Bernardo Provenzano: Sicilian ‘Tractor’ who ran the Mafia from a shepherd’s hut

1933-2016

BERNARDO Provenzano, who has died in custody aged 83, was the leader of the Corleonesi, who became the most powerful and violent Mafia family in history.

He had been on the run since 1963 after a string of murders, mainly of other Mafiosi, and was caught only in 2006. Incredibly, police arrested him just a few kilometres from his home town of Corleone in a shepherd’s refuge where he had been living like a hermit. It was from this hut that he, as the Sicilian Mafia’s capo di tutti i capi (boss of bosses), ran a criminal empire.

He did so by means of pizzini — typewritten coded messages — hidden in the pages of the Bible and carried by trusted couriers to faithful henchmen. His nicknames were Binnu u Tratturi (Bernardo the Tractor) because of his habit of mowing down his opponents with submachine guns, or Il Ragioniere (the Bookkeeper) because of his skill with money.

Paradoxically, he was a devout Catholic and his messages included benedictions such as: “May the Lord bless and protect you.” STRAIGHT SEX: Sally Beauman spurned bedtime euphemisms

Provenzano was born on January 31 1933, the third of seven siblings, at Corleone, a small and picturesque agricultural town in the Sicilian interior.

The town achieved mythical status outside Italy after Mario Puzo used it as the name of the Mafia family in his 1969 novel The Godfather, soon turned into a series of films by Francis Ford Coppola.

Provenzano, whose parents were farm labourers, left school at the age of 10 to work in the fields at the time of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. After the war he was admitted to the “Honoured Society” at a secret ceremony.

The capo of the Corleonesi clan at the time was Michele Navarra. In the late ’50s Navarra decided to kill a young member of his Mafia clan, Luciano Leggio, because he aspired to take over the clan. His men shot at Leggio in a field but SALLY Beauman, who has died aged 71, was best known for her glamorous and racy romantic novel Destiny, for which she was given a £1-million (about R19-million) advance in 1985; it was said at the time to be the largest amount paid for a first novel.

She did not necessarily fit the mould of a writer of blockbuster romps. A Cambridge graduate, Beauman had worked as a journalist, interviewer and critic for missed and so Leggio decided to kill Navarra.

The assassins included 27-yearold Salvatore “Toto” Riina, who would later become capo, first of the Corleonesi Mafia in 1974 when Leggio was jailed for life, and later of the entire Sicilian Mafia known as Cosa Nostra. They also included 25-year-old Provenzano, who would become Riina’s second-incommand and succeed him.

Provenzano went into hiding in 1963 because he was sought in connection with numerous murders. He was not seen again in public until his arrest 43 years later. The last known photograph of him before his arrest was taken in 1959.

Hugely ambitious and violent, the pint-sized Riina set his sights on taking over the Mafia throughout Sicily.

The violence left up to a thousand people dead, which outraged Italian public opinion and prompted the first Mafia “supergrass” to emerge: Tommaso Buscetta.

His testimony saw nearly 360 Mafiosi convicted, including many in absentia such as Provenzano.

Provenzano looked after the financial side and lived for much of the ’80s and ’90s in Bagheria, a suburb of Palermo, in an 18thcentury villa furnished with impeccable taste. He never used the phone or had a bank account and was chauffeured to meetings in an ambulance. The police apparently did not know where he lived.

Provenzano was so angry at Riina’s violence when a car bomb in Florence killed five people including a baby girl in 1993 that it was he, according to one supergrass, who gave police Riina’s address, which led to his arrest.

From then on, until his arrest in 2006, Provenzano was the capo di tutti i capi. Back in the ’90s, however, it was not even known that he was still alive.

Police only found out in January 2005, when, during the arrest of 40 or so suspected Mafiosi, they discovered his typewritten coded notes. They identified the shepherd’s refuge near his home town where he was arrested thanks to a simple trick: they tracked a delivery of clean laundry from the home of his common-law wife.

Provenzano had already been convicted in absentia of many murders, so there was no trial. — ©

He was arrested thanks to a simple trick: they tracked a delivery of clean laundry