Last week, when police arrested one of Italy’s most wanted mafia fugitives, Gioacchino Gammino, in the suburbs of Madrid, he asked how he found him. Did someone kick him out, or did he accidentally leave a clue?
Gammino claimed to have lived under the wrong name without calling his family for more than 10 years. “I met you on Google Maps,” police told him, showing him a vague photo of himself standing outside the greengrocer’s store in 2018.
61-year-old Gamino escaped from Levivia prison in Rome in 2002 and has lived under various names ever since. Recently, he went under the name Manu and got married. He and his wife ran a series of businesses, including hair salons, restaurants, and vegetable stores.
Gammino, a member of the Stidda clan in Sicilian Mafia, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, drug trafficking, and mafia conspiracy when he escaped from prison while filming a movie. He was first arrested in 1984 and was in and out of jail until he was convicted of murder in 1998.
Anti-Mafia investigators suspected of living in the town of Galapagar in Spain could find a vegetable store named El Huertode by looking at Google Maps Street View images after random information. I decided to see if I could do it. Manu that was thought to be owned by the fugitive.
But when the investigator found the store, he also saw Gamino standing in front of the store. Later, executives tracked the store’s financial statements and discovered that Gammino had a restaurant in the town of Manu’s Kitchen, where he worked as a chef. After that, the restaurant closed, but police officers were able to find grainy images on TripAdvisor. This shows that Gamino is clearly visible in the kitchen. According to police, the image of the man and the chef in front of the vegetable counter was undoubtedly the same person because of a noticeable scar on his chin during the knife fight.
“The photos helped to confirm the investigation we were developing in the traditional way,” Nicola Artiello, deputy director of the Italian anti-mafia police, told reporters.
Gamino is currently detained in Spain, facing a transfer to Italy and imprisoned for life imprisonment.
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