Procopio di Maggio: Mafia boss from blood-soaked era of the 1980s and 1990s celebrates 100th birthday to the outrage of local authorities

Some say crime doesn’t pay, but centenarian mobster Procopio di Maggio, who has celebrated his 100th birthday in style in Sicily, probably isn’t one of them.

The white-haired mafioso, who survived some of the most violent years in the history of the Mafia, lived it up on the big day, greeting locals and shady overseas visitors from the US, to the outrage of local authorities in his home town of Cinisi, near Palermo.

Di Maggio is the last senior Cosa Nostra figure both alive and at liberty from the blood-soaked era of “Toto” Riina in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when rival mobsters, policemen, politicians and even judges were gunned down or blown up in bomb attacks.

Riina, the most notorious Cosa Nostra “boss of bosses”, has languished in a maximum security prison for 22 years. But Di Maggio, although found guilty of lesser charges in the “Maxi-trial” of 1986, escaped 20 charges of murder – and thus the life sentences dished out to his associates.

Small but still spritely, he received a huge cake on 6 January in the shape of “100” and fielded journalists’ questions with the smiling response: “Mafia? What Mafia?”

Video: fireworks proceed dispite ban

Giangiacomo Palazzolo, Cinisi’s mayor, said he was in no doubt, though. “Di Maggio is a mafioso like his son. This business really bothers me. Today, Di Maggio is harmless, but this is a story that bothers me. I will seek to take appropriate action.”

It’s not clear what he can do, however. A temporary fireworks ban was flouted: Di Maggio rubbed the authorities’ noses in it with a spectacular six-minute display outside a villa near the town hall, culminating with an display of fireworks that spelled out the numerals “100”.

Observers said the noisy celebrations amounted to a two-fingered gesture at the authorities. Corrado de Rosa, an author of books on organised crime, said the celebrations were “like a ‘Thank you’ for the work the old godfather did for his men”, adding: “The fireworks were all about arrogance, and said: ‘We care nothing for the state.’”

Despite associations with some of the Mafia’s most vicious killers, Di Maggio is not short of fans. A video of the party posted on Facebook drew hundreds of “likes”. “Another 100 years,” said one comment. That might be ambitious even for Di Maggio. Locals note, however, that he still has seven lives to use up, following bungled assassination attempts in 1983 and 1981.

One who is not a fan, however, is the brother of murdered anti-mob campaigner Peppino Impastato. Di Maggio worked for the Cinisi Mafia boss Tano Badalamenti, who notoriously ordered the murder in 1978 of the left-wing activist. Impastato, born into a Mafia family himself before rebelling, was strapped to a railway line and blown up with TNT.

“I feel great bitterness for what’s happened,” his brother Giovanni Impastato told La Repubblica. “We’re faced with bad things that stop the town moving forward.”

In the early 1980s when the even more vicious breed of Cosa Nostra kingpin led by Riina and Bernardo Provenzano swept into power, Di Maggio switched allegiances to the new rulers – and was rewarded by being given Badalamenti’s old job. Both of his sons entered the family business, but neither fared well. One was murdered and dumped in the sea. The other is serving a 10-year sentence for Mafia association.