He used his excellent connections to secure the location Eletronica Siciliana (ELSI), a subsidiary of the huge US defence contractor Raytheon, in his district in 1962. The Italian manager of the factory later testified to the parliament’s Antimafia Commission about why he had to deal with the Mafia boss: “Paolo Bonta is useful to me, he provides me with the water I need, he gives me the land to expand the factory and I depend on him for workers to run the factory.” He had first noted the muscle of Bontade when during a meeting in the factory where all the highest regional and local authorities were present, the door opened and a short, fat man walked in. Everyone immediately turned to the new arrival to embrace him. “At that moment, I understood what the word ‘mafia’ meant,” he later recalled. Banishment and resignation In the aftermath of the First Mafia War in 1962-63 and the Ciaculli Massacre that prompted the first concerted Antimafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy, Bontade was among the many that received an internal banishment in Italy to dislodge Mafiosi from their home towns. Around 1964, Don Paolino Bontade, stepped down as head of the Mafia family because of ill health; he suffered from diabetes. His son Stefano Bontade succeeded him as the boss of the Mafia family. In December 1968, he was absolved in the Trial of the 114. He died on February 25, 1974, after he spent six months as a bedridden patient in a hospital in Messina. References Caruso, Alfio (2000). Da cosa nasce cosa. Storia della mafia del 1943 a oggi, Milan: Longanesi Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet, Lupo, Salvatore (2009). History of the Mafia, New York: Columbia University Press, Paoli, Letizia (2003). Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style, New York: Oxford University Press Seindal, René (1998). Mafia: Money and Politics in Sicily, 1950-1997, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press Stille, Alexander (1995). Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage 1939 births 1964 deaths Sicilian mafiosi