Corleone is a small town where everyone knows everything especially people like Michele Navarra and Luciano Leggio. Michele Navarra was the local mafia boss of Corleone just after the Second World War. Navarra was different from the rest of his clan: first of all, Navarra was a member of the middle-class and, secondly, he had a chance of graduating as doctor, a general practitioner. However, despite having a more sophisticated background, Michele Navarra, who was feared and respected by everyone in that village, and even addressed as “Our Father”, was no saint and was notorious for using violence as a way of solving problems. As an example, Michele Navarra once injected a lethal dose of poison in the arm of a 12-year-old boy who had the misfortune of been an involuntary witness to a murder committed by Navarra himself. I guess that is a bit of a violation of the medical oath of “first, do no harm”, don’t you think? On the contrary, over those years when Riina was a simple thief, Luciano Leggio was not a boss but simply one of the many “picciotti” or soldiers in the Navarra’s army, with a peculiarity, actually two: the first he was extremely ambitious and the second one Leggio came across 3 young guys understanding their massive potential and the degree of actions were willing to do to get out of poverty. Obviously, those three guys were Riina, Bagarella and Provenzano, three young kids but smart and determined to get out of poverty at all cost; and notably Riina and Provenzano were able and effective at committing murders, which as you can imagine, is a sought after skill in the world of crime. Riina’s uncle, Giacomo, happened to also be a “man of honor” and supported Salvatore Riina’s induction into the mafia or as the Sicilians called it back then, cosa nostra. This crime syndicate was mostly involved in cigarette smuggling, robberies and extortion, but with the increased amount of investments being made to rebuild Italy, the area of significant growth was becoming that of public contracts.
The Corleone family led by Navarra was eager to find talented young members because it had been significantly weakened during fascism and the second world war, and it was slowly rebuilding its power thanks also to Angelo Di Carlo, cousin of Navarra who had been a U.S. marine during the war, and Vincenzo Collura, both of whom had emigrated to the United States in the 1920s in an attempt to escape poverty, and had returned with some wealth and a burning desire to rebuild.
However, when Leggio seems to have found reliable guys to expand his personal operations, Salvatore Riina was called out of the game due to a murder committed in unknown circumstances.
In fact, the reason why Domenico Di Matteo was killed by Salvatore Riina has never been fully clarified. According to some sources, this was his initiation test to become affiliated to Sicilian mafia, while, in some other sources explain that the murder was the consequence of a fight between Riina and Di Matteo about a girl. Whatever was the reason, Salvatore Riina was the first to take out a gun and kill the other guy in cold blood. Sentenced to 12 years of jail, Salvatore Riina only spent 5 years behind the bars for this murder and from 1955 onwards he was back in the pack at the orders of Luciano Leggio. Ultimately the name of Salvatore Riina commenced to be popular in Corleone after he killed Domenico Di Matteo and his reputation as cold-blood killer commenced to circulate fast. Luciano Leggio as well as Bernardo Provenzano and Calogero Bagarella understood that Salvatore Riina had talent as a criminal and if they wanted to rise to power, Salvatore Riina was the right man at the right time in the right place.
After 5 years in jail, Salvatore Riina was no longer a kid and he was a full-grown man with high level of confidence and incredible ambition. He was fully aware that he only needed the right support and the right people to climb the hierarchy of the Sicilian Mafia. Those four criminals were tailored one on the other – it was somewhat of a very complementary “dream team” of crime. The rest will be covered in our upcoming videos, which we encourage you to keep an eye on.

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