Just two weeks after the stunning capture of Sicilian Cosa Nostra supremo Matteo Messina Denaro inside a health facility in Palermo, Sicily, on January 16, Italian anti-Mafia police have captured another wanted gangster.
This time, Edgardo Greco, 63, was the one who was caught in Saint-Etienne, France, where he was employed as a pizzaiolo (or pizza chef) at the Italian restaurant Caffe Rossini, using the identity Paolo Dimitrio.
Greco, a member of the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, was found guilty in absentia for the 1991 double homicide of Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo, who he is accused of killing with iron bars and then dissolving in acid, according to court records. Ever after his conviction, he had avoided Italian police enforcement.
Greco was also convicted of the attempted murder of several prison officials, earning him the moniker “prison killer.” He was described as a “dangerous fugitive” by Nicola Gratteri, the anti-Mafia prosecutor who oversaw the investigation as head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Catanzaro, Calabria.
Gratteri began pursuing Greco after he was mentioned in an article published by the French publication Le Progres that the restaurant shared on its official Facebook page, the prosecutor’s office confirmed to CNN.
He frequently posted on social media under his bogus name, according to the police in Calabria. On Friday, a call to the restaurant’s phone number proved unsuccessful. According to journalist and novelist Roberto Saviano, who has been living under police protection since the publication of his book “Gomorrah” in 2006, Mafia bosses frequently want for limelight.
“It’s normal. Consider El Chapo, who wished to meet Sean Penn in order for him to be the subject of a movie while he was employed. And Al Capone wanted to visit the “Scarface” film set, Saviano said in an interview last week.
There are still four top mafiosi hiding out, according to Italian anti-Mafia police, and numerous other less powerful people are also on the run. The top four are listed on the anti-Mafia website of the Italian government. Having been found guilty of Mafia crimes connected to the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, Pasquale Bonavota, 48, has been on the run since 2018.
Since his 1998 conviction for murder and Mafia affiliation in Sicily, 64-year-old Giovanni Motisi, a member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, has been on the lam. Attilio Cubeddu, 75, has been on the run since 1997 after being found guilty of numerous kidnapping charges, and Renato Cinquegranella, 73, of the Neapolitan Camorra, has been on the run since 2002 after being found guilty of murder, charges involving weapons, and extortion. Both of these men are regarded as some of Italy’s most dangerous fugitives.
The anti-Mafia unit in Italy claimed to be working round-the-clock to track down those still at large. They are doing this by arresting people who are a part of their protective networks, freezing bank accounts and other assets, and even searching social media for mistakes like the one that let Greco’s cover slip.
