[3] Cavataio claimed to have drawn a map of the Palermo Mafia families including the names of all members in an attempt to blackmail his way out of trouble.

[4][5] A Mafia hit squad was composed including Bernardo Provenzano, Calogero Bagarella (an elder brother of Leoluca Bagarella the brother-in-law of Totò Riina), Emanuele D’Agostino and Gaetano Grado of Stefano Bontade’s Santa Maria di Gesù Family, and Damiano Caruso (mafioso), a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina, the Mafia boss of Riesi.

[2][7] At 7:30 p.m., the hit squad dressed in police uniforms carrying 12-gauge shotguns, submachine guns and pistols, entered the office of the Girolamo Moncada construction company in the Viale Lazio – a modern street in the smart new northern area of Palermo.

[4] The shoot-out lasted a few minutes and left five men dead: Cavataio, the mafioso Francesco Tumminello, the accountant Salvatore Bevilacqua, Giovanni Domè, a security guard, as well as Bagarella, one of the attackers.

[9] The attack increased Provenzano’s reputation and his nickname, u’ tratturi (the tractor) because, as one pentito put it, ‘where he passed, the grass no longer grew’.

In hospital, where he was interned for his gunshot wounds, Fillippo started talking about his father’s meetings with notorious mafiosi, and described how Cavataio had gradually become the real boss in Moncada’s firm.

They were released from prison, but their father was placed in custody together with 24 alleged participants in the Viale Lazio massacre who had been rounded up on the evidence given by the two brothers.

The final verdict of the jury at the first trial was that no evidence could be substantiated to prove that any of the 24 defendants had been directly responsible for the Viale Lazio massacre.

In 2007, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano went on trial for their role in the Viale Lazio Massacre that resulted on Cavataio and his men's deaths.