Salvatore "U Pugilista" Scaglione (6 April 1940–30 November 1982) was the Mafia boss of Noce from 1973 to 1982, preceding Raffaele Ganci. A member of the Commission, Scaglione was killed in 1982 during Salvatore Riina's campaign against the Palermo Mafia clans.
Biography[]
Scaglione was born on 6 April 1940 to an Italian family in Palermo, Sicily. He engaged in professional boxing in his younger years, earning him the nickname "U Pugilista" (the boxer), and he became a mafioso later in life. In his early career, Scaglione became a target of Mafia boss Michele Cavataio, leading Cavataio to put out a hit on Scaglione, but fellow boss Giuseppe Di Cristina mediated the situation and alleviated tensions. By 1974, Scaglione had become the boss of the Noce neighborhood of Palermo as well as a member of the Commission, where he was close to bosses such as Stefano Bontade, Salvatore Inzerillo and Rosario Riccobono, and he partook in cigarette and narcotics trafficking with Riccobono and Camorrista Michele Zaza. During the 1970s, internal politics within the Commission became agitated when a takeover attempt by the Corleonesi clan and Salvatore Riina became apparent; in 1977, hoping to pin the other bosses against Scaglione, whom Riina considered "the worst boss in Palermo", he pointed out how Scaglione had let a 19-year-old man who impregnated his underage daughter marry her after the fact, a dishonor to his family. Thus, Scaglione's mandamento was reduced to a sub-unit of the Porta Nuova clan of Giuseppe Calò, and his influence was severely minimized. After Riina waged open war against the Palermo families in 1981, Scaglione elected to join his side so he would be spared, but Riina believed that since Scaglione had been eager to betray his former friends, he was untrustworthy and had to be eliminated; on 30 November 1982, Scaglione was lured to an apparent meeting at Michele Greco's Palermo estate where, unbeknownst to him, his former ally Rosario Riccobono and his men had been strangled and killed hours earlier. Upon arriving there, he was confronted by Riina and some of his subordinates, who ignored Scaglione's begging for mercy and strangled him to death. His corpse was then disposed of in a vat of acid along with those of Riccobono and his underlings.