The Sacco Gang Read online

  And they would write one last letter.

  And if this one, too, got no reply, then the person to whom the letter was addressed would be killed.

  In Raffadali there were two Mafia bosses. One was a farm overseer by the name of Cuffaro, the other a butcher by the name of Terrazzino.

  But it was rumored that there was a lawyer behind them, the real but hidden brains behind the gang.

  Alfonso Sacco writes:

  “Almost every family in town had been touched in some way by the octopus. Those whose father had been killed, those whose brother, son, or husband had been eliminated; or those who’d had their livestock poached or been robbed of other possessions.”

  Of note in these lines is the fact that Alfonso calls the Mafia the “octopus.”

  At the time, there was still no television in our country, so he had no way of knowing that one day there would be a televised series on the Mafia entitled The Octopus.

  *

  Against the reigning Mafia, the Carabinieri can do precious little, if anything at all. They merely look on, powerless, as things happen. They may arrest some insignificant thief, expressly delivered up to them by the Mafia themselves, perhaps because he stole something without their permission.

  The mafiosi instill fear in people, and fear generates omertà, the conspiracy of silence.

  The local garrison, moreover, is short on soldiers, whereas a great many more carabinieri are needed.2

  *

  Seeing that the law can do nothing about them, and that the people are not up to rebelling, the Mafia redoubles its bullying.

  It’s no longer enough to extort money through threats and shoot-outs and murder, or slitting farm animals’ throats or burning people’s crops. No, now they even want to lord it over people’s destinies.

  And so begins a period in which the Mafia kidnaps girls to force them into marrying them, or sometimes only to enjoy them for a few days and then send them home, used up forever.

  It’s like back in the day when the feudal lord would occasionally order his bravoes to go and bring him some fresh meat.

  *

  The event that triggers widespread rage against the Mafia, however, occurs in 1922, at a time when the Mafia’s power seems to be encountering no more opposition.

  One very hot summer evening, the three Gallo kids, one boy and two girls, quite young, decide to go and sleep outside, in the farmyard.

  During the night, while they’re sleeping, eight armed men show up, grab one of the two sisters, and try to abduct her. The girl starts screaming and fighting, waking her brother and sister. These two immediately realize what’s happening and throw themselves, defenseless, at the kidnappers, trying to rescue their sister.

  They don’t even have time to get close before they are ruthlessly shot dead.

  The bodies of the two young people, a brother and sister not even twenty years old, are found the next morning at dawn by their mother, who’d gone out, as usual, to work the fields.

  A few days later the girl who was kidnapped is found abandoned outside of town, just past the first houses.

  But the fact of having witnessed the murder of her brother and sister, and of having suffered what the kidnappers put her through, has driven her completely out of her mind. And she will never recover. She will spend the rest of her life locked up in an insane asylum.

  But that’s not the end of the horror to this story.

  The outrage of all the law-abiding townsfolk prompts the Carabinieri to conduct a serious investigation. And all eight of the men who took part in the kidnapping, who turn out to be sons of mafiosi, are arrested.

  At the end of the trial, however, the sentence given the kidnappers is so benign—just a few months in jail—that the poor mother of the victims, a widow bereft of two children and with her only remaining child now insane, stands up to protest, only to fall back down, dead from a heart attack, in front of the judge.

  *

  “Nobody felt safe to go out of the house any longer,” Alfonso writes about those years.

  This was not an exaggeration.

  2The Carabinieri are a policing branch of the Italian army, hence the term “garrison.” (t.n.)

  III

  THE FIRST DARK CLOUDS

  In the first months of 1920, the Sacco family’s life changes.

  Luigi has taught his family a precise rule to live by.

  Every morning, the small table in the first room of the country house must be set and a loaf of fresh bread, a round of cheese, a variety of fruit, and a flask of wine must be laid out.

  This is made available to anyone who might be passing by and needs a bite to eat and something to drink.

  Whoever so wishes can come in, sit down, eat, drink, and be on their way.

  No questions asked.

  In addition, just outside the entrance door are some bundles of sticks for anyone who might need to make a fire.

  And there are also two or three chests full of a variety of seeds, for anyone who may wish to sow them but lacks the money to buy them.

  Luigi has also made it clear that anyone who comes begging for alms must be given something. And if anyone needs a small loan, that too must be granted, without interest and without fixing a date for repayment.

  But it’s not alms the Mafia wants.

  *

  One dark day Luigi Sacco receives a letter from the Mafia, demanding a large sum of money. Since he never went to school, he asks someone who’d been through the elementary grades to read it for him. But even before the person starts reading, he already knows what it’s about.

  That same evening, with the whole family gathered round the fire because it’s cold outside, Luigi takes the letter out of his pocket and hands it to Alfonso.

  “Read it.”

