Pizza Connection Trial - Witnesses

Witnesses

Sicilian Mafia cooperator Tommaso Buscetta testified at the trial against his former criminal associates; he had not been part of the Pizza Connection scheme himself, but he helped explain the rules and control of the Mafia, and established the Sicilians’ dominance over the U.S. drug trade in the early 1970s. Buscetta had fled from Italy in the early ‘80s when the faction of the mafia with which he was associated lost the battle for control of heroin trafficking, and many of his family members were killed. A close associate of many of the defendants, Buscetta was captured in Brazil shortly after the April 1984 arrests, and then ordered extradited to Italy. On the trip to Italy following his extradition, Buscetta attempted to commit suicide in an effort to protect his family from more killings. The Italian authorities saved him, and Buscetta decided to cooperate. Italian and U.S. authorities coordinated Buscetta’s debriefing and protection, and he was transferred to the U.S., placed in the Witness Protection Program and granted immunity from prosecution for his testimony at the Pizza Connection trial.

Buscetta later appeared as a pivotal witness in the “Maxi-Trial” in Palermo, Sicily, after the Italian court recognized and applied the U.S. grant of immunity for his testimony there. Italian prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and Italian National Police leader Gianni De Gennaro presented Buscetta and other witnesses at the trial, which led to the conviction of more than 300 Sicilian Mafia members. Falcone and De Gennaro worked closely with Assistant United States Attorney Richard A. Martin to arrange for Buscetta’s protection and testimony. Martin was one of the lead prosecutors of the Pizza Connection trial, and later became the Special Representative of the U.S. Attorney General in Rome, Italy.

Another key witness was Salvatore Contorno, a Sicilian mafioso who became a state witness following the example of Buscetta. He agreed to testify in return for entry in the United States’ Witness Protection Program after having been the target of an attempted murder by the Corleonesi and losing family members in the battle for control of the Sicilian mafia. He gave evidence that directly linked the defendants to heroin trafficking. On the witness stand, he told how in the spring of 1980 he was present at a meeting in a farmhouse in Bagheria, Sicily, in the territory of the Mafia boss Leonardo Greco. Among those present were five of the defendants at the trial: Salvatore Greco, Giuseppe Ganci, Gaetano Mazzara, Salvatore Catalano, and Francesco Castronovo. Contorno watched as the men "took out two plastic garbage bags and extracted packages of white powder in clear plastic envelopes, each bearing different tiny scissor cuts or pen or pencil marks to identify the individual owner. They poured samples of the powder into a bottle heating on a hot plate." These same marked samples were intercepted by the Drug Enforcement Administration is a seizure of 40 kilograms of 85 percent pure heroin two weeks later in Milan, Italy. The heroin was worth "$8 million at Mafia importer’s prices and at least $80 million worth at street prices." Until the heroin was removed from storage in 1984 after Contorno cooperated, no one had noticed the small cuts in the tops of the plastic bags, which were described by Contorno.

FBI Special Agent Joseph Pistone, better known by his undercover alias "Donnie Brasco" was the initial source for information regarding the "Pizza Connection" (leaked to him in casual conversations by Bonanno family mafiosi Anthony Mirra and Benjamin Ruggiero). Pistone testified at trial as to the command and control structure of the U.S. Mafia, establishing that the U.S. bosses were criminally liable for the actions of their underlings.

The trial also included the presentation of hundreds of wiretap conversations, combined with surveillance evidence, undercover heroin purchases and painstakingly detailed records of money laundering and transfers of multi-millions of dollars to Switzerland. Swiss bank records and testimony taken in that country established that the enterprise purchased two metric tons of morphine base from Turkish suppliers at $6,000/kilo, which was refined into pure heroin in clandestine labs in Sicily and sold in the U.S. for between $165,000-185,000 wholesale, and up to $1,000,000 at street level, generating more than $1.6 billion for the enterprise.

Another unusual aspect of the trial was the fact that several defendants elected to testify in their own defense, most prominent among them being Gaetano Badalamenti. Badalamenti did not deny being a member of the Sicilian La Cosa Nostra but did claim that his wiretapped conversations with other defendants and his business dealings with them were not related to narcotics. He would not say what those conversations and transactions were about and refused to answer questions he said could incriminate him in Italy. His testimony was widely regarded as enormously harmful to him and the defense.