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A crime that horrified the whole of Italy in the 90s and then became the subject of a movie returns today with the new arrest, after more than 20 years, of Giuseppe Costa, a mobster who was involved in this case and who complied 10 years in prison.
Giuseppe Di Matteo, a 12-year-old boy, was kidnapped in November 1993. The boy was held hostage for 26 months, after which he was killed and dissolved in acid. The boy was the victim of a revenge against his father, Santino Di Matteo, who had been part of the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra, but who later withdrew and collaborated with the police.
Giuseppe Costa was part of a mafia commando that kidnapped the boy. The boy was held hostage in a makeshift cell at Costa’s home in Trapani province. Giuseppe Costa was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for 10 years, until 2007, for his participation in this crime.
Italian anti-mafia police, DIA, announced on Friday that Giuseppe Costa had been arrested again, because after his release, he resumed ties with mafia groups in Trapani. He is now accused of belonging to an organized criminal group, and can be sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in prison, writes Agerpres.
The story of the kidnapping of Santino Di Matteo’s son was the subject of books and a movie, Sicilian ghost story, released in 2017 at the Cannes Film Festival.
Who is Santino Di Matteo, the mobster punished by Cosa Nostra
Santino Di Matteo, 66, was known as Mezzanasca when he was part of the Sicilian mafia. He lived in Altofonte, in the province of Palermo. He participated in the murder of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, near Capaci.
After his arrest on June 4, 1993, he became the first of Falcone’s killers to agree to be a government witness (pentito, “repentant”). He revealed the details of this murder: who dug the tunnel under the road, who made the explosive, how it was shipped with a skateboard, and who pressed the button.
As revenge for becoming a police informant, the Sicilian mafia kidnapped her 12-year-old son a few months later, on December 23, 1993, on the orders of Giovanni Brusca and Leoluca Bagarella, two famous leaders of Cosa Nostra.
The mobsters dressed up as policemen and said they came to pick up the boy to take him to see his father, who at the time was under police protection in mainland Italy.
In a desperate attempt, Santino Di Matteo went to Sicily to negotiate the release of his son, but on January 11, 1996, after 779 days in detention, the boy, who had meanwhile fallen ill from the way he had been treated, he was strangled and his body was dissolved in a barrel of acid, a specific practice of the mafia. The perpetrators were Enzo Brusca, Giovanni Brusca’s brother, Vincenzo Chiodo and Salvatore Monticciolo. Everything was done at the behest of Giovanni Brusca.
