Sicilian mafioso dubbed ‘people slayer,’ who said he killed 150 and dissolved victim in acid, released after 25 years
The notorious Cosa Nostra turncoat dubbed “the people slayer,” who claimed a role in more than 150 murders, including one where a boy was strangled and dissolved in acid, is now a free man.
Giovanni Brusca, 64, walked out of Rome’s Rebibbia prison Monday after 25 years behind bars, sparking public outrage.
At his 1997 trial, Brusca admitted detonating the bomb that killed anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards as the group traveled on a highway in Palermo in 1992.
He also was convicted for his role in the kidnapping and strangling of an informant’s 11-year-old son, whose body was dissolved in a vat of acid.
“It is a punch in the stomach that leaves you breathless,” Italy’s former prime minister Enrico Letta said Tuesday in reaction to Brusca’s release, according to ANSA.
But Falcone’s sister reportedly said Brusca had earned his freedom by squealing on others, and her dead brother would have supported it.
“On a human level, this is news that pains me. But the law on the reduction of sentences for the collaboration of mafiosi is a law my brother wanted, and therefore it must be respected,” Maria Falcone said, according to ANSA.
“I only hope the judiciary and police will be vigilant, with extreme attention, in order to avert the risk that he commit crimes again,” she said.
Brusca was the heir apparent to the Cosa Nostra crime family when he was arrested in 1996 after years on the run.
He reportedly was apprehended at a seaside villa in Sicily as he was sitting down with his family to watch a TV film about Giovanni Falcone’s life.
He was sentenced to life for more than 100 murders but became eligible for a fixed-term after giving investigators valuable information about the Sicilian Mafia, officials said.
