Name Mariano Troia | ||
Died March 27, 2010, Viterbo, Italy | ||
Mariano Tullio Troia (Palermo, September 3, 1933 – Viterbo, March 27, 2010) was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was on the "most wanted list" of the Italian ministry of the Interior since 1992 until his arrest in Palermo in September 1998.
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High ranking Mafia boss
Troia was the son of a Mafia boss that controlled the San Lorenzo neighbourhood of Palermo. For a long time Troia remained unknown to police investigators although he had reached a major role within Cosa Nostra as head of the mandamento of the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo. He was one of the most trusted lieutenants of the so-called boss of bosses Totò Riina. In the early 1990s his name emerged in statements of some collaborators of justice (pentiti), such as Gaspare Mutolo and Giuseppe Marchese. He substituted Giuseppe Giacomo Gambino who was jailed in 1986 as head of the San Lorenzo mandamento and on the Sicilian Mafia Commission.
Police received detailed information from Alberto Lo Cicero, former driver and confidant of Troia. Lo Cicero said that some Commission members of Cosa Nostra, including Riina, met in Troia’s villa in San Lorenzo. Lo Cicero became a pentito in August 1992 after surviving an ambush on December 20, 1991, and the killing of Antimafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in May and July 1992.
Fugitive and arrest
In October 1992, he was indicted for the murder of Christian Democrat politician Salvo Lima, the right hand man of Prime minister Giulio Andreotti. His name also appeared as backer of the killing of Mario Prestifilippo and Giovanni Fici, assassinated in 1987 and 1988 to prevent retaliation after the elimination of the Mafia killer Pino "Little Shoe" Greco.
He was put on Italy’s most wanted list. Italian police claimed Troia had moved to South Africa where he was being harboured by Salvatore Morettino, a naturalised South African citizen living in Houghton (a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg), according to Western Cape police intelligence in a March 1998 briefing. He was also in contact with Vito Roberto Palazzolo, a Sicilian businessman with ties to the Mafia.
He was arrested in Palermo on September 15, 1998. At the time, he was considered to be the number 3 of the Sicilian Mafia. He was captured on the second floor of a house in the Tommaso Natale neighbourhood in bed with the lady of the house while the woman's husband was asleep in downstairs in a room with her daughters.
Death
Troia died on March 27, 2010, in the prison hospital of Viterbo. He participated in or, as member of the Commission, was held responsible for some 40 murders.