Giuseppe Calo was a senior member of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia. He sat on the organization's governing Commission. Courts convicted him in two separate sets of cases. The first concerned the killings aboard train 904, the Naples to Milan express, near San Benedetto Val di Sambro on December 23, 1984, in which 16 people died. The second concerned murders charged against the Commission as a body. He received life sentences in both.
He was also tried and acquitted twice on charges of complicity in famous murders, those of Carmine Pecorelli and Roberto Calvi. Those acquittals are not convictions. Calo is living. His life sentence for the killings aboard train 904 became final in 1992, and an attempt to reopen it failed in 2020.
Train 904 left Naples on Sunday, December 23, 1984, bound for Milan. That evening, in the Apennines near San Benedetto Val di Sambro, 16 people aboard it were killed. The dead included three children. The Florence courts treated the case as a massacre, the Italian offense known as strage.
Investigators first looked toward far-right political violence, and the inquiry was long and complex. By October 1985 Calo had been charged as the organizer of the crime. In January 1986 the Florence prosecutor asked that he and others be sent to trial, among them his second-in-command, Guido Cercola, and a group of men from Naples.
The Florence assize court gave its first judgment on February 25, 1989. It sentenced Calo and Cercola to life imprisonment, along with several of the Neapolitan defendants. Franco Di Agostino received 28 years and Friedrich Schaudinn received 25.
On appeal in Florence in March 1990, the life sentences against Calo and Cercola were confirmed. Di Agostino's term was reduced to 24 years and Schaudinn's to 22. The Neapolitan defendants who had received life sentences at first instance were acquitted of the massacre and left with convictions on lesser offenses.
On March 5, 1991, the Court of Cassation annulled the Florence appeal judgment and sent the case back for a new appeal.
The new appeal ran from November 1991 into March 1992, and the Florence court of appeal delivered its judgment on March 14, 1992. It confirmed the life sentences for Calo and Cercola, 24 years for Di Agostino and 22 years for Schaudinn. The court deliberated for about 49 hours. The Neapolitan defendants remained convicted only of lesser offenses.
The Court of Cassation, fifth criminal section, confirmed the convictions on November 24, 1992, and the life sentences against Calo and Cercola became final. The court recognized the terrorist and mafia character of the event. The courts found that the crime had been the work of an alliance between Cosa Nostra and Neapolitan criminal groups.
Calo was convicted as the organizer, and Di Agostino and Schaudinn received final sentences of 24 and 22 years.
Calo's other life sentence arose from the prosecution of Cosa Nostra's leadership in Palermo. The Court of Cassation judgment of June 10, 1996 rejected the appeals of Calo and nine others. It dealt with a long list of murders charged against the Commission.
In those cases the first trial court and the first court of appeal had acquitted Calo of the murders attributed to the Commission. On a retrial the Assize Court of Appeal in Palermo reversed that outcome, on March 17, 1995, and found him a full participant. It found that he had a direct interest in several of the killings, among them two connected to disputes involving men close to him, and it treated each Commission member as a participant in the decisions of the body unless the member could show otherwise. The court imposed life imprisonment with three years of daytime isolation, to be added to a final conviction he already held for membership of a mafia-type association.
The Court of Cassation rejected his appeal on June 10, 1996. It found that the defense points were largely questions of fact and of legal theory that the court could not review, and it ordered Calo and the others to reimburse the costs of the civil parties.
Prosecutors in Perugia charged Calo with complicity in the murder of Carmine Pecorelli, in the role of an intermediate instigator linking Cosa Nostra to a Rome criminal group. On September 24, 1999, the Perugia assize court acquitted him "per non aver commesso il fatto", finding no evidence of a part in organizing or carrying out the murder. The Perugia assize court of appeal confirmed his acquittal on November 17, 2002. The question of the prosecutor general's challenge to Calo's acquittal then went to the Court of Cassation in 2003. This is an acquittal and not a conviction.
The Calvi case concerned the death of Roberto Calvi in London on June 18, 1982. Prosecutors in Rome charged Calo with complicity in premeditated murder. None of the five defendants was accused of carrying out the act themselves.
