‘At night you can easily spot lights coming from the sky or the sea.’ ibid. resident
2004: A Sicilian fishing village experiences a series of shocking events: a fireball is observed shooting out of the ocean, and glowing UFOs are spotted moving across the horizon. But events rapidly descend into chaos. Over the space of weeks electrical appliances spontaneously combust causing a series of mysterious house fires. The Italian government records more than 400 incidents in the village. Residents are ordered to evacuate. UFOs: The Untold Stories s1e6, National Geographic 2012
Canneto di Caronia, Sicily, January 2004 4 a.m. and a local fisherman is working in the bay. Suddenly, a dazzling object bursts through the waters but in seconds the object disappears … This sighting isn’t the first mysterious event to happen in the village. ibid.
So what are these strange fireballs? ibid.
Even with no power supplied to Canneto the mysterious fires continue. ibid.
She’s been fought over and occupied by all the great powers of the Mediterranean … As much north African as it is European. Michael Scott, Sicily: Wonder of the Mediterranean I, BBC 2017
The largest island in the Mediterranean. ibid.
In the 9th century the Arabs invaded Sicily … Then the Normans came to Sicily. ibid.
By the 3rd century B.C. freedom was in short supply … Greek rule of Sicily was fading. Carthage had risen again and Rome was the new power on the Mediterranean block. ibid.
Pasta was actually introduced to Sicily … and became the nation’s favourite dish. Michael Scott, Sicily: Wonder of the Mediterranean II
A hidden network of tunnels … a system that’s designed not just for bringing water to drink, but water that can be used for irrigation and crops. ibid.
Roger had himself crowned the first king of Sicily. ibid.
When Norman rule ended in Sicily, power passed to a man called Frederick II. ibid.
103,845. In the past 20 years 400,000 migrants have landed on Lampedusa in an attempt to cross the strait of Sicily to reach Europe. It is estimated that 15,000 have died. Fire at Sea, 2016
On the boat that sank there were 250 people. So far 34 bodies have been recovered. Rescuers have pulled 206 people from the sea. ibid.
‘Can you help us? We are sinking …’ ibid. SOS
Sicily is picture-postcard, a huge island, the largest in the Mediterranean. Mediterranean with Simon Reeve III, BBC 2018
Sicily’s rural population has been falling for decades. ibid.
‘It is a tragedy of intrigue, mystery and death. But also of life, passion and struggle. The stage is set for an extraordinary story where good and evil confront each other.’ A Very Sicilian Justice: Taking on the Mafia, Al Jazeera 2016
An unprecedented trial where politicians, the police and the Mafia are in the dock together. [Judge] Di Matteo is now the threatened man in Italy and the most protected. ibid.
‘In one year 200 people were killed.’ ibid.
‘I was brought up on the legend of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.’ ibid. lawyer of murdered anti-Mafia judges
475 Mafioso were brought to court; 346 were found guilty. ibid.
‘It’s an organisation that wants to exercise power in place of the state.’ ibid. commentator
In 1993 the Mafia unleashed a wave of bombings across Italy. ibid.
In Palermo, Italy, the Italian state is on trial for colluding with the Mafia. ibid.
That the state made a secret pact with Riina’s successor … in return for ending the bombing campaign. ibid. testimony
The State/Mafia trial is still ongoing. All the accused denied the charges against them … The hunt for the explosives continues. ibid.
In the 1960s the history of the Mafia changed for ever when the Sicilian Mob began flooding the United States with … heroin: heroin would turn the Mafia into a global organisation and make them more money than they had ever made before; but it would also sow the seeds of their own destruction. Inside the Mafia: Going Global, National Geographic 2005
Shutting down the French Connection was indirectly opening the door to … the Sicilian Mafia. ibid.
Galante: a heroin man … multi-billion-dollar profits and unparalleled violence. In the ’70s the Bonanno family was known as … the heroin family. ibid.
The Sicilians set up a sophisticated smuggling system … Toto Riina … his factories were producing ton after ton of pure heroin. ibid.
The Sicilians had turned on Galante. ibid.
Henry Hill regularly used Pizza restaurants for his heroin drop-offs. ibid.
They were two very different godfathers separated by 4,000 miles of ocean. John Gotti was the Teflon don, a New York mobster who adored public attention and defied lawmen to get him. Toto Riina was a peasant from rural Sicily, a boss who operated in the shadows. In the late ’80s and early ’90s it required two very different approaches to bring them to justice. Inside the Mafia: The Godfathers, National Geographic 2005
In Sicily it would take a revolution by the people to put Riina behind bars. ibid.
Toto Riina – an elusive psychopathic killer from the two of Corleone. ibid.
Falcone needed a way of connecting Mafia boss Riina to the crimes carried out in his name by his army of killers. ibid.
It was perhaps the most lucrative criminal racket in history. Between 1979 and 1984 the Sicilian Mafia smuggled nearly two billion dollars’ worth of heroin into the US. It made mobsters on both sides of the Atlantic rich. It also led to war. In Sicily rival bosses fought for control of the heroin-trafficking empire. The terror this war unleashed drove one Godfather to break Omerta, the Mafia’s sacred code of silence. His act of betrayal would lead to a transatlantic assault on the Mafia and make the first serious dent in their worldwide power. Heroin was flooding into the United States in the late 1970s. Smuggled inside Italian food products and distributed through Pizzarias owned by the Sicilian Mafia. It was known as the Pizza Connection. The US faced an epidemic of heroin addiction. But for American gangstas heroin meant money. And lots of it. Inside the Mafia: The Great Betrayal
In 1981 & 1982 the bodies of Riina’s victims were turning up on the streets of Palermo every three days. ibid.
Riina had murdered his way to the top of the Sicilian Mafia to seize control of the heroin trade to the US. Hundreds of people may have been killed on his orders. Few in Sicily had the courage to stand up to him. ibid.
The most spectacular trial in Mafia history – the Maxi trial was about the begin. Falcone would lead the prosecution. The star witness was Tommaso Buscetta. The trial began in February 1986. 3,000 armed soldiers guarded the bunker. Plus an army tank. Nearly 500 defendants were scheduled for trial … He was on the witness stand for a week protected by bullet-proof glass repeating what he had already told Judge Falcone … 344 Mafiosi were found guilty. ibid.
There’s a dark heart to this tourist dream. Italy is also a society of organised crime, corruption and unsolved murders. Out of this chilling reality a new wave of crime fiction has emerged. With its own twist on the redemptions of the detective novel ... A noir world with no happy endings. Timeshift: Italian Noir: The Story of Italian Crime Fiction, BBC 2010
The detective novels of Andrea Camilleri are set in contemporary Sicily. They deal with the casebook of the worldly Inspector Montalbano of the local police force. ibid.
In That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana Carlo Emilio Gadda employed a crime story to explore Italy’s fascist era. ibid.
Into the 1960s Leonardo Sciascia’s novels would expose the power of the Sicilian Mafia. ibid.
This neo-fascist bombing began a decade of terror. ibid.
In 1978 the kidnapping and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro troubled Italians. ibid.
The Goodbye Kiss is filmed as a modern-day noir. ibid.
Giancarlo de Cataldo: Romanzo Criminale. ibid.
‘In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns.’ The Godfather Legacy, sidekick to Michael, H2 2015