  His son reads it aloud. Luigi then takes it out of his hands and, without saying a word, throws it into the fire.

  The gesture serves as a kind of pledge they all have taken at that moment: Never give in.

  They never answer the letter.

  Five nights later, the Saccos are woken up in the middle of the night by some loud noises in the stables.

  Someone is clearly trying to steal the animals.

  They all run out of their houses at the same time, firing guns in the air, forcing the thieves to flee.

  First thing the following morning, Luigi Sacco pays a visit to the marshal of the Carabinieri and reports the attempted robbery.

  The marshal looks at him in bewilderment.

  “Are you sure you want to file this report?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Do you realize it’s useless? That we can’t do anything?”

  “Well, I’m going to file the report just the same.”

  As Luigi is leaving the compound to get his mule, a man passes close to him and says in a low voice:

  “Wrong move.”

  *

  Less than a week later, a second threatening letter arrives and, like the first, it too receives no reply.

  A few more days pass, and then some strangers set fire to two farm buildings, one for storing food stocks for the animals, the other for all their farming tools and machinery.

  The following morning, a terrified Luigi Sacco goes to the Carabinieri compound to report the crime in due fashion.

  On his way to the compound, not one person he passes on the street deigns to greet him. They pretend not to see him. They want nothing to do with someone who, rather than turn to the Mafia boss to seek justice, goes to the forces of the law to report a crime.

  Luigi is throwing the rules dictated by the Mafia, and obeyed by all, out the window. Luigi is practically a dead man walking.

  Even the marshal of the Carabinieri, seeing Luigi appear before him, feels uneasy.

  Each new crime
reported by Luigi Sacco underscores, in the eyes of the townsfolk, the powerlessness of law enforcement to enforce the law.

  Emerging from the station, Luigi runs into the same stranger again.

  “You keep making the wrong move,” the man says.

  Luigi pretends not to hear him.

  Not ten days go by before the third threatening letter arrives.

  It meets the same end as the first two.

  Just to be safe, however, Luigi Sacco moves his whole family out of the countryside and into town.

  One Monday morning in early March 1920, Giovanni and Alfonso ride off on horseback, as they do every morning, to their country estate.

  And they find all the houses and beehives burnt to the ground and still smoldering.

  Incalculable damages.

  So Luigi goes again to report the crime. As he’s walking to the station, all around him turns as silent as the grave.

  “Do you know who did it?” the marshal asks Luigi, who by this point has become one of the family at the Carabinieri post.

  “Yes. I can even give you their names.”

  “Well, I could tell you their names, too. But names are not enough. Do you have proof?”

  “No.”

  “Then I can’t take any action.”

  “But you have to just the same . . . ”

  “Look, here’s how it works. Even if you had this proof and I, at the risk of endangering my life and those of my men, went to arrest them, the investigating judge would release them in a matter of days. And they would all laugh in my face. It’s already happened to me before. And I’m tired of it.”

  “So we’re supposed to defend ourselves on our own?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t say it, but it’s the logical conclusion of what you did say.”

  The marshal says nothing.

  This time, upon Luigi’s exiting, the stranger doesn’t tell him he’s made the wrong move, but threatens him outright.

  “Take good care of yourself and your children.”

  Whereupon Luigi, without a word, sucker-punches him hard in the face.

  The man falls to the ground. He wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction. Luigi continues on his way.

  Even Alfonso, at this point, though a minor, is granted a proper gun permit, with the proviso he must use it under his father’s supervision.

  With saintly patience, but boiling with rage inside, the Sacco brothers rebuild their homes.

  But everything in their lives has suddenly changed.

  Alfonso writes:

  “Here ends our time of tranquility, our activity as honest workers; the peace of the family is over, and we enter the dark wood from which we shall never manage to emerge again. [ . . . ] We had to go into the countryside all armed with rifles, carbines, and pistols; as one of us led the livestock, the others would level their weapons so that no one could pass at the most dangerous points.”

  *

  One evening in March, still in 1920, Alfonso notices in the distance, along the road to Raffadali, four human silhouettes advancing very cautiously.

  Suspicious, he takes a better look through his binoculars and sees them taking cover in a cave overlooking the road.

  The four men, to all appearances, are preparing an ambush. They want to catch the Saccos by surprise on their way home.

  There are three Saccos present at that moment: Salvatore, Vanni, and Alfonso. One fewer than the group waiting for them.

  Salvatore decides to race into town by way of a different road, so he can summon the other two brothers for help.

  As he’s running, he’s stopped by a patrol of carabinieri under the command of none other than the marshal, who, seeing him in a state of agitation, becomes suspicious and wants to haul him into headquarters.

  To avoid leaving his brothers unaided back in the countryside, he tells the marshal everything.

  The officer decides to go and rescue the Sacco brothers.

  And so, the Saccos and the carabinieri, side by side, surround the cave.

  “Come out!”

  A few rifle shots are their only reply. The Saccos and carabinieri start firing back, but in order to take cover they have to distance themselves a good ways from the grotto entrance.

  At that point the four men, firing wildly in every direction, attempt an escape.

  Three of them manage to escape, while a fourth is nabbed by the carabinieri.

  Alfonso is greatly affected by this. His brothers had already fought in the war; for him this was a baptism by fire.

  To their great astonishment, the Saccos recognize the man arrested as a neighbor of theirs, a certain Pasquale Manno, a former convict who had been twice wounded in attacks by unknown parties, but who had always behaved decently with them. They thought he was a friend.

  Indeed, Alfonso writes that “he had very often sat down at our table.”

  At the Carabinieri compound, it doesn’t take long for Manno to spit out the names of his accomplices: Francesco Ferro, Stefano Cuffaro, and a guy known as “Picareddra”—all Mafia grunts, all with criminal records for brawling, burglary, armed assault, and attempted murder.

  *

  Oddly enough, the trial begins only a few months after the event.

  Pasquale Manno admits to waiting in ambush, with his friends, for the Saccos to pass along that road.

  “Were you going to kill them?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why were you lying in wait for them?”

  “Just to scare them, not to kill them.”

  “And why did you want to frighten them?”

  “Because I couldn’t take any more of the Sacco brothers’ tyranny and bullying!”

  “Why, what did they do?”

  “They would come into my field and demand food and drink. And then they would even take a lamb and roast it. Another time Alfonso pointed a shotgun in my face and wanted all the money I had in my pockets. Another time Vanni shot at me but missed.”

  “But do you have witnesses to what you’re asserting?”

  “Of course I do, your honor! Ciccio Ferro was there when Alfonso pointed the shotgun at me, and Stefanu Cuffaro was there when Vanni shot at me.”

  When questioned by the judge, the Saccos stammer, get confused, say the wrong things.

  The fact is that they feel utterly at a loss. The deck has been stacked so brazenly that they don’t know what to do.

  “But didn’t you see that the carabinieri were with the Saccos?”

  “It was too dark,” Manno blithely replies.

  The whole thing is a farce, a day at the puppet theatre.

  It becomes clear that Manno and his men have been reassured that they will not be convicted.

  Apparently, the judges had been “spoken to.”

  And, indeed, the culprits are all acquitted. Their explanations are taken at face value.

  And since the explanations of their enemies are taken as valid, the Saccos now expect the trial to be turned against them, making them no longer the accusers but the accused.

  The judges, however, are not up to going that far.

  They gather their papers, stand up, and leave.

  And that’s that.

  IV

  FIRST BLOOD

  By this point the Saccos know that the Mafia has declared war on them, a war involving not just rifle blasts but also bureaucratic blows: false accusations supported by testimonies even falser than the accusations.

  By hook or by crook, dead or alive, they have to be eliminated.

  Their continued presence in town is a daily humiliation, an intolerable offense to the “men of honor.”

  The Mafia can ambush them whenever it sees fit, at any hour of the day or night; and the Saccos, for their part, can
hardly stay holed up at home all the time, just to avoid danger. They have no choice but to go to their places of work, both in town and in the countryside.

  On top of this, given the actions of Manno—whom they had considered a good neighbor and a sincere friend—they realize they can no longer trust anyone. They can only count on members of their immediate family.

  And so they come up with a defense strategy conceived specifically for getting about daily and working in the fields.

  None of them must ever go around alone. There must always be at least two of them, armed to the teeth, so that the one can always cover the other’s back.

  When necessary, they can request reinforcements from another brother or relative, or trusted friend.

  *

  But they can’t possibly dodge every ambush in the nick of time.

  It is Carnival, 1921. A Wednesday.

  Vanni and Alfonso, who’ve gone to a nearby town that is hosting a livestock fair, are on their way home to their country house with the mules and horses they’ve just bought.

  With them is their ten-year-old nephew, Luigino. The boy is tremendously pleased because his uncles showed him a good time at the fair and bought him sweets, doughnuts, and nougat.

  The Saccos are traveling along a road they don’t know very well, and therefore proceed in defensive formation.

  They have Luigino ride on the back of a mare, while Alfonso, revolver in hand, rides a mule to which they’ve hitched the other mules and horses they’ve just purchased.

  Giovanni, on the other hand, advances on foot along the land beside the road, a ’91 Carcano slung over his shoulder.

  Thus armed and arrayed, they look like soldiers on a reconnaissance patrol, when in fact they are peaceful, law-abiding citizens of a government unable to protect them from organized crime.

  All at once someone begins firing at them from behind a dense clump of prickly pear on a slope above the road.

  Falling quickly to the ground, Giovanni starts returning fire.