ABSTRACT: Michele Margiotta, the judge who "died this year in Palermo", had investigated in 1933 the death of the French writer Raymond Roussel, with whom Sciascia also concerned himself [in writing a story on the affair, ed.]. Margiotta had written a book of memoirs on the Mafia and its "then powerful chief: Don Vito Cascio-Ferro", the man who was said to have killed the "famous Italo-American policeman Petrosino". Once becomng head of Palermo's Mafia, Vito Cascio-Ferro banned Margiotta from being given "defence work in the Court of Assizes". This was "a Mafia chieftain up until the Fifties". In 1957, Sciascia had written that he was afraid the Mafia could come out of the rural areas and "infiltrate the process of industrialisation". Unfortunately, with the arrival of "drugs and arms trafficking", even worse arrived.

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, August 25, 1982)

Dr. Michele Margiotta, born in Bisacquino in 1901 (a peasant, therefore, and contemporary of Frank Capra), and who died this year in Palermo, wrote and published privately a book of memoirs shortly before his death. It is necessary to say that in his life he practised three professions: attorney, judge, and last and longest, notary. As a judge he happened to investigate in the summer of 1933 the death of Raymond Roussel in Palermo's Hotel des Palmes. And since I too, some forty years later, found myself investigating that death, this is the reason his book of memoirs was sent to me.

A short chapter of the book is dedicated to the Mafia and its then powerful chieftain Don Vito Cascio-Ferro. Dr. Margiotta relates that after a "youthful error" of attempted extortion, for which he was denounced and arrested, Don Vito emigrated to the United States where he entered the Mafia which at that time was called the Black Hand. "They say he was given the job of following the famous Italo-American policeman Petrosino and of killing him which he is said to have done personally, killing him in Piazza Marina. This fact, which has not been legally proved, gave Don Vito the prestige necessary for him to assume direction with a sure hand of the Mafia for the whole Province of Palermo... the big real estate deals in Palermo went through his hands, but he was modest in the percentage he asked for and and provoked no retaliations... At Bisacquino Don Vito managed from on high the agricultural industries of the Hon. Domenico De Michele Ferrantelli, with headquarters in Guiglia, and the Santa Maria del Bos

co farm of Nenč Inglese... I was a lawyer and he imposed a veto on my being given cases to defend in the Court of Assizes. This limited my work in the courts and the appeal court. That was what induced me to enter the magistracy... I must say, however, that otherwise Don Vito always behaved correctly. I am sure that he had nothing to do with my father's being robbed and in my opinion he was innocent of the killing of Gioacchino Lo Voi, for which crime, however, he was sentenced to life in prison." And it seems that Don Vito gave some justification to the unjust sentence when he shouted at the judges that they had not managed to convict him for the many killings he had committed, but did so for the one he had not committed.

This was a Mafia chieftain up until the Fifties, and these were the Mafia's interests. Writing about it in 1957, it seemed to me that a Mafia of this kind and with such interests was on the road to extinction. But this is how I ended: "If it succeeds in migrating from the large land-holdings and consolidate a position in the cities, if it manages to get its hooks into the regional bureaucracies and infiltrate into the island's industrial development, this enormous problem will give us plenty to talk about and for many years to come." An easy and even optimistic forecast.

The Mafia went even further, became a vaster phenomenon, indefinable and - while highly visible in its manifold effects - invisible in its workings, its chiefs, its connections, its connivings and protection. A Sicilian-American Mafia was known and one spoke of a degree of penetration - especially with regard to cattle-rustling - into the French colonies of Tunisia and Algeria. But drugs and arms-trafficking allowed it to spread throughout the world.

Little by little we are going back to missing everything or almost everything in the past. Will be forced to miss the Mafia of Don Vito Cascio-Ferro too?