The extended family ruled both in Ciaculli and Croceverde Giardini, two south-eastern outskirts of Palermo in the citrus growing area.

[2] Both family groups probably had a common ancestor in Salvatore Greco who was mentioned in the Sangiorgi report at the turn of the 20th century as the capomafia of Ciaculli.

In 1916, they ordered the murder of a priest who had denounced the Mafia's interference in the administration of ecclesiastical revenues and charity funds during a Sunday sermon.

In 1929, a Greco fired twenty bullets into an enemy's great casks of wine and then sat down amid the foaming splinters to smoke his pipe.

The Ciaculli faction reacted a few months later when two of Piddu the lieutenant's men were shot with a lupara, the typical Sicilian short-barrelled shotgun.

When it became clear he was not dead yet, two women of the Ciaculli clan, Antonina (51) and Rosalia (19) the widow and daughter of one of the bosses killed the year before, went down into the street and finished the victim off with kitchen knives.

[5] Piddu the lieutenant asked for mediation from Antonio Cottone, the boss of the Mafia family of Villabate, a town close to Ciaculli and Croceverde.

[5][6][8] Piddu the lieutenant withdrew from active life as a mafioso and settled in a modern house in Palermo, where he consolidated and expanded his friendships among the ‘accepted’ section of society, protecting his younger relations when they got into trouble with the law.

[11] The Grecos were protagonist in the violent conflict about the Palermo fruit and vegetable wholesale market that was moved from the Zisa area to Acquasanta near the port in January 1955, disturbing the delicate power balances within Cosa Nostra.

[12][13] Some villages just outside Palermo, like Bagheria and Villabate, flared up with the same kind of violence for the control of irrigation, transport, and wholesale markets.

They both participated at the Grand Hotel des Palmes Mafia meeting in October 1957 between prominent American and Sicilian mafiosi.

The Sicilians agreed and Tommaso Buscetta, Gaetano Badalamenti and Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco set the ground rules.

The conflict was sparked by a quarrel over an underweight shipment of heroin and the murder of Calcedonio Di Pisa – an ally of the Grecos – in December 1962.

The La Barberas, in contrast, come out of obscurity and their power consists especially in their enterprising ways and their following – a determined band of professional killers.

"[17] On June 30, 1963 a car bomb exploded near Grecos' house in Ciaculli, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call.

Control over the trade fell into the hands of a few fugitives: the Greco cousins, Pietro Davì, Tommaso Buscetta and Gaetano Badalamenti.

[18] Salvatore "The Engineer" and "Ciaschiteddu" Greco were sentenced in absentia to respectively 10 and 4 years in prison at the Trial of the 114 in 1968 that was initiated as the result of the First Mafia War, but as they had been on the run since 1963, they did not serve a day.

[21] Bankers and other notables were invited to wine and dine and take part in hunting parties at Michele Greco's estate La Favarella.

Greco's contempt for Cosa Nostra's leadership was such that he no longer attended the meetings of the Commission, sending his deputy Vincenzo Puccio instead.

Riina was apparently threatened by the way that a significant following of younger mobsters looked up to Greco and saw him as a potential future boss.