Recently the channel Rai Storia proposed an interview between Enzo Biagi and Luciano Liggio. It was 1989 and the boss appeared clean shaved and smiling, ready to answer in a defiant way the questions he was asked. Even his Italian, seasoned with some dialect, sounded correct.

He also corrected the pronunciation of his surname: Leggio and not Liggio, that had become his pseudonym because everyone called him that way. When he was asked if he was a Mafioso, he answered mentioning “Petrè”, in his cultural background, a pseudonym of Pitrè. According to the great Sicilian ethnologist – he remembered with a university tone – the word Mafia expresses a sense of beauty. That is why you say of a beautiful girl or a nice horse “picciotta mafiusa” and “cavaddu mafiusu”. He then ended the interview saying that he did not consider himself a mafioso because he still had not reached “spiritual beauty” typical of the mafia. His judgement was crystal clear: he knew Navarra, his predecessor in the Corleonesi reign, and he had a good opinion of him. He also met Riina, his cell mate in prison: “a good man”.

But the interview reached its apex when Liggio talked about the judge Terranova. “A paranoid” who hammered away at him and against whom he did not feel resentment but just “pity”. Therefore he considered some judges like “psychopaths” and he thought that, before becoming judges, they should undergo special tests. Others, several years later, have a very similar idea. Liggio had seized that “truth” long before. What a long view…. Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute