In 1987, he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders in the "Pizza Connection", a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984.

[3] His elder brother Emanuele Badalamenti had moved to the United States and operated a supermarket and gas station in Monroe, Michigan.

Badalamenti founded a successful construction business that supplied the crushed rock for Palermo's Punta Raisi Airport which fell within the Cinisi family's sphere of influence.

[9][10] One of the first issue that had to be confronted was an offer of Prince Junio Valerio Borghese who asked for support for his plans for a neofascist coup in return for a pardon of convicted mobsters like Vincenzo Rimi and Luciano Leggio.

After 1975, Badalamenti joined forces with Salvatore Catalano of the Sicilian faction in the Bonanno family in New York and was involved with the "Pizza Connection" case, where the mafia smuggled millions worth of heroin and cocaine to the United States using mafia-owned pizzerias as distribution points.

Di Cristina and Badalamenti wanted to kill Francesco Madonia, the boss of Vallelunga Mafia family and an ally of the Corleonesi in the province of Caltanissetta.

In 1984, again through telephone interceptions, the FBI discovered that Badalamenti had planned a meeting in Madrid with his nephew Pietro "Pete" Alfano, owner of a pizzeria in Oregon, Illinois, and considered him the "main point of contact in the United States" for heroin trafficking.

The trial lasted about 17 months, the longest in the judicial history of the United States,[17] ending on 2 March 1987 with a conviction for Badalamenti and Salvatore Catalano, who were each sentenced to 45 years in prison on 22 June 1987.

[20] Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled in October 2004 that former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti had "friendly and even direct ties" with top men in the moderate wing of Cosa Nostra, Gaetano Badalamenti and Stefano Bontade, favored by the connection between them and Salvo Lima through the Salvo cousins.

According to investigating magistrates Andreotti also commissioned the Mafia to kill the journalist Mino Pecorelli, managing editor of a magazine Osservatorio Politico [it] (OP).

On 6 April 1993, Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta told Palermo prosecutors that he had learnt from his boss Badalamenti that Pecorelli's murder had been carried out in the interest of Andreotti.

The Salvo cousins, two powerful Sicilian politicians with deep ties to local Mafia families, were also involved in the murder.

Among the information was the complete memorial of Aldo Moro, which would be published only in 1990 and which Pecorelli had shown to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa before his death.

[23][24] Many failed to understand how the court could convict Andreotti of orchestrating the killing, yet acquit his co-accused, who supposedly had carried out his orders by setting up and committing the murder.

[26][27] In April 2002, an Italian court convicted Badalamenti of the 1978 murder of activist radio broadcaster Peppino Impastato and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

[6][29] On 29 April 2004, Badalamenti died from heart failure, at the age of 80, at the Devens Federal Medical Center in Ayer, Massachusetts.