(3 of 9)
The case broke in April, when Spanish authorities, who had been tipped off by the Americans, arrested Alfano, Badalamenti and his son in Madrid. A day later, federal authorities in New York released an indictment charging the three and 28 others with conspiracy to violate drug laws. Within a month, the number under U.S. indictment had grown to 38. According to federal officials, the members of what was quickly dubbed the "pizza connection" had smuggled some 1,650 Ibs. of heroin, with an estimated street value of $1.65 billion, into the U.S during the past five years. The arrests, particularly those in the Midwest, shocked neighbors. Mary Moss, who owns the grain elevator across the street from Giuseppe Vitale's pizzeria in Paris, Ill., spoke well of his product. "He makes a marvelous pizza," she said. "He uses real bacon, not bacon bits."
Even before the discovery of the pizza connection, Italian authorities had been seeking Buscetta, a native of Palermo and an ally of the Badalamenti organization, who had fled Italy in 1970 and gone to New York, where he acquired a second wife, a new daughter and new pizzerias. He also owned property in Brazil, where he was arrested in 1972 when police found 60 kilos (132 Ibs.) of heroin on his farm. Extradited to Italy, Buscetta spent eight years in various jails, living well and even giving away his daughter in a marriage held within the prison's walls. He did not, however, serve out his sentence. Transferred to Turin in 1976, Buscetta behaved so well that an apparently sympathetic judge allowed him to go out by day to work at his old family trade of cutting glass. One night in 1980 he failed to return from his glass-cutting activities. Instead, he went back to Brazil and to a wife, his third, who was so beautiful, according to one Italian judge, that he underwent plastic surgery so that he would remain attractive to her.
In 1982, say Italian authorities, Buscetta slipped back into Palermo with a false passport. The reason for his return: to help his gang and its allies regain the control that had been wrested from it by Luciano Liggio, a tough crime boss from Corleone, one of the traditional Mafia strongholds in western Sicily.
Not even Buscetta's family was immune from the bloodletting. One day, gunmen burst into Buscetta's Palermo pizzeria and shot and killed his son-in-law. A day later, armed men cut down three of his lieutenants. Before long, Buscetta's brother and nephew were dead and Buscetta's two sons had disappeared. They are presumed dead.
Understandably shaken, Buscetta fled back to Brazil, though not to the obscurity he sought. In October 1983, Brazilian authorities picked him up on an Italian warrant and made plans to extradite him to Italy. Fearing what awaited him, the hunted boss of two worlds unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide by taking strychnine. Facing a probable prison sentence and Mafia vengeance, he decided to talk.