Salvatore Scaglione

Scaglione became boss of the Noce mandamento in the early 1970s, at a time when the Mafia was recuperating from the disastrous end of the First Mafia War and subsequent police crackdown, with the Noce family in particular having been one of the hardest hit by the war. Scaglione was close from the beginning to other powerful mafiosi from Palermo such as Stefano Bontade, Salvatore Inzerillo and Rosario Riccobono, and future pentito Antonino Calderone recalled that, due to this, Mafia boss Michele Cavataio had been plotting to murder Scaglione, a plot which was called off at the last minute due to the intervention of the boss of Riesi Giuseppe Di Cristina but which also precipitated Cavataio's own murder on 10 December 1969, in the Viale Lazio massacre.

During the 1970s Scaglione worked particularly close with Salvatore Inzerillo and Rosario Riccobono in the cigarette smuggling operations that the Sicilian Mafia ran in Campania through the Nuvoletta brothers and Michele Zaza, themselves initiated as "men of honour" in the organization. Soon enough, through the same contraband routes, these activities quickly evolved into extremely profitable heroin trafficking, which immensely enriched the Mafia families of Palermo within a few years. Scaglione was furthermore involved in the booming construction industry in Palermo at the time, which was largely in the hands of the Mafia. This allowed Scaglione to become the de-facto owner of dozens of different buildings and apartments between the areas of San Lorenzo and the city's western outskirts.^[1] As capo mandamento of the Noce, Scaglione became a member the Commission, the coordinating body of Cosa Nostra in Sicily, in 1974.

In the mid 1970s, the growing power of the Corleonesi led by Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano began concerning some of the established Mafia families in Palermo and other provinces. According to pentito Gaspare Mutolo, between 1974 and 1976, several meetings were held in properties owned by Gaetano Badalamenti, Rosario Di Maggio (uncle of Salvatore Inzerillo) and Stefano Bontade, and, later, at the Favarella estate owned by Michele Greco, where many bosses would gather to discuss the growing threat. Among them, Scaglione, Inzerillo, Riccobono and especially Giuseppe Di Cristina from Riesi held a tough stance and even favored an armed confrontation, whereas Bontade, Badalamenti and Di Maggio held a more moderate position, asserting that Riina would never have been able to unseat their power and influence and it was thus unnecessary to wage war on the Corleonesi. As these meetings eventually moved over to the Favarella estate, Michele Greco, who was secretly allied with Riina, was able to inform the Corleonesi boss of the intentions of Scaglione, Inzerillo and Riccobono towards him.

In 1977, the struggle became more severe as the Corleonesi had secured enough allies to obtain a dominant position during Commission meetings. Riina tried to unseat Riccobono and Scaglione from their positions, and while Riccobono only lost the Resuttana family, which became its own mandamento, Scaglione fared worse. Riina used as a pretext the fact that Scaglione's daughter, then 16 years old, had been impregnated by the 19-year-old son of one of the builders working for Scaglione, Luigi Meola. Rather than punishing his daughter and killing Meola's son, Scaglione had agreed to a "rehabilitating marriage", thus, according to Riina, compromising his family's honor. This was, of course, all a pretext to reduce Scaglione's power, but it had the effect that in 1977 Scaglione lost his position as capo mandamento and the Noce mandamento itself ceased to exist, and became subordinate to that of Porta Nuova run by Giuseppe Calò, a close ally of Riina.^[2]

While Scaglione was able to remain the boss of the family, his position was made even more precarious by the fact that the Noce family had become infiltrated by men close to Riina, particularly Raffaele Ganci and his sons. As related by future pentito Francesco Paolo Anselmo, when he was initiated into the family, Riina had told him that he was against the initiation because he deemed Scaglione to be "the worst boss in Palermo". Soon, Scaglione was almost completely isolated and became in effect a "general without an army", as most of the up-and-rising members of the Noce family were allied with Riina and the Corleonesi.^[3]