one, he consented to the massacres, a consent that mattered under Riina's rule that all bosses had to agree. The fact that no Catania men took part at via D'Amelio did not show that he had not consented.
Eight days after via D'Amelio, on July 27, 1992, Giovanni Lizzio was killed in Catania. At the trial of the men who carried it out, in the Catania tribunal in June 1998, two defendants who had become collaborators of justice received twelve years each, and two others received thirty years each; of those two, one was later acquitted on appeal, and two further defendants were acquitted. A 2003 ruling in the Orsa Maggiore 3 proceedings recognized Santapaola as mandante "in via definitiva", in a final decision.
Santapaola never cooperated with prosecutors. He was held under the 41-bis regime from his arrest, latterly in Lombardy, a total of about thirty-three years. He died in Milan on March 2, 2026, aged 87.
Cosa Nostra in eastern Sicily was organized in clans that were represented on a regional Commission. Riina's strategy in the early 1990s was to strike at the state through the killing of judges, and it required consent from the clan heads.
Italian criminal cases of this kind pass through three levels: the Corte d'assise (first instance), the Corte d'assise d'appello, and the Corte di Cassazione, whose confirmation makes a sentence final. In Santapaola's cases the outcome changed between levels: the via D'Amelio life sentence was reduced on appeal and later restored, while the Dalla Chiesa life sentence was overturned and the acquittal stood.
The Dalla Chiesa and Setti Carraro killings did not end in a conviction. In the via D'Amelio case the first appeal reduced the life sentence to twenty years before the Cassazione reopened it. In the Fava case it is unclear whether the two convicted instigators acted alone or for others.
June 4, 1938: born in Catania.
Early 1960s: becomes an "uomo d'onore".
1981: opens the Renault dealership.
June 16, 1982: killings on the Palermo ring road, including Alfio Ferlito.
1982: Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa and Emanuela Setti Carraro killed in Palermo.
January 5, 1984: Giuseppe Fava killed in Catania.
1987: life sentence at first instance in the Palermo maxi-trial.
December 10, 1990: Palermo appeal verdict in the maxi-trial; life sentence kept for the ring-road killings.
May 23, 1992: the Capaci killings.
July 1992: the via D'Amelio killings.
July 27, 1992: Giovanni Lizzio killed in Catania.
May 18, 1993: arrested.
December 9, 1999: life sentence at first instance in the via D'Amelio case.
Early 2000s: the appeal reduces it to twenty years; the Cassazione later annuls that ruling.
2003: Cassazione confirms the Fava life sentence (November); Lizzio mandante finding final.
September 18, 2008: Cassazione confirms life imprisonment in the via D'Amelio case.
March 2, 2026: dies in Milan, aged 87.