Spain: Google Street View brings investigators on the trail of wanted Mafioso

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Screenshot of the street view shot that is supposed to show the criminal in front of his shop in Spain

Photo: Google

Italian investigators were able to locate and arrest the convicted Sicilian mafioso Gioacchino Gammino in December using the street view function of Google Maps, among other things. The investigators had discovered him on a street view photo from the Spanish town of Galapagar, which showed him in front of a fruit and vegetable stand, as a spokesman for the anti-mafia police Dia said on Wednesday when asked. The investigators suspected him after two years of investigative work in the place near Madrid. On December 17th, the Spanish authorities finally took action.

There was a restaurant not far from the store that served Sicilian cuisine as a specialty - a note for the officials.

According to the newspaper »La Repubblica«, the restaurant posted a photo of the chef on Facebook.

From a scar on his chin, the investigators recognized that it was the wanted man.

This finally enabled them to identify the person pixelated in Google Street View.

The Mafioso had previously been on the run for almost 20 years because he was wanted for, among other things, murder and drug trafficking.

A life sentence awaits him in Italy.

He belonged to the Sicilian Mafia Stidda, a counter-organization to the better known Cosa Nostra.

Spectacular escape

The mafioso had already been arrested in 1995, but was able to go into hiding in Spain until he was finally apprehended in Barcelona and transferred to the notorious high-security prison Rebibbia in Rome in 1999. In June 2002, however, he managed to escape from there in a sensational way: When a prisoner while filming a film with actress Vittoria Belvedere climbed up a wall screaming and trembling and refused to come down, Gammino used the diversionary maneuver. He escaped by joining a group of people who had visited their imprisoned relatives.

Apparently he was surprised that the police finally found him in Spain.

When he was arrested, he is said to have said: “How did you find me?

I haven't called my family for ten years. "After he fled Italy, the man started a new life in Galapagar, reports the Guardian."

So he not only set up the fruit and vegetable shop and worked as a cook in the restaurant, but also got married and changed his name to Manuel.

mak / dpa