An Italian mafia boss on the run for 20 years was tracked right down to a Spanish city after being noticed on Google Avenue View.
Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted assassin listed amongst Italy’s most wished gangsters, was arrested in Galapagar, a city close to Madrid, the place through the years he had married, modified his title to Manuel, labored as a chef and owned a fruit and vegetable store.
Sicilian police carried out a number of investigations of their seek for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, however it was Google Avenue View that helped to pinpoint his exact location.
The navigation instrument, accessible by means of Google Maps, had captured a picture of two males chatting exterior a fruit and vegetable store known as El Huerto de Manu, or Manu’s Backyard, in Galapagar. Police believed one of many males carefully resembled Gammino, however his id was solely confirmed after they got here throughout a list for a close-by restaurant known as La Cocina de Manu or Manu’s Kitchen.
The store and the restaurant are actually closed, however the police discovered a photograph of Gammino, wearing his chef’s garb, on a still-existing Fb web page for La Cocina de Manu. He was recognisable by the scar on the left aspect of his chin. The restaurant’s menu included a dish known as Cena Siciliana or Sicilian dinner.
Gammino was arrested on 17 December however the particulars surrounding his seize didn’t come to gentle till they have been reported by La Repubblica on Wednesday.
The small print have been confirmed by the Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, who led the most recent investigation. “It’s not as if we spend our days wading by means of Google Maps to search out fugitives,” he instructed the Guardian. “There have been many earlier and lengthy investigations, which led us to Spain. We have been on a great path, with Google Maps serving to to verify our investigations.”
After 20 years in hiding, Gammino thought he had managed to sever all his ties with Sicily. Upon his arrest, he reportedly instructed police: “How did you discover me? I haven’t even known as my household for 10 years!”
Gammino belonged to a mafia clan in Agrigento, Sicily, which was caught up in a bloody feud with Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s essential mafia community, within the Nineties. He was first arrested in 1984, when he was investigated by the anti-mafia choose Giovanni Falcone, who was assassinated by the mafia in a automobile bomb in 1992.
Gammino was wished for homicide and varied different mafia-related crimes. He was arrested for a second time in Barcelona in 1998. He had been serving a life sentence at Rebibbia jail in Rome when, in 2002, he managed to flee through the commotion of the making of a movie on the jail.
It’s not the primary time a mafia fugitive has been caught with the assistance of the net. In March final 12 months, Mark Feren Claude Biart was captured within the Caribbean after showing in YouTube cooking movies. Biart had been on the run since 2014, when Italian prosecutors ordered his arrest for trafficking cocaine within the Netherlands on behalf of the Cacciola clan of the ’Ndrangheta mafia.
Till his arrest, Biart had been main a quiet life among the many Italian expat neighborhood in Boca Chica within the Dominican Republic. Though the YouTube movies of him flaunting his cooking expertise by no means confirmed his face, police mentioned he was betrayed by the distinctive tattoos on his physique.
In 2019, police arrested a mobster with the Camorra mafia organisation whereas he was consuming pasta together with his two cats sitting beside him in an condo within the outskirts of Naples.