#partanna

In the meantime, Rita grew up and started a relationship with Calogero Cascio, a small extortionist affiliated with the Cannata family (rival to the Atrias), becoming his confidante.

In 1991, another tragedy struck Rita’s life when Nicola was killed before his wife’s and his three-year-old daughter’s eyes on June 24. Despite being the wife of a Mafioso, the now widowed Piera was a different breed. This woman, who had thought about joining the police and had told her husband she would have even arrested him if he had kept pursuing his criminal life (resulting in Nicola hitting her), thought about making the killers pay, but she chose the legal way.

Piera was put in contact with the then Chief Prosecutor in Marsala, Judge Paolo Borsellino, and started to talk. She became a witness and, for her security, she was transferred to Rome together with her child, where they took on new identities.

Now alone, Rita was shunned by her fellow townspeople. She was the sister-in-law of a snitch ("infame"), a traitor. Her boyfriend dumped her, and even her mother accused Piera of tarnishing their family’s honor by "ratting everything to the police" instead of keeping quiet as she should have done.

After a couple of months, Rita chose to follow Piera’s example and she too secretly met Borsellino in Marsala. The girl began to reveal the information her brother had related to her all those years. From here began a close collaboration between the judge and the girl, and soon Paolo Borsellino became a father figure to Rita, someone she could wholeheartedly trust. On the other hand, Borsellino understood how, despite being a child of the Mafia, this "picciridda" (lit. little girl), as he called her, was a pure soul who only needed to get rid of the negative effects of her Mafia upbringing. Between her and Piera’s confessions, the authorities managed to arrest a dozen Mafiosi.

As it was expected, just like she had done with her daughter-in-law, Mamma Giovanna turned against her traitorous daughter. Like Piera, Rita too was spirited away to Rome where she assumed a new identity and was forced to constantly change living quarters.

In Rome, Rita and Piera were often visited by Borsellino, who gave them wise counsel and even helped them economically since the pocket money they received as witnesses was indeed a small sum. Despite the restrictions, her time in Rome was perhaps one of the happiest moments in her life. Thanks to Piera and their "Uncle Paolo," Rita began to heal, but everything ended on July 19, 1992. That day, Borsellino was killed by the Mafia together with five members of his escort in a horrible terrorist attack known as "Strage di Via d’Amelio."

Rita was devastated. Her guardian angel, her "Uncle Paolo," was dead. Who could protect her now? In her diary she wrote: "Now that Borsellino is dead, nobody can understand what gap he has left in my life. Everyone is scared, but the only thing I am scared of is that the Mafia state will win and those poor fools who tilt at windmills will be killed. Before fighting the Mafia, you need to examine your conscience. Then, after defeating the Mafia you have in yourself, you can fight the Mafia in your friends’ group. WE are the Mafia; it’s our wrong way to behave. Borsellino, you died for what you believed, but I am dead without you."

On the morning of July 26, merely a week after Borsellino’s death, Rita killed herself by jumping from her apartment situated on the 7th floor in Viale Amelia no. 23, Rome. She was 17.

Her funerals took place in Partanna, but no townspeople took part, not even her mother. A couple of days after, Mamma Giovanna even destroyed with a pickaxe the tombstone of her shameful daughter.

Despite the hatred she suffered from her own people, Rita’s tragic life and death has inspired many people from all around Italy, and every July 26, her resting place is visited by many who come to honor her existence.