Francesco Paolo Varsallona

Who is Francesco Paolo Varsallona?

Francesco Paolo Varsallona or Varsalona was a Sicilian bandit who operated on the island around the turn of the 20th century. He is considered to be the last great bandit of the pre-fascist era. He hailed from Castronovo and was the son of a bandit that had belonged to the notorious band of Angelo Pugliese, better known as "Don Peppino il Lombardo", credited with introducing kidnapping people for money in Sicily.

Varsallona became an outlaw in 1893 after he killed a witness in the trial about his brother Luigi Varsallona's murder. His brother, a bandit as well, had been killed in 1892 over a dispute about the booty of his band’s actions. The witness did his best to provide the defendants with an alibi. Varsallona took justice in its own hands and in an act of vendetta killed the witness.

He became a fugitive and his hide-out was in the Cammarata mountains. He assembled a band of fellow fugitives which became involved in robberies and cattle rustling roaming the province of Caltanisetta and the neighbouring areas of the provinces of Palermo and Agrigento.

He soon acquired an aureole of popularity to challenge the law and its agents, according to the New York Times. From his hide-out in the mountains, he “dominated great territories, imposing ransoms which were regularly paid, administering justice according to their own ideas, and living quite secure, as the shepherds and peasants – partly through fear, and partly from satisfaction in that open rebellion against what is the personification of that Government which they have hated for centuries – never let them lack ammunition or food and carefully informed them of every move of the police by signals.”