Giuseppe Genco Russo (26 January 1893 – 18 March 1976) was an Italian mafioso, the boss of Mussomeli in the Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily. Genco Russo, also known as "Zi Peppi Jencu", was an uncouth, sly, semi-literate thug with excellent political connections. A vulgar man – he used to spit on the floor no matter who was present – he was often photographed with bishops, bankers, civil servants and politicians. As such he was considered to be the arbiter of Mafia politics, and was regarded as the successor of Calogero Vizzini, who had died in 1954. Although by then a wealthy landowner and politician (as a member of Democrazia Cristiana) he still kept his mule in the house and the toilet outside, which was little more than a hole in the ground with a stone for a seat and no walls or door, according to Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta. Traditional mafiosi, like Genco Russo and Calogero Vizzini, Mafia bosses in the years between the two world wars until the 1950s and 1960s, were the archetypes of the "man of honour" of a bygone age, as a social intermediary and a man standing for order and peace. Although they used violence to establish their position in the first phase of their careers, in the second stage they limited recourse to violence, turned to primarily legal sources of gain, and exercised their power in an open and legitimate fashion and became "[men] of order". Early years Genco Russo was born on 26 January 1893 in Mussomeli, Sicily, of very humble origin. His father was a simple peasant. At one time he was just a beggar, a fellow-villager said about him. In his youth he was forced to work as a goatherd on the large Polizzello estate owned by the noble Lanza Branciforti family. He started his criminal career as a juvenile highway robber, rustling cattle and sheep. Through a career of violence stretching from the 1920s to the 1940s, he established his position as a mafioso, a so-called "man of honour." From 1918–1922 Genco Russo served in the military, leaving a record of "rebellious behaviour and impatience to discipline." In a 1927 report by the police chief of Caltanissetta, he was described as "a mafioso that acquired a respectable financial position out of nothing" and on the countryside people feared him. In 1929 he married with a local girl and four years