York, in what became known as the "Pizza Connection" case. The trial lasted about 17 months, the longest in the judicial history of the United States, ending on 2 March 1987 with a conviction for Badalamenti and Salvatore Catalano, who were each sentenced to 45 years in prison on 22 June 1987. Only his son Vito was released after being acquitted. Gaetano Badalamenti was also fined $125,000, and since he was extradited from Spain with the provision that he serve no more than 30 years, he was ordered to be released after 30 years should he live that long. Political contacts and murder charge Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled in October 2004 that former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti had "friendly and even direct ties" with top men in the so-called moderate wing of Cosa Nostra, Gaetano Badalamenti and Stefano Bontade, favored by the connection between them and Salvo Lima through the Salvo cousins. According to investigating magistrates Andreotti also commissioned the Mafia to kill the journalist Mino Pecorelli, managing editor of a magazine (OP). The murder took place on 20 March 1979. On 6 April 1993, Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta told Palermo prosecutors that he had learnt from his boss Badalamenti that Pecorelli's murder had been carried out in the interest of Andreotti. The Salvo cousins, two powerful Sicilian politicians with deep ties to local Mafia families, were also involved in the murder. Buscetta testified that Gaetano Badalamenti told him that the murder had been commissioned by the Salvo cousins as a favor to Andreotti. Andreotti was allegedly afraid that Pecorelli was about to publish information that could have destroyed his political career. Among the information was the complete memorial of Aldo Moro, which would be published only in 1990 and which Pecorelli had shown to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa before his death. Dalla Chiesa was also assassinated by Mafia in September 1982. Andreotti was acquitted along with his co-defendants in 1999. Local prosecutors successfully appealed the acquittal and there was a retrial, which in 2002 convicted Andreotti and sentenced him to 24 years imprisonment. Italians of all political allegiances denounced the conviction. Many failed to understand how the court could convict Andreotti of orchestrating the killing, yet acquit his co-accused, who supposedly had carried out his orders by setting up and committing the murder. The Italian supreme court definitively acquitted Andreotti of the murder in