Giovanni Brusca - Ruthless Killer

Ruthless Killer

Nothing better demonstrated Brusca's ruthlessness than the kidnapping and murder of 11-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo. The boy's father, Santo Di Matteo, took part in the 1992 Falcone killing and later informed on others involved in the plot. Brusca kidnapped the boy in November 1993. He was told that they were taking him to see his father, who was in hiding. Instead they held the boy for 26 months, during which they tortured him and sent grisly photos to his father to force him to retract his testimony. Di Matteo made a desperate trip to Sicily to try to negotiate his son's release. The boy was finally strangled on the orders of Giovanni Brusca. Subsequently the body was dissolved in a barrel of acid to destroy the evidence.

Brusca once had to face Di Matteo, in court. Di Matteo told the judge: "I guarantee my collaboration but to this animal I guarantee nothing. If you leave me alone with him for two minutes I'll cut off his head."

Giovanni Brusca was one of the most powerful Mafia leaders between Riina’s arrest in January 1993 and his own in May 1996. He was involved in the campaign of terror in 1993 against the state to get them to back off in their crackdown against the Mafia after the murders of Anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Following the months after Riina's arrest, there were a series of bombings by the Corleonesi against several tourist spots on the Italian mainland – the Via dei Georgofili in Florence, Via Palestro in Milan and the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in Rome, which left 10 people dead and 71 injured as well as severe damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery.