On this day in 1942 the Sicilian mobster known as the Baron was born in Palermo. Salvatore Lo Piccolo was a notable mobster throughout the 1980’s operating various cocaine trafficking projects, business extortion, and real estate schemes.

On November 5, 2007, Lo Piccolo was arrested in a villa in Giardinello. At his hideout, the Mafia Ten Commandments were found.

On this day in 1942, Salvatore Lo Piccolo was born in Palermo, Sicily, entering a world that would eventually draw him deep into the brutal and unforgiving ranks of Cosa Nostra. Known by the regal nickname "the Baron," Lo Piccolo would rise through the decades to become one of the most powerful and feared Mafia bosses in Sicily, commanding respect and terror in equal measure across the island's criminal underworld.

Lo Piccolo's ascent through the Sicilian Mafia gathered serious momentum during the 1980s, a period of extraordinary violence and ambition within Cosa Nostra. While the organisation was embroiled in the devastating Second Mafia War and later grappling with the consequences of the Maxi Trial — the landmark prosecution orchestrated by magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino — Lo Piccolo quietly consolidated his power base in the Palermo mandamento of San Lorenzo. His criminal portfolio was broad and ruthlessly efficient, encompassing cocaine trafficking operations, systematic extortion of local businesses, and sophisticated real estate schemes that helped launder the proceeds of his illicit empire.

His influence extended well beyond the streets of Palermo. Lo Piccolo maintained significant transatlantic connections, with investigators linking his network to Mafia operations in the United States, echoing the long-established bonds between the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the American La Cosa Nostra that had been forged in the era of Lucky Luciano's landmark 1957 Palermo summit at the Grand Hotel et Des Palmes. Those historic ties between the Old World and the New had never truly faded, and Lo Piccolo understood their value implicitly.

Following the arrest and imprisonment of the fearsome Bernardo Provenzano in 2006, Lo Piccolo was widely regarded as one of the principal candidates to assume leadership of the entire Sicilian Mafia. His ambitions, however, were dramatically curtailed on 5th November 2007, when law enforcement officers swooped on a villa in the small town of Giardinello, near Palermo, capturing Lo Piccolo alongside his son Sandro and two other senior members of the organisation. The raid yielded a remarkable discovery — a handwritten document outlining the so-called Mafia Ten Commandments, a code of conduct governing the behaviour and obligations of Cosa Nostra members, offering investigators a rare and extraordinary glimpse into the internal rules of the secretive brotherhood.

Lo Piccolo's capture was celebrated as one of Italy's most significant anti-Mafia victories in years, a testament to the enduring dedication of those fighting to dismantle an organisation that has cast its shadow over Sicily for well over a century.