Francis Turatello

Francesco Turatello (Asiago, 4 April 1944 – Nuoro, 17 August 1981) was an important Italian crime figure and mob boss who operated during the 1970s and early 1980s mainly in the city of Milan. He was popularly known by his pseudonym Francis Turatello. His nickname was "Faccia d'Angelo" (Angel Face).

Throughout his criminal career, Turatello was known for maintaining strong connections with the Mafia.

Biography

Early career Born in Veneto, Turatello was the son of a maiden seamstress from Asiago in the Province of Vicenza who returned to her hometown during World War II. According to some sources, he is the biological son of Italian-American Frank Coppola, a major drug trafficker with strong ties to the American Mafia. However, this claim is highly likely to be false. In any case, he was Coppola's godson.

Turatello moved with his mother to Milan in his early childhood and settled in the district of Lambrate. He became an amateur boxer in his youth and later made his first appearance in the local Milanese underworld as a petty car thief. Driven by a strong personality and a firm ambition to succeed, he rose up in position and increasingly began taking serious roles, eventually becoming the head of a criminal gang consisting mainly of immigrants from Catania, Sicily.

Mob boss His gang sought to control all the clandestine criminal rackets within the city as well as being the sole controller of prostitution. The gang made billions of lire from these rackets, and also participated in several robberies and kidnappings, with the complicity of the Banda dei Marsigliesi, headed by Albert Bergamelli. Turatello was the boss of all illegal rackets in the Po Valley as far north as Milan and was a close protégé of the Mafia. The reason for such a terrible killing, indicative of a heavy guilt inside the mob environment, is still unknown now.

The murder was probably ordered by Raffaele Cutolo and the death sentence was passed by Carmela Provenzano, the wife of senior NCO figure Pasquale D'Amico, but there are no evidences of that.