1993
May 27, Florence
Attack on the Accademia dei Georgofili
Background
In April 1993, Gioacchino Calabrò (head of the Castellammare del Golfo family) tasked Vincenzo Ferro (son of Giuseppe, head of the Alcamo family) to go to Prato to his uncle Antonino Messana, his mother’s brother, to request the use of a garage for some people arriving from Sicily. Initially, Messana refused, but Calabrò, accompanied by Ferro and Giorgio Pizzo (mafioso from Brancaccio), convinced Messana with threats. In mid-May, mafiosi from Brancaccio and Corso dei Mille (Gaspare Spatuzza, Cosimo Lo Nigro, Francesco Giuliano) ground and packed four explosive packages in a run-down house on Corso dei Mille, made available by Antonino Mangano (head of the Roccella family).
On May 23, Giuseppe Barranca, Gaspare Spatuzza, Cosimo Lo Nigro, and Francesco Giuliano went to Prato and were hosted in Messana’s apartment, supervised by Ferro, who accompanied them in his car to central Florence for reconnaissance. In the following days, the four explosive packages hidden in a double bottom of Pietro Carra’s truck (a haulier connected to the Brancaccio mafia circles) were transported to Galciana, a suburb of Prato, where Lo Nigro, Giuliano, and Spatuzza retrieved them, always accompanied by Ferro in his car, and unloaded them in Messana’s garage.
The Attack
On the evening of May 26, Giuliano and Spatuzza stole a Fiat Fiorino van and brought it to the garage, where they prepared the explosive, composed of TNT, inside it. Subsequently, Giuliano and Lo Nigro parked the car bomb in via dei Georgofili. At around 01:04 on May 27, they caused the explosion.
Damage and Victims
The explosion was devastating due to the addition, by non-mafia elements, of T4 explosive to the TNT placed by the mafiosi.
This caused the collapse of the Torre dei Pulci, seat of the Accademia dei Georgofili, where Fabrizio Nencioni, a municipal police inspector, and his wife Angela Fiume, custodian of the Academy, along with their daughters Nadia (nine years old) and Caterina (less than two months old), who lived on the third floor of the Tower, were killed. An adjacent apartment fire also killed a 22-year-old university student, Dario Capolicchio.
The attack also severely damaged some rooms of the Uffizi Gallery and the Vasari Corridor, located near via dei Georgofili: 25% of the artworks were damaged, while the most important masterpieces were protected by glass, which mitigated the impact, but some paintings were severely damaged or almost destroyed.
Investigations and Trials
The investigations reconstructed the execution of the via dei Georgofili massacre based on the statements of collaborators of justice Pietro Carra, Vincenzo and Giuseppe Ferro, Salvatore Grigoli, Antonio Calvaruso, Pietro Romeo, and Vincenzo Sinacori. In 1998, Giuseppe Barranca, Gaspare Spatuzza, Cosimo Lo Nigro, Francesco Giuliano, Giorgio Pizzo, Gioacchino Calabrò, Vincenzo Ferro, Pietro Carra, and Antonino Mangano were recognized as the material perpetrators of the massacre in the 1993 massacre trial.
In 2008, Spatuzza began collaborating with justice and confirmed his responsibility in the via dei Georgofili bombing. Specifically, Spatuzza stated that the massacre was planned during a meeting attended by him, Barranca, and Giuliano with bosses Giuseppe Graviano, Matteo Messina Denaro, and Francesco Tagliavia (head of the Corso dei Mille family), who decided on the target using tourist brochures; Tagliavia also funded the “trip” to Florence to carry out the attack. Following Spatuzza’s statements, in 2011, the Florence Assize Court sentenced Tagliavia to life imprisonment.
Also based on Spatuzza’s statements, in 2012, the Florence Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of fisherman Cosimo D’Amato, cousin of Cosimo Lo Nigro, who was accused of supplying the explosives, extracted from war remnants recovered at sea, used in all the bombings of 1992-1993, including the via dei Georgofili massacre. In 2013, D’Amato was sentenced to life imprisonment in an expedited trial by the preliminary judge of Florence; the sentence was confirmed on appeal in 2014 and, two years later, by the Court of Cassation; in 2015, D’Amato himself began collaborating with justice and confirmed his involvement in the supply of explosives.
Also in 2013, the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the via dei Georgofili Massacre, chaired by Giovanna Maggiani Chelli, was admitted as a civil party to the State-mafia negotiations trial and was represented by Danilo Ammannato as its lawyer.
On May 20, 2016, from some excerpts of the motivations deposited by the second Court of Appeal of Florence in the trial against Tagliavia, it emerged that “The State – initiated negotiations with Cosa Nostra,” which “undoubtedly happened and was initially based on a do ut des” to stop the Cosa Nostra massacre strategy. And “the initiative – specify – was taken by representatives of the State and not by mafia men.”