 In 1976 Cancemi was sent to jail for stealing a load of meat from a butcher who had refused to pay the "pizzo" – protection money.In prison Tommaso Buscetta took care of the freshly initiated Cancemi.Twenty years later, when Cancemi was reunited with Buscetta during a trial in 1993; he confessed that he had strangled two of Buscetta's sons in 1982, on the orders of Totò Riina.