Boy, 12, killed after 800 days of terror when Mafia boss said 5 terrifying words | World | News
Giuseppe Di Matteo was just 12 when he was abducted (Image: undefined)
Young Giuseppe Di Matteo believed he was heading to see his father when people posing as police officers collected him one day in 1993.
Former Mafia associate Santino Di Matteo had recently turned his back on his criminal associates and was living under the protection of the authorities for his own safety.
Tragically, his 12-year-old son became a victim when Cosa Nostra criminals in Sicily, Italy, disguised themselves as police officers and abducted him.
The chilling scheme was orchestrated by hitman Giovanni Brusca and crime boss Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina. For nearly 800 days, the defenceless youngster endured unimaginable suffering while held captive in a café.
He was beaten and starved by his captors, who also dispatched photographs of the boy to Santino as part of their twisted psychological torment, reports the Daily Star.
Giuseppe di Matteo was a keen horse rider (Image: Newsflash)
The original intention was to prevent the informant from providing evidence in the trial of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, who had been murdered in a car bomb attack.
The distinguished judge had dedicated his career to prosecuting organised crime, most notably presiding over the infamous “maxi trial” in 1986, which resulted in the conviction of 342 mafiosi, according to the Mirror.
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Brusca was instructed to exact revenge and, in 1992, he planted half a tonne of explosives beneath a motorway near Palermo, targeting Falcone as his vehicle drove overhead.
The judge died alongside his wife and three bodyguards, forcing Brusca to immediately flee and go into hiding.
Anti-Mafia police wearing masks to hide their identity, escort top Mafia fugitive Giovani Brusca (Image: Getty)
The subsequent capture of Santino exposed Brusca — nicknamed ‘The Pig’ — as the mastermind, sealing Giuseppe’s horrific fate.
In 1996 — 779 days after his abduction — Brusca issued the order to murder Giuseppe with five chilling words: “Get rid of the puppy”.
The boy was so weakened by his ordeal that he was unable to resist as he was strangled to death.
His remains were then dissolved in acid to ensure they would never be discovered — a method known as ‘lupara bianca’. Disturbingly, Brusca displayed no remorse, later boasting in his autobiography about his increasingly horrific crimes.
“I’ve dissolved bodies in acid; I’ve roasted corpses on big grills; I’ve buried the remains after digging graves with an earthmover,” he wrote.
“Some pentiti [former Mafiosi] say today they feel disgust for what they did. I can speak for myself: I’ve never been upset by these things.”
Brusca was subsequently captured and imprisoned for 25 years after confessing his involvement in more than 100 murders.
His eventual release in 2021, at the age of 64, provoked widespread outrage across Italy that such a dangerous killer was now free to walk the streets. Tina Montinaro, whose bodyguard husband was murdered alongside Falcone, told the Repubblica at the time: “The state is against us – after 29 years we still don’t know the truth about the massacre and Giovanni Brusca, the man who destroyed my family, is free.”
Three years earlier in 2018, Giuseppe’s family received over €2.2m (£1.9m) as compensation for his murder. On the 25th anniversary of his son’s abduction, Santino stated in an interview: “I think about it every day.
“How can there be people so evil to treat a child this way? When people get involved in stuff like this, it’s most likely they are never coming back.”
