Michele Navarra

Michele Navarra (; 5 January 1905 – 2 August 1958) was an Italian member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was a qualified physician and headed the Corleone Mafia family in Sicily. He was known as (our father).

Early career Navarra was born in the Sicilian town of Corleone in a middle class family; his father was a small landowner, a land surveyor and a teacher at the local agrarian school.

Navarra studied at the University of Palermo, first engineering and later medicine, getting his degree in 1929. He served in the Royal Italian Army until 1942, reaching the rank of captain. He became the boss of Corleone in 1943, succeeding Calogero Lo Bue. By skilful manipulation of the Mafia network of mutual aid and graft, he occupied several key positions in the establishment of Corleone, had powerful political connections and enjoyed a high status. He became the official medical adviser to the Ferrovie dello Stato (Italian State Railways), which was offered to him when, in public competition, he was the only candidate. A new large modern hospital in Corleone stood empty from 1952 to 1958 and was only put into service after the death of Navarra, the director of the old one.

Navarra used his position as director of the hospital to increase his power. In Corleone, people still talk of the blind electors of Navarra: On election day hundreds of men and women were struck blind; they pretended to have lost their sight. He issued certificates to the effect that they were blind or short-sighted and therefore had to be assisted in the act of voting in order to enable Navarra’s men to accompany them into the polling booth and check their ballot.

For a while Navarra sympathized with the Sicilian separatist movement, but he soon joined the Christian Democrat party in 1948. When Leggio murdered the Socialist trade union leader Placido Rizzotto in March 1948, Navarra made sure to dispose of the only witness, Giuseppe Letizia, an 11-year-old shepherd. His father took the shocked boy to the hospital run by Navarra. The boy talked about the murder but died after an injection. Navarra was blamed by the press for killing the boy and thus eliminating a witness.

Conflict with Leggio Meanwhile, his former underling Leggio developed his own rackets, independently from Navarra – transport, smuggling stolen cattle and selling the meat on Palermo’s wholesale market. From 1953–1958 Corleone recorded 153 Mafia-related murders.

Navarra tried to have Leggio killed in June 1958. Leggio was invited by Navarra to meet him at an estate but instead, he found fifteen armed men there. The hitmen hired for the task did a poor job and Leggio escaped with just minor injuries. The event left Leggio and his followers with the knowledge that they were as good as dead if they did not strike back soon.

Leggio thus became the boss of the Corleone Mafia. Among Navarra's suspected murderers were Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore "Totò" Riina. Riina became the leading Mafioso in 1974 after Leggio was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment for his murder. His Corleonesi would continue to take over the Sicilian Mafia in the Second Mafia War in the 1980s.

Navarra was more interested in power than money. He left his widow a few plots of land and part of a house. The Antimafia Commission remarked that “the small size of his estate shows that Navarra has always aimed at power, rather than at money for its own sake … He often spent more than he brought in, both in his medical activities and in his career as Mafioso.”