It was a short, violent end to the equally violent life of Mafia godfather Daniele Emmanuello when police traced him to his farmhouse hideout in the port-town of Gela last week.
He died face-down in a ravine with a bullet wound in his back.
Police claim he was hit by a warning shot as he fled, stuffing into his mouth as he ran small slips of paper that may have contained names and addresses.
He was discovered after detectives followed a paper trail implicating him as the next in command in Sicily's infamous Cosa Nostra.
But depending on whether the slips can still be read by officers after they are extracted from his gullet, any further unravelling of the Mafia may end with Emmanuello's death.
The trial started last year with the arrest of Mafia boss-of-bosses Bernardo Provenzano, who was head of the clan based in Sicilian town of Corleone – the setting of the Godfather films.
The 73-year-old was one of Sicily's most feared gangsters and was nicknamed 'Bernie the Tractor' for mowing down his rivals with a submachine gun.
Because he feared communicating via phones or the internet, he used a system of codes written on slips of paper called pizzini.
They were carried by his underlings to other gangsters and were composed of a simplistic code which involved simply swapping letters of a person's name for numbers.
After police cracked the code, it led them to Provenzano's underbosses, Antonio Rotolo, 61, and Salvatore "The Baron" Lo Piccolo, 65.
However, Rotolo was arrested before a Mafia convention in June 2006 with two barrels of acid.
Police believe that there may have been a power struggle between the two underbosses and Rotolo may have intended to kill Lo Piccolo and dump his body in the acid.
Shortly afterwards, two bosses affiliated with Rotolo were shot and went missing, respectively.
Police were desperate to trace Lo Piccolo, and managed to find him last month through his son, who unwittingly led them to his hideout in a villa near Sicily's capital, Palermo.
Inside, police found pizzini, suggesting that the next highest boss was Emmanuello. Whether or not they will be able to follow the trail further will depend on whether the messages that were lodged in Emmanuello's gullet can still be read.
The 43-year-old boss, who had been on the run for 11 years, had been behind an attempt to quell protest from 80 businessmen from Caltanissetta, who were refusing to pay pizzo – protection payment – to the mob.
Last month mobsters in the town torched the local offices of Italy's employer's federation, Confindustria, which had been supporting the revolt.
Computer disks containing details of all the businesses that were refusing to pay the illegal tax were also stolen.
The tax is primarily one of the only sources of income after the Mafia have become less involved in drug trafficking.
With the audacious rebellion by businesses and unravelling of senior figures in the Mafia, commentators believe that the power of the mob may be on the wane.
However British Mafia expert and author Tony Thompson, believes that they are still a force to be reckoned with.
He said: "A lot of the bosses are out of touch with modern crime. They are now less violent then they used to be and a lot of younger gangs such as those from Albania are coming across and they are every bit as violent as the Mafia used to be.
"But as a force they are still pretty powerful although some of the old guard are certainly more vulnerable."
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