Overview
- He died in the penitentiary medical ward of Milan's San Paolo Hospital after a transfer from Opera prison prompted by worsening diabetes.
- The longtime head of the Catania clan of Cosa Nostra was serving multiple life sentences at the time of his death.
- Italian courts deemed him an instigator of the 1992 bomb attacks that killed anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
- He was captured on May 18, 1993 in a farmhouse near Caltagirone after spending 11 years on the run.
- His rule fused a cultivated business persona and ties to local elites with violent consolidation of drug-trafficking power, and his wife was slain in 1995 in a revenge attack.