Toto Riina - The Boss of All Bosses

The Boss of All Bosses

The arrest last week of Salvatore Lo Piccolo was a triumph for Italian law enforcement: the second Capo dei Capi, or boss of bosses, of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, to fall in as many years. But each leader — captured or at large — adds to the mystique of the still deadly 150-year old organization.

It continues to lord over life in Sicily, and do business with criminals across the globe. All too often, the symbiosis between Mafia legend and reality only adds to the difficulty in trying to dismantle it. Looking through the biographies of its top bosses, it is important to know the folklore, but to stay focused on the facts that matter. Here are snapshots of some of the Mafia's notorious leaders from the past two decades.

FOLKLORE: The most cinematic moment in his 15-year reign as boss of bosses was a kiss that never happened. A turncoat witness testified that Riina had greeted the former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti with a "kiss of honor" at a meeting in the early 1980s to discuss the outcomes of a major Mafia trial.

UGLY TRUTH: While commanding Cosa Nostra from the mid 1970s to early 1990s, Riina waged a bloody war on both internal rivals, and the Italian state. He also made sure to nurture important political connections in Sicily, though Andreotti is unlikely to have been one of them. The former prime minister has spent years in and out of court battling charges of Mafia links, connections he has consistently denied.

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