The murder of the “traitor” Angelo Castronovo, Enrico Rallo’s “cousin” arrested

Breakthrough in the investigation into the murder of Angelo Castronovo, the agricultural worker killed on 31 October 2022 in the Cipolla district between Palma di Montechiaro and Licata. The Agrigento carabinieri arrested Giuseppe Rallo, from Palma di Montechiaro, believed to be the farmer’s killer. The crime is part of the so-called “Palma di Montechiaro Feud”, a real war between two families – Rallo and Azzarello – triggered by the theft of a van. Giuseppe Rallo is the cousin of Enrico Rallo, the first victim of the feud, killed in 2015 with three gunshots in front of the Mazza bar in Palma di Montechiaro. It was Giuseppe Rallo himself, present that evening, who transported his cousin to the hospital in Licata and he was also the last to speak to the relative who would later die.

The figure of Angelo Castronovo fits right between the murder of Enrico Rallo and that of Salvatore Azzarello, killed in August 2017 in the countryside of the Burraiti district. According to investigators, Castronovo was central to both crimes: he was the one who provided essential information in both murders. Enrico Rallo, on the evening of the ambush, had an appointment with Angelo Castronovo. The same man, almost two years later, would reveal to Ignazio Rallo, Enrico’s brother, the whereabouts of Salvatore Azzarello. For this latest murder Ignazio Rallo was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Castronovo was known in the town as an arms trafficker who easily, with the help of some of his trusted collaborators, managed to import from abroad. In 1991 he miraculously saved himself in what is known as the “New Year’s Eve massacre”, which took place inside the “Bar2000” as part of the war between Cosa Nostra and Stidda. He has been arrested twice for weapons in the last three years but, above all, for the investigators he is the one who provided essential information to carry out the two crimes. The investigating judge, applying the precautionary measure to him in prison, wrote of him: “He is the key figure, the constant of the two events in which the ground is Janus Bifronte, friend of one against the other but, if necessary, friend of the other against the first.”