Born in Palermo 14 December 1945, Francesca earned her Law degree with honors at the University of Palermo. She pursued a brilliant career, serving as a judge in the court of Agrigento and as Deputy Prosecutor in the Juvenile Court of Palermo, where she demonstrated a strong commitment to rehabilitating youths involved in delinquent crime. While continuing her own career, Francesca also provided personal and professional support to Giovanni Falcone, whom she married in 1986. Despite the challenges and sacrifices of their married lives, with 24-hour bodyguard protection and death threats, Francesca made notable contributions to the field and practice of law. As her colleague Pasqua Seminara recalls, Francesca “Was an excellent penal lawyer. She had her life, her personality, and strong character. Giovanni respected her ideas.” On 22 May 1992, Francesca was at the Ergife Hotel, fulfilling her responsibilities as a member of the Commission for the Judiciary qualifying exams. The next day, 23 May, after taking the plane from Rome to Palermo, she sat next to Giovanni as they drove along the highway from the airport to downtown Palermo, escorted by two other police cars and 7 bodyguards in all. At around 6:00 pm, they were approaching the city of Capaci when a colossal explosion blasted a crater in the highway beneath the cars. Some 400 kilos of explosives had been planted under a culvert and detonated by order of mafia superboss Salvatore Riina. The explosion caused critical internal injuries to Francesca, who was transported to the hospital, where she died later in the evening at 46 years of age. Also killed in the explosion, known as the Capaci Massacre, were Giovanni Falcone, and the police body guards Rocco Di Cillo, Antonio Montinaro, and Vito Schifani. Francesca was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor. According to both Annamaria Palma, a judge and friend of Francesca, and Fernanda Contri, a voluntary member of the Magistrates Internal Board of Supervisors, Cosa Nostra’s murder of Francesca was deliberate and planned. Palma states, “Francesca’s death was not a matter of chance; they [Falcone and Morvillo] weren’t killed together just because they were a close couple. I think that
Francesca knew a lot of things and they were afraid to leave her alive.” Along similar lines, Contri maintains, “They deliberately waited for a time when Francesca would be there too, unfortunately Francesca did not only enjoy her husband’s confidence, but she shared in the demanding work of the magistracy. . . . She would have been a rather inconvenient witness.”1
Sources: Francesca Laura Morvillo, Rete degli Archivi per non dimenticare, www. memoria.san.beniculturali.it; Paula M. Salvio, The Story-Takers. Public Pedagogy, Transitional Justice, and Italy’s Non-violent Protest against the Mafia, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2017; Renate Siebert, Secrets of Life and Death: Women and the Mafia, London, Verso, 1996.
Photo, Wikimedia commons, Creative Commons License
Francesca Morvillo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXXWkf8P9LI. francesca morvillo.wmv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7gaArWCy8s.
Era D’Estate - Clip dal film - Prima cena all’Asinara: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YtJm0kCmzZM.
23 MAY 1992
MORVILLOFRANCESCA
Born 9 October 1967, in the town of Sestu in Sardinia, Emanuela had dreamed of becoming a teacher, but then became interested in working as a police officer. She and her sister Claudia studied for the qualifying exams, and Emanuela passed the test with honors. In 1989, she was admitted to the 6-month police training course in Trieste, and then began what promised to be a successful career. In 1991, Emanuela was assigned a position as sentry guard, and served as protection for Sergio Mattarella, Pina Maisano Grassi, and mafia boss Francesco Madonia, a protected witness. On the weekends when she was free, she returned home to Sestu, to spend time with her mother Alberta, father Virgilio, sister Claudia, brother Marcello, and fiancé Andrea. In the wake of the Capaci Massacre, that claimed the lives of 3 fellow police bodyguards along with Judges Giovanni Falcone and Francesca Morvillo, Emanuela was notified that she would become part of the bodyguard protection squad. In early July, she was assigned to Judge Paolo Borsellino’s team of bodyguards, a high risk position. On 19 July, shortly before 5:00 pm, Emanuela and fellow bodyguards escorted Judge Borsellino to his aged mother’s home in Via D’Amelio. As they got out of the car, a Fiat exploded, instantly killing Emanuela, fellow bodyguards Walter Eddie Cosina, Agostino Catalano, Claudio Traina, Vincenzo Li Muli, and Judge Borsellino, the intended target. On 5 August 1992, Emanuela was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor. Commenting upon her sister’s profound sense of duty and how her example should serve others, Claudia tells us, “I want to pay tribute to Emanuela, I want to remember and commemorate her every day. Not only because she was the first woman in Italy entrusted with police bodyguard duty and the first woman to die while performing that duty. I want to do so also because, together with fellow victims of mafia and terrorist massacres, and together with people who paid with their lives to defend the State and democratic values, Emanuela is an example, both great and simple at the same time. She’s the example of a young woman, like me, my sister, my best friend, who simply fulfilled her duty to the fullest without ever holding back, not even when fate sent her to Palermo”. Numerous schools, piazzas and streets in Italy
have been renamed in honor of Emanuela Loi. Her sister Claudia gives talks at schools and public events, telling Emanuela’s story and informing people about the mafia and the culture of legality.
Sources: Film La scorta di Paolo Borsellino – Emanuela Loi, directed by Stefano Mordini and Pietro Valsecchi, 2018; Annarita Caramico, “Emanuela Loi: un angelo biondo al servizio dello Stato,” https://ecointernazionale.com/; Annalisa Strada, Io, Emanuela agente della scorta di Paolo Borsellino, Turin, Einaudi Ragazzi, 2016; Laura Anello, L’altra storia, Milan, Sperling and Kupfer Editori, 2012; film Gli angeli di Borsellino, directed by Rocco Cesareo, 2003.
Photo, it.Wikipedia.org, Creative Commons License
Per Non Dimenticare Emanuela Loi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP11ijGkB9M. Film La scorta di Paolo Borsellino - Emanuela Loi: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=pb1ojPkgvxA.
19 JULY 1992
LOI
Born on 4 September 1974, in Partanna Sicily, Rita was raised in a mafia family. Her father Vito Atria was a small-time mafioso who rustled livestock and then extorted money from the owners for the livestock’s return. Rita’s brother was also involved with the local mafia clans and the drug trade. In 1985, when Rita was just 11 years old, her father was gunned down by members of the clan vying for territorial power. Then 6 years later, in 1991, Nicola was riddled with machine gun fire, likely to prevent him from carrying out the vendetta against his father’s murderers. In early November, 1991, Rita followed the example of her sister-in-law Piera Aiello, with whom she had a close, affectionate relationship, and became a witness for justice. Almost immediately she received death threats, and was transferred to Rome as part of the witness protection program. Working with Judges Alessandra Camassa and Paolo Borsellino, Rita provided invaluable testimony about the Cosa Nostra clans in the Partanna area and their possible links with local politicians, which enabled the successful prosecution of numerous mafiosi. Following the Capaci Massacre 23 May 1992 and then the Via D’Amelio Massacre 19 July 1992, which took the lives of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, along with Judge Francesca Morvillo and 8 police body guards, Rita wrote the following words in her diary, “Borsellino, you died for what you believed in but without you I’m dead.” Exactly 7 days after the murder of Borsellino, Rita jumped to her death from the seventh-floor balcony of her safe-house in Rome. Since then, she has become an inspirational symbol of the antimafia struggle and the commitment to justice, and several books tell her life story. Moreover, Rita Atria’s own writings give invaluable insights about growing up in a mafia family, the experience of becoming a witness for justice, and the significance of the fight for truth and justice.
Sources: Robin Pickering-Iazzi, The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2017; video, “La storia di Rita Atria,” Associazione Nazionale Legalità e Giustizia, YouTube, published 17 April
26 JULY 1992
ATRIARITA
2014; Andrea Gentile, Volevo nascere vento. Storia di Rita che sfidò la mafia con Paolo Borsellino, Milan, Mondadori, 2012; Petra Reski, Rita Atria. La picciridda dell’antimafia, Modena, Nuovi Mondi, 2011; Rita Atria, “Testimony,” in Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007; Sandra Rizza, Una ragazza contro la mafia. Rita Atria, morte per solitudine, Palermo, La luna, 1993.
Photo courtesy of vittimemafia.it, drawn from bsicilia.it.
La storia di Rita Atria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMjMQ_3CzVU. Il ricordo di Rita Atria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0tFqUJMXPQ.
At 67 years of age, Rosa had made a good life for herself and her son Angelo (41 years old) in Toronto, Canada, but dreamed only of returning to her hometown of Calanna in Calabria, just once before she died. Born in Calanna, she had married Rosario Morena and raised their son there, until she fled to Toronto to escape a spiraling cycle of vendettas, which started when her husband shot and killed their nephew, Letterio Versaci in 1961. He confessed and served a 16 year sentence. Upon his release in 1977, he was gunned down in the same spot where he had murdered Letterio. Hoping to fulfill his elderly mother’s dream, on 20 December 1993, Angelo and his wife Caterina accompanied Rosa on a trip to Calanna to spend Christmas there. Just 3 days before they were scheduled to return to Toronto, on 11 January 1994, they were traveling on the road that runs from Calanna toward Rosaniti and neared the spot where Rosario had died, and Letterio before him. Another car pulled alongside theirs and a hit squad opened fire. In the hail of bullets, Rosa and Angelo were fatally shot, thus fulfilling the vendetta harbored for over 30 years. Caterina survived the attack without a scratch. Source: Aldo Varano, “Madre e figlio assassinati in Calabria. Una vendetta covata per oltre trent’anni,” L’Unità, 13 January 1994; “Rosa Versaci,” www.vittimemafia.it.