Gerlando Alberti

Gerlando Alberti (somethings referred to as Gerlando Albertini) was born on 18 Septemeber 1927 and died 1 February 2012. Alberti was the son of a fruit seller and was born and grew up in Palermo, in the derelict district of Danisinni. He only went to school for four years. Alberti was initiated into the Mafia by Gaetano Filippone. His first test was to steal an entire cheese. In 1956 he was acquitted of a killing for 'lack of evidence'.

Alberti was considered to be an upstart Mafia boss in the shadow of men like Pietro Torretta, Tommaso Buscetta and the La Barbera brothers. They formed the so-called "New Mafia", which adopted new gangster techniques. Alberti's official business was selling textiles, employing a squad of travelling salesmen, a wonderful cover for both his trafficking operations and smuggling jewels and works of art. In 1961 he set up a textile trading business in Milan and formed a cosca in Northern Italy, with bases in Genoa and Milan which gave him access to all the important financial and business hubs in Italy.

Alberti was indicted in July 1963 with 53 other mafiosi after the Ciaculli massacre, which turned the First Mafia War into a war against the Mafia. Together with Tommaso Buscetta, he was suspected of the attack against Angelo La Barbera, one of the protagonists of the war, in Milan in May 1963. At the "Trial of the 114" he was acquitted but sent into internal exile in a village in Lombardy.[5] Alberti, although living in Milan, had been in Palermo at the time of the bomb attack in Ciaculli. Interrogated, he declared that he had been with a woman and could not reveal her name.

In December 1969 he was again in Palermo (while he was supposed to be in exile) when Mafia boss Michele Cavataio was killed by a Mafia hit squad for his double-crossing role in the First Mafia War. At the time, the Carabinieri began to consider Alberti as the boss of a kind of Murder Incorporated for the Sicilian Cosa Nostra.

Alberti was a rising stars of the Mafia in the 1970s. He lived a luxurious lifestyle with apartments in Milan and Naples, he owned a green Maserati and he and his men spent their evenings at nightclubs with expensive women. His position was confirmed on 17 June 1970, when the traffic police in Milan stopped an Alfa Romeo for speeding. In the car were Alberti, Tommaso Buscetta, Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, Gaetano Badalamenti and Giuseppe Calderone. The police let them continue their journey. At the time, they were involved in a series of meetings about the future of Cosa Nostra. They decided to set up a new Sicilian Mafia Commission.

On 5 May 1971, Pietro Scaglione, Chief Prosecutor of Palermo, was killed along with his driver Antonino Lo Russo. It was the first time since the end of World War II that the Mafia had carried out a hit on an Italian magistrate. The police rounded up 114 mafiosi who would be tried in the second "Trial of the 114". Scaglione was killed in the district under Alberti’s command. Alberti had arrived from Naples just before the attack and left immediately afterwards. A barman who had confirmed to the police that Alberti was in Palermo while Scaglione’s murder was taking place was kidnapped and killed.

At the second "Trial of the 114" in 1974, Alberti was convicted and sentenced to six years. Sent to the island of Asinara, he escaped in June 1975 but was arrested again in December that year, hiding among Sicilians in Northern Italy.In October 1977 he became a fugitive again when he was supposed to appear before a court in Naples charged with cigarette smuggling.

In March 1974, Alberti was charged in Rome with heroin trafficking as the result of a 30-month investigation. The inquiry started in September 1971 when US Customs agents seized 84 kilos of heroin in a Ford that was sent from Genoa to New York. Alberti and Gaetano Badalamenti were considered to be among the bosses of the international ring.

On 25 August 1980, two heroin-refining labs were discovered on Sicily; a small lab was discovered first in Trabia and later that day a bigger lab was uncovered in Carini that could produce 50 kilograms a week. Alberti was arrested with three Corsican chemists in Trabia, among them André Bousquet an old hand from the French Connection days, who was sent by Corsican gangster Gaetan Zampa. This was in the aftermath of the Nixon administration's War on Drugs which was actually a war on the Corsican mafia's role in the international drug network to consolidate it into the one controlled by the CIA, in Sicily.

Alberti barely survived an attempt on his life while incarcerated in the Ucciardone prison on 9 February 1983. He received two sentences, one for the heroin lab in Trabia and one life sentence for the killing of a hotel owner who had tipped off the police about the lab. He was arrested several more times, including during Operation Gotha. Each time he was released due to ill health, just not sick enough to quit being a mafia don.

Sources:

Lodato, Quindici anni di mafia, pp. 47-50

Morto Gerlando Alberti detto 'U paccaré', ADN Kronos, February 1, 2012

"Cheats, shoots and thieves", The Scotsman, January 31, 2004

Servadio, Mafioso, pp. 230-42