Overview
- Authorities confirmed he died on March 2 in the penitentiary medicine unit at Milan’s San Paolo Hospital after a February 25 hospitalization for worsening health.
- He was serving multiple life terms, including definitive convictions as a mandante for the 1992 Capaci and Via D'Amelio bombings that killed judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
- Police captured him on May 18, 1993, after eleven years as a fugitive during the Orsa Maggiore operation enabled by cooperating-witness testimony.
- He led the Santapaola-Ercolano faction in Catania, was linked to the murder of journalist Pippo Fava and other killings, and was documented as infiltrating public contracts, extortion and drug trafficking.
- He spent more than three decades under the 41-bis regime at Opera, with requests for house arrest repeatedly rejected after accusations he continued to manage the clan from prison.