Convicted Mafia boss and so-called 'Pope' Michele Greco, 83, died on Wednesday of unknown causes in a Rome clinic, where he was admitted several weeks ago.Until he fell ill, Greco was serving several life sentences in Rome's high-security Rebibbia prison. He was dubbed the Mafia 'Pope' for his legendary ability to mediate between feuding Mafia families in the Sicilian city of Palermo. Greco, an ally of jailed Mafia "boss of bosses" Toto Riina, was arrested on February 20, 1986, after four years on the run. He had a copy of the bible by his bedside. Greco was tried on charges of having ordered 78 murders. These included those of the anti-Mafia magistrate Rocco Chinnici and three others a 1983 a car bomb, and the murder of the prefect of Palermo, Gen. Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, on 3 September, 1982.At the end of the trial, on December 16, 1987, Greco, then aged 63, was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an...
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