Bonavota is now among the top fugitives.

Pasquale Bonavota, leading member of the ‘Ndrangheta
The last of the four most wanted Italian mafiosi is 49-year-old Pasquale Bonavota, who was born in Sant’Onofrio, in the province of Vibo Valentia. He belongs to the ‘Ndrangheta, more precisely the Bonavota clan, which has always been at war with the Petrolo Bartolotta family from the city of Stefanaconi.

The place was called Corleone Calabria by the press in the 90s.

On January 6, 1991, a group of the Petrolo-Bartolotta family shot around with pistols and Kalashnikovs in the Piazza of Sant’Onofrio, killing two people and injuring eleven. This act of violence is remembered in Italy as the Epiphany massacre.

Pasquale Bonavota grew up in a family determined to avenge this attack on their own territory. He quickly became the head of his family and was described by Marisa Manzini, Catanzaro’s assistant prosecutor, as “a person who combines two criminal faces: on the one hand, that of an old-fashioned ‘ndranghetista’ who grew up in a clan that ruled the has made the dynamic of violence the leitmotif of his life and, on the other hand, that of the offspring who wants to expand his presence beyond the territorial limits of his community”.

Bonavota invested enormous capital in Rome to buy companies that over time, according to the investigating prosecutor, developed into “real centers of drug trafficking”. Bonavota has been wanted since 2018 for membership in a criminal organization and complicity in aggravated murder.