Gaia Servadio, an English/Italian journalist who wrote a biography on Angelo La Barbera, described him as the symbol of the quick, clever gangster – the new post-war mafioso who in the end became the victim of the many politicians he himself had built.

They started with petty larceny and murder and raised themselves to become prominent leaders of a new generation of mafiosi in the 1950s and 1960s who made their fortune in real estate transactions, cigarette smuggling and heroin trafficking.

Still in his thirties, Angelo la Barbera began acting like a man of affairs, acquiring bulldozers, trucks and other construction equipment as well as apartment buildings.

Generous and charming, he assumed the lifestyle of a Chicago gangster of the 1930s, with new cars, luxurious clothes and frequent visits to Milan and Rome, where he stayed in the best hotels, surrounded by beautiful women.

Men who were starting their ‘careers’ in their shadow were forming into new generation of mafiosi; they had initiative, and the road to the leadership of a cosca had suddenly become quicker and available to those who were fast with their tommy-guns.

[3] The new generation of mafiosi like La Barbera needed to create a new political base of their own, pushing forward new politicians through which they could influence control over regional corporations, and credit banks and circumvent building regulations.

Angelo La Barbera had connections with local politicians of the Christian Democrat party (DC - Democrazia Cristiana) – in particular with Salvo Lima, the mayor of Palermo from 1958-1963.

Joseph Bonanno, Lucky Luciano, John Bonventre, Frank Garofalo, Santo Sorge and Carmine Galante were among the American mafiosi present, while among the Sicilian side there were Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco and his cousin Salvatore Greco "The Engineer", Giuseppe Genco Russo, Gaetano Badalamenti, Calcedonio Di Pisa and Tommaso Buscetta.

[8][9] In 1960 Angelo La Barbera was spotted in Mexico City and subsequently expelled from the United States and Canada for allegedly organising trafficking in heroin.

The Commission decided in Moncada’s favour and ordered Angelo La Barbera to give up the leadership of the Palermo Centro family—which he refused to do.

Angelo La Barbera also disappeared, but two weeks later he reappeared in Milan, in the north of Italy, giving a press conference.

[15] Buscetta admits to having accepted a contract to kill Angelo La Barbera but claims that someone else carried out the shooting in Milan before he could.

[16] On 30 June 1963, a car bomb in Ciaculli killed seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call.

[19] In May 1970, a government decree established that defendants whose sentences had not yet become final after they had been held without bail for four to six years had to be released provisionally pending their appeals.