On June 6, 2007, the Rome assize court acquitted all five defendants for insufficient evidence. Calo followed the verdict by video link from custody in central Italy, where he was already serving a life sentence from convictions in the 1980s. The prosecutor had asked for life imprisonment for Calo and two co-defendants. On May 7, 2010, the Rome assize court of appeal confirmed the acquittals of Calo and two others. The Court of Cassation, first section, ruled on November 17, 2011, and the acquittals under the rule for insufficient or contradictory evidence stood. These are acquittals. No court found Calo responsible for Calvi's death.
In October 2020 the Court of Cassation rejected, definitively, Calo's request for a retrial of the train 904 conviction. He had argued that he could not have organized the crime alone, without the approval of the Commission, after the leader of the Commission was acquitted in his own trial as the alleged instigator. The Genoa court of appeal had already turned the request down. The Court of Cassation found no new evidence that could reopen the case, and said the request was too general: it named no witnesses or co-defendants and set out no precise body of evidence.
Separately, Calo challenged the extension of his special custody regime, which the Ministry of Justice had extended on September 5, 2018. The Rome surveillance court rejected his appeal in November 2019. His lawyers argued his age, his lack of contact with the outside and a 2017 statement that he wished to leave the criminal environment. The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal on May 4, 2020, at which time he was 89, and ordered him to pay 3,000 euros to the fund of the prison administration.
Italian criminal cases pass through three levels: a first-instance court, a court of appeal and the Court of Cassation, which reviews points of law and can annul a judgment and send the case back for a new appeal. The train 904 case went through that sequence, and the Commission cases did too. A verdict is final only once the Court of Cassation has ruled or the time to appeal has passed.
The Ministry of Justice extends the special custody regime applied to Calo, and the surveillance court and the Court of Cassation can review the extension.
After the 1992 judgment, the train 904 case continued against others. A new trial opened in 2014 with the leader of the Cosa Nostra Commission as the only defendant, accused of ordering the crime. The Florence assize court acquitted him on April 14, 2015, and an appeal began on April 27, 2017. He died in 2017.
The Calvi and Pecorelli matters are acquittals, not convictions. The Calvi acquittals rest on insufficient or contradictory evidence, and the Pecorelli acquittal on the finding that Calo did not commit the act.
His sentence at the first-instance maxi trial verdict in Palermo on December 16, 1987 is not on record.
Who gave the final order for the train 904 crime has not been settled by a final judgment. The only court to try the alleged instigator acquitted him in 2015. Calo's own argument in 2020, that he could not have acted without the Commission, was rejected as too general.
December 23, 1984: 16 people die aboard train 904 near San Benedetto Val di Sambro.
October 1985: Calo charged as the organizer.
January 1986: Florence prosecutor asks for trial of Calo, Cercola and others.
December 16, 1987: first-instance maxi trial verdict in Palermo.
February 25, 1989: Florence assize court sentences Calo and Cercola to life.
March 1990: Florence court of appeal confirms the life sentences.
March 5, 1991: Court of Cassation annuls the appeal judgment and orders a new appeal.
March 14, 1992: Florence court of appeal again confirms life for Calo and Cercola.
November 24, 1992: Court of Cassation makes the life sentences final.
March 17, 1995: Palermo assize court of appeal, on retrial, convicts Calo in the Commission murder cases.
June 10, 1996: Court of Cassation rejects his appeal; life with three years of daytime isolation.
September 24, 1999: Perugia assize court acquits him in the Pecorelli case.
November 17, 2002: Perugia assize court of appeal confirms the acquittal.
June 6, 2007: Rome assize court acquits him in the Calvi case.
May 7, 2010: Rome assize court of appeal confirms the acquittals.
November 17, 2011: Court of Cassation rules in the Calvi case; acquittals stand.
April 14, 2015: Florence assize court acquits the alleged instigator of the train 904 crime.
May 4, 2020: Court of Cassation rejects his challenge to the special custody regime.
October 2020: Court of Cassation rejects his request for a new trial on the train 904 conviction.