He had returned to Padula in March 1909 that would have been fatal to him. A few days before reaching his main destination, Palermo, where the mafia was already warned and ready to kill him.

 

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From the city of the Certosa where he was born, Joe Petrosino had been missing for thirty-six years, that is, since, at the age of thirteen, he had had to leave his house to emigrate with his family to America. And he never went back until that spring, when the investigation into the links between the American and Sicilian mafia had brought him back to Italy. A short stop in Padula, to see his country, his birthplace again. Remained the same as they left it many years before. And as can still be seen today, because the Petrosino house has become a museum. With the original furnishings from the second half of the nineteenth century and all the details, even the table set for lunch. As if time had stopped.

Padula's homage to his illustrious fellow citizen is also the only museum in Italy dedicated to a policeman. And, on the upper floor, there is also a multimedia museum on anti-mafia, starting from Petrosino's investigative activity to the figures of the protagonists of the fight against the mafias of today.