He was described by British author Norman Lewis in "The Honoured Society" as "a garish young freebooter, habitually begloved, shirted in a puce silk and with a coat of the palest camel hair – a kind of latter-day George Raft.
[2] Di Pisa was present at a series of meetings in the hotel Delle Palme and the Spanò seafood restaurant between top Italian-American and Sicilian mafiosi in Palermo on 12–16 October 1957.
Joseph Bonanno, Lucky Luciano, John Bonventre, Frank Garofalo, Santo Sorge and Carmine Galante were among the American mafiosi present, while among the Sicilian side were Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco and his cousin Salvatore Greco, known as "l'ingegnere" or "Totò il lungo", Giuseppe Genco Russo, Angelo La Barbera, Gaetano Badalamenti, Totò Minore and Tommaso Buscetta.
The shipment was financed by Cesare Manzella, the Greco cousins from Ciaculli and the La Barbera brothers (Angelo and Salvatore) from Palermo Centre.
[8] Only later did it become clear that Mafia boss Michele Cavataio had killed Di Pisa, according to Tommaso Buscetta after he became a cooperating witness in 1984.