FRONTLINE/WORLD TELLS THE INSIDE STORY OF AN ANTI-MAFIA MOVEMENT IN ITALY

Near the start of this episode of the PBS international newsmagazine FRONTLINE/World, Vincenzo Conticello, a restaurant owner in Palermo, Sicily, describes his first run-in with the Mafia: “A man I had never seen before asked to meet with me and said: ‘I’m your tax collector. ... Pay me $800 a month, and you’ll have no more problems.’” Conticello continues: “I looked at him. I felt an intense fear. Still to this day, when I think about it, my heart drops. I lost my breath. The Mafia was right there in front of me.” The surprising tale of what happened next to Conticello would open a new chapter in the region’s long history of Mafia dominance and provide the dramatic spine of a story that would resonate through Italy. “I realized that it wasn't just my personal battle,” Conticello tells FRONTLINE/World. “It was the battle of an entire city.”

In Taking on the Mafia, airing Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009, at 9:00 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE/World producer and reporter Carola Mamberto tells the inside story of how the restaurant owner—backed by an upstart anti-Mafia movement of young people and an elite anti-Mafia law enforcement team—combined for a rare victory in the nation’s uphill battle against mob bosses who have kept the country in their grip for decades.

“The Mafia feeds itself as if it were Dracula, this vampire that bites into people and sucks the economy,” says Lirio Abbate, whose controversial recent exposé on the Mafia led to an attempt on his life. “Shop owners and businessmen are scared, and so they pay and don’t report it. Some are so terrified that they’ll deny it in court, even if they are caught on film.”

To catch mafiosi in the act and to persuade their extortion victims to cooperate, the police have undertaken an extensive surveillance effort. In the case of Conticello’s restaurant, the police cameras rolled as one mobster after another entered the restaurant to get him to pay the extortion which locals call “the pizzo.” “In Palermo, 80 percent of businesses pay the pizzo,” one of Sicily’s top anti-Mafia cops, Jacopo Mannucci, tells FRONTLINE/World. “Even market stands pay protection. They pay $80 to $150. For larger companies, the payments can be thousands of dollars, up to $15,000 per month.”

Paying the pizzo to the Mafia has been a pillar of Mafia power for decades, but after a series of high-profile Mafia murders in Palermo, an anti-Mafia spirit began to grow among the city’s next generation, among them two young people considering opening a pub who instead started a protest movement after they realized they’d be forced to give a larger part of their profits to the mob. “Why [did we decide] to focus on the pizzo rather than drugs, weapons or other shady deals?” Laura Nocilla and Raffaele Genova, the founders of the Goodbye Pizzo movement, tell FRONTLINE/World. “Because we immediately realized that it was the tool for the Mafia to create a culture that accepts their control of the territory. If you take that away, everything else the Mafia does will collapse.”

Ultimately in this story, members of the Goodbye Pizzo movement—young people, shop owners and even some members of the Palermo establishment—pack a Palermo courtroom as the restaurant owner Conticello faces his moment of truth and points a finger at one of the men who had tried to shake him down, leading to some rare Mafia prosecutions. “What I have made is a small opening, a small hole,” Conticello says. “We have to hammer every day so that it becomes bigger, and we can advance in this ongoing war.”

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Underworld Histories 2: Chicago

IF YOU were an underworld mobster would you really like the nickname "The Clown", or "The German" – or what about "Mad Sam"?

Then there's "Joe Batters" – sounds like someone who works at a fish and chip shop, doesn't it?

But they are all real-life and real scary members of Chicago's underworld: Joey "The Clown" Lombardo (also known as Lumpy), Frank "The German" Schweihs and Samuele "Mad Sam" DeStefano.

Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo (also known as Big Tuna) was the chief executive of the Chicago Outfit, that city's notorious crime gang founded by none other than Al Capone. According to this doco, Accardo earned the Joe Batters moniker because of "his talent of breaking skulls with a baseball bat".

Underworld Histories 2: Chicago is littered with such marvellously rich quotes which could be discarded as the stuff of comic book gratuitousness if it weren't recorded fact.

Like this quote from a former mob member about an associate who was being tortured with an ice pick: "Billy wouldn't come up with anything, so finally they stuck his head in a vice and they started tightening until . . ."

(OK, look away now, or up to the ceiling, like the camera does in Reservoir Dogs when they're ripping that guy's ear off, because I'm about to give you the end of this quote and it's a bit squeamy. So skip to the next paragraph if you need.)

". . . until his eyeball popped out. Then they cut his throat."

Eeee-yuk. Horrible, horrible stuff . . . but you just have to watch it somehow – like a train wreck. Or like when I saw Huey Lewis from the '80s band Huey Lewis And The News playing the part of celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago on Broadway a few years back.

He was awful . . . eye-poppingly awful. It was a wonder a Chicago mobster on vacation in New York didn't open his violin case and rat-a-tat-tat him right there on stage. But back to America's "second city".

Underworld Histories 2: Chicago details the rise and fall of the Outfit from the Prohibition days of the 1920s through to the wild and wicked '60s and '70s and touches on how the city now copes with its bloody heritage, saying law enforcement agencies now have the upper hand on mobsters.

"For the people of Chicago," the narrator (who's Rory O'Shea, by the way, but who really sounds like he's channelling Phil Hartman's Simpsons character Troy McClure) says, "organised crime is the history and the foundation of the city."

The underworld of Chicago was just that. The city is located on the banks of Lake Michigan and in the mid 19th century much of it was built on stilts to avoid flooding. The bullets and bashings went on in the gloomy shadows around those stilts. But there were a few light moments in the history of the Outfit – the classic being Mad Sam DeStefano.

There's some great footage of him arriving for a pre-trial in the mid-1960s.

He's carried into court on a stretcher and he's rambling incoherently through a bullhorn to the crowds outside.

It looks like a scene from Get Smart. But once again, there is a seriousness behind all this.

DeStefano was convicted of rape and sentenced to three years' imprisonment when he was just 18. He was known as Mad Sam for his sadistic torture methods and the way he'd froth at the mouth and laugh uncontrollably when being interviewed by police.

Considered by some to be a devil worshipper, he also built his own sound-proof torture chamber in his basement.

If ever Heath Ledger had needed an archetype for The Joker, then this was the guy.

Actually, come to think of it, Huey Lewis doesn't look too horrendous against these mobsters. Now that's scary.

Thanks to Geoff Shearer

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$5,000 Reward Offered for Capture of Chicago Gangster

Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is asking for the public's help in locating GILBERTO VARGAS, age 31, whose last known address was 6134 North Kedzie in Chicago. VARGAS has been the subject of a nationwide manhunt, coordinated by Chicago FBI's Joint Task Force on Gangs (JTFG), since October of 2008 when he was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago with violation of federal drug laws.

VARGAS is alleged to be a member of the Spanish Cobras street gang and is believed responsible for overseeing the distribution of crack cocaine at various locations throughout the City of Chicago. VARGAS was among 30 suspected gang members and associates who were charged in October of 2008 as the result of an investigation code named "Operation Snake Charmer". VARGAS is one of only two defendants from this investigation, who is still at large.

VARGAS is described as a Hispanic/male, 31 years of age, 6'2" tall, medium build, weighing approximately 180 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes and slight facial hair. He is also known to use the street name of "Twin" as he has a twin brother with the same name, Gilberto Vargas. VARGAS has the letters "MOB" tattooed on his left arm and the phrase "Trust no nigga, Love no bitch" tattooed on his stomach.

In appealing to the public for help in locating VARGAS, Mr. Grant announced that a reward of up to $5,000 is being offered for information leading to his location and arrest. Anyone recognizing VARGAS or having any information as to his current whereabouts is asked to call the Chicago FBI at (312) 421-6700.

VARGAS has an extensive criminal record, including charges for crimes of violence, and as such should be considered "Armed and Dangerous".

The Chicago FBI's Joint Task Force on Gangs is comprised of FBI Special Agents and Detectives from the CPD, Gang Crimes Unit.

The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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