Cosa Nostra (21 page)

Fontana … was driven into Palermo in the Prince’s carriage, accompanied by the Prince’s lawyers, interrogated at [Sangiorgi’s] private house instead of being taken ignominiously to the police station, allowed to pay a farewell visit to his family, and, without being handcuffed, was considerately conducted … to the chief prison, where he was placed in a comfortable cell. Yet this is a man who has on his record four murders and various attempts at murder and theft of all of which charges he has been acquitted for ‘insufficient proof’, or, in other words, on account of the impossibility of inducing magistrates and witnesses to rise above the terrorism of the Maffia.

Giuseppe Fontana was making a point when he gave himself up in this fashion. His was a world of relationships between men. In that world, institutions, like the state, were meaningless. His arrest was a personal matter between himself and a respected adversary, Chief of Police Ermanno Sangiorgi.

With both Palizzolo and Fontana now under arrest, the Milan trial was abandoned on 10 January 1900 to allow further investigations to be carried out. The judicial marathon was only just beginning.

*   *   *

Even after the revelations in Milan, Palizzolo was not without friends while in custody. Indeed, he nearly managed to avoid being brought to trial at all.

In June 1900, Palizzolo’s people put him forward for re-election to his central Palermo parliamentary constituency. The mafia, facing Sangiorgi’s trial, needed all the political help it could get. With Sicilian influence on the wane in the national political arena, NGI also needed its old friends. If Palizzolo had been elected, he would again have been given parliamentary immunity. Florio money funded the election campaign, and even Ignazio’s mother, the Baroness Giovanna d’Ondes, signed up to a ladies’ support association started by Palizzolo’s sisters. This local backing was not enough; the government supported his opponent, and Don Raffaele failed to secure victory.

Palizzolo’s supporters in the magistrature also nearly stopped the case coming to court. Chief Prosecutor Cosenza drew up a report advising that there was not enough evidence for a trial. Only direct pressure from the King forced him to change his conclusion, although he still called the evidence ‘slight’.

Before the second trial started, Fontana’s cause was also helped by the death—from cirrhosis of the liver—of the shifty ticket collector, Giuseppe Carollo.

*   *   *

The second trial was held in what was probably Italy’s most imposing courthouse, a palace in Bologna whose courtyard and noble façade were designed by Palladio. Its lavish interior was baroque, with the huge courtroom itself panelled in elaborately carved dark wood. Bologna was a politically conservative city, which would not give a sympathetic hearing to anyone trying to take advantage of the case’s subversive implications.

Don Raffaele Palizzolo was one of the first witnesses called from the cage where the defendants were held. The time spent in custody had aged him; he looked thin and grey, the flesh sagging around his prominent jaw. He was still dressed immaculately, peering at his notes through an elegant pince-nez. He gave evidence for two days in a tragic pose, leaning on the back of a chair, punctuating his testimony with sobs and flourishing gestures, his voice alternating between a piteous murmur and a defiant boom.

Members of the jury, I am sure that you have not discovered in me any trace of inborn ferocity. What you have seen instead … are the deep, ineradicable marks left by the inhuman, barbaric treatment to which I have unjustly been subjected by the factional hatred, vendetta and anger that have formed a pact with fear on the part of the strong and cowardice on the part of the weak. So, let scorned, outraged humanity speak!… I am alone, I am poor, and I do not belong to any party factions. My dead brother said to me with his last kiss, ‘Defend yourself, and defend your family’s honour.’

Exhausted by the strain of delivering his evidence, Don Raffaele succumbed to a chronic nosebleed.

Giuseppe Fontana, the man accused of actually carrying out the Notarbartolo murder, was as composed and concise in the witness box as Don Raffaele had been prolix. He was relaxed and well groomed. Dressed in a dark blue suit, he looked just like the upstanding citrus fruit entrepreneur he claimed to be. Journalists present noted his powerful physique, and the sunken slits of his eyes, ‘like two deep finger holes in a head modelled in clay’. Fontana had a characteristic way of pausing for reflection, head back and lips pursed, before continuing his statement with calm assurance. It seemed at times as if the evidence he was giving related to someone else and not to him. He even managed to raise a laugh from the courtroom when he said, with a smile, that if he had been a mafia boss as the prosecution claimed, then he would have sent one of his men to carry out the killing rather than do it himself.

It was an extraordinarily accomplished performance. As a member of the mafia’s military organization, Fontana was more exposed than his
cosca
’s political patron. Even politicians prepared to embrace Palizzolo as one of their own were edgy about spending any of their political credibility on protecting a thug.

Much attention in court was focused on the alibi that had helped Fontana avoid prosecution for so long. He provided plentiful company records to show that he had in fact been in Tunisia on the day of the murder. With no little courage, Leopoldo Notarbartolo had gone to North Africa on the mafioso’s trail in the spring of 1895. (Sangiorgi believed that there was a whole
cosca
operating there.) The Sicilians whom Leopoldo encountered in and around Hammamet confirmed Fontana’s alibi ‘with the uniformity of a phonograph’. But by meticulously comparing Tunisian post-office money order registers with those in Palermo, Leopoldo and his lawyers raised doubts about the alibi. It was quite possible for one of Fontana’s associates to have sent and received the money orders that supposedly proved that he had been away from Sicily at the time of the murder.

There had been sightings of the mafioso at key times, such as on the very evening of the murder in Altavilla where the two bowler-hatted suspects alighted from the train. In court, however, the witnesses who had earlier claimed to have seen Fontana made uneasy, contradictory denials.

Palizzolo’s response to cross-examination stood as one long proof of the truism that one excuse is better than many. In the teeth of the most evident implausibility, Don Raffaele portrayed himself as the victim of a political plot, and denied even the most trivial of the prosecution’s assertions. Far from being the leader of the mafia, he said, he was one of its victims. Fontana and he denied knowing each other. Yet it turned out that Palizzolo’s intermediary in the NGI share swindle was also Fontana’s business partner—a man who had provided a great deal of evidence in support of the Tunisian alibi.

One witness whose statement was followed with particular interest was Giuseppe Pitrè, the famous folklore expert. The professor of ‘demo-psychology’ gave a glowing account of Palizzolo’s character—the accused was a close colleague of his in local government. Pitrè asserted that the fact that Palizzolo had written a novel in his youth revealed that he had ‘a noble mind, devoted to virtue, averse to vice’. When asked to define the mafia, Pitrè explained that its origins lay in the Arabic word ‘mascias’. It meant an exaggerated awareness of one’s own personality, a reluctance to submit to bullying; in the lower social classes it could lead to criminal activity.

Chief of Police Ermanno Sangiorgi took a less bookish approach when called to the witness stand. The mafia, he said, was a sworn criminal organization based on protection rackets. It had bases across western Sicily and even in other countries. Sangiorgi was suffering from a bad cold at the time, and to many in court his hoarse voice was nearly inaudible. Advocates for the defence countered by pointing out that the recent trial in Palermo hardly gave convincing backing to his theory.

*   *   *

The Bologna jury retired to consider its verdict on the Notarbartolo murder at a quarter to ten on the evening of 30 July 1902. The sense of expectation matched the scale of the trial. It had lasted nearly eleven months. Fifty fat volumes of evidence were submitted; 503 witnesses were heard, whether in person or by sworn statement. They included three former government ministers, seven senators, eleven members of parliament, and five chiefs of police. The trial transcripts recorded fifty-four ‘tumults’. On six occasions the court had to be completely cleared to restore order. Several times the lawyers on both sides had to be separated before they came to blows. One of the presiding judges died during the trial; two jurors had to be substituted because of ill health. The numerous advocates on both sides performed feats of forensic oratory: one of the Notarbartolo family lawyers delivered a concluding speech that lasted eight days; another spoke for four and a half.

The night of 30 July was one of the hottest of the year. The gas lamps burning inside the packed courtroom made the atmosphere unbreatheable. The streets outside were crowded. The court was guarded by half a company of infantrymen, fifty police, and forty-five
carabinieri,
many of whom formed a rank around the dock with bayonets fixed. Rumours of a mafia plot to kill one of the Notarbartolos’ lawyers had spread during the judge’s summing-up.

At twenty-five past eleven the jury filed back into the courtroom. The foreman, an elementary school teacher, stood up and placed his hand on his heart. There was evident emotion in his voice as he listened to the judge’s list of questions.

‘Is the accused, Raffaele Palizzolo, guilty of having caused others to commit the murder of Commendatore Emanuele Notarbartolo?’

The ‘Yes’ response was greeted with applause and cries of astonishment. Fontana was also convicted of carrying out the Notarbartolo murder.

After the judge had issued the sentences—the accused were given thirty years each—Palizzolo demanded to say a word: ‘You have been deceived, I swear it, as I said from day one. I am innocent. There is a God who will avenge me. Not on you, the jury, but on those who have assassinated me despite knowing that I am innocent.’

Fontana chipped in with, ‘On my mother’s tomb, I am innocent too.’ They were led away.

The defence lawyers left the court to deafening whistles from the public gallery. Leopoldo Notarbartolo and his lawyers were already being mobbed to repeated cries: ‘Long live the jury!’ ‘Long live Bolognese justice!’ ‘Long live the civil complainant.’ They were unable to make it through the throng outside to their hotels, and had to take refuge in a nearby lawyer’s office. There, in answer to shouted pleas, they spoke of their gratitude from the balcony.

In Palermo the scene could hardly have been more different. Huge numbers had gathered before the telegraph and newspaper offices. Within fifty minutes of the news arriving, special editions were on the street. By then the crowd was already thinning out in silence. The next day signs reading ‘City in mourning’ appeared in some Palermo shop windows. Chief of Police Sangiorgi reported that they were printed and distributed by mafiosi.
L’Ora,
a newspaper owned by Ignazio Florio, declared its perplexity at the verdict and asked what concrete proof there had been of Palizzolo’s guilt.

In an article much quoted in the press across Italy,
The Times
too expressed surprise:

In view of the shuffling evidence of intimidated witnesses and of the testimony favourable to the character of Palizzolo given by several Sicilian magnates, it was expected that the jury would profit by the lack of material proof of the guilt of the accused to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Nevertheless, the article concluded, ‘Broad justice has been done, and done courageously.’

The tone in some papers was celebratory. ‘Glory and honour to the twelve men of the jury,’ proclaimed
La Nazione.
The Socialist
Avanti!
hailed a defeat for ‘one of the most barbaric and poisonous forms of delinquency—the maffia’. Sicily was still divided by the case. The
Giornale di Sicilia,
which had looked favourably on Leopoldo Notarbartolo’s cause throughout the trial, called the result a blow struck against ‘the mafia’s principal champion, political power’. Many papers joined Bologna’s
Resto del Carlino
in expressing pleasure that justice had prevailed, but also in drawing sombre lessons from the proven complicity of the authorities in protecting the guilty: ‘Let us hope that we have all learned something from this monstrous court case and that we never see its like again under an Italian sky.’

*   *   *

Six months later, the Court of Cassation in Rome quashed the whole Bologna trial on a technicality.

A minor witness had been called to give evidence. No sooner had he taken the oath than he had to withdraw while lawyers argued over whether he needed to testify at all. The next day he appeared in the witness box again, but made his statement without renewing the oath. Leopoldo Notarbartolo understandably thought that the episode had been deliberately arranged as a fail-safe for the defence.

In Sicily the Bologna verdict had given rise to a coordinated political response. Following the initiative of the ‘demo-psychologist’ Giuseppe Pitrè, a ‘Pro Sicilia’ committee was formed to express ‘public indignation’ at Palizzolo’s conviction, which was seen as an attack on the island as a whole. Two hundred thousand people signed up to show their support.

When things periodically go against them at the national level, the mafia and its politicians fall back on complaints of this kind, and even start to make noises about Sicilian independence. This tactic seeks to draw on some powerful ‘Sicilianist’ feelings on the island. During the Notarbartolo trials, there certainly had been some prejudiced interventions in the press. ‘Sicily is a cancer on Italy’s foot,’ one commentator proclaimed. These were also the years in which some academics were arguing that southern Italians were a backward race with oddly shaped heads and an innate proclivity for crime.