Italian Mobster Nabbed by 'Ghostbusters'

By
DAVID WRIGHT
April 11, 2006, 4:49 PM ET
2 min read

April 11, 2006 — -- The dramatic arrest of Bernardo Provenzano is such a big deal here, it is leading the news the day after a cliffhanger election.

It's a story straight out of a gangster movie.

The "boss of bosses" for the Italian mafia has been on the run for 43 years until authorities tracked him down Tuesday at a farmhouse near Corleone -- his hometown, and the birthplace of the fabled Godfather of Puzo and Coppola.

Chief Mower of the Underworld

Provenzano earned the nickname "The Tractor" because "he mows people down." Another former mob boss Luciano Liggio once said of him, "He has the brains of a chicken, but he shoots like an angel."

Provenzano outfoxed Italian authorities for four decades, moving nightly from farmhouse to farmhouse in the Sicilian countryside.

Officials say he scrupulously avoided using cell phones because he knew they could be traced. Instead, he relied on the culture of omerta -- the Mafia Code of Silence -- in Sicily.

Apparently, he continued to rule his crime family by sending little notes on scraps of paper through various couriers. It was by following those couriers that authorities eventually tracked him down.

The only picture police had of Provenzano was from the early 1960s. It had to be "digitally aged" for the wanted posters, using information from a Mafia stooge. For more than a dozen years, Provenzano was Italy's Most Wanted man.

Real Ghostbusters

Italian police say when they finally caught up with him, he identified himself and congratulated them on an historic arrest.

But according to police he is not answering their questions about La Cosa Nostra. Instead, they say, he is maintaining the Code of Silence.

Authorities also arrested his host at the farmhouse, a shepherd who was in the process of making Ricotta cheese, when officials closed the chapter on one of the country's most notorious fugitives.

The three policemen, called 'The Ghostbusters,' who spearheaded the arrest -- part of an elite anti-Mafia task force -- are now folk heroes in Italy.