Excellent Cadavers: Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic

Excellent Cadavers - a term used in Sicily to distinguish the assassination of prominent government officials from the hundreds of common criminals killed in the course of routine mafia business - tells of the remarkable investigation spearheaded by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two Sicilian prosecutors who in the 1980s took the war against the Mafia further than anyone had ever dared. They succeeded in penetrating the Mafia’s code of silence and revealed for the first time the structure and extent of the Mafia’s powers. But dramatic as Falcone’s and Borsellino’s success was, it was followed by the Italian government’s even more dramatic effort to unravel what they had achieved and to impede further investigation. In 1992, aware that the two magistrates were without the complete support of the Italian government, the Mafia assassinated them. In death they were hailed as national heroes; massive public outcry demanded their investigations be completed. The outcome - the toppling of crucial alliances that had forged political rule in Italy since World War II and the criminal indictment of Italy’s most prominent leaders.