[1] He is widely considered to have been responsible for the 1909 murder of Joseph Petrosino, head of the New York City police department's Italian Squad.

Although many sources have identified Cascio Ferro as a native of the rural town of Bisacquino, where he was raised, he was actually born in the city of Palermo, on 22 January 1862.

[3] The family moved to Bisacquino when his father became a campiere (an armed guard) with the local landlord, Baron Antonino Inglese, a notorious usurper of state-owned land.

[2][4][5] According to other sources, at an early age, the family moved to Sambuca Zabut, where he lived for approximately 24 years before relocating to Bisacquino, his recognized power base in the Mafia.

[8] His criminal record began with an assault in 1884 and progressed through extortion, arson, and menacing, and eventually to the kidnapping of the 19-year-old Baroness Clorinda Peritelli di Valpetrosa in June 1898,[9] for which he received a three-year sentence.

[2][4][5] After serving his sentence for his role in the peasant unrest, Cascio Ferro returned to a position of social power and pressured authorities in Palermo to put him in charge of granting emigration permits in the district of Corleone.

To escape special police surveillance in Sicily, he sailed to the United States and arrived in New York City at the end of September 1901.

He was the capo elettore (ward heeler) of Domenico De Michele Ferrantelli, the mayor of Burgio and member of Parliament for the district of Bivona, as well as on good terms with the Baron Inglese.

[4] He exercised influence over several Mafia cosche (clans) in the towns of Bisacquino, Burgio, Campofiorito, Chiusa Sclafani, Contessa Entellina, Corleone, and Villafranca Sicula, as well as some districts in the city of Palermo.

The Mafia leader who scatters corpses all over the island in order to achieve his goal is considered as inept as the statesman who has to wage aggressive wars.

When he started a journey, every major, dressed in his best clothes, awaited him at the entrance of his village, kissed his hands, and paid homage, as if he were a king.

[1] Cascio Ferro is considered to be the mastermind behind the murder of New York policeman and head of the Italian Squad, Joseph Petrosino, on 12 March 1909.

Petrosino had gone to Sicily to gather information from local police files to help deport Italian gangsters from New York as illegal immigrants.

Legend has it that Cascio Ferro excused himself from a dinner party among the high society at the home of his political patron De Michele Ferrantelli, took a carriage (that of his host according to some), and drove to Piazza Marina in Palermo's city centre.

"[20] A report by Baldassare Ceola, the police commissioner of Palermo, concluded that the crime had probably been carried out by Mafiosi Carlo Costantino and Antonino Passananti under Cascio Ferro's direction.

[16][22] In 2014, more than a century after the assassination, the Italian police overheard a tapped phone conversation in which a sibling claimed that Paolo Palazzotto had been the killer on the orders of Cascio Ferro.

[23][24][25] In a recorded conversation during an (unrelated) investigation by Italian police the suspected Mafia boss, Domenico Palazzotto, told other mafiosi that his great-uncle had killed Petrosino on behalf of Cascio Ferro.

[10] In May 1926, Prefect Cesare Mori, under orders from Fascist leader Benito Mussolini to destroy the Mafia, arrested Cascio Ferro in a big round-up in the area that included Corleone and Bisacquino.

According to Petacco, Cascio Ferro was left behind in his cell by prison guards while other inmates were evacuated in advance of the Allied invasion of Sicily.

[31] For years, a sentence believed to be carved by Cascio Ferro was legible on the wall of his Ucciardone cell: "Prison, sickness, and necessity, reveal the real heart of a man."