Godfather Arrested in Corleone

ROME — For more than 40 years he eluded arrest. He dispatched
orders on little typewritten notes and shunned telephones that might
pinpoint his location. His resume allegedly included some of the most
gruesome murders in Mafia lore.

Yesterday, the reputed godfather of the Cosa Nostra and Italy’s most-wanted
fugitive was captured in a ramshackle farmhouse outside the Sicilian town
of Corleone, a name made infamous by author Mario Puzo and Marlon Brando.

Provenzano, 73, has been on the run since 1963, surviving thanks to a network
of faithful henchmen, his family, and corrupt police and politicians. Authorities
say he became the ”capo di tutti capi," the boss of bosses, following
the arrest in 1993 of Salvatore ”The Beast" Riina.

He was convicted in absentia in the 1992 bombing murder of a leading anti-Mafia
prosecutor in Sicily. He earned the nickname ”The Tractor" from his
reputation for mowing down people in his youth, when authorities say he
was an up-and-coming hit man for the Corleone clan.

article from the Boston Globe