Historica Wiki
Advertisement
Cesare Terranova

Cesare Terranova (25 August 1921 – 25 September 1979) was an Italian judge and politician who served as an Italian Communist Party member of the Chamber of Deputies from 25 May 1972 to 19 June 1979.

Biography[]

Cesare Terranova was born in Petralia Sottana, Sicily, Italy in 1921, and he entered the judiciary in 1946. He became a known anti-Mafia crusader who served as a key figure in the "Trial of the 114" in the aftermath of the First Mafia War in 1965, but many prominent mafiosi (all but 10 of the 114) were acquitted in 1968. He was also the first to acknowledge the existence of a Sicilian Mafia Commission based on a confidential 1963 Carabinieri report, but he did not believe that the Mafia was a tightly unified structure.

He also investigated the Mafia's political ties, finding that Palermo mayor Salvatore Lima was in league with mafiosi such as Angelo La Barbera. In 1972, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a PCI-affiliated "independent", and he became secretary of the Anti-Mafia Commission and worked with PCI deputy Pio La Torre to reveal the Mafia's political connections. However, the reports of the commission were disregarded, and Terranova came to regard the commission as "thirteen wasted years" and did not seek re-election in 1979.

He decided to return to the judiciary, only to be ambushed in his car and killed by the Mafia in Palermo in September 1979 at the age of 58. His successor, Rocco Chinnici, was also assassinated in 1983.

Advertisement