Corleone apologizes for decades of Mafia murders

ROME--Corleone, the Sicilian hill town synonymous with Mafia, seeks forgiveness for the murders, shootings and intimidation committed by its godfathers. Leoluchina Savona, mayor of the town, apologized to victims of the Mafia's vendettas, bombings and killings on behalf of the inhabitants of the town, immortalized by The Godfather book and subsequent films starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino.

The appeal was made on the 20th anniversary of the arrest of a Corleone-born mafia leader, Toto Riina, nicknamed "The Beast" for his ruthlessness and brutality. The mayor stated during a related ceremony:

"I apologize in the name of all the people of Corleone. I ask forgiveness for the blood that was spilled. To the Mafia, I ask you to leave this land, to abandon the struggle. I ask them to admit defeat, to surrender."

To remind that politicians, police, and ordinary people killed by the Mafia, including prominent prosecutors Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, did not die in vain, she said: "In the 20 years since the arrest of Toto Riina, their blood reminds us all that there can only be one path to choose in this war (that of legality)."

Once the capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses) of the powerful Corleonesi faction of the Mafia, Riina is serving multiple life-sentences for several murders, including assassination of rival gangsters. He was succeeded by Bernardo "The Bulldozer" Provenzano, who in turn was arrested in 2006 after more than 40 years as a fugitive.

References to The Godfather in Corleone are everywhere – a bar on the main street offers a bitter aperitif called "Don Corleone Amaro", while just across the road, the walls of a pastry shop are covered in black and white pictures of Brando and Pacino in scenes from the films.

SOURCE: "Corleone apologises for decades of Mafia murders" by Nick Squires in Rome; January 16, 2013.

Russia’s reputed top criminal boss killed

MOSCOW--Aslan Usoyan, Russia’s top criminal boss was shot dead by a sniper in broad daylight in the center of Moscow on Wednesday, in what law enforcement officials said was a dispute with a rival Georgian gang.

Usoyan, who went by the nickname “Grandpa Hasan”, was leaving the Karetniy dvor (Carriage House) - which he used as his "office" - when an assassin opened fire with a rifle from a stairwell of a building across the street. He was hit with a single shot to the head, dying a few minutes later at the same hospital where his life was saved after he was shot in a similar 2010 attack.

Usoyan was an ethnic Kurd of the Yezidi faith who hailed from Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. He was the highest-ranking vor v zakone – literally “thief in law” or code-bound criminal – in Russia. The vory are a caste of professional criminals formed in the Soviet gulags of the 1930s. The highest rank is given to men of respect who sit at the top of Russia’s criminal hierarchy, follow the thieves’ common code of ‘law’, and act as unofficial adjudicators of disputes.

“They are dinosaurs, the old Soviet gulag-era crime lords,” says Mark Galeotti, professor at New York University - and expert on the Russian underworld - adding the vory had been steadily giving way to more agile and less principled criminal “authorities” since the fall of Communism.

In 2006, in the only television interview Usoyan ever gave, he said: “I am a pensioner, I live on a pension. I live modestly, I don’t touch anyone, I just mind my own business.”

SOURCE: Charles Clover, Financial Times; January 16, 2013.

'Zerilli Says Hoffa Left In Shallow Grave'

DETROIT--Mob underboss Anthony Zerilli, 85, says he knows where Detroit’s most notorious missing person, Jimmy Hoffa, is buried.

Zerilli told WDIV in Detroit Hoffa’s killers buried him in a shallow grave and were going to move him to a hunting lodge in northern Michigan after they offed him 37 years ago. But Zerilli – who was in prison at the time on a racketeering charge – said they left him where he was.

Local mob expert and author Scott Burnstein thinks this is the biggest break in the Hoffa case since the union boss’ disappearance.

“I think this is the most credible person to ever come forward to talk about this story,” Bernstein said, adding Zerilli is the son of Detroit mafia founder Joe Zerilli and served as the Detroit mob underboss from 1979 to 2002.

Why would Zerilli tell this story now?

“It’s a combination of he’s looking for a payday and he’s upset with the leaders of the family for taking him out of the loop a couple of years ago,” said Burnstein, author of “Motor City Mafia” and the documentary “Detroit Mob Confidential”.

Zerilli hasn’t yet publicly said where the shallow grave is, but reports say the area he’s discussing is in northern Oakland County, about 20 miles away from Hoffa’s last sighting.

On July 30, 1975, Hoffa disappeared from the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills. Searches for Hoffa’s body have included digs at a football stadium, at a Milford farm, and under a Roseville driveway.

Burnstein made a video several years ago called “Gangland Detroit Mob” where he explained the Zerilli situation, saying boss “Black Jack” Tocco blamed Zerilli for the big bust in the 1970s that essentially shut down the Detroit mafia. Burnstein said Tocco “took Zerilli’s stripes” when he got out of jail, and “put him on the shelf.”

CBS Detroit January 14, 2013.