ITALIAN POLICE have been left wringing their hands in frustration after the country’s most wanted Mafia killer escaped their grasp by seconds and fled for more than a mile through the sewers beneath the Neapolitan hinterland.
Giuseppe Setola left behind a pistol, €12,000 and his bedside reading – the late Pope John Paul’s appropriately titled 2004 work, Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way.
Setola (38) has already been convicted and jailed for one murder. Investigators however say that in the past five months he has masterminded a killing spree that has left 18 corpses on the streets of Campania, the region that surrounds Naples.
He is also believed to be the hitman delegated by the Camorra, the Campanian Mafia, to kill the author Roberto Saviano.
The film of Saviano’s book about the Camorra, Gomorrah, is Italy’s candidate for a 2009 Oscar.
Yesterday’s escape was Setola’s third since he slipped out of a hospital while being treated for an eye infection.
Paramilitary carabinieri broke into a house in the town of Trentola Ducenta near Naples that he was sharing with his wife Stefania Martinelli and another suspected mobster.
Their path was blocked, first by a gate and then a wall built across the front yard. According to investigators, Setola took advantage of the delay to slip through a trapdoor under the bed.
From there, a passage led to the sewers. Setola re-emerged through a manhole outside a dairy.
There, he stole a woman’s car and drove it for a short distance before abandoning it and stealing another.
Last night, one of the prosecutors leading the hunt for Setola and his accomplices received a threatening letter.
Inside the envelope were five rounds of live ammunition. – (Guardian service)