Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/13/2006 3:46:14 AM PDT by MadIvan
HE eluded capture for 43 years. But in the end he was betrayed by the need for clean underwear.
Bernardo Provenzano, the Mafia “boss of bosses” who was arrested this week, was traced to his Sicilian hideaway by police who tracked a delivery of laundry.
Provenzano, who had not been seen since going into hiding in 1963, asked his wife to send him “a pack of washed and ironed clothes” — underpants, shirts, and socks.
Police intercepted a telephone conversation between mafiosi indicating that Provenzano’s wife, Saveria Benedetta Palazzolo, who runs a laundry in Corleone, was about to return her husband’s clean clothes. The pack of laundry was handed to one of a team of trusted messengers who for years had taken notes and packages to and from “the Godfather”. This time, however, they were watched by police as well as by television surveillance cameras.
The watchers saw the door of the farmhouse open a tiny crack and a hand emerge to receive the package. A signal was given to storm the house. Provenzano, taken by surprise, turned out to be an elderly, pink-cheeked man with thick-lensed metal-rimmed reading glasses.
“He was not what we were expecting at all,” Piero Grasso, the chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, said yesterday. “Obviously, country air and the simple life keep you youthful.”
Provenzano had been nearly captured on six occasions, but had always escaped after being mysteriously tipped off. “Perhaps some powerful people withdrew their protection,” La Repubblica suggested yesterday. Provenzano had been untouchable until now thanks to “support from politicians and businessmen”.
Provenzano, 73, was captured on Tuesday — the day after the Italian election — in an isolated, unheated and rundown three-room stone farmhouse, barely 2 kilometres (1¼ miles) from Corleone, his home town, which inspired the Mafia family name in The Godfather films and books.
He had evaded capture so often that he had earned the nickname “the Phantom of Corleone”. There was nothing romantic, however, about the squalid hideaway in which he was found — nor about the insistence on clean underwear that in the end proved his downfall. The legendary gang boss was seated at a rough table and chair, his makeshift office. The room contained two televisions — one broken and dusty, the other new — and an electric fire. He barely resembled the photofit circulated — and updated — by police.
The house belongs to Giovanni Marino, a local shepherd who uses a battered old Fiat Panda for deliveries of home-made ricotta cheese. He too is under arrest, together with three of the Mafia messengers.
Provenzano also had a plastic bag containing medicines, including insulin. There was a shotgun on floor, but he offered no resistance.
Dressed in a check shirt, a white scarf, a navy-coloured winter jacket and a pair of old jeans, he was “calm, rather beatific-looking, a bit like a priest,” one police officer said.
On a table next to his unmade single bed, police found a portrait of St Pio, the miracle-working hermit, copies of the local paper, a rosary, and the Bible. He also had a well-thumbed anti-Mafia manual published by “Captain Ultimo”, a pseudonym for the police officer who captured Provenzano’s predecessor, Toto Riina, in 1993. “It was as if he was trying to read our minds, ” one police source said.
Provenzano was transferred yesterday from Palermo to a high security prison at Terni in Umbria.
Signor Grasso said Provenzano “knows a great many secrets, but I don’t hold out much hope he will reveal them”.
Provenzano had been leader of the Mafia since the arrest of Riina after the assassination in 1992 of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two top anti-Mafia judges.
Italy was abuzz yesterday with speculation over the extraordinary timing of the arrest, which came just as the Centre Left under Romano Prodi claimed a wafer-thin victory over the Centre Right led by Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister.
Although Signor Berlusconi has always vehemently denied any link with the Mafia, one of his longest-serving aides is appealing against a nine year prison sentence for “Mafia association”.
Luciano Violante, a former Speaker of parliament and a former anti-Mafia magistrate, said: “Perhaps we will now find out who protected him all these years.”
Signor Grasso warned that the anti-Mafia fight was not over, and that there would be a bloody succession struggle.
The leading contenders are Matteo Messina Denaro, 43, a protégé of Provenzano from Palermo, who is said to favour a lifestyle of designer clothes and fast cars, and Salvatore Lo Piccolo, 63, who has been on the run for 20 years and also claims to have Provenzano’s blessing.
UNDERLYING FIGURES
Bill Clinton was asked by a 17-year- old girl in 1994 whether he wore boxers or briefs. He replied “usually briefs”
Under the headline “Tyrant’s in his pants” Saddam Hussein was pictured by The Sun in 2005 wearing Y-fronts
Superman prefers red pants, but likes to wear them over lycra trousers
David Beckham changes his underwear a number of times daily and never wears any pants twice
When Marlon Brando was fitted in tight jeans for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) he insisted on wearing no underwear
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
I dont know why anyone would want to replace this guy as head of the Mafia. The job doesnt sound all that swell to me.
Do the DBM (Drive By Media) not know the difference between pants and shirts?
Or, are they trying to throw us off, thinking that our being lowly pajamadeen, we'll not understand the difference?
Morons.
"Provenzano, taken by surprise, turned out to be an elderly, pink-cheeked man with thick-lensed metal-rimmed reading glasses.."
Isnt that Uncle Jr. from the Sopranos?
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