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By Eric Pape
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Giuseppina Vitale wasn't just another strong Italian woman in high heels. She was the twentysomething kid sister of Leonardo and Vito, reputedly princes (of sorts) in the Sicilian mob, the Cosa Nostra. Italian media tapped the two brothers as potential heirs to "the godfather" himself. When Leonardo was sent to the slammer in the early 1990s, Vito did his brotherly duty and replaced Leonardo. And when Vito was sent to jail in 1998, Giusy, as she is known, did her sisterly duty. She cursed and spit at police--then did something women in Sicily aren't supposed to do: she took over for her brothers. Or so she claims, at any rate.
The Cosa Nostra isn't exactly a bastion of women's rights. And yet, in a country that's never had a female president, prime minister or mayor of Rome, Giusy, 33, is the first woman to run one of the most important Cosa Nostra families. By all accounts, she did her job well. Like corporate climbers in the legitimate world, she worked her way up through the mafia ranks, apparently starting as Vito's messenger, taking on his duties when he went on the lam in the mid-1990s and, before long, deciding on such sensitive matters as promotions within the mob hierarchy and, she claims, even issuing top executive orders--including at least one "hit" on a former trader named Salvatore Riina (no relation to the former godfather of the same name). By the time police caught up with Vito, Giusy was essentially running the show. Her time at the top, alas, turned out to be brief. Her reign came to an end when she, too, was arrested on June 26, 1998, six days after Riina's murder.
For a time, she was the very model of a "mafia mamma." After the courts sent her to the slammer--convicted of "association with the mafia"--she quietly served out her term. Freed in 2002, she was again arrested, some months later, this time on charges of ordering Riina's killing. As before, the mother of two stayed quiet in prison--but only at first. Over the next year and a half, she began to weigh her future. On the one hand, there was the omerta--the historic code of silence and mafia honor. On the other were her maternal responsibilities and a possible lifetime prison sentence. "I want to be near my kids," she concluded to a prosecutor. "If I stay in prison, I'll lose them."
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So it was that Giusy became the Cosa Nostra's first female boss pentito--or informer. The "family's" reaction was not, to say the least, very positive. "I've learned that a certain blood relation of mine is collaborating with justice," Leonardo noted at the start of a court hearing on April 19. "Well, we disown her, whether she's living or dead. And we hope it's the latter--and as quickly as possible."
Giusy is not the first woman to turn against Italian mobsters. Nor is she the first high-profile mafiosa: another big crime family, the more modernized Camorra mafia of Naples, has long hired female members and killers and even crime bosses. But the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, more rooted in the conservative southern traditions, has kept women out of decision making. So ingrained is this historical chauvinism, in fact, that some mafia experts--all male, naturally--refuse to believe Giusy's accounts. "There is not a single man who would take orders from a woman," says Francesco La Licata, author of numerous books on the Sicilian mafia. "Cosa Nostra has Islamic rules; it's like Al Qaeda in that sense." La Licata's theory is that Giusy was merely a caretaker for her jailed brother Vito and that she is pumping herself up to get a better deal from the judge.
Perhaps so, but such experts may be slow to recognize changes in the organization. Anna Puglisi, coauthor of the book "Women and the Mafia" and a Cosa Nostra watcher for the last three decades, says that the female presence in the organization is underestimated. Some Palermo prosecutors agree. "She ran the gang and ordered a murder," says Puglisi--"as if all of that doesn't mean being a boss!" Ironically, the success of police and prosecutors in nabbing male members of the Cosa Nostra's upper ranks appears to have opened more opportunities for mob mammas. "The mafia has simply adapted itself to changing times," Puglisi says, even if the changes have taken longer in Sicily than elsewhere. "We are probably going to see more and more bosses in skirts."
As for Giusy, she has entered a witness-protection program, joined by her two teenage sons. She returns to court this week to resume her expose, recounting, among other things, an alleged web of collusion between mobsters and politicians. She's also confessed to various crimes, including the Riina murder. Her testimony has already led to at least eight mafia busts.
Her informing could lead to other crucial breakthroughs. Giusy has spoken of a secret rendezvous with the reputed godfather, Bernardo Provenzano, whom authorities have not seen in 42 years. Along with her brothers, Giusy claims, she drove to the meeting. The godfather came disguised as a local bishop, complete with a chauffeur-driven town car that ensured smooth passage through police checkpoints. But Giusy was not permitted to take part in the actual meeting, she says--because she is a woman. It would be ironic if that were the slight that spurred her, along with motherhood, to turn on the family. In any event, her replacement, a man named Michele Seidita, has been arrested as well. And he, too, has become a pentito.
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