Salvatore Riina

Salvatore Riina, also known as Totò Riina (born November 16, 1930) is one of the most infamous members of the Sicilian Mafia. He was nicknamed The Beast, or sometimes Shorty (U curtu in Sicilian) due to his diminutive height, although no-one ever dared to call him either nickname to his face. During his life-long career in crime he personally killed around forty people and is believed to have ordered the deaths of upwards of a thousand more.

Family And Personality

Totò Riina married his wife, Ninetta, in 1974, and they had four children. His two sons, Giovanni and Giuseppe, followed in their father's footsteps and have since joined him behind bars. In November 2001, 24-year-old Giovanni Riina was convicted of committing four murders in 1995 http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/11/23/italy.mafia.son/. On December 31, 2004, Riina's youngest son, Giuseppe Riina, was sentenced to fourteen-years for various crimes, including Mafia association, extortion and money laundering http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,6119,2-10-1462_1641943,00.html. One his daughters, however, was elected class representative in her high school.

Related Topics:
1974 - November - 2001 - 1995 - December 31 - 2004 - Money laundering - High school

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Thanks to his natural habit of being secretive and evasive, Riina remains enigmatic with regards to his personality. An informant, Antonino Calderone, described Riina as being "unbelievably ignorant, but he had an intuition and intelligence and was difficult to fathom...very hard to predict". He said Riina was soft-spoken and was a dedicated father and husband. One of the more bizarre anecdotes Calderone related was that of Riina giving a tearful eulogy at the funeral of Calderone's murdered brother, even though Riina himself had ordered the killing. Calderone also said that, when Totò Riina set his sights on marrying his sweetheart, Ninetta, the young lady's family objected to the union. Calderone quoted Riina as saying "I don't want any woman other than my Ninetta, and if they don't let me marry her, I'll have to kill some people." Ninetta's family soon dropped any opposition to Riina's matrimonial plans.

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Giovanni Brusca, one of Riina's hitmen, and the man who personally detonated the bomb that killed Falcone, later became an informant after his 1996 arrest. Brusca claimed that, during 1991 and early 1992, Totò Riina contemplated acts of terrorism against the state to get them to back off in their crackdown against the Mafia, including acts such as bombing the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In fact, during the months after Riina's arrest, there were a series of bombings by the Corleonesi against several tourist spots on the Italian mainland, resulting in the deaths of ten people, including an entire family. Brusca also quoted Riina as declaring that the children of informants were legitimate targets, and indeed Brusca subsequently tortured and killed the 11-year-old son of an informant in a failed attempt to silence the boy's father who had been giving testimony against Riina.

Related Topics:
Giovanni Brusca - 1996 - 1991 - 1992 - Terrorism - Leaning Tower of Pisa

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Although Riina's criminal actions were geared towards the acquisition of wealth and power, his ruthlessness, treachery and the enormous number of brutal murders he either committed or sanctioned were excessive even by the standards of other gangsters. This may suggest that he was a psychopath, or at the very least that he clearly earned his nickname, The Beast.

Related Topics:
Gangsters - Psychopath